Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Best Voice in Sports Goes Deep

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

You might think that calling a game is easy. That Tom Brady can do this in his sleep. Jon "Boog" Sciambi, announcer for the Chicago Cubs and "MLB: The Show," teaches Pablo why the human voice is an instrument that requires restraint and distinction to record the first draft of sports history, then pass it down like an heirloom. Come for the PTFO dictionary's debut in the broadcast booth; stay for Nic Cage murdering Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg with a Toyota Outback at Wrigley Field.This episode originally aired May 14, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Pablo Torre the hero as a knocks in velociraptor and the Cubs walk it off. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. So this is true. My first ever road game as a broadcaster with the then Florida Marlins. It was at Wrigley Field. It was, I believe, still the coldest first pitch temperature on record. 28 degrees. I finished the pregame.

I have to come back to do the lineups, but I have to really go to the bathroom. Old Wrigley Field was two urinals, one stall. Run into the men's room quickly, take care of it. I'm washing my hands. As I'm washing my hands, Harry Carey walks in. I have not met him. But that will come. sure as God made green apple, someday the Chicago Cubs are going to be in the World Series,

and maybe sooner than we think. It seems to be... He goes to the stall, and from the stall, as I'm drying my hands, he says out loud. Not to me, I'm just standing there, but he says out loud, God is my witness. I got so many goddamn clothes on. I can't find my dick and I look around and I'm like

wait that just happened and that was it you didn't go and here's the zip here's the two two that's why we do that's why you do this job it was taught to me a long time ago that pretty much everyone speaks

about an octave higher than what they should and they speak out of here so you basically pointing to your throat there right and so you basically just get yourself more more to your diaphragm.

So I'm able to get myself to a place where I sort of regulate and just, I'm calmer. And then it's just more natural. I am in awe of how deep in your diaphragm you walk. So deep. I'm doing it right now. I'm like my energy levels will bring me higher. Yeah, yeah. And only when I started podcasting in earnest did I realize, like, I'm like going

through podcast microphone management puberty. And this sounds so clean, right? Right, you know what I mean? Because I'm so used to Nat sounds and stuff like that. So this sounds, I mean, you could just leave me in here and I would just talk to myself. Like there is a musicality to, and I say this to you all the time, that you have the best voice in announcing, let alone baseball. And you're making faces with your red glasses that betrays the reality. When somebody says that I have a nice voice, I feel, I appreciate it, but I would also say

it's like trying to tell somebody, I don't even want to come up with a crappy metaphor. Okay, so I'm just jumping in here because I need to save Boog from his own self-deprecation, and also because, obviously, I love crappy metaphors. And to that point, the human voice is an instrument. And while lots of us just sort of pluck our banjos, us broadcasters, John Boog Shambi has a Stratavarius tucked deep inside his diaphragm, as you can already tell. It's why Boog is the voice of the Chicago Cubs doing play-by-play on their TV broadcasts. It's why he's the voice of MLB, the show, the wildly popular video game.

And it's also why Boog calls college basketball and baseball for ESPN, and was just named the National Radio Voice of the World. World Series last year. But as audible as his job is, Boog recently got in my ear, after listening to one particular conversation we had on this very show about the prospects of a rookie broadcaster,

a real up-and-comer named Tom Brady. And Boog argued to me that while millions of us clearly listen to game broadcasts, the vast majority of people in America simply do not understand the most basic mechanics of what happens in the booth. and that I, allegedly, might be one of those people. So I asked Boog to help me find out, if that's the case, what he really does.

And he invited me to sit in the booth with him, actually, and hear everything that he hears, all of which we'll get to. But first, we do need to get back to the matter of Boog's ego and my own. Who counts as the best in this craft, which I, brought you on here to both shame me about. I can't. I did not. Yes, you did. You did. We're going to save it. Because we got to fully explore the shame. And then in the audience is going to be mad at me.

John Miller, I think, uses his voice. That's your guy. Yeah, I just, I love him. And I think Vince Scully used his voice. Sure. Really, really well. Fastball is a high drive in the feet left center field. Butner goes back to the fans. I would say, if it's not Vince Scully in my essay,

estimation, I think John is the next greatest. Give me a little John Miller so people can situate themselves in the theater. John Miller is the voice of the San Francisco Giants. He was the longtime voice of Sunday Night Baseball on television, the original voice with Joe Morgan. There they go. And the pinch. Swinging a long drag to me. And you say this as somebody who is now the voice of the World Series on ESPN Radio.

Yeah. This is the, your voice carries here, so to speak. But he sounds like what? Give me a little John Miller in that way. It has some Vin sing-songy to it. It's sort of playful. There's a shot. Deep down the other field line.

Way back there. Adios! Pelotta! One of the ones in my head would be, I remember in the World Series, there was a pop-up to the left side, and their shortstop was Edgar Ranteria. And sort of in post-play describing it,

And Joe, Rintorea went back and said, Yola Tango. And then he tangoed it. And like, that's John, you know? Just that playfulness and... And a rest, an almost kind restraint? No doubt. And there's also, look, there's a cleverness and a wit that is pretty unparalleled.

The story that I was going to tell was, I had missed a dinner, a previous night, after having maybe a couple too many, and I jokingly, I was supposed to meet Rick Sutcliffe and Dave O'Brien, and I'm out in the hallway, and John Miller walks by, and Sutcliffe says, do you believe it? Boog stiffed us for dinner last night, said a man named Jack Daniels beat his butt, and that's why he couldn't show up. And John, without missing a beat, says, well, that's nothing a couple days ago. I was mugged by three chocolate chip cookies.

I really admire the way so many of these guys do their jobs and the gift for the language, the humor, and it's also using the voice, right? The job is so fascinating to me, and I've been shadowing you at work. Oh, gosh. I was at City Field with you, in the booth with you, wearing the headset, because, again, you shamed me,

which I'll explain. I keep on saying I'll explain it. I will eventually. But the point is that you're using an instrument that is by design not supposed to be electric guitar solo. There is a restraint that's built in, but inside of that space, you get to be, not just to lard all of this with like just highfalutinness, but there is an art to this. And how you learn that art and how I apparently, allegedly, fail to understand it is why you're here. I do feel like there's art out there. I don't feel like that's what I'm producing.

I would tell you that for me, it's accessing five-year-old me who likes to play. And the willingness to play is what brings out my authentic self. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you say that so self-consciously, your authentic self. Yeah, right. Well, I feel like it gets said a lot. I don't, and then, you know, from a, you know, crafting it standpoint, I just think that, you know, you look at so many of the great calls, you know, the Gibson home run.

The radio call is Jack Bucks. I don't believe what I just saw. One of the things that I always point out is the best part about that call is he doesn't do it once. He does it twice. He says, I don't believe what I just saw. I don't believe what I just saw. From Eckersley, Gibson swings and a fly ball to the bright field. This has got to be a home run.

Unbelievable. A home run for Gibson. And the Dodgers have won the game. And then VIN's call on TV is, in a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened. And so improbable, the impossible has happened. I just, I don't know, man. I mean, look, for some people, I'm sure it doesn't speak to them, but I, like, they had one shot at it. Nobody.

So I want to explain the stakes of this, because it's not just that you're announcing a game for an audience that is used to a century plus of tradition. Yeah. Like, you can't be an electric guitarist because the electric guitar in this metaphor that I'm torturing was not a lot. invented when they fell in love with the game. So it's just a restriction on what you have available to you. And then there's the live definitional aspect of like you are writing the first draft of history in this way of sports history. And if you f*** it up, it's going to be recorded that way in every highlight that

gets played for eternity. I go into it thinking it's a chance for me to do something great. I don't contemplate it as what a if I f*** it up is the first thing. The other part that I would say in terms of how long people have done it, and it's one of the handicaps

for young people in the sport, and that is the game's been broadcast for it. It's the ultimate broadcasting sport because there's so much space and because they've been broadcasting it longer than any of the other sports. Right.

Hours upon hours in all these senses. And so we all try to sound like a 67-year-old white guy. So I want to talk about this. So like there's a ground ball to short with a guy on first, and there is still a part of me that wants to, you know, so, okay, so Imanagi gives up fly balls, and I'm a dork for mentioning that. But it's like tonight if there's a man on first, you know, he could really use a ground ball.

And it's like, on the ground to short, Swanson, the Horner, on the bush, and that's just what the doctor ordered. And it would, there's a part of me that has to resist saying that, but the part of me that's saying that is because that's the type of shit that I heard and it worked for the person authentic but like that's not how I speak and so I really want to be as far away from that as possible. I want to give you as much of me as I can. I've learned and come to appreciate that all of us everywhere are imitating somebody but within these industries where there is a gold standard.

unconscious or not, it gets passed down like an heirloom, that you, I assume, when you fell in love with this, we're imitating somebody. No question. I still do it in different spaces. One of my favorite calls, and this will hurt some people and love other people, but one of my favorite calls is the Buckner play by Scully.

Sometimes someone will hit a little roller up along first, and all of a sudden I find myself, like, just rolling into that call. But, like, yeah, when I'm doing basketball, I was going to say, you also do college basketball for ESPN all over the time. I will steal puts it in. Breen is someone that uses that all the time. Or Mike Gorman, when I was at BC, is a big, got it. Pierce.

For the game. Got it. And I don't know. It just comes out. Yeah, I bothered you about this. You refused to develop a catchphrase. Yeah. It's, I mean, I think I, none of that for you.

And I love Breen. I want you to bang. Oog? Why don't you bang? Hartstein gets it out to Ananoby. Devencenzhou a three. I actually, you know what? That's not true.

That's not. I do have a catchphrase. I actually do have a catchphrase. Now that, you know, it's funny. This is how, but this is how I wanted to be. I have a catchphrase, actually. And I started using it with the Cubs. When the game is over, I bark ballgame.

What's the intonation? Ballgame. Last year here. Swing and a liner. Cush lays out. Cubs win. And I just started doing it. And it just happened.

Like, that's it. So I was in the booth with you for the Cubs Mets game. And it struck me, like, the degree to which you can show off in a game, right? The degree to which you can sort of like put the ball between your legs and spin it around. I don't know when you feel that, but there was a moment when you just showcased it to me. And it was, I believe, the bottom of the third. Okay. And I was like, hey, boog, people make fun of me on this program,

Pablo Torre finds out, because I say phrases that are impossible to diagram, and for some people, impossible to understand at all. Just so many angles on Tom Brady and just so many curves. Oh, with you. Voluptuous. Truly Zoftig, I believe they used to say in the 1920s. And so we gave you a couple of options, like, hey, can you do something with us? This is a menu.

Yeah, a menu of just ridiculous highfaludinisms. Yes. Do we have the clip of what I provided, Boog, the menu item that I ended up suggesting to him? I've been described as truly Zafting as they'd say in the 1920s. That guy's not afraid to put ketchup on his hot dog. bounced the third backhanded madrigal and alonzo retired there's two away did you say zafting zafting can you break that down for me I've never heard that term before well that's what they would say in the 20 yeah here to help I have my friend Pablo

Tori with me to JD's giggling feeding me smart words like they would say at Harvard And then you continue to call a broadcast that was utterly professional. So the part that's funny is that to me, part of what makes that funny is Bouncer to Third and Madrigal throws it to first. But that's the autopilot that just kicks in. It was the best. That's what kicks in. So we do the bit and the line and then the ball's in play. And it's like, oh, we got to get this going.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to force you to keep doing that as a side note. as I continue to just truly harang you into doing things for my total benefit and no one else's. So we should explain that your voice matters to me in all the ways we've discussed, but also because I've been searching for fair criticism of myself. And you have been, I told you this before the show was launched. Yes. That we needed an ombudsman of sorts.

The ombudsman. And you said, what about the umboogsman? And I forgot about it Because we're doing a zillion shows And then at some point I believe you texted and then called And then generally harassed me About how I gave one of the

Worst takes you'd heard You and Mina Me and Mina had given one of the worst takes you'd heard Smart people say dumb things All right so in short What Mina and I both said Back in February on this program Is that Tom Brady

Is gonna be good at broadcasting That's basically the take. Brady, if you hadn't heard, is going to be doing color commentary alongside Kevin Harlan on Fox in September. Brady is getting paid $375 million over 10 years, reportedly to do it. But yeah, Mina and I basically bought Brady's stock. And I argued confidently that Brady's previous life as the greatest quarterback of all time is absolutely going to transfer to the booth. Tom Brady, where it's just like, whatever his take is, is inherently interesting because that's how good he used to be. His one personality trait that we know of is competitive freak.

He's probably been doing an insane amount of preparation. The criticism of Romo now is that he's maybe not as prepared as he was initially. These are all the leaked stories we're seeing. That's not going to be the case with Tom Brady based on everything we know about him. And it went viral in announcing circles, it sounds. like where people were like, these f-fitting alleged smart people. I don't know about that. I think

most people were on your side, to be honest. Oh, I mean to say publicly yes, and Dan was on the other side of it. Yes. But, Mina, I would say to you as someone who has done that, I would say to you as someone who has a lot of information at her disposal, you know

how fast all that moves. You can prepare for that. Tom Brady, I'm sure, will have a lot of things to say and not enough time to say them because you are not prepared for how quickly all of that moves when you've got 700 sheets of paper in front of you and you need to know. And Dan is always on the wrong side of history. Always on the wrong side. Dan Lebitard on the right side. That's the thing that where I am, yeah, I'm just gently. It's a dangerous place for you to be on his side. Me and Lebitard down on a limb is just insert. I mean, there's no joke. You don't even need, yeah. But the announcing circles I refer to are

people who actually are announcers who are like, oh, that's why you came out. I mean, that's, that's the, the genesis of all this was we went back and forth. I sent him a voice text. That's right. And mildly berated him, if that's possible. Please recap what the argument was as you understood it. I just thought, it's hard to be an analyst. And the idea that, look, if you're betting on. it. More often than not, these guys come to become color analysts. They're not very good. The ex-athletes, like in this case, Tom Brady was the guy. And there's so many reasons for it. I mean, I would say number one is they're not going to respect it and put the work into it that they

put into their game. But then the next part that I would say that you guys were missing is just this idea of, like when Tom Brady's playing the other team, he doesn't know the first and last name of all 11 on the other side. He knows the corner's bad and he could. pick on him, but he doesn't know his first and last name. When the ball's thrown to him and he's broadcasting a game, he's got to say his first and last name. And accessing that is a completely different skill set than the idea of, oh, he's open. I can throw it to him. Like, it's completely different. Where I was baffled by your take was, but he also has the most sophisticated high speed processing of the mechanics of the game.

The X's a nose he's dissecting a defense in a booth the way that he would, presumably, on the field. And then he's got to say it, and that has nothing to do with him playing quarterback. If in the booth, they allowed him to throw the ball. I'm not saying, look, he might be good, but I was annoyed that you guys gave him the benefit of the doubt that you think just because he can process, that he can process and spit it back out. No, we'll see if he can.

I think what I underrated, which is hard for me to now dispute to you, to your face, is that the skill is transferable. Like, the hardest part about all of this would be, can you diagnose the play? Can you do the prophecy thing, which Romo was famed for until he stopped being famed for it? But like that to me feels like the unicorn skill of like, tell me the future. But for it to be executed at the highest, highest level, it's two parts. It is diagnosing and articulating. And the diagnosing part certainly replicates what he does in his former job.

The articulating has nothing to do with it and is a completely separate skill. And to prognosticate that he will be good at it, we're all just kind of guessing. Like part of me was like, I just want to see it. Yeah, right. Like, I don't care if he's bad. I just want to see if he can swim and if he's going to tell me the future. And even if it's clumsy, I'll take it. And you're saying that, oh, your face, your face is already like, this is going to be,

it's not what you, okay, what is your face suggesting? What do you, what do you mean? I just want to see it. I don't, I mean, look, an example to your point, in my opinion, would be listening to LeBron and JJ do that podcast because everybody has talked for years about LeBron being a savant. And so far on that podcast, you're watching and it's like, man, he's a savant. They have one set that they run off all free throws. Chet takes the ball out.

They send two guys to the other end. And now Shea has got, he has it on the right wing or the left wing or whatever case may be. At the same time that the biggest trying to load on Shea, there's a guard that's flaring Chet to the opposite slot. Do you know how hard that is? They're flaring a seven-footer to the opposite slot. But it's not happening in live real time. Right. And that's the distinction. And look, don't get me wrong. I am not a brain surgeon. You're calling Tom Brady unclutch is what you're doing. Chokes under pressure.

Yes, that's correct. It's we're not rocket. I also would tell you this. They do a terrible job in our industry training the analysts to explain to them, hey man, you don't call them the mic. You can't like you can refer to the mic. But like if you want to be great. And this is, again, these are opinions. But like. I want to. It's not, it's not, if there's a pop-up to shallow right, J-D can't call in the second basement. Yeah, Jim DeShay's your partner. Yeah. It's like, you can't call him. And the second basement goes out. No, man. No.

Who went out? Like you got to, because there's a story to who the second basement is. So like, that, that's the part of it that I don't know that gets completely articulated. And being able to do it efficiently, being able to do it. in a manner where you're really hitting the points that need to be hit. So one of the criticisms that I had read just in the press that executives had sort of levied against Romo, people have done this for decades on decades, right, was that he wasn't doing enough storytelling as the analyst, as the color guy.

What does that, what does that mean? I wouldn't, because I don't know that I would say that in a live game, I think it's hard to ask the analyst to be the storyteller. say that the play-by-play guy is more trained to be the storyteller. I would say initially he was someone that did the, you know, the prognosticating. To me, and again, I think that there are certain people that are going to care and certain people that are not. And I realize now I'm turning into like the douchebag on the hill waving the wand.

But I think, yeah, there's just a little more sort of game flow stuff. Like on that, the final play at a Super Bowl. Like, yes. Be quiet. not great can only feel the number of people out there being like what's going on first and goal

mahomes flings that you're there Hartman Jackpot Kansas City and this was the Andy Reid special this was the Andy Reid special we talked about he was saving all day he's going to fake emotion to go across and at that

moment he turns and goes back hard you know the guy called play right right Like there's a flow to the... So the dance. Yeah, there's a dance, man. That's what I observed with you and J.D. Jim DeShay's former pitcher in the 80s,

who is also, like, shockingly, given his demographics, statistically fluent and incredibly literary. Yeah, man, he's... And so you guys... So I want to say about your broadcast is that it is traditional in the ways that are obvious insofar as you respect what this should sound like. Yeah. But it also is subversive in the way that you weave in like advanced statistics.

Yeah. Which I think is less about a personal, we've talked about this, less about a personal crusade you have, although of course you are moneyball curious, long have been. It's that this is how the actual sport fucking talks. That's right.

At the highest levels, they are talking not about, okay, so for you, what stats in baseball as just an example here in football, there are parallels, but in baseball, what you do, what stats are the ones that fail fans focus on that actually people who make decisions don't give a shit about. Wins. Pitcher wins they don't care about. Runs batted in for the most part they don't really care about. Runs scored individually they don't really care about. I was telling you off the

air about stories. In the middle of the game last year, I texted Jed Hoyer, who's a president of baseball operations for the Cubs, and I said, who leads our team in RBIs? And he guessed, and he was wrong. And then he asked Carter Hawkins, who's the general manager, and he guessed and he was wrong. And then he asked our head of R&D, and he guessed, and he was wrong. They were 0 for three, the guys who are running the team. So, I mean, look, my point is simply, we can sit there and everybody can get cranky about, I don't want to turn it into math class, but I also would say, I feel some journalistic or reporter responsibility to deliver, this is what they're looking at. here's how they are being evaluated, and this is what it is.

The two stats that correlate the most with run scoring are on base and slugging. So every offensive stat, whether it's weighted runs created plus or Wobah, is some derivation of those two together. So look, you have to focus on the way these players are being evaluated if you want to do something that delivers some form of accuracy. Yeah, and so when I was shadowing you in this take your child to work day kind of dynamic, We were on the field. I was yelled at for touching the grass.

Yeah, you were. By the city field guardian of grass. He was like, you can't be on the grass. This guy can, you can't. And I was shamed like a child, like an actual child. And I backed away. It was good too because the guy came over and said, you can't be on the grass, but he can.

And then when we were leaving the field, another guy came over. And even though we were on the dirt, he said, don't go on the grass. Yeah, I'm habitual grass stepper. Yeah. And in the process, I was watching you report. I mean, in a sense, research.

You have on your phone an advanced statistical personalized stat packet that you have provided by a personal researcher. Yep. You have your iPad in which you score the game on a tablet as you would by hand, but now you have just a searchable archive for, I guess, forever. And you're having these conversations with people on the other table. team, the home team in this case, the Mets. On your side, you're watching VP. And I was watching you have conversations that I then heard you work into the broadcast. And I was just like, okay, boog is working. Like, this is the unseen stuff that I did not anticipate when I gave my takes about how Tom Brady's going to be awesome. And it culminated in just a broadcast that

didn't show the seams. Like all of this is about what you did for me with that Zafhtig thing, into your research, it was like, oh, I, the point is that you want people on some level to not know how hard it is. Yeah, I think, I mean, I feel uncomfortable saying, I don't want to make it seem like we're doing something. You had like a dozen tabs open, like searching like, that ball came off the, that ball came off the bat at 101 mile, whatever it was. You were like. Give it another reading. Do one more. I can't.

I'm so self-conscious. I'm so self-conscious. Ripped into left field. Wow, did that hang up? And hat makes the catch. It too hard. 13 miles per hour on a line. The other part that you picked up on very quickly is the social aspect of it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, we, I forgot. I met Keith Hernandez and Ron Darlinging to your booth and Gary Cohn. Gary Keith and Ron. And it's that way all the time. You and Taylor, who is the on-field reporter for you guys, Yep. Handed Keith Hernandez,

customized Oreos with his cat. Hajie. Oh my God. Wait till I get home. I'll wake Hajie up and show me. Yeah, that's right. Little salmon and maybe an Oreo for dessert. Oh, that's so sweet.

You guys are the best. Are you going to eat them? Did you see that? I saw them. They're all unbelievable. That's hilarious. Wow. Keith Hernandez and Ozzy.

21 and a half he is. Yeah, his birthday. And so there are two sets of cookies. We got Keith Oreos that have just Haji and then Keith and Haji because we thought it would be funny. I don't think Keith Hernandez will be happier this season than he was during that moment. It was magnificent. All Taylor McGregor right there. And so you mentioned Andy Green, who works now in the Mets front office.

He was the Cubs bench coach last year, smart baseball guy. I'm excited to see Andy. Green. I like Andy. And there are so many people throughout my time that I've connected with. David Stearns, I got to know through Craig Counsel when he was with Milwaukee. I was really happy to get a chance to see him. And we talk baseball. And then, yes, I get to use it on the air. And all of it in some dorky way kind of nourishes me. My head for sure, because these are interesting, smart people. and they provide really good content and perspective, but then also the social component,

the connective, you know, I'm hugging Andy Green. I had a pen explode on me. I got pen all over him. Your hand was covered in it. Andy Green doesn't like being hugged. What are you going to do? Yeah.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I invaded your personal space as you were invading Andy Green's personal space. That's a good way to put it. But I want to get to, can I have you do some... Absolutely. Some stuff here.

Cortez round around? Oh, yeah. Cortez, I've been telling him to help me prepare for this last part of the show, which is a dangerous thing to foreshadow. Yeah, I can't even. There's going to be stuff on here that, oh my gosh, yeah. Yeah, we might both lose our jobs. That's fair.

I'm willing to risk it all. So you heard me mentioned before that Booggiambi is the voice of the most popular baseball video game in existence, MLB, the show. What I did not mention, however, is that that video game is so intricate that if you were at bat, let's say, and you repeatedly asked for timeout, virtual boog would get a little frustrated with you. Time called.

This is brutal. No one has time for this. Just hit pause. And that is the thing about baseball in a nutshell. Approximately one zillion weird scenarios can happen in a game, like someone abusively calling for time. and these scenarios can involve a zillion different people. And so I wanted to understand what doing that job,

the job of the guy who has to simulate, call all of these hypotheticals, what that job involves, so that this show, and maybe these show as a result, could take full advantage of that too. Okay, so MLB the show. Yeah. I want to introduce this concept by explaining how it is you did that job. Yeah.

What did it involve? So there's multiple things, but there's base hit left field. Here comes the runner around third, and the Mets are going to the World Series. And then base hit runner comes around third. And the Mets are going to the NLCS. Like, I have to do every version of it. Every possible timeline. Right.

You are a nexus announcer. And then I have to do, and then I have to do your name. And I do Pablo Torre. Torre Torre Torre Torre So that they can stitch it all together

And that's for everybody's name Are you afraid of being replaced by AI boog? Nah, not really I mean eventually I probably will ask for it The part that I love is that I do some of it in my apartment in Chicago And it dawns on me

Even with You know Sound buffling, et cetera, that the people across the hall from here, like, man, he is just so into his craft. Or just like, that guy is insane. Yeah, he's just practicing his home run calls. That serial killer. Yeah.

That's me. So, but truly, like, when you do the math on it, it's like thousands upon thousands of reads. So we've done, I think I've done it for five years. and in five years we've done over 300 hours of recording. My God. So you are,

I mean, your consciousness is effectively uploaded into the MLB, the show. Yeah, it's, it's intense. And so what I am going to venture to guess is that you were never asked to describe some of the following scenarios.

Go. This is going to be hard because what I did was assemble a writer's room of Mike Scher and Alan Yang and Mina Kimes and me. and me and Cortez, just vaping in the corner. Yeah, sure he is. I basically am giving you the office writer's room. And I was like, they're all baseball fans.

What do you guys want to hear? And they gave me some prompts. So I'm going to give you the prompt. Yeah. And I want you to call this like it's happening in a sporting event. Yep. So here's one prompt. In the middle of a Royals Twins game,

Nicholas Cage drives onto the field in a Subaru outback and attacks the shortstop with a Nerf guy. done. This is so stupid. It is. It's really, it's really. 2-2 to Buxton is foul back. And the count remains even.

And whoa, hey, what do we got here? There's a car in the field. Good Lord. And it's out at shortstop. Bobby Wood Jr. is backpedaling. He is skit. That's Nick Cage. Goodness.

Nick Cage is out of the Toyota Outback. And he's got a gun. He's got this. What is going on over there? Oh, it's a Nerf gun. Everybody will be fine. He's shooting the Nerf gun at Bobby Witt, Jr. This is terrible.

I stink at this. Let's say it's Mets Cubs. Yeah. And in the stance is Sir Anthony Hopkins. Okay. He's wearing a, well, actually, he's wearing and then systematically eating in its entirety. A sombrero made out of tortilla chip material.

And if there's guacamole. there's salted, there's nacho cheese. Back here at Wrigley as we go to the top of the fourth, Cubs lead the Mets for nothing. Oh, and look who's here today, Sir Anthony Hopkins. Tell you one of the great things about coming to Wrigley Field is a giant sombrero hat made out of tortilla chips. And nobody loves it more than that guy.

Sir Anthony Hopkins. And I mean, J.D., look at him getting down on that sombrero hat. The guacks going everywhere. I think I see some fava beans there. You know that he is. is enjoying himself a little bit of Kianti and, oh gosh, get him a napkin for the love of God. Clean it up. Okay, Alan Yang submitted this one.

Can you have Boog do Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Arm Wrestling, Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, to a violent emotional draw that culminates in a embrace, maybe respectful but wary. So whatever your spin on that is. Back here at Wrigley, and time now for our heavyweight arm. wrestling matchup, it'll be Sonia Sotomayor and Leonardo from the teenage mutant ninja turtles. And away we go. Release the arms and Leonardo. Very, very strong. He's got Sonia Sotomayor.

Close to a win. Very, very close. Sonia Sotomayor, back the other way. She's got some guns. I got nothing else. Okay, hold on. What if, you're calling a Cub game, you're a Yankee Stadium. In the bullpen, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberger are there.

Yeah. And they're actually going to do their MMA fight. Okay. During the seventh inning of this Yankees' Cubs game. Okay. And after a few sad moments of wrestling, they suddenly just decide to start staring in each other's eyes. And they start kissing gently. Am I allowed to change it?

Of course. Okay. So here it is the matchup we've been waiting for. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They will square off in this UFC battle royale. And we are underway and Elon right now with the upper hand. Elon with a takedown. And he's punching him in the face, punching him harder.

Wait, what's that? It's Nicholas Cage. He's driving his Toyota Outback onto the field. And he has run them both over and killed them. And this fight is over. That is... That is so fucking stupid. Yeah.

All right, Pug. At the end, here there's only one way to sort of send you off into your job. Can you call me hitting a game-winning triple at Wrigley Field? I'm Chicago Cubs this time. Right. My teammate on first base scoring the game-winning run

is a velociraptor. Yes. It's just to figure out how to open doors and hit off speed pitches. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That just happened in seven. But now we're here. Bottom of the ninth.

Okay. Two down, bottom of the ninth. The Cubs try to pull out a win. It's a two-two game. Clay Holmes and a mound for the Yankees. And here's the Cubs Pablo Torrey. Right-hand hitter digs in. Velociraptor over there at first.

Holmes listens in for the sign and he's ready. The kick and the pitch. Swang in a ball. Ribbon, right field, towards the corner, slicing fairball. That's going to get into the corner, and Velociraptor is on his horse. On his way to third, Velociraptor, they're going to send him. Soto trying to dig it out. Velociraptor on his way to the plate, and save ballgame.

Cubs win. Pablo Torre the hero as he knocks in Velociraptor, and the Cubs walk it off. You are too good of a Fred to be. Thank you for doing this. Absolutely. Love you, buddy. This is fun. God bless.

Thanks for having me, man. So the show isn't over yet. And it could be, obviously, but it isn't because I got one more thing, a bonus thing. I didn't know where to put, but I just wanted to hand to you before you go. And it is not another Tom Brady take, even though I would say that might as desire to watch him try and pluck his banjo, as it were, on live television, has now been, at least partially satiated by that orgy of humiliation that was the Netflix roast from a couple weeks ago. Also, it was kind of, it was a little weird, right, that he got up and strenuously objected to

the Bobcraft handjob joke, but nothing else, um, nothing else involving his, like, family or ex-wife or anything. It's a little weird, right? I digress. Um, The reason this episode isn't over yet is because I had one more request, a shameless, romantic request for Booke. What are we doing? Is the rain seen from the notebook? I give that a shot because I would say that I've seen that. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll admit it. I've seen it. Well, it looks like it's going to rain. Ryan Gosling knows it's going to rain. Now it's raining, everybody. Oh, boy. What are we going to do?

Yeah, the sweater. on top of your head's going to help a whole heck of a lot. I feel like a very, very personal conversation is about to be had because the rain is making Rachel McAdams very uncomfortable. He's laughing. She's laughing. Everybody's laughing. Everybody's laughing.

Oh, yes. And there's joy. It's rained. It's like washing away all of the painful memories from back in the day. And she wants to know, how come you never wrote me? Isn't that what happens? I think that's what happened.

Now it's serious. She's staring at him. We're going to get close. Yeah, the lightning just flashed. Doc the boat already, Ryan, for the love of God. She's furious. She went from joyous in the rain, and she wants to know how come he didn't wait for her.

And now she's turning around. He's still going to put the boat up on the dock, though. Let's go. Why? We all want to know why She waited for him She waited for him Well how come your mom hid the letters

Huh? That's what I want How come we all want to know Your mom hid the letters He wrote every single day I've seen the movie I'm not embarrassed by it Yeah

It wasn't over It's never over It's not over right now Come over here That's all I got Did they kiss Bouncing to third And Magrigal over to first

over to first and that'll end up in the inning. And they're kissing. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A metal arc media production. And I'll talk to you next time.