Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Best, Worst and Sexiest Trophies in Sports, with Legendary Art Critic Jerry Saltz

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

The Heisman? "An American classic." The World Cup? "Uncircumcised." A white-gloved Pablo welcomes back New York magazine's unfiltered, Pulitzer Prize-winning arbiter of taste to evaluate the history of competitive hardware as sculpture — with a curated tour of shiny balls, stolen chalices and one gigantic mystery box.• Previously on PTFO: Athlete Statues, Reviewed by Pulitzer-Winning Art Critic Jerry Saltz• Subscribe to New York magazine for more Jerry Saltz• Subscribe to The Athletic 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. It looks like an uncircumcised penis held in his hand with the skin being pulled back. Right after this. Sir. Great to see you. I'm coming back. I'm no Sarah, Jessica, Raphael.

What's her name? Parker. That's right. In my universe, your own sex in the city is an even better series. Back at you. Congratulations on the Pulitzer Prize. You know, just wanted to be able to hang out with you credibly. Except I can't figure out how to monetize it at all.

I was hoping that that would be what we found out today. How do we make money off of this thing? You might be able to, but I figured it would just keep me in a job for 18 more months, and I used it up. Well, enjoy it at the top. We got two to three months already behind us, so the clock is ticking. It is. So, Jerry, thank you for being back. Great to be here.

You're surrounded by cloaks and shadowed figures, and I want people who are not watching to have the joy of Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, Jerry Salts, New York Magazine's chief art critic, and one of the great New Yorkers that I've ever met. Thank you, fellow Pulitzer Prize winner. Just to two guys hanging out. surrounded by things veiled from public view. And I would love for you to just describe as we go through here what we get to see together as we reveal them.

And I will give you these white gloves. You don't have to wear them just yet, but I'll throw them at you because we will get to a point at which we have to engage the giant mystery box. I have no idea what we're going to see. You're also the subject of a new documentary called House of Criticism. Yes. Was Justice Tribeca was so well reviewed. But I want to say that you are missing.

Do you mind if I say that she is your better half? Oh, God. Yeah, no. She is by far. Roberta Smith. Yes. Art critic, former Art critic of the New York Times. And we'll show a still frame here of you and Roberta Smith.

Boom. Look at that. As you're on your knees praying to her, it seems. like i'm praying to her and to one of the greatest paintings in all of modernism Picasso's five horrors of da vanion street or des mazelles de a vagnon painted in 1906 that changed everything everything i dare say that that pablo cannot hold a candle to what's going on here in the studio with me i dare say you're insane. Well, the last time,

the last time you were here, you reviewed a Pablo, as it were, and for those who don't remember your last appearance, could you please describe this? Oh, a butter sculpture

of my host, Pablo. That's pretty good. That's a good... What, didn't I like it? You did like it? Butter on Pablo, 24, by the award-winning food sculptors, Jim and Marie.

Paltin of Pennsylvania. Yeah. I think you compared it to almost like a JFK-style bust. Yeah, that's your look. It's kind of cool because it's too big. Yeah. It's bigger than you are slightly. It's still good.

And it was good until I would say this happened. Could you describe what you're seeing? I'm seeing a knife sliced through the front of Pablo's face and serve it up in chips. shards. Yeah. It was good. I would have rather

had been a cake. I briefly, I recall, I being butter me from my wife and child who were listening. I briefly did make out with some other art critics in Washington Square Park.

They came by and planted one on us. Wow. Yeah. Congratulations. I never get that. And as a consequence, I got my face cut off.

But there is one brief update we have for you in the athlete's statue genre. That's what you came on to review last time. Yeah. Because as an evolution of what it is to depict the human form in tribute, we do have this. And so this is Argentina, Patagonia. This is in the desert there.

Could you describe what you see here? This is an enormous sculpture. How tall is it? 85 foot, 70 tonne. 85 feet of messy, skinny. after having just scored a goal with his right arm raised to the heavens preaching like Zeus,

go! It's epically great. Oh, $130,000 is what this cost. The time to say that this was a public-funded project. This is a remote oil town in the middle of the Patagonian Desert. The local sculptor, his name is Aldo Berosa. Great artist, Aldo.

And he wielded oil pipes into the shape of Messi's skeleton. Wow. It's like he's kind of naked below. It reminds me of a famous artist, Tracy Eamon, who's from England and their greatest sculptor

and above, it's like a half a body plunked on this sort of open-legged mass. It's tremendous. He does look like he's kind of like Winnie the Poohing it, now that I think about it. There's a top and there's the box.

Well, that looks like he's got an enormous penis from this angle. Yeah, we're from the back now. Yeah, from the behind. It's kind of great because it's cement. That's what makes it great. The rawness, the materiality is not hidden. There's no lie to this sculpture. It says, I am artificial.

I am a monument to the eternal God, messy. His, like, jersey, his shirt, they've worked the folds in. You can see the fold that he created, which is so almost beautifully precise. And then down below, it looks like he has a giant d-a- Yeah, no, it's awful for me as a Jewish boy. I do not want to see it. I don't need to see that. But no, it's enormous, as it were. Yeah, and the ass is just sort of just like a flat. That's good. Okay. Yeah.

This is a great work of art. It parallels the very large-scale Melania sculpture. I'm looking that up right now. It's homemade in her birth city. It's pretty cool. Are you familiar with that portrait of, I think it was, was it Mother Mary that got sort of like disfigured? Oh, yes. Yeah, it's a painting.

The 17th century painting of the Virgin Mary that got ruined after a furniture repairman was paid approximately $1,300 to restore it. It is a tremendous painting now because there's no other Madonna on earth remotely like it. And I just want to split screen the wooden Melania in Slovenia with that disfigured Mother of Christ. Yeah, good combinations there, just great.

I'm sure there's a larger moment. message there, but I'm not the guy with the Pulitzer for art criticism, so I'll leave well, I'm not the guy with a Pulitzer for a podcast. So. I am, though, going to let you now, if you can put on your gloves, your white gloves. Happily. Yes, and I will do the same because we are going to have you open the little black box in front of us.

Okay. As a way into this strange podcast that you have once again consensually agreed to participate in. Yes. And it'll be the first of the multiple divine mysteries that are surrounding us. And so... That's the size of the World Cup sculpture? That's it?

Let me see it. Yeah, there you go. I always thought it was enormous. I should admit, of course, this is a unfortunate replica of the World Cup trophy. They wouldn't let us have the real one. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, I think they've maybe watched other episodes that we've done, and they're like, no, that's not okay. This one is, yeah, about, I don't know, five, four, five inches.

Size of a butt plug, basically. A butt plug-sized replica. And God bless, if your butt plug exceeds about four inches in length, which is what I'm told in my ear, this technically is. But hey. And it looks vaguely phallic. Yeah. But I love it. because of its abstraction.

Okay, so the real one, I'll set up the dimensions, 14.4 inches high, about three and a half times bigger than what you're holding. And what does it look like in its abstraction? So it looks like it's a ball, which has a map of the globe of the world on it. It's held up by figures, each abstractly, sort of with their arms outreached, with their mouth, open, their heads cocked back, and a kind of a twisting stem that looks, again, vaguely like a penile shaft with veins. But I don't say that to be funny. No. But the abstraction, realism, just the

sculpting of it is pretty fantastic. Yeah. I could imagine hoisting that over one's head feeling pretty darn good. So this was commissioned originally by FIFA for the 1974 World Cup. The Italian sculptor, his name is Silvio Gadsaniga. It looks like a kitsch, Italian-kind of a sculptor's idea in the 70s of what abstraction would look like. Frankly, I don't like to talk this way, but it looks like an uncircumcised penis. The skin being pulled back. I think that's absolutely correct. Yeah. And you just have to say what things look like.

It's all gold. Yep. It's got 18 carrot. 18 carrot. And it's got a base. We don't know why. The artist never asked himself about it. He just wanted to do that.

So he put it on a dumb base. And that's what it is. I was going to say, something that we should be evaluating here is, to borrow the language of the metaphor and the literal object. the base of the thing. Yeah, right, yeah. Because that's a bit tossed on, it kind of feels like. Yeah.

It's like the envelope for the card. That's a good metaphor. Did you really think about what it's going to be sitting on? I wonder if other trophies have given the base more thought, or maybe the thought comes delivered whole as if from the universe where no one else will ever notice the base, except, you know, a pointy-headed art. art critic. Well, I should point out that the World Cup trophy that you're seeing is not the original

World Cup trophy. That's the current one. It was commissioned because something strange happened to the previous trophy, which I do need to point out as we show that visual. This is what is known as the Jules Ramei Cup. It's an actual cup, kind of, as you can see. It's a neo-Greek revival, neo-fascistie. It's a woman not bare-breasted, but with enormous breasts held in by her toga, with her arms holding an urn filled with the deceased's ashes. And she's got great wings underneath. Nike, the goddess of victory, is the lady with the boobs. The new one is much better.

Really? Much. Oh, wow. Because this looks like your standard European kind of idea of what a trophy should look like. It's not gaudy, nor is it specific. That could be for billiards. It doesn't matter. It could be for tidily wings.

Yes. It's not specific to the game of football. I was going to ask you whether the cup makes it more. satisfying because you're actually living up to the name of the tournament, but you're saying this looks like a generic... Worse in the sense that that's not quite a cup. It's an eight-sided, you know, hexagonical, octagonal nut bolt with like an ashtray indentation. So it's not really saying much other than it's great that you want it. But I think the new one

is better because it's gaudier, it's kitcher, it's gold. It is gold. And that is FIFA and Trump and, you know, the new world order. It's what the world is right now. And what you're saying is that the representation of the climate sociologically, politically, emotionally, emotionally, that is more meaningful as a matter of what does this say about the climate, that? people who are awarding it and receiving it. Absolutely, and that is part and parcel of the object itself. And anyone who's holding it or talking about it is seeing that without recognizing that that's what they're seeing.

Yes. Today, one of the contents, the content of that sculpture, that cup, that whatever it is. That uncircumcised. Yeah, yes, is today and our values today. I would imagine that most trophies are now gold. Yeah. I should point out that the brief history of the old trophy is funny. What is it?

In 1938. Ah, yeah. I know, we're getting, we're getting deep into it now. An Italian FIFA official hid the cup in a shoebox under his bed to prevent the Nazis from getting a hold of him. it. 20 years later, 1958, journalists believe it may have disappeared after the Germans won the World Cup.

66 comes around, and a collie, a dog named Pickles, found the cup, and the cup was wrapped in a newspaper under a garden bush because it had been stolen in London, apparently. And the originator of it, Jules Rameh, who was the former FIFA president, he'd wanted the trophy to remain in

perpetuity in the possession of the First Nation to win it three times. which Brazil did in 1970, only for 1983 to come along and a bunch of apparently hooded thieves broke into the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation. They tied up the night watchman, took off with the World Cup, esconded with it, along with some other stuff.

And the investigators found the robbers, not the trophy. Wow. And they said maybe it had been melted into gold bars or something like that. Right. That makes sense. It's like El Chapo stuff. It's like very narcos. It's very FIFA, narcos, corrupt, post-fascist.

Yes. It's a fitting story. Well, and I should point out for legal reasons that a convicted Argentine gold dealer testified that he had not melted the cup down. I guess he could sue us from the grave. And so I guess what I'm saying is the original World Cup trophy may still be out there somewhere floating. Wow. I do want to ask you in the World Cup context, do you like perhaps this one anymore or any less? This is the current women's World Cup trophy.

And I don't know how you would describe what this is going for, but this is what they got going for the women. Yeah, that's a twisted spiral gold with a soccer bowl. in its sort of grip. It's not very good, I'm afraid. And women in America are the only ones that have kept the game alive for so long. I want the game to become much, much more popular here. It's a game that you have to be so witty to play at because everything is against you. You can't use your hands, and that's our most natural, you know, thing.

you have to use your feet. There's no timeouts, except for the hydration breaks, bullshit. Like life, it never stops, and you only score rarely. And that is exactly like life. And it can come down to a tiny, tiny thing making you score or not score.

Now that we're into, though, the sort of grand sweep of metal balls on top of bases and such. I do want to just speed run through some of this. I just wanted to know if you recognize what this is. Well, I do because it recently came to the New York Knicks. It is an abstract rendition below of a basket, elongated. Behold the Larry O'Brien championship trophy, as it is officially known.

I don't think it's a great sculpture. Yeah. Honestly, there's a kind of plainness to it again that this bizarre, kits, ugly object You know, doesn't have, but that has real scale. This is Tiffany & Co. designing and creating this in 1977. It's on a huge tilt.

Why? We don't know. Yeah, it's a regulation-sized basketball at the very top. So that's one-to-one scale of the ball but like two to one of the basket and there's this kind of insane world's fair base. It must be amazing to hold

and almost impossible to hold up with one hand. Yes, 29 pounds, Larry O'Brien, trophy named after the former NBA commissioner and former postmaster general, Lawrence O'Brien. There you go. Do you like this sculpture? You know, part of the reason I wanted to do this is because I've conditioned my brinkered,

to associate this with the pinnacle of something. Absolutely. And now, hearing you say what you're saying, I'm like, this kind of sucks, actually. Yeah, it isn't great. I would love to see an actual artist make one of these things, and no one would like it, but it would push the thought into some other dimension.

That's very, very literal. Yes, you can even see the etching of the... the net. Yeah, and the writing of the National Basketball Association is very large. You know, I like the sculptures when they get personalized or abstract or unaccounted for the ones that might have names written on them. I think that's a cool idea. I want my name on the Art Critics Trophy, but there are none, so. Not yet. Okay. Not yet. I don't. I do. I, would like you to evaluate, though, this because this feels of a similar kind of aesthetic in that regard. The Vince Lombardi Trophy. Okay. This is complex for me because this is America to me.

Football is a sport I love. And the object itself is like America. It's not so. specific, but it is only what it is. So I suppose that it makes it quite specific. It is a tilted silver football on a sort of large trapezoidal tea. Yeah. And it celebrates the one aspect of football that every single person feels that she or he could do, which is kick the ball. So it's a very egalitarian, Jeffersonian ideal and reduced almost minimal. When was this one designed? 1960. Yes.

At the height of American movement called minimalism, which was stripping down and simplifying a form, the football has no texture. No. It has the stitches. The stitches, but no texture. The trapezoid itself just has our first president, Vince Lombardi, written on it. Look at that. Does that just say football?

Nothing special, and you can't have it. You know, it's kind of great. The origin of it, apparently, because this was made by Tiffany's as well, and what they did was, apparently the design chief knew nothing about football. He brought a toy ball at F.A.O. Schwartz, if you can recall, the toy store. that I grew up also going to and fantasizing about. He put the ball on his kitchen table, ate a bowl of corn flakes at said table,

and in an apparent epiphany, it seems, he started cutting up the empty cereal box, turned it into the trophy base, and voila, Americana. He made something that says football, to any football fan. To nobody else, is it special? But I think that's a special.

of all of these trophies, except maybe again, the... The Uncircumcised. The World Cup one. It's bizarre. I love how you are entranced by the tiny trophy. Yeah. As we present you with all of its competitors,

and yet you return to the veins. It could be because it's the only material thing I'm seeing. And so its presence is a form of great. and its presence keeps me pulled magnetically back to it. It could just be that simple. Well, I do think we need to enter into the evidence here, some other gravitational fields. But before we do, I just got to show you this.

Whoa. That's a crystal Tiffany egg. No, it's a crystal... Waterford. Waterford egg. Yeah. of the Hindenburg squished together

and it goes to the coach of the year? Here is the Coaches Trophy given to the winner of the BCS National Championship game if you remember that until 2013.

The Coaches Trophy is what it says along the base in like impact font which is kind of funny now that I think about Waterfordness versus the like I printed this on Microsoft Word of it.

Now you're doing it. Pablo. I'm not kidding. Go on. It also, as we evaluate its crystal-ness, it seemed like it may have inspired the object that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State,

recently offered the Pope on his recent trip to the Vatican if we have shite. Absolute. Shite. And he's an American Pope, and he can't even believe.

That's what America offers the Pope. What is he offering? He's offering a little thing that you put in your vagina, an egg, that you stick up there, and I think you walk around all day with it in there. And it's glass football. It's a glass football of about three inches long. Why?

It says the State Department. That's why? Yeah, this does look like one of those jade eggs. Yoni egg is what the... Yes, that... Wow, you're good. You got to strengthen the pelvic floor. Yeah.

No, that's a good thing to be a healthy on. Now, that said, the Pope, I just can't reiterate his review enough, which was, wow, period, okay, period. It is, wow, okay. That's what it is. God, I love our country. We are a magnificent creature. Yeah. That was the coach's trophy in college football, given to the winner of the previous championship.

game and this is now what the national champion gets instead i'm so sorry uh college national champions that they're giving you an absolutely generic idea of an abstract football super bowl sculpture it's sad you work very hard and it doesn't look like much of anything the base it goes down to a silver thing before it meets like a little marble base that says national champion with I'm really sorry it has nothing to it except gold yeah this is also the thing that uh jd vance kind of dropped when he was delivering it to uh the national champions when they visited the white house uh the base there was actually key to ohio state's visit you kind of let the base fall off thing and it was wow it wasn't great but this is 24 karat gold bronze and stainless steel and the way i'm

seeing it now it does look like a football and maybe this is almost like the the what the the contrails yeah like the things sort of like making those waves in the air yeah a good call it's an idea of someone else's idea of a trophy and i'm sorry i i i'm sorry They can do better. This was designed when? Do you have its date? Yeah. This was in the 20 teens.

Yeah, it looks like that. It's like, eh, nobody's got an idea. Get that department to just make one, make it gold in a football. That's it. It's a shame. Sports is better than that. The thing that makes me smile, though, when I think of the college football landscape, is this. A pop

That's insane That there's a label that says Pop Tarts on your trophy This is the Pop Tarts Bowl Trophy You get it for winning the Pop Tarts Bowl And where is what is the Pop Tarts Bowl? I'm so glad you asked for ourselves

What is it? So College Football culminates in a series of One-Off games Yeah Not everybody can be in the college football Playoff field And so you play these one-off games, and one of them is sponsored by Pop-Tarts.

And where is it played? This one was played in Orlando, as is sort of like very tiny font along the bottom of the pop-tart with the bite taken out of it at the base. Well, here again, it's all derived. This works like artworks. It works from the Super Bowl trophy, from the tilted football that that guy had the idea.

idea for. And it keeps repeating, repeating, repeating. So so far, in American sports, you have found the Err trophy, which is the Super Bowl trophy, and that's what they're all taking off from. Does this object gain anything in your estimation by virtue of the fact that it's also a toaster? It's a function. It's a function. toaster. Oh my God. Now, that makes it like a Duchamp. It's like an assisted ready-made. That's a found sculpture, Duchamp created... Marcel Duchamp, of course. Yes. Created the urinal. So this is a trophy that functions like a working toaster. So I could toast my Pop-Tart or toast in there every morning. I don't know if it

would accept toast, but the bricolage of you putting toast inside of a Pop-Tart trophy. That's cool. I mean, that's avant-garde. It's avant-garde. It's complete crappola of the highest order of idiocy American kitsch, but, and it's shameless of Pop-Tarts. It's just shameless. They probably paid all of $4 million to get this naming rights thing.

And it's ridiculous to sell your soul for something like this. But that's what we are in this country. And we love ourselves for it. And everybody gets a toaster. I should say that according to our exhaustive fact-checking process here, we have just discovered that the Pop-Tarts Bowl paid $2 million. Oh, Jesus. Stop it.

Stop it, America's sports. You could have sold... We just gave you a 50% off. Oh, Jesus. I'm sorry. God, America. You sell yourself. You like trumpet. Go on. I want to now use these white gloves for real, for real tactile evaluation here because we have a real sculpture here, Jerry. And behind you, there is an object. And I would love it if we could. Oh, we have the door opening. We're going to bring in our docents. Hello, docent.

Hello, hello. Rob and Patrick. Hey, Rob and Patrick. Please reveal what has been behind. I'm going to turn all the way around. Jerry Salts. Oh, they're bringing it over. Wow.

The truly iconic Heisman Memorial Trophy. The weight of history. Jerry, you may touch the object. May I? With the gloves as a prophylactic. You may. What is it weigh? It weighs 45 pounds.

My God. I'll tell you, this is an American classic. It pictures someone running with a ball, presumably a running back. God, is this fantastic? The sheer weight, the sheer iron throne, power, magnificence of this again. It's like a rob. A tiny little doll. Like just, bam, it's just amazing.

It's a running back, giving a stiff arm, holding the ball to his bosom, and making a huge stride exaggerated. But it's fantastic. It looks pre-World War II is what it looks like. So this is an America that no longer exists. of just barely with the equipment that we would recognize, no apparent jersey, you know, almost like the Olympians playing half-naked. But whatever it is, it's just a powerful, heavy block

of American history. Well, it does, now that you mentioned, it does have sort of the aspect of our own version of, it was discobulus by Myron, right? The guy with the disc, the throwing disc. Oh, yes, yes, yes, exactly. Yes, there it is. It has...

Genius. If I had said that, I'd leave today happy. But I didn't. So that is brilliant. You know, the way this was made, and you can, yeah, it's solid as you are... Yeah. As you are feeling it. The ancient method used was lost,

wax casting. Yes. Hot wax poured into a mold and then dipped into a liquid ceramic. It was called the investment, the liquid ceramic. Egyptians use this apparently dates back to 45, 50 BC. It's just utterly archaic and ancient that way. It also feels like earlier American illustration a la pre-Norman Rockwell, but Americana. Yes. So it's just a piece of America right in front of me. John Heisman, the director of the downtown athletic club, is what it's named after, summoning that, you know, again,

Rockwellian. I never knew that. Yeah, the Downtown Athletic Club here in New York City. And the guy who is the model for this is the friend of the, sculptor. The sculptor's name is Frank Ellis Q. Apparently, he designed this when he was 19 years old. Yes. And his friend is a guy, was a guy named Ed Smith, fullback passer, runner, and punter on the NYU football team. Who is pictured here, Jerry, as you can see. What a face. What, what a mug. What a great mug. I do want to bring another image to the table here, though, because what is not in this box, just to be

clear about what we're not going to show you is this. And I do really want you to evaluate this. Because this trophy, it's the Borg-Warner trophy. And can you describe what is at the base of this? Well, those are the kings on the base, little tiny portraits of each winner of said race. What race is it? This would be the Indianapolis 500. Well, that's incredible. You want, if possible, to have your face or name engraved or sculpted onto an object to make you part of its history. Because that is part, it can be part of what a trophy is, where you attach your spirit to the spirit of the winning.

of that trophy. And because, I mean, car racing is a great sport. I love F1. I don't like... Indy car. ...at all because they only go around in a circle, but I have nothing against it.

And that's a kind of an amazing sculpture. All the names of all the winners are right there next to the tiny little busts. Yeah. And this, I mean, you talked about before, will no one think of the base? This is essential. Yeah, absolutely.

Every part of this sculpture is part of it. The whole base holding a great Greco urn filled with the ashes of the great burning an abstract stylized flame. But it's just, and look how enormous, It's taller than the vehicle that won the race. It's tremendous. More than five feet tall.

And it keeps on growing to accommodate more bases and more faces on said bases. To give it that almost like Stanley Cup dynamic in hockey, that's the sort of like accumulated history manifesting. Great. That is a great idea. Wouldn't you want to have your name on that thing? I think every art and journalism award should also have this. That's a genius idea. There is a veiled piece of hardware that I now feel comfortable bringing into this desk.

And it is the one behind me. And so into the museum here, return our docents. And now, what do we have here? The James Mortimer Memorial Cup for what sport is it? Well, Jerry? I couldn't read it. I think it's best if we play this clip. The best in show winner at the 148th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is the miniature poodle.

I have to say, when America was founded, in the 1700s, 1800s, our design style was Greek revival. All of our cemeteries have either Egyptian obelisks in them or earns Greek temples, if you're buried that way. A lot of our homes are designed that way. And so it comes as no surprise, does it, that we haven't moved. Don from that. What is the definition of trophy? It is not earn.

What is an urn? It is a place to put ashes. So, yes, there's an immemorial aspect to all of these great cups. But it, again, feels terribly American to me. Yeah. 150 years is what the Westminster Kennel Club. show how long they've been at it. So this is the second longest running sporting competition in America after the Kentucky

Derby. This is American. Yes. And the video we saw was, of course, Sage, the miniature poodle from 2024. Previous winners also include Wasabi, the Pekingese. Well, hate. Hate the dog. Well, I love the dog, but I hate the dog.

Because of the haircut. Well, I'd like to see a Doxon win. But they're never going to win. Well, there is a certain hierarchy, of course, a caste system. Are you a dog person? I grew up in the city and I never had a dog growing up by a role. No, no. I do dig the sort of like, I don't know,

like a Star Wars character kind of. Good point. Kind of like that. Good point. And we have one more. Okay. Trumpet, the Bloodhound. Oh, come on.

trumpet you've got dumbo ears you're beautiful 22 love you madly this is a one of one trophy so I get to keep this well if you Jerry salts can defeat a variety of best in show worthy dogs you might be able to get this for one year or forever

well this is the rule so the trophy stays at the headquarters of the Westminster Kennel Club here in New York City, not with the winner. Mm-hmm. And it stays in perpetuity unless it is visiting our podcast. Or the best-in-show winner wins five times and is American bread. And you get to keep it then. Which has never happened.

No, it's never going to happen. That is the bar you got to clear. It's sort of an echo of like that World Cup original design where it's like, hey, if you win it three times, you can keep it. The Brazilians got it. Of course, got stolen. But this, no one has met that standard. And, of course, the president of the Kennel Club, a gentleman by the name of Don Sturs,

told us, yeah, he thinks it's never going to happen. Never going to happen. The last object here, well, I suppose I should ask you because under this large black cloak, this veil, is, and I will give you this clue, not the Stanley Cup. Unfortunately, because the Stanley Cup, and the keeper of the cup who accompanies him.

Been there, done that, you know about that thing. Yeah, wow. We have our own guardian of this mystery box who is here by law. Okay. And I do want to explain that we are not allowed to touch the trophy inside this box.

Okay. And the guardian of said mystery box has been just outside the studio this entire time watching us, perhaps cringing. I'm sure. perhaps growing aroused at times on the resonance of our descriptions.

Doubtful. But I do believe it is now time to take the Westminster Kennel trophy away and replace it with a clear sight line to what is underneath this. Georgia, please do us the honors of revealing what's underneath.

It's a giant Louis Vuitton coffin scale. suitcase package. A big red V across the front, many sort of like golden buckles,

the inimitable and very, I am told, valuable print of Louis Vodon all over this thing. It is a trunk. Okay.

A very large trunk, Jerry. And I'm into it. Can we reveal what's inside the very large trunk? The top has been popped. A hookah?

No, what? It's a gigantic. It's like a four-foot-tall, chesspiece, a hookah, a fountain thing. So this giant, I mean, trophy, it's affectionately known as the Ald Mug. It was crafted in 1848. Wow. by a master silversmith by the name of Edmund Cottrell. This is a style, Jerry, I don't know if you're familiar with it.

Neo-manorist. Was it made in Europe? It was, in fact, made in London. Year of Revolution, 1848. Could you just describe the shape as we sort of go, if you could look up and down? The shape on the top looks like a little syrup pourer thing. A gravy boat of sorts? A gravy boat, per table.

perched atop a candlestick, perched at top a tuftet, perched at top, you know, a two-tiered bell-shaped bass. And the whole thing has got writing on it of a lot of etched words. I should say that the people who have been allowed to touch slash hold this figure include billionaires such as Richard Branson and Larry Ellison. It's not for smoking. I thought it might be a cigar smokers. I do love the idea of putting in one of those like coals at the top and like smoking this thing on a sidewalk. So what did they do? Branson was in the air, ballooning.

That's a ballooner sculpture, right? You are getting both warmer and colder at the same time. Uh, clue. Water. Water, sailing. You are looking, Jerry Saltz, at the America's Cup trophy. The America's Cup, of course,

is called the America's Cup because the first race in 1851 was won by a boat named America as raised by the New York Yacht Club. And so, this is a very New York, a New York institution in its history. Wow. I never knew.

I had no idea. Congratulations, all you sailors. I mean, what can I say? You could say that if you were to look closer and you can look closer, you will notice that there are spelling errors everywhere. The fonts are different everywhere. This is according to the official historian,

Magnus Wheatley, because what a name for the official historian of the America's Cup. According to legend, nothing fair about winning this. This is the hardest trophy in international sport to win because when you win the America's Cup, you basically have to decide where they'll race,

what sort of boats they'll be racing with. You kind of get this all-powerful ability to dictate the race itself. So if I win it this year, I can say next year we're going to go in figure rates. In the East. River. In the East River, because that's my best shot at winning. I would like Jerry Saltz, Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, to gaze at this and the utter

generosity of Georgia aside. I would like you to do what you do and tell us what artistically you are looking at. Well, this is a combination like you called it neo-manorist, mannerist. was a movement after the Renaissance where every artist thought, how am I going to do something different than the err object of Michelangelo? So they started making figures do this and posing strange.

A mannerist tendency means to take an err object and sort of pull it apart, twist it around, add something to it, grow in a different culture. And that is sort of what this is. It has almost like a fencing sort of epa handle.

Yeah. Over there. Yeah. And then like a genie's gravy boat at the top. Yeah. And it has, I mean, you said it was a, was it a muffet or tough it? No one knows, but it's like a muffin top on the top. Correct.

It's like a bust, a girdle. Yeah. A corset. It's just a lot of things. Does it work as one? Think again of it as a chess piece. Kind of does feel like every chess piece combined into one chess piece.

Yeah, that's what it does. That's it. It kind of feels like the chess piece that says, I'm buying all of the other chess pieces. Is it the best trophy? It is not the best trophy. But it does appear to be the biggest trophy. trophy. You'd think they could like pick up on Tibetan, like lore or like South American or

Aboriginal. I don't know. I think it's colonist. It's colonizing. The trophies are all colonized. Yes, they've colonized themselves. And us are expectations for what it looks like to be a winner. Yeah, that's true. And what is more winner-like? than having a kind human being named Georgia, who we've conned into opening a Louis Vuitton trunk inside of which is the greatest hookah the world has ever seen. Absolutely. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you, Georgia. You're welcome. Jerry, I'm going to let you keep that butt plug. Is that true? Yeah. I get to take this home? I mean...

I love this. I can't co-sign exactly what you're going to do with it, but we are a country of freedom. This, I get to keep this? Yeah. We brought you the fucking America's Cup, Jerry, and you're obsessed with that. I won!

Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound designed by Andrew Bursick, Digital Strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

I'll talk to you next time.