Green Light with Chris Long - Long Gone Summer, Sosa, McGwire, Steroids and St. Louis Football with Randy Karraker.

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

0:54 - open. 5:00 - Mayan Calendar. 10:09 - Randy Karraker on Sosa and McGwire and Steroids. 49:50 - MLB Labor Situation. 55:12 - St. Louis Football. An old friend joins today @RandyKarraker has covered StL sports for decades + had a front row seat in 98. 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

Happy Monday afternoon. I'm your host, Chris Long. This is the Greenlight Pod. And we're going to talk some baseball today. Randy Kerker from 101 ESPN in St. Louis is going to join me. He knows a lot about baseball. One of my favorite media members. And he's watched a lot of baseball. So I'm going to have him on. In fact, he had Mark McGuire on the show last week. So we'll see what context he can give us in talking about McGuire, Sosa, that era in baseball, as well as, you know, the fallout and the context with which we view these sluggers from the 90s in that steroid era. It's a crazy time and we're all doing what we have to do to get through it. Two big things for me, this podcast, and we've had a ton of interesting guests of late,

which has been great. And then hiking, which I love doing, like to get outside, nice place to be where there's not a ton of people. There's a ton of good hikes in Virginia. I've been hitting the trails a lot and that's in large part due to all birds. They are the new sponsor of the Greenlight Podcasts. and I'm wearing a pair of these shoes right now. Bays, tree dashers, they sent me.

They're great. They're lightweight. They're tough. And they have to be. Because believe me, I can put a herding on an athletic shoe. I could Zion Williamson a shoe on the trail. And these things stand up. All birds also walks the walk when it comes to the environment.

So my tree dashers are made of all natural materials like merino wool, eucalyptus fiber, and sugar cane. And they look good. Really thrilled to welcome Allbirds to the Greenlight Pod. Go check them out at allbirds.com, the tree dashers. I changed my Twitter handle to baseball watcher, Chris Long, late in the playoffs last fall. At first it was a joke, but now it's an effort. I work in sports and podcasting in the media,

so I have to know a little bit about baseball. And truth be told, I grew up playing baseball, loved it, was pretty good at it, very good at it, I would say. My brother was better. He was very good. He was very, very good. Two verys. Got drafted, you know, one of the later rounds by the White Sox, but I wasn't that good. But I could hit some dingers. And I love watching baseball. But by the time I was a pro athlete living in St. Louis for eight years in a Cardinals town. And St. Louis is a great sports town. It is a Cardinals town first and foremost. It will always be that. I didn't follow baseball like that as a pro athlete. So I'm re-learning the sport watching last night was cool. I did think the documentary could be a lot better. I thought it was fairly sterile, which unfortunately is kind of a baseball stereotype that I'm applying to the doc, but when the shoe fits, you wear it. It was kind of a highlight reel of home runs. I know that the reviews have been pretty mixed on Twitter. But the discussions that we can have off of that

hour and a half, 30 for 30 are infinite. When you talk about the things that they didn't even address, they barely addressed the steroids. I'm so intrigued by performance enhancers in baseball. I'm intrigued by, you know, being there in that time and place in 1998, which was the epicenter of the baseball and the sports world. You've got Sosa and McGuire, two cities that are kind of regional rivals. They're very different in scale and feel, St. Louis and Chicago.

and this was going on over the summer in two of the most storied, although at that point Chicago was still enjoying that very long drought, but very storied franchises in baseball. And that was the heyday of baseball. As a baseball fan, it was a home run derby. It was who's going to hit 62. You know, you were glued to the TV. I can remember growing up and watching a lot of baseball.

But needless to say, I need help talking about it. Randy Kerker from 101 ESPN in St. Louis is going to join me. He knows a lot about baseball. One of my favorite media members that I've dealt with my entire career. Still a guy I keep in contact with. And he lived it in 1998. He was right there in the thick of it. He also had to suffer through a lot of Rams years while I was there that were very

tough to deal with as a player or a media member if you're rooting for the home team. But the balance for him is that he got to watch baseball. And he's watched a lot of baseball. So I'm going to have him on. In fact, he had Mark McGuire on the show last week. So we'll see what context he can give us in talking about McGuire, Sosa, that era in baseball, as well as, you know, the fallout and in the context with which we view these sluggers from the 90s in that steroid era. So I can't wait to talk to him and reconnect with him. Also this week, you know, the end of the world is a topic.

And not just because of COVID or police brutality or everything we've been talking about the last couple weeks. the Mayan calendar it was if you remember in 2012 supposed to end December 21st, 2012 of course that was a big bummer nothing happened we've had to live out the last eight years at the time we were relieved

but maybe had we known how shitty 2020 would be we would have been mad at the Mayan calendar for leading us on there is an alternate reading of the calendar that says the world ends this week or next week so if this is my last podcast or

last few podcasts it's been a good run. I have enjoyed it and bring it on man. Bring it on. The number of days lost in a year due to the Gregorian calendar is 11 when dealing with the Mayan calendar and I wrote all this out to explain to you guys but suffice to say yada yada yada yada we basically lost eight years when looking at 2012. It's 2020 the Mayans at least according to some guy studying for his master's in plant biology on Twitter, he brought this to light. He deleted the tweet, but people are lending this some legitimacy and people are in a frenzy. Everybody wants the world to end. I get it. Let me just say this. I'm tired of being teased. Okay, every time I read an article about a fucking asteroid, I am reminded what pussy's asteroids are.

don't talk about it be about it asteroids are so so painfully soft that the only time they really did anything recently is they hit Siberia in 1908 a 200 foot wide comet fragment that they say had a thousand times the energy of an atomic bomb just plowed Siberia you're drunk okay be better you know when you see all the lights from space, aim for where you see a lot of lights. Just let's get this thing over with. Asteroids half mile wide hit every 250,000 years. That'd do a number on civilization, but not finish the job. Okay.

So now the five mile type, the dinosaur killer, the good news is there's a belt near Neptune that has evidently 100,000 ice balls, 50 miles in diameter. So you can imagine what that would do. We get small comets from that belt all the time. So I would ask that belt to get serious. There's also gamma ray bursts, you know, and doing a little bit of reading. That's one way it could all end. It's like two collapsed stars colliding.

Whenever that happens, we won't even know it. As far as I understand. It'll be a bright flash and it will be over, like men in black. You know, you've got rogue black holes. That could, you know, that could happen. And global warming has some big promises. A lot of big talk from global warming. But what a tease.

I don't even think I'm going to live to see it. There's always nuclear war, definitely a possibility. And then there's the Yellowstone volcano that's really overdue. I think it's a bit exaggeratedly. And people have written about it more in recent years. I was in Montana a couple years back, not far from that volcano, that caldera. You know, in Yellowstone that everybody says is near the fault line there. If it went, it's curtains.

I mean, like nuclear winter type vibes. And there was an earthquake in the middle of night. And I jumped out of bed. My first thought, after I thought that there was a ghost in the cabin there in Montana, I thought, oh, it's the Yellowstone volcano. And it's happening. Unfortunately, nothing happened. And here we are in 2020.

Now, when it comes to my encounter, I guess I'm wondering why they left all the droughts and the other shit out that took them down in about 950 AD. Might want to go back in reference to see if they included that stuff to gauge the validity of any of their predictions. These guys also did blood sacrifices to keep invisible men in the sky happy. So I'm not sure how in tune I am to their calendar. But fuck, I've been talking about it for five minutes on this podcast. So I guess it's on my mind. So if the world's not ending, we got to keep podcasting. Podcasts the wheels fall off.

Today we're talking baseball. Thankfully, as I mentioned, I'm bringing in my good friend Randy Kerker from St. Louis, the place you'd want to be in 1998 watching baseball. And we won't just talk that. We'll talk about the NFL leaving St. Louis. We'll talk about the possibility of ever coming back. I hope we'll talk about that. And then we'll also get into the current labor situation.

So without further ado, here's Randy. So the tables of turn now, I have, as I said earlier, one of my favorite media personalities hands down in all my years of playing football, Randy Kerker, former Fast Lane host. That was a staple while I played in St. Louis. now co-host of Kerker and Smallman, which of course is Randy Kerker and Michelle Smallman, one of my other favorites. 101Sports.com, you can listen live.

Randy, how you doing, man? I'm doing good, Chris. It's always good to see him, my man. It's great to see you, too. How about last night? Because, you know, if you were a St. Louis fan, like, I'm not a Cardinals fan. I never was that big into baseball, which I know is almost like sacrilege in St. Louis, because it is baseball heaven, and people refer to it that way.

way in football. You always felt like understandably second fiddle, especially when your team sucks. But last night I tuned in because I do podcasts. I was interested in purely talking about what was topical. And as I turned on the documentary, it was like a flood of nostalgia. I was seeing Ted Cruz. I was seeing people I knew. I was seen Bernie Miklis. I'm seeing personalities, places, cityscapes that are very near and dear to my heart. What did you make? make of it? Did it take you back? Were there unexpected twists and turns that you hadn't known about? It did take me back because even though the Rams won a Super Bowl here and the Blues made it, they advanced to the Stanley Cup finals last year, from a moment in sports standpoint, that's still

the coolest thing that I've ever been at when he hit number 62. That was a magical moment for me. And I didn't think it was that revealing. I thought that there was a great deal of rehashing stuff that I already knew, but it was great to see it again. But the one thing that I think they could have done a better job of is trying to find out what baseball knew about performance enhancers at that point. Because I was naive to it. And people were talking about it. But at that point, I was really naive to performance enhancing drugs. And I said, yeah, maybe he's doing it, maybe he's not, but I'm having a good time.

And that's what mattered to me. And so that's what it really took me back to is the fact that I had a great time with it. And I can't retroactively, even if it didn't bother me that those guys were using roids, I can't retroactively change my emotions from that season. I had a great time. Yeah, it seemed like everybody in the city had a great time. Obviously, that sequence predates any of my teammates. or myself getting to St. Louis, but knowing what I know about St. Louis as a baseball town,

that had to be like the epicenter of sports that summer. I mean, and not just the fact that it was Mark McGuire in St. Louis. You had Sammy Sosa playing for a fierce rival that felt like a big brother, little brother kind of rivalry as far as the size of a city and that sort of thing and how close the two communities are. That had to be just the perfect storm for baseball. to pull them out of what was a really rough time. Yeah, that's exactly right. They were still coming off the strike of 94. Fans hadn't completely come back.

And because they were two guys from the same division and teams that played each other a lot. And like you said, fierce rivals, that made it just incredible. Like you said, it was a perfect storm of baseball. And it couldn't have been any better. And so we were just a few years, not only that strike of 94, but 94 was when news and sports, as far as I am concerned, really started to intersect because of OJ. And like he became the lead of the news and news people started caring about sports because it delivered ratings.

And so you'd watch, like we saw, Katie Couric at the top of the news, talking about McGuire and Sosa and Peter Jennings on ABC. So it was more than just a sports story too. And not only was we're St. Louis in Chicago, the epicenter of, of the sports world, but they were really the epicenter of American culture during that summer. And I wasn't looking at it from a global view. That's one of the things that you can see now when they show that stuff is that there is it really, it really was a global story. And I was focusing on the St. Louis part of it.

But it was pretty darn cool. Yeah, it was amazing. And as you mentioned, fierce rivals, but the two somehow had this really interesting relationship. And you could tell McGuire, and he said this explicitly, didn't know much about Sosa before that year. It was kind of a big brother, little brother situation where McGuire knew, I'm breaking this record. I want the title. But I'm glad you're here to push me. But I'm not going to let you, you know, usurp me this year and pass me other than in the 60s when he had it for a minute.

But still, they got along. It seemed like they legitimately liked each other. They were very different personalities. They highlighted that when dealing with the person. press and that sort of thing. But they seem like it worked for those two. Yeah, it did. And I think Mark overall handled it well. And he's admitted that he used steroids. And I tell stories all the time about how I could go into their locker room because I would do sports casts from a little studio at Bush Stadium before the games. I was there at 1.30 in the afternoon getting ready.

And sometimes I'd walk into that clubhouse when it opened and he would be jovial and fun and smiling and great and I understand there was a ton of pressure on him but some days I'd walk down the hall and he'd be walking the other way as if I wasn't even there right and so you wonder how much of it was the pressure and how much of it was the performance enhancers that he was using but specific to their relationship I thought Mark handled that very well because he could have been a guy that just kind of like he said he had never heard of so so he could have just kind of flicked him off and said this is my race but I think he could have been a guy that just kind of like he said he's not think he kind of embraced that competition because the Cardinals weren't that good.

And that's, I think Sammy really is what pushed him in 98. Griffey was supposed to at the beginning of the season, but Sammy having that 20 home run June kind of changed the scope of things. And really, that's what made it a story. And there couldn't have been a hotter month in baseball history as far as a hitter's concern. I mean, maybe Barry Bonds had a month like that that I don't remember. but to be in Chicago at Wrigley,

belting balls out of that park at that click for that month, it had to be just insane. Did he really come out of nowhere the way they made it? You, somebody who covered baseball and knows it well, you know, I'm a kid at the time. So I can't remember if I had any consciousness of Sammy before that year. I was stunned because of Mark saying that he hadn't heard of so soon. And we talked to Mark last week on our show,

and he mentioned that. And I went back and looked, and granted, Mark had been playing in the American League until the year before. So he hadn't seen Sosa. But in the three years leading up to that, Sosa had hit 36 and then 40 and then 36 home runs.

He'd hit a lot of home runs. He was a really good hitter. I could understand if Mark was focused on his thing on the West Coast. But Sammy didn't come out of nowhere for fans that were paying really close attention to the game. He was a really good player. As far as hitting 20 home runs in June, that was out of nowhere.

aware. But he showed the ability to be a really good player. Yeah, I had no idea. You know, somebody framed it this way. 60 home runs three times no titles when it came to homers. He's like the Buffalo Bills of the home run title. And he seemed to have a pretty good perspective even now about it. He seemed to be even stubbornly at peace, if you know what I mean, towards the end of the Doc. You know what shocked me about the whole thing was that also, and I guess it depends on who you ask, when McGuire arrived in St. Louis, a lot wasn't expected of him. Was that true? Or was he older? Was that the kind of consensus? And, you know, we'll see. Yeah. He was 35 in a rental. He was about to be a free agent. And the Cardinals got him on July 31st. And we saw in the, in the documentary,

how he's something like two for 28 coming off of the road. He started his Cardinal career on road in 97 comes in and gets a standing ovation strikes out or whatever then comes up the second time and gets another standing ovation and I think that's really when Cardinal fans kind of endeared themselves to him but even though he hit a home run in the second at bat even after that for the first couple of weeks I certainly thought that he was going to leave as a free agent because he's from SoCal. He grew up going to Angels and Dodgers games. The Angels needed a first basement. And he had said that he wanted to be in California. But then all of a sudden, he gets a load of Cardinal fans and he starts hitting all these home runs that they're going

crazy. And Cardinal ownership comes to him and said, hey, you want to visit this now in terms of a contract? So the Cardinals get him on July 31st. He plays August in the first half of September. And he signs a new contract on September 17th. That's how quickly it was. that he fell in love with the idea of being a Cardinal. And he's really Chris is where the term baseball heaven started. When the Cardinals traded for Jim Edmonds in 2000, McGuire came up to him. I was there in the clubhouse that day down in spring training. And Edmonds brings in this giant Angels bag with all this stuff.

And McGuire shakes his hand, said, welcome to baseball heaven. And it's not California from a weather standpoint. And it doesn't have the population or the hustle and bustle of New York. But from a baseball standpoint, you've got 40,000 people that are totally friendly to you in there every single night. And I think it's really got to be cool for a player to have that sort of energy every single night, but then be able to go out to eat afterwards and nobody's coming up and bugging you. Yeah, I mean, that was one thing about St. Louis that, you know, obviously we weren't the Cardinals, but people were respectful of your time and, you know, the fact that you're more than a player.

And so I thought that was cool. And not to mention that ballpark, now he wasn't playing, he was playing in the old Bush Stadium, but the new one, that cityscape is just, you know, second to none. You'd have to put it up there with the Pittsburgh Cityscape and some of these amazing ballparks that just were architected correctly. I mean, the whole nine yards, I can see why they call it that. Yeah, it fits great, doesn't it? And then you've got the arch as a backdrop if you're sitting behind home plate.

and it really does have a good look. And it was interesting because after McGuire came in about 2000, they brought in a bunch of other guys who because he had stayed here for less money, they came into, and Peter Gammon's went on ESPN and said, look, this is a $110 million team with an $80 million payroll. And he kind of set the tone for guys giving the Cardinals the hometown discount. They don't do that anymore.

But another thing about him, Chris, And actually, I could see you doing this. When he retired after 01, McGuire had a $30 million contract sitting in his desk drawer, and he never signed it. He said, I'm done. I can't play anymore.

I'm physically, I just can't do it anymore. He's a guy that easily could have taken the money and run, but he told the Cardinals, look, I'm not going to take this. I can't make this worth your while. But he seems like a guy that is well liked in clubhouses.

He seems like a guy that even in coaching, you know, in baseball circles, people like him. And I think that's helped his image. I mean, just his seemingly humble way that I keep hearing about, the restoration of the image of a guy who went through something like this and put himself in that situation, Sammy as well, it seems to be a tricky path back to regaining that respect and normalcy. Yeah, and he disappeared for a while.

But going back, clubhouse guy, in in baseball equipment guys in football they all know what's going on in a clubhouse and if you get to know from a media standpoint you get to know those guys you find out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and without fail cardinal guys would always tell me he's awesome he said I know that he can be testy with you guys but he's awesome as a teammate and for those guys he did the right thing and as we saw on the documentary he still because they're wasn't a baseball rule against anabolic steroids at the time

and I tend to agree with him on this he still doesn't look at it as cheating he could have gone up that night when he hit 62 look back at the home plate umpire today I just wanted you to know I'm loaded on roids tonight and there was nothing the umpire or baseball could have done

but it was but it was but it was kind of uh taboo oh yeah yeah and the weird thing about it was, is that at that time, Ken Kamenetti, who had won an MVP, said 80% of the players were using in baseball, which kind of makes it a level playing field. So from a public standpoint, it was taboo. And for certain anabolic steroids, we don't know if he used those. Those were,

it was a federal crime to use them. But from a baseball perspective, not only was it not against the rules, but there were a lot of guys that obviously, and the best players in baseball, fall we're using him and he if it was a level playing field that year he was the best of that group well it's interesting because he seemed to be and and to your point when we look back and we contextualize history in sports whether it was the lance documentary which lance has done more to ruin people's lives outside of his transgressions within the sport but comparing those two not just documentaries i thought that one addressed the elephant in the room as you said a little bit better than the other. I mean, the Lance documentary started with like, hey, you cheated. And, you know, we,

we addressed that right away. They kind of went the opposite way in this 30 for 30. Now, with Lance, I look at it like everybody was using. So he was the best of the cheaters. And that was normal. And I guess is it accurate to look at Sammy and mark the same way? If 80% of league is using, they're the best of the 80% of league. Now, I don't know about the other 20% But you're punishing the guys, and I guess heavy is the head that wears the crown. You're punishing the guys that were just better than everybody else. And the cheating elevated it relatively speaking another 20% higher or whatever it is. Yeah, that is totally the way that I look at it.

And I want to start with this. For the guys that have the high character that say, no, I'm not using that stuff. I'm going to rely on my God-given gifts. I feel really bad for those guys because they're really bad. because there were some really good players that didn't use that got overlooked and probably aren't going to make the hall of fame because they weren't doing what everybody else did because they felt like it was cheating but because of the tremendous pressure a at that point just to make it to baseball a lot of the guys made it to baseball because they used because what they said at the time

in baseball or a little after that time was it made a minor league or major leaguer a bad player good, a good player great. And a great player, an icon. And McGuire was already great. He had 49 home runs as a rookie. And I think that he was one of those guys that became iconic after

starting to use the helpers that were there. And I want to point this out because nobody's ever proved otherwise. I don't know what sort of antibiotic steroids if he was using anabolic. The stuff that he allegedly was using at that point was a

when you went to a GNC store. You could just go take it off the shelf. Now, they took it off the shelves within a week after he was fond of a bit of using it. But at that point, you could use that stuff. Well, it's funny. They said, I saw something where it said the sales went up 1,000% after seeing what he was on. And the fact of the matter is, I understand somebody saying, well, it was taboo. So it's against the rules.

I also look at it and say, if this guy was willing to have that shit in his locker out in front, when the media comes in, you know, that was. complacency, but if it was something that he thought was just the end-all, be-all, and the smoking gun, maybe he wouldn't have it in the front of his locker. Maybe he'd be a bit more careful. It's hard, it's hard to put it in context. I think it's complicated. I look at it like this, though, but we don't talk about the pitchers. And I'm not a baseball expert, but I got to figure, they don't start testing for two, three years after the McGuire-Sosa thing. How many power pitchers got by because home runs are the thing that nobody can ignore. What about innings pitch? What about

the power pitchers like Martinez and Randy Johnson and all these guys shilling that retired two, three years after that kind of coincided with the time that the hammer came down? Yeah, and pitch some of those guys well into their 40s. And some guys, their performance improved, their velocity improved after the age of 36 or 37. There's no doubt in my mind that there were a lot of pitchers at that time that McGuire and so so we're hitting home runs off of that we're also using. And I would think there's probably some of those guys that are in the Hall of Fame that never have to admit it.

But that is a perspective that I don't think is looked at enough. People perceive that it only helped the hitters. Well, it helped the pitchers too. And it helped a lot of guys just stay on the field, whether it was steroids or amphetamines. There were a lot of guys that were able to. play a lot because they had chemicals in their body. And the sad part of it is, I guess, from somebody who would like to see all the best players in the Hall of Fame, we'll never know who used what. That's the hard part because, you know, I do feel for guys that didn't,

if it was just allowed and everybody had the same opportunity to bulk up or be durable, then maybe it's not as big an issue. I kind of wonder this as an aside, And we can get to labor stuff at a minute. But say there's no season this year, hypothetically. You're looking at a long layoff. You're looking at pitching always being ahead of hitting. You're looking at probably a bunch of pissed off fans, whether they side with the owners or the players in this negotiation.

A year from now, if that were to happen, I had Mark Cuban on the other day. And Mark Cuban said that he's exploring the possibility of introducing HGH into the NBA as something safe and regulated, should baseball knowing what they know about 1994 and what it took to get out of it? And it wasn't just the home runs. Ever consider taking drastic measures

to inject, no pun intended, some excitement into the game coming out of this layoff? I don't think that that's a ridiculous idea at all. And HGH can just help guys stay on the field. We all have HGH, it just depends on the level, right? that you have injected. But hey, I had a virus last fall and they gave me a steroid to make me feel better. I can see it.

There you go. I'm working. You're jacked. Barely fit in the booth. Right. So that was one of the things that was always said by the experts during the time that we were talking about steroids every day was if used properly, they, can really be a huge benefit to an athlete.

The issue is going to come when they're used improperly and you aren't cycling them properly, and that's when it can cause real physical harm down the road to somebody. But I've talked to a lot of doctors over the years that say that it can be something that really is good for your body. So to your point, I agree that would be something that would make baseball a better sport. Now, are we ever going to have a McGuire-Sosa race like that? it's hard to imagine that we could. And we've got so many home runs already with the juice ball.

But just in terms of having your best players be able to play all the time, I think that's something the baseball should take a look at it. And I think it's a smart idea for basketball too. Man, I can't imagine. And I was out of practice with you guys a lot. Yeah. You should try being out there with me at 33. You got the young spry me, you know, waddling around the building from taking 60s.

It only got harder. Right, exactly. And for those guys, and with the travel, you're traveling three months a year, you've got, you've got so many hotel stays, and you've got so many days where you play a night game and then a day game in a different city. Those are things that can get a player on the field. And if I'm an owner, and I have an investment in that athlete, I want to have him out on the field as much as I can. So I just think from an owner's perspective, it makes sense to introduce something like that. Now, the question is going to be, is everybody in a players association going to be on board with it? Because I do think you have to have everybody on board. If you have three or four guys, especially big time players that wouldn't be on board with it, then I think it kind of defeats the purpose. Yeah, because if some guys are like, I don't want to take it because it's safe or I have, you know, some moral obligation not to take it, whatever you think, then the playing field is not level.

And, you know, and that's what you want. I mean, in the NFL, if they were to make HGH legal, they'd be getting their best product on Sunday, guys would be recovered because that's the biggest thing. You want the game to be bigger, stronger, faster. You know, if you're able to regulate it and it's safe, which I don't know anything about. You know, I've admitted this before on the pod that there was only one time in my career that I considered taking something. I considered taking HCH coming off those two injury years. And not like at an illegal level, somebody sold it to me as if you take a little bit, you know, you can you can take it, you know, and, it'd be above board and it would just raise your levels to where you can recover faster

because those two years were a grind. But eventually I was like, you know what, I can't do it because everybody else is not doing it. And, you know, I think that if they were to introduce, you know, a CBA resolution where all players are going to be on this thing and it's regulated, I would, I would take that shit. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Well, but here, and I don't want to get off topic here, but I guarantee you played against guys

that were on Adderall. Adderall's got to be a PED, right? I would have easily gone and fudge my test to get Adderall because I have ADHD, Randy. So if I had gone and like really gone through that whole jumping hoops thing, I could have got a prescription for Adderall. I know it's a performance enhancer. But for me, I wouldn't be able to sleep. I wouldn't be, you know, like then they tell you you got to take it all week.

So they'll come in and test you on a random day to make sure you're not just taking it for the game. You know, and so like I didn't want to change my life and not be it. when I lay my head down on the pillow, like, what's the point of diminishing return when I'm sleeping three hours a night? Yeah, but it's, and I've never taken it, but I've heard, man, that it just, it gives you incredible focus. And for those three hours on Sunday, for you guys to have that level of focus, it would be a game changer. Yeah, absolutely. Was there anybody you thought that skated by in the 90s that was a big name that you're like, that guy was definitely on the Jews? I definitely have my suspicions and Piazza I know has continually denied he's made the Hall of Fame

but man he got a lot bigger and then the other one is and this is just a suspicion and I don't I think he's skated by just in terms of suspicion but Randy Johnson started throwing a lot harder when he got into his late late 30s and early 40s and he became a lot more durable and And because he was a big stringy, wiry guy, nobody ever suspected him. But I think it's reasonable to look at that era, especially the guys that played for a really long time, and be suspicious of those guys. And I think it's a shame for the guys that are suspected, like Piazza and Bagwell and Biggio, they're all in the Hall of Fame. And people have written about them. well, the injuries that Ken Griffey Jr. suffered that were pulling muscles off of bones,

they were consistent with somebody who's- With steroid used, yep, hamstring stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Now, fast guys, fast guys certainly have hamstring problems, but when I talk to somebody who I trust in the baseball circle, after I watched this doc last night, he mentioned Ken and Ken Griffey and the hamstring stuff. He mentioned Randy Johnson. But again, these aren't prototypical, roided outlooking dudes. So, you know, even Cal Ripkin who, Cal Ripkin had this remarkable streak. Not everybody looked like the, the juxtaposition from, you know,

Big Macs, you know, when he was medium Mac in Oakland, to this guy who's trapped out and built like, you know, like a house. I mean, some guys, maybe it was more subtle in their appearance and you're using it for durability or throwing the ball harder. It's just there's, I think the guys that get it, the worst, the guys that just look bigger. Raphael Palmeiro, who was on the docket in Congress, wagging his fist and saying, I never use steroids. He didn't look at all like a steroid guy. But it's amazing to look at his career when Jose Canseco got traded to Texas.

Palmyra was at Texas at the time. And once Conceco got traded there, his numbers just went boom, just right up the chart. So it seemed to be clear that he was one of the guys. guys that benefited. How about the Hall of Fame? You mentioned a couple times. Should these guys get in? I would definitely have them in. Whether it's with a note on their plaque that said McGuire admitted to using steroids in whatever year 2010 or Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa allegedly tested positive, I don't, for me, Hall of Fames tell the story of your sport. And I really don't think that you can tell the story of baseball without that summer.

and Sosa or without Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. I think if I were in charge of a Hall of Fame, I would want to have those guys in, even if it does take a little massaging of what they might have done during their careers. Because there's a lot of guys that, like, Ty Cobb was a noted racist and he's in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, exactly. Ty Cobb was a ridiculous racist. Bad guy, really bad guy. So I think that there is a spot for all.

of these guys to be in the hall of him. I think it's kind of crazy that they are. Yeah, I would support the asterisk, you know, clause there. Bob Costas put it nicely. And for a second, I was like, where is he going with this on the documentary last thing? He's like, but they're nice guys. And I'm like, well, it doesn't matter. And then he finishes his point. And he's like, but it is, you know, you could view it as an inauthentic record. And, you know, on top of that, I wonder how the Maris family feel. Yeah, I thought it was interesting to have them. And we didn't really get their thoughts about it. one of the amazing things about that stretch, 98, 99, 2000, 2001, four years.

There have been eight 60 home run seasons in baseball. Six of them were in those four seasons. And the Marist and Babe Ruth had the other two. So it seems pretty obvious that something untoward was going on there. And if I'm the Maris family, I think I would be more bothered by the fact that he came into the stands. And for that night, if I looked back at it, I'd say, man, what the hell? Why didn't you just finish your thing with Sammy and go back into the dugout? But he made them part of the show.

And maybe that's because Mark is just a nice guy. I don't know. Or he didn't think he was doing anything wrong. But if I were the mayor's family, I think I would be, I'd kind of feel like I was a prop that. Didn't it look like they were kind of a prop? Yeah, you know what? I could certainly see it's a delicate dynamic because in your heart, heart of hearts, you know that you're doing something that's maybe wrong. Probably definitely

wrong. But it's not illegal. The Maris family has obviously shown that they're very supportive of you. They might call and say, hey, we want to be there. Do you blow them off? You know, because you don't want to look disingenuous. I mean, you're already down the road a little bit on this thing. You've got to give them a hug. You've got to show them respect and love. I would certainly feel that way maybe if I was the mayor's family. But, but, you know, knowing what I know about Mark just a little bit, it would be hard to imagine that he was thinking, I'm going to use these folks as a prop. No, and my point is that, no, I know. That's not what you're saying. But, you know, if the Maris family is upset about anything, I could certainly see it. But the, but the, but the

motivation to me, you'd have to be a pretty sociopathic person to think, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to invite them to the game, use them as a prop and add them. Because there was so many great things going on that night, that day. Why would that be necessary? Why would that be the thing that's worth risking? And they brought the bat that their dad had hit number 61 with to that game. And Mark got to hold it and there's a photo with it. And he met with them before the game too, in addition to going up in the stands.

So there was a good relationship. And I honestly have no idea how they feel about it. But I can see how there would be a way that they would be upset. But once again, Chris, if they look at it from my perspective, yes, their dad was removed from the record books. But baseball wanted to put an asterisk next to Roger Maris's name. They did put an asterisk next to Rogers Maris's name when he hits 61 because he did it in 162 games rather than 154. And the media and baseball wanted to protect Babe Ruth's record. And that asterisk never should have been there.

And because of the circumstances, maybe they look at it like, well, there shouldn't be an asterisk next to his either. They know what an asterisk means more than anybody. What's the next frontier of quote unquote cheating? Because we've seen it in different iterations since the beginning of the time. You had, you know, whether there was spitballs or pine tar or cork bats and then you've got steroid era. And now you've got the Astros. What's next? How can they push the envelope?

I wonder if it's something that is physical with pitchers. You know, pitchers and Kyle pitched for a while, right? Your brother? Yeah, my brother did. And I remember when he was pitching because he was throwing in the 90s. Well, now everybody's throwing 100. And these pitchers are maxing out. And they're going to this place up in Seattle called Drive Line, which is awesome.

It maximizes the efficiency of pitchers. but they're getting guys that are throwing 92 and getting it up to 104, 105. And I wonder if there is some other sort of performance enhancer. Jordan Hicks here with the Cardinal serves 105 miles an hour. I wonder if

there's something that can get players to even throw harder because that's where the game has really changed. Every bullpen now has a guy that's throwing 100 out of their bullpen and nobody except for Nolan Ryan threw 100 miles an hour when I was a kid. And it's just amazing to me

how far that's come. So I don't know if that's cheating. I think that's probably the next frontier. I think baseball probably has a pretty good handle right now on the chemicals. Once they caught Arod and Ryan Braun, I think everybody probably said, uh-oh, they're on to us and we better to be really careful. You mentioned A-Rod because it's interesting. I thought about, you know, the roadmap for guys that screw up or, you know,

are caught up in this stuff. for them, you know, seeking kind of, you know, getting out of that whole of public perception. One guy, and I think Arod did a good job of that because he just said, hey, I did it. You know, like, I'm going to go in TV and we're going to forget about it. And that's kind of what's happened. Barry Bonds has never been able to get out of that shadow, even more so than Sammy and, and, and, and Mark, I think because of maybe his personality. I really think that, you know, Barry, I've heard stories about Barry back when he was a rookie and pitchers on opposing teams would get approached by, you know, Andy Van Slyke and Andy would say,

hey, hit this guy. You know, he doesn't get it. He's a rookie. He's getting us hit. He's getting us being. Like, he wasn't well-liked from the beginning. And it's not like he's done anything to ingratiate himself to the baseball community after his mistake.

Right. They do love him in San Francisco and they retired his number. But from the time he was the young player in people, Pittsburgh, he was, you'd hear about his teammates not liking him, which you don't, you don't hear that about a young player ever. You say, people say all he's fined in his way, but from early on, they thought he was a dick. And I don't think that ever changed for him. And I think, I think writers generally are balanced enough in their observation of a player that if there were nothing else going on, that with him, with the suspicion of steroids, that he would get

into the Hall of Fame. But if it were close with a player like him, and if you can find a reason to not vote him into the Hall of Fame, if you're somebody who was mistreated by him, then I think there are a lot of reasons out there. Because, like you said, he had his own recliner in their clubhouse in San Francisco. Everybody else had their stools that they would sit at in a locker room clubhouse and he had his own recliner and he didn't it was facing his locker he didn't interact with his teammates he just he wasn't a pleasant guy and i think if he would have just shown a little bit of a pleasant side that it would have been a lot easier for him to recover nationally no rather than just in san francisco i think that's one of the things that mcguire did here in

in addition to being able to redeem himself by going on to the interviews he had three or four interviews before he became the Cardinal Hitting coach. And he told the story. But I've heard stories about that spring training. The first year he was the Cardinal Hitting coach, he would come in where the media was sitting into the media room and say, does anybody need anything? And we would talk about anything and got every single one-on-one taken care of and was pleasant and amenable and would answer every question.

And Barry has always been reluctant to even discuss performance enhancers, let alone ask people if they want to do an interview. There was a point in the dock last night where it was about 12 minutes in, somebody belted a homer, I think it was probably Mark. And they show Barry in the outfield looking kind of like, I want a piece of this. Like, you know, a little bit almost spiteful. Do you think that he was on the juice for this run, or do you think that this run inspired him to take it to the next level? And then you saw the big bulked up Barry who hit 70, his head grew. It just was very evident.

Yeah. I want to start with that home run because I was at that game and Barry never took his hands off his knees. He didn't even look. He just kept looking into the infield because he knew it was out of the ballpark. It was awesome. But there's a book that and T.J. Quinn, who was on the documentary last night and he wrote about it, that Bonds and Griffey were at a dinner. And Bonds was complaining about the level of adulation that McGuire and Sosa got in 19.

and that that was what spurred him on to be the guy that got the record. Now, obviously he didn't want the adulation that went with it, as it turns out. But it's pretty well chronicled by Don Van Netta and T.J. Quinn that Bonds was motivated to get into that realm, the performance enhanced her realm by McGuire and Sosa's racing and the fact that they got so much attention. You hit it right on the head there. It's amazing because I always grew up thinking about him as just, monster power hitter. And he always hit with power early in his career, but he was just a complete baseball player, a complete hitter. And it's funny the way these guys, kind of my perception of them as a

13-year-old kid in 98, got skewed as what type of hitters they were and how they were built and that sort of thing. You go back and you're like, wow, even Sammy looked a little bit different. I mean, Sammy did, you know, Sammy looks way different now. But Sammy as a young player, and in 1998, there was a difference there as well. I was just going to say the sad thing about Barry. there's a lot of people that argue that he would have been a Hall of Famer. If he stopped playing in 2000, he had played 14 years by that point. He would have been a Hall of Famer then. He didn't need steroids to get into the Hall of Fame.

No, absolutely not. Do you think anybody ever breaks the record or if they do, who's got the best shot? Yeah. I think that a guy like Stanton getting to 59 a few years ago was probably the limit. If Aaron Judge could ever stay healthy for a whole season, I could see it. But that's the thing. Steroids allowed McGuire to stay healthy for the whole season. And that's why I don't see anybody doing it because you really have to be great,

not just good, but great for six months. And that's what McGuire was that year. And Aaron Judge has shown no ability to stay healthy and without the ability to use a performance enhancer to stay on the field. I just don't see it happen. Yeah, it's wild because it is in playing baseball my whole life growing up, being a power hitter, you know, it's like being a defensive end that's getting paid to register sacks, you know, the slumps are real, and sometimes they're out of your control. You're not seeing pitches you want.

You know, maybe you're not, I don't know. I don't know what you could have an injury. You could have a nagging injury like Mark talked about that planar fasciitis. You know, like, and when you get in those slumps, it's very mental. So I could imagine it being very stressful to think, as he, highlighted, I got to hit 10 a month. And if I can just do that, I could break the record. When you put it in those terms, it's unbelievable to hit 10 a month for an entire season. Yeah. And one of the things that he did, and this was brought up in the documentary, and he really went in depth with

with ours show, he would meditate before every game. He would go back into the trainer's room, and it was all about mental for him. And you do, especially, I think it would be worse now because of of social media, I think it would have been really hard for him to break the record if we had Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all of that stuff, although he says he's not on it, but he's such a mentally strong guy. And that really had to benefit him to. There are many people that are as tough mentally as he is. Yeah, you could tell. So right now with the labor situation, you know, current events, who's right? Because as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, And players want to, they don't want to take a haircut on top of the pro rated salary.

Right. And the owners, you know, God bless them, they don't have enough money. Yeah. From a technical standpoint, letter of the law, the way their contracts are written, it is the players. But every time I've seen a negotiation between players and owners in any sport, it's we want a partnership. Well, baseball doesn't have a partnership. And yeah, the 40% of baseball's regular season revenue comes from tickets and concessions. So a $10 billion industry last year for baseball probably is a $6 billion industry this year.

And so they are going to lose a lot of money, but the players don't want to participate in that. I look at it this way. I think that the players, if they really wanted to have a legitimate partnership, they should be willing to play ball here. and they aren't. The owners have shown a little desire to play ball. And all across America, at our company, we had a ton of layoffs. I know that there are a lot of high paid people that are taking pay cuts. And I know the players will be taking the pro rata pay cut.

If they play half a season, they only get half their pay. But I think you do have to understand that there are no fans in the stands. And that's a big loss. So if I were to pick one, if you force me to, if it's a would you rather, I would say that I think the players could have been a little bit more flexible here. But at the same time, the owners just signed a new billion-dollar deal with TNT. Right. So, yeah, because the thing that always I struggle with is, and obviously not knowing the ins and out to baseball,

it seems like when you're making an analogy to, you know, ESPN 101 or, you know, a 101 ESPN or a local business or something like the business might go under. if people don't take haircuts. But, you know, baseball, I just figure if you're talking about, hey, every year we make $10 billion and we're going to make $6 this year, like it's going to hurt.

What about opening the books? Like, that's been something I've heard about. Like, that would be the key for me is if this were a partnership and we're players, I want to see what's on the books so I can prove to me that I need to take this haircut. And that's where I think the owners have been really disingenuous for a long time.

And we don't know. what the books are. Here in St. Louis, we have Ballpark Village right next door to the ballpark. That makes a ton of money for them. I've given Ballpark Village a lot of money late at night. Yeah. So I don't know if that's part of baseball revenue. And if it is, then that's a whole lot more.

That should be going to the players. I'm in total agreement with that. And I think for the owners to be asking what they're asking for, that it's pretty selfish and disingenuous of them to say, yeah, well, we're losing money, but they're not show how they're losing money or how much they're making. And for example, when the players asked for the books, all the teams came back with redacted numbers from their local regional sports networks. Like, how can you redact the numbers if you're opening your books? You can't do that. So there's a high level of

distrust on the part of the players and I totally get. How about the minor leagues? Because are we going to see a big funneling of that pipeline because they're going to have to consolidate some things. Those guys are getting hurt the worst. I know my friend Sean Doolittle and the Nationals, UVA guy doing the right thing, you know, pulling money together to support those minor leaguers. Like, whose responsibility is that? And what, what's the fallout we're going to see as a result of this year? I think what owners have done to minor leaguers is absolutely criminal. Those guys make, for the amount of work they're doing, they're making less than minimum wage. And the baseball owners hired lobbyists to go to Congress. It's called a

good of the game clause last year. They voted on this and the Congress and the Senate, minor league players are treated as seasonal workers. Right. It's absolutely criminal. So I think it's awesome what the nationals are doing. Adam Wainwright did that here in St. Louis, giving minor league players a bunch of money.

But those guys have to give a living wage. And you're right. This year, many teams aren't taking care of those players at all. And it's absolutely ridiculous. The A's said they weren't, and the A's because of public back, are paying their guys. They said they weren't going to pay their players, but the contracts were still in force. How ridiculous is that? And I think, once again, part of the responsibility here, and I love the fact that the major leaguers are taking care of guys, but the major league

baseball players association has never shown an inclination to allow minor leaguers in their union. And I think that's what the minor leaguers need is they need a voice in that negotiation room. And that could come from the major league players. They've all been there sleeping five to an apartment and eating peanut butter and sandwiches every day. It is not an easy life being a minor league baseball player. No, not at all. From what I hear, it is a grind and the majors are a grind. But if you're not being compensated, it can be even tougher.

We're going to take a hard right turn before I let him go. He's been gracious with his time. Talk about football for a second, because that's where you and I know each other from, Obviously, St. Louis doesn't have that anymore. The Rams moved a few years back to L.A. And that was a tough process. Where are football fans in St. Louis turning for that fix now? Well, one thing that was amazing was when we had the XFL, man, people here lit up.

The St. Louis Battlehawks lit up the town. It was unbelievable. And it's a shame that the XFL had to go under it because people were fired up about it here. And I think there's a lot of disdain for the NFL because the owners voted to allow the Rams to move. But I think if teams were going to pick, or people were going to pick a team here, the obvious one is KC because they're fun. Mahomes and Kelsey came to Blue Stanley Cup games. The offense is kind of like the greatest show on turf, and it's really accessible. I can leave my driveway and be at Arrowhead in three and a half hours.

I think that if Andrew Luck would have stuck around that some of the people would have gravitated towards the Colts. But Kansas City is in the state. I think NFL fans here. And a lot of people actually didn't stick with the Rams because they didn't want to penalize the players for something that only shit did. Yeah, that's the tough part.

Yeah, it is. Because at that point, my career, personally, I knew I was getting released, but I thought if I weren't getting released, what would I do? Because I feel like almost like I'd be, I would be betraying my fan base is stuck with me. me and my teammates for so many years, but if that's where football took me, can anybody

blame me? Because I got to support my family. My family's obviously supported, but the saying goes, I have to support my family. And my job is to play football. Yeah, and I totally get that. And my thing was, I could just not root for Stan Kronky and Kevin Demoff to succeed. That was just me because of what they did to this community. I grew up here. I've lived here my entire life. But that doesn't mean that I didn't want Todd Gurley or Roger Stapled or William Hayes or those guys to do well. I wanted the players to succeed. I just didn't want the team to win. Yeah, especially if they show appreciation. I think that was one of the biggest things. Show that you understand where fans are coming from and fans will still love you. They don't have to root for

the L.A. Rams. But, you know, the players, I mean, a lot of those players and there's fewer and fewer there now have roots in St. Louis. So I get that. What's been the biggest, like, hidden fallout from that move. I mean, I know there has to be, a lot of those bars down there are Cardinals bars, but I know that there's some businesses that have to be affected. I know people that were working for the Rams for decades that are working on weird jobs right now

that I'm just like, this doesn't even seem right. You worked in pro football. No, one of your equipment guys is working at Menards. It is. It's kind of weird. But you know what the biggest fallout has been, and you're a humble guy, but it's losing that charitable leadership. It's like the St. Louis Food Bank now, they're doing a lot of stuff,

but there's nothing like that taste of the NFL. That was their biggest fundraiser every year. And I know you did, you and William Hayes did a lot more St. Patrick's Center, and Sam had his charitable arm here that did a whole lot of things. And the Rams were one of the most, as a group, you players, were one of the most charitable aspects of the town. And losing an NFL team is really devastating for a lot of those charities. So I think that's been the biggest fallout from just a community standpoint.

That stuff has had to have been rebuilt and it's hard to do. What do St. Louis people say to L.A. fans who say, well, we were you once in the early 90s. So, you know, like get over it. Well, I think the biggest difference is that in the mid-90s, L.A. was given multiple opportunities to, build a stadium and an NFL level stadium wasn't available for the Rams and that's why Georgia moved the team to St. Louis. When Stan wanted to move the team back to L.A., not only did L.A. still not want to build the stadium that he was financing on his own dime, but St. Louis was prepared and had an actionable NFL stadium on the board. It was ready to go and the NFL didn't care.

They said, no, we want to get back to L.A. So it's a difference of one city wanting to keep the franchise to St. Louis and do it a lot, and L.A. not really doing a lot in the midnight. Yeah, which makes sense. And refresh my memory, Randy. It was supposed to be like 2020 that when they had this pipe dream of a stadium downtown on the river, that was around when it would have been erected, which is funny because I could still be playing. Like, I could still play.

But I remember back then thinking there's no way. I would see that. I'm tired of football. I'm too old. I'll never play. But like it would have been a cool thing. It would have been a very cool thing. I think that setup would have been great. Do you think there's ever hope that the NFL comes back and would fans even welcome it? I think fans would. I think right now the leadership in the community, the political and business leadership felt so burned by the process that it would be hard in this generation of leaders to get, to get everybody on board to build a stadium and to pursue a team. Because they really thought that, well, they did everything that the NFL asked them to do to get that stadium plan in place. And then even when they did it, it didn't work out. So I think there's a lot of distrust. But I think a generation down the line that St. Louis has shown itself to be a great sports town. I think if there is an appetite to help with a stadium, I think that people would show up for it.

Yeah. Well, St. Louis is definitely great sports town. I had the pleasure of being there for eight years. Obviously, not a lot of winning going on, but the media, people like Randy, the fans, they gave us a lot of leeway. And they just appreciated it if you showed up, work hard, and had character. So I appreciate the media. I appreciate the fans of St. Louis. And I certainly appreciate Randy Carrier, one of the best, man. So I appreciate you joining me. You've been very gracious with the time. And I want to tell the people the story. I knew Chris Long was smart when you came.

in and you were doing your first round of interviews with all the St. Louis media people. You and I are in a room together. And I said, why didn't you choose number 75? And you said, I'm not an idiot. Exactly. I'm not an idiot. I ended up in a much uglier number until Steve Spagnola let me take 91 after Leonard retired. It was funny. He made me wait a whole year with Leonard off the field to give Leonard time to come back. I'm like, I can really tell what you think about me. So, yeah, eventually got in the 91 and I'm just very lucky to have fans in St. Louis. appreciate them and I appreciate you Randy and do me a favor tell Michelle hi and everybody at the headquarters hello for me as well.

We'll do, Chris. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you.