Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Sporting Class: What You Can’t Control, with David Samson

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

He’s watched one movie per day for the last 30 years. He’s a germaphobe. He obsesses over the efficient use of his time. But when David Samson, the ex-president of the Miami Marlins, just last month, received the news of his daughter’s sudden illness, the life he meticulously engineered was upended forever. David sits down for a candid discussion about his failures as a father and his hopes for his daughter. Also: electing a commissioner; Giancarlo Stanton’s best home run; Jerry Reinsdorf’s “Happy Birthday”; the time Derek Jeter berated David across a Cooperstown souvenir shop; and oops, we forgot to tell Skipper he’s not on this episode. 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. Happy birthday, sending best wishes and hoping all as well. Have you no shame? Right after this ad. Hey, buddy. So you have, I want to be very clear with our audience what's happening here today. You're going to be out of here.

In an hour, almost literally, you got places to be. it is not lost on me that you made time to do this and I have really missed you thank you i was at a a deli and i lost track of days and i was asked by my daughter's mother my ex cindy to get a sandwich bagel a bagel with nova and cream cheese and i wanted one too so i went to Sables and I completely didn't understand why there was a line out the door because I had forgotten that it was young Kipper. And so I am online. I get to fourth. It's my turn almost fourth. And a doctor calls. And that's my life now. So when the doctor calls, that's it. Whatever you're doing. And it's happened during the taping of nothing personal. That's it. You take the call because

I'm on their time. I'm on everybody else's time but mine. So I get offline. I then do the call, get back online, get to the front. And before I can make an order, the guy looks right at me and says, do you know Pablo Torre? Oh, no. And I said, yeah, why? I said, oh, I've seen you on a show. I said, thank you so much.

Can I get you anything? I said, yeah, I wouldn't mind a smear. Oh, God. You went to Sables? Yes. Was it an Asian guy who asked you that? Yes, it was. I met that guy probably two weeks before you had that.

It was all octogenarian Jewish women getting ready for Arab Yom Kippur. Then it was me with a backpack because that's my new thing. I have shoes that I bike with because I bike all over the city now because I won't sit in traffic like I did today. And I don't, and that comfortable shoes. And I'm getting food because I'm trying to have my family eat because we're not eating. we're not sleeping. And the first thing I'm ready to order, I'm late because my daughter has certain times

that I can see her in between therapies. And the delay is, do you know Pablo Torre? There's a variety of ways that I need people to understand and appreciate what it is that your life is now. One of them, I hope, is informed by the fact that you're the person for whom normal everyday shit,

is fascinating through the lens of how you see the world. We've done episodes with you about losing your senses of smell and taste. We've done episodes with you in which you bring us inside of baseball arbitration against your former employees. We do episodes with you with John Skipper typically sitting right here in between us. He is not here today. He was supposed to be. Then we said we should just do this, me and you, because the thing that you always bring to the table is a level of candid strangeness

that reads as foreign, even alien to so many of our mutual friends. And now, in what you're dealing with in the present, which only begins to explain why you haven't been on the shows people have expected you to be on your own show, nothing personal. I've been gone for two weeks

as my family has been dealing with a critical situation. I have a daughter who is seriously ill, and it came out of nowhere. And I have been spending the last two weeks trying to figure out how to do the only thing that matters, which is to take care of her and my other children and my family. And I've made a promise to you all

that you've been with me for all these years that I would not in any way lie to you, lie to you, I would not in any way mislead you, I would not in any way do anything to break the trust that we built together over all these years where you know you're gonna get it from me straight. And I wasn't ready, that's the bottom line,

I wasn't ready to talk about it, I wasn't ready to think about it other than to do what was in front of me, which was to figure out how to deal with something that is unthinkable, unimaginable, can't be happening. And you open, open your eyes 24 hours a day and it happens. It's in front of you.

There's nothing you can do. There's no escape from the nightmare of a life changing and the blink of an eye. My struggle is that I can't find the meaning right now. I can't, it doesn't serve as a distraction to me right now. And on September 12th when I got the call about my daughter, out of nowhere, it was out of nowhere, Pablo. I mean, it was out of nowhere.

of nowhere. This was not, there is no way to describe what it is when the phone rings and it's someone calling you who you speak to often, but you knew that was a strange time to call because my brain is keeping track of where people are and what people are doing because I thought that I would always want to be ready for whatever particular call could come at a particular time because I always try to plan for any possible outcome that could possibly happen. You and me eating at a restaurant, you're already, if you haven't listened to David on this show before, you should know that he's already planning the exit strategies. You have as a function of your foremost desire, control.

The irony, I don't have control over anything. Nothing. I can't control. I can't make my daughter better. I can't put my family back together. I can't put our lives back together. I can't do anything. I can't control when the doctors call me back.

I can't control when test results come. I can't control one thing. And that's why I'm biking back and forth to the hospital every day from where I live because, and I've got, I mean, this isn't for the data. You've shown your feet before. So I've cut all over. You've shown toe. I mean, I've got, I'm bleeding everywhere.

You have bandages under your blue dress socks. I can't deal with the fact that I can't control the outcome. I've never entered a fight that I know. So that's that. So biking in New York is a problem because people are idiots. You're somebody for whom, again, the piece of tape on the side of the table, whether the water bottle has a label on it, whether this thing got breathed on by somebody else.

You're someone for whom the small things have always been comically frustrating. They're easy. No, but they're easy. Look, there's a yellow sticker here that says control. Has that always been here? I have a yellow button. I didn't, I didn't never notice it. But you are tracing it back and forth with your finger.

You called me on September 12th. And it was one of the scarier calls that I've received from someone that I care about because I was almost immediately informed, not with words, but with tone of voice, that something really scary had just happened to you. And look, man, I, in the attempt to, of course, respect and abide by the boundaries that,

are protecting your family and your daughter. I don't want to say more than, of course, you want me to say. So I want to focus in, frankly, on just you as a person that I think we as a show, certainly our audience, but we as friends of yours, have just really been worried about and thinking about. I just wonder if there is any degree of zooming out, or is it all very zoomed in right now. I'm trying to gain back some sort of control over something, so I find myself doing

thing. I mean, I've just, my life has changed in a way. I don't know how it'll change back and it manifests itself in ways I can't. I haven't watched a movie. I haven't watched a movie since September 12th. That's scary. And I watched a movie every day for decades before that and I can't,

it's not a time issue because there's 24 hours in a day because I can't sleep because wake up brings you back into the nightmare in which I find myself so I'm not sleeping. I thought maybe doing the show would be a distraction, so I started doing that on September 29th. After taking, again, two weeks off. Two, which I, Jesus. The scary, part of what was scary is that, so I remember talking to Koka, Coco calls me and he's like, hey, here's what I think my approach is going to be with David, because our assumption would be he's going to want to work day one, because that's just his

constitution. That's what he will want to do. And it will be our job to push. back. And when word came that in fact you could not, would not, did not want to do the thing that has always been your comfort zone, the thing that you do for fun, that provided you, by the way, in the decision to become a media person, some establishment of control over your life. I'm going to do this shit that makes me happy now. I'm going to find out what that is. When you didn't want to do that, it became very unsettling. Were you surprised about that, how you personally responded? When I got the phone call, the first thing I thought of was that I tried to fast forward to everything.

I tried to do what I do in my brain, which is to go through every pathway. Where does that end? Where does that end? What do I do now? How does this work now? What calls do I need to make? What do I need to do? and every single pathway led to just another nightmare,

led to another maze where I didn't know how to get out of that state I was in after that phone call came. And I've never had that before because there's always been an exit. There's always been a strategy that I've been able to go through my mind faster. And it's the reason why I have trouble with relationships because I go through all of it way faster, and all of a sudden, Levitare will say, slow down, David, I'm not there yet.

That you see how the story is going to go? I have it. And you've sped there because time is also something that you are measuring. The ultimate irony. The ultimate irony of my measuring of time and understanding the time runs out and then thinking about that now, I just... I've thought a little bit about God because I struggle with that.

I always have, but now I'm struggling way more. I sort of imagine God, whatever entity that is laughing at me because this is the hell that I would have someone choose for me and I've never had it. I've gotten away with everything my whole life because I've been able to talk my way out of it. I've been able to maneuver my way out of it. And I have no play.

It is checkmate. And the humor in that that I want to see, and I thought if I got back on camera, that I'd be able to pull back and enjoy the irony of the fact that everything that I've been able to do, I don't know how to do anymore. I don't have it yet. I don't have it yet. And so my thought was I'd start doing the show immediately.

I said to Coca, it was Friday night. I'll be back Monday. And then it just became obvious that I didn't have the pathways projected right. I had them all wrong. And I'm still getting them wrong. The desire to even see the humor in a cruel and cosmic joke that you, by the way, I want to make this clear too, the story of you as I have best understood it is not of a man who's never experienced tragedy. It's of a man who has always found ways

to shed the inefficient waste of time that attends the rituals of human emotion. It's how you don't feel it. It's just that you're like recognizing when it's a waste, when it's not. It's always been a waste. It's always been a waste. And it's not that I feel it's still a waste. And I'm stuck in that waste.

And I've always been able to dismiss the waste. maybe now I'm beginning to understand how to say it. The things I feel right now, they don't help. They don't move forward anything. They don't make her better. They don't make me better. They don't make my two other kids better. They don't make my Cindy better.

I don't even know what I, it sounds so harsh to say my ex-wife. The mother of the daughter makes it sound weird. The mother of my children. It's, we are a team. The reason I focus on you. as opposed to your daughter is not merely because of the privacy and the confidence that I want to protect. Dude, it's just like, so for people who don't know, like, how close we've become, like, part of, I was like, explained to Liz, like, what happened.

And we- It was a gut-wrenching text she sent me. But we had stayed with you and your daughter. How many weeks before September 12th? There was nothing wrong. We were in the same house together, watching movies. The fucking earthquake that destabilizes everything that isn't stopping yet. The reason I turn my focus to you is because I genuinely haven't talked to you enough.

And my hope is that there is something here as people who live in front of a microphone to think out loud about and I just don't really know what's okay to poke you about. You're never at a loss for words. You can poke all you want. I think I'm sharp enough to not allow the pokes in the place I don't want them.

Just tell me, please. But I may not be. That's the other thing and what scared me about doing the show is my respect for the audience and I've always, that's been the thing since the first time I did nothing personal is I just, and there was one person listening to my first show in October of 19, and Coke and I've been together ever since.

I just respect people's time because I want my time to be respected. And so how can I ask for that if I won't give it? And I've always been willing to give it. And I don't want to sit in a waiting room at a doctor's office for 45 minutes. I just, I can't handle that. and there is no more on my time. It's done. Like, it's done.

What's done? The ability to have someone respect my time, the way that I'm willing to respect theirs, it's done. Because now I'm on somebody else's schedule. All day, every day, no matter what happens, no matter what plan I have, what's unbelievable to me is that all I'm asking for is like,

communication is what we do for a living we communicate you don't have to lie to me you don't have to mislead me you can not like me you cannot love me but just tell me what's happening and i've had to learn a new language because it's it's a new language when you're in the world of doctors they don't speak english and then of course the first thing is don't google anything well hold on i need to teach myself because otherwise I'm at a disadvantage and I don't go into conversations in a disadvantage. I won't do it because then there's an opportunity to lose. There's an opportunity for me to get something wrong. The doctors don't sit and teach you all of this language. The health care, you know, I got a call from the insurance company, hey, it's the complex

case manager calling it just anything you need. Yeah, there's a lot I need. All right, well, thank you for the time. Like that was the call. It was a check the box call, and I'm not imputing the insurance company. It is what it is. I mean, big picture, I just feel like you're on a journey through the American health care system. Of course, with various advantages that you are trying to leverage that are not nearly helpful enough, even with those advantages. I have so many advantages.

I have so many things that other people in my position don't have, which is another source of guilt that weighs on me like a 2,000 pound weight. But just listen. And it doesn't even matter. Well, that's the irony. That's the thing is that, like, you have, you're somebody for whom you've collected real bonds and relationships with people who in the nightmare scenario that you're living, ostensibly, you would absolutely draft in the first round of just like people who might let me cash in a favor right now. And you've been doing that. And yet, it's fucking life.

It's life. And so, you know, Jeff and Fred Wilpon, just people I competed against for almost two decades. The Mets owners. Tooth and nail, the former Mets owners. And we were in the NL East and I'm talking in the owners room, on the committees, on the field. You want to talk about two different ways to look at the same sport you're in. The Mets and the Marlins are opposite. There was barely anything we could agree on because they're in a different situation.

than we were in. But you live with people and you work with them and my show is based on truth-telling off the subject. Anyway, thank you to Jeff and Fred who were great, of course.

But what I was thinking with my show is I can't talk about Jerry Jones anymore. I don't even know if I can mention his name. What if I need Jerry Jones to help with something in Texas? And I was thinking about, well, I can't call Stevie Cohn because all I do is,

is refer to the chop shops and the fact that he's literally figuratively i don't want to use literal anymore incompetent but may have great connections to the possibility of the thread of a chance to make something better that i have to see if i can make better so what am i going to go on nothing personal and talk about the met's off season and the fact that what you know pita lonsa i just i can't come to grips with it that's part of the the process that I'm trying to do right now and I don't have an answer to it right now. My son said to me,

you're not going to call Jerry Reinsdorf, right? I was in Chicago. My son was with me when Jerry Reinsdorf in Cooperstown approached and said, oh, it must not be pleasant having him as your father. That's what Jerry Reinsdorf said to my son. And it became memorable. It was the same day that...

I mean, that's pretty funny. That Derek Jeter and I had a shouting match in the Hall of Fame Museum. Wait, wait, wait, wait, what was that? happened. Derek Cheater has a problem. I mean, that's the bottom line. He has a problem of aptitude. He has a problem in everything other than being a shortstop. And I hadn't seen him since the transaction. So he took over the Marlins. He got Bruce Sherman to buy the Marlins for a price that Bruce Sherman shouldn't have paid him. Bruce knows it. And Derek got Bruce to do it because Derek Jeter was the player and the idol. And he took over the team.

And it turns out that he's a shortstop, not a president. So he got fired, of course. And that was the end of Derek Jeter. And I had not seen. him and I saw him in Cooperstown and I approached him with my son and I just said good to see you and extended my hand and he just looked at me and he's much tall than I am which so are you and he said he said oh you brought your camera crew I'm sure and I said actually that's my son he said sure it is and my son was just standing there like jaw open and then Derek started talking about how angry he was about everything and i said derrick i'm happy i live rent-free in your head and thank you for watching the show every day he had people listen to our show every day every day while he was still employed with the marlins and uh i then just said okay and and and he started walking away i started walking

away and then he yelled across the hall of fame store some terrible thing toward me and my son was standing right there and this is dear see i have to understand from a kid's perspective who was with his friend who was a huge Yankee fan. As am I. There's Derek Cheater like yelling. Dude, I love this. At Caleb's dad. It was ridiculous.

To recap, so you, I mean, briefly, because... And this was recent. I was going to say, because the last time... We were just talking about in this studio how Ichiro, how you had to do out at Cooperstown, you were there as part of the delegation. And you had taken Caleb. I remember you telling me that.

taking your son and his friend to go basically live a dream that any baseball fan would have. And part of the dream that I don't think I ever considered was Derek Jeter basically motherfucking your dad, which is so good. Which, of course, and then Caleb's response, hey, what was the highlight of the weekend as we're driving the four hours back because I didn't want to miss a show. So Sunday after the ceremony, I get right in the car to make it back because I have a show Monday morning. And highlight when Jerry Reinsdorf and Derek Jeter.

put you in your place for him to think about, oh, I guess Jerry Reinsdorf is not on the list of people who you can count on now. Right. But the fact is if I called Jerry Reinstorff today and we were in Chicago, my daughter got sick in Chicago, she was there for work, she doesn't live there, and we were in Chicago for longer than I've ever been in Chicago

without winning a playoff series. And I would have called Jerry. And I said, Anybody. Anybody. You could help. Anybody and Jerry would have taken the call. Well, no, I would have had to leave a message

and I would have had to say why I was calling because otherwise he wouldn't have taken the call. I think my last text from Jerry was, you have some nerve wishing me a happy birthday. That was. Because I do wish him a happy birthday. That is another favorite thing you do. I remind, because I don't want, anyway, I'm a birthday person.

I like saying happy birthday, and his birthday is the same as my late sister who passed away way too young, and they have the same birthday. So I've always known Jerry's birthday. So I always text him on his birthday. And I have it here. I mean, it was...

Please read it because it is one of the funnier things about just how you do human interaction is that you are also just like cheerily out of the ether, wishing people happy birthday when the last memory they have of you is, I fucking hate that guy. Happy birthday, sending best wishes and hoping all as well. Have you no shame? I'm telling you, it's right there. It's literally right there.

Have you no shame in response to that specific birthday message? I'd like to tell you I'm making it up, but as you know, with me, it's just your life. It's right there. So I had not seen Jerry and I saw him in Cooperstown, and the first thing he did when I said, Jerry, this is, I'd like you to meet my son. His first comment was out, sorry. Can you imagine hearing that as you guys? Is your son? I have two thoughts.

Two thoughts. One is that Caleb is used to it. Second thought. Second thought is, why does Jerry Rinesdorf hate you? He's very unhappy about nothing personal. So your show is listened to by the executive class across all sports,

but baseball is particularly, of course, interested. A lot of people listen. For those who are just meeting David for the first time, Foreign President of the Marlins, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the member of the C-suite, the executive class, a guy who's home that I stayed in with your daughter, with Liz, with Violet, you have a World Series trophy, the real thing, because you are the president of a team. And so you talking about all of this in the way that you do with me on your show with Dan, with Lebitard, yeah, people don't love it, although they must listen. So this is it. So hate listen or love listen to me is the same.

I just want you to listen. And the background with Jerry goes all the way back to when Rob was 2014 at a hotel in Baltimore when he did not want Rob to be the commissioner. And I did. And we went at it with votes. We were trying to collect votes. I was secretly meeting with the Washington Nationals owners while I had someone telling Jerry that the nationals owners were out of the room because

Jerry thought he had the votes to block Rob, and he did, and there were three or four votes. And I actually, you know, it's the way my life has changed before September 12th, I had gone to the framing store because I had a piece of my life that I wanted to have framed. And what it was, you're a collector of things, by the way. That's the other thing you learn when you visit your home, is that you frame and collect, and honor the various cool experiences. I do because to me, it shows me. I don't do it for others. An interesting thing is people think that I do it like for charge admission,

but that's not, I do it for me. I'm talking about it. So if you watch nothing personal, you'll see David sitting inside of a giant baseball glove and behind them are various artifacts in the way that many people have artifacts. The stuff I'm referring to is the stuff that's off camera that you don't actually talk about

that I was blown away by. because you take the time to frame it and put it up, and it is for you and those you love. So I have here a picture. I wonder what date, geez, September 9th. Everything was great, September 9th. I was at a framing store, and I happened to have taken very copious notes

during the vote for the commissioner to replace Bud's ceiling. This was back in 2014, and I kept all the notes. And what I have is me counting votes. And the first vote was Rob 20, Tom Werner 10. And that means that there's no commissioner. Is it white smoke or black smoke, the one when there's a pope? A white smoke.

So black smoke is when there's not. I believe so. So I'm Jewish. I'm Catholic. I don't remember. And you don't know the color of the smoke? Which is the most Catholic thing. You know, white smoke is what is released when they pick a new pope.

But don't they do smoke at the end of every day? I believe so. I think it's the black smoke, meaning. we're still going. We're still in a conclave. That's what the movie said. So it was 20 to 10. So then there had to be another vote. And I have second ballot with a list of the teams circled who voted against Rob. You have this is a, and then the second vote was 21-9. A screenshot of handwriting of you just keeping, again, measuring. I have it. And then the final one is seventh ballot. Rob wins 23 to 7.

All right. And what you're showing me is the political process for how to elect the commissioner. And I was right there. And Jerry Reinsdorf was sitting directly across for me. And Jerry Reinsdorf wanted Tom Warner because Jerry Reinsdorf didn't think that Bud Seelig or anyone Bud Seelig wanted would be hard enough in labor. Owner of the White Sox Jerry Reinsdorf and the Bulls. Right.

And so during the course of this process, Jerry Reinsdorf is counting to eight because you need eight votes to block in baseball. You need a final score of 23 to 7 with the 30 owners. And so Jerry and I were counting votes. I had a count to 23 and Rob's not in the room. He's up in a suite in the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore. Does Rob Manfred know that you are doing this? I'm on the phone with Rob talking about the different teams and which teams, how we're going to get the teams. What a thing to have you. you, David Sampson, doing all of this. And the final, final, we had to convert Ted Lerner, the late Ted Lerner.

And to do it, Jerry... Owner of the Nationals. Jared Rinesdorff had gotten to him. And Ted Lerner had said that he won't vote for Rob because of some mass and deals, which is the Regional Sports Network that he and the Orioles have been fighting over for years. And we found a solution, which is we... Ted Lerner is one of my mentors. And we got Ted Lerner to agree not to vote.

we got him to give his son Mark the vote so Ted Lerner could say he never voted for Rob but Mark Lerner agreed to vote for Rob Ted Lerner allowed for Mark Lerner to vote for Rob and Bud Sealy didn't know Rob knew because I called Rob I said we got the 23rd Rob said get Bud to call a vote Rinesdorf said call a vote call a vote you don't have the votes

I know you don't have the votes because Jerry was with Ted Lerner and we had Ted Lerner stay with Jerry because let Jerry keep thinking. So when we call for the vote, Jerry was like, hey, you're calling for a vote. You have no chance. He's sitting two feet for me. And I said, call the vote, bud.

Call it right now. So Bud calls the vote. And then it's announced 23 to 7 Rob Wins and Reinsdorf could not understand. His look to me, I've never been looked at that way by anyone in my life, in my life the way he looked at me. That's the story of how Rob became commercial. That's what happened with Cherry. Have you no shame?

That's what I was. Apparently I don't know. One of the reasons why we have become close friends is because your stories are not merely, here's a war story from a thing that happened. It's the strategy. We're talking franchise swaps. We're talking. Just power plays that catch people by surprise.

everyone is surprised except for you. You found the way to play by the rules and get the outcome that you were fighting for. I learned it from George Steinbrenner, by the way. George Steinbrenner told me, and this is one of his mantras, is don't be upset with me for what the Yankees do because I don't break any rules.

It's like what Balmer tries to say, except Steinbrenner, you know, other than when he got suspended and when he hired people and all these. Other than the stuff that enabled me a fruitful childhood as a Yankee fan outside of all the things that, you know, got him famously punished.

And suspended. And suspended from the game. I would say other than that, he's nothing like Palmer. But the point being... He always said, listen, I'm going to play by the rules and you take your revenue sharing, he was so angry when we beat his team in the World Series because he literally felt like the players beating him

were the players he paid. And he would sit in the suite at pro player or a Yankee Stadium and we would spend time. The players he paid because of the luxury tax? Yeah, revenue share. Revenue sharing. One of the letters that I have framed that I don't talk about much

was the letter of congratulations from George when we won. And I felt like it got signed with blood. Did it also end with have you no shame? No. It might as well, though. By the way, so I'm like, we're taping this before game three of Yankees Red Sox. And I've been watching the Yankees towards the end of the season, especially closely. And what are the things that you told me when we were just on the phone, one of the rare times you've been on the phone? Like the only time actually before this sit down that we've been on the phone talking.

And I like forced you to like talk to me because... Thank you. Dude, it's just, what I told you is what is now clear, I think, to everybody, which is that I genuinely love talking to you and I love hearing about what's in your head. And this has been a chapter of your life in which I think you lost confidence in that, and that I would feel that way. So you don't need to thank me. It's just, frankly, as always, a mixture of total self-interest from me because I think it's good. But also, I was worried that you were behaving so differently. This is my very long way of saying that you were telling me about John Carlos Stan.

your former employee, or in this case, according to George Steinbrenner's framework, one of his also. I love Jean-Carlo, and we go back a long way. And he's a Yankee, and he wants a ring, and I want him to get a ring very, very badly. And he's known my kids. He met my daughter when she was young, you know, 12 years old, maybe. and he's known Caleb since he was, I don't know, first grade. We drafted him, I want to say, oh, nine, and I want to say he was in the big leagues in 11,

but I may have it, I probably have my years wrong, but you forget as the years pass. Yeah, he made the bigs in 2010. 2010, so yeah, he was sick. Caleb was seven years old. Anyway, so I was speaking to him and the way we do right before the playoffs start where we have the same conversation each year,

like, all right, like, let's go. like it's ring time right now and uh this conversation was very different when i spoke to him about what was going on in my life and uh some things are just more important like all of a sudden things are more important and it was the day uh where stanton hit his 450th home run against the orioles the two two fly ball deep right jackson back on the track at the wall see ya a third Three-run, home run, over the high scoreboard. And the Yankees are on the board, 3-0. He hit a home run in the first inning,

and my daughter and I were watching. And it was... From the hospital. Yes. And she smiled at the home run, which was amazing. Because she doesn't even like baseball. She hates that I'm in baseball, hated it growing up, hated the attention.

It took you from them. It took me from them, always. So it's always associated. with that. And I just texted Giancarlo like, hey, why can't you hit like 162 home runs? Because if you're thinking of people and sending love and hitting a home run, like, can't you think of someone different every night?

To just explain, though, what happened is John Carlo Stan does the Babe Ruth thing. He does the thing in the movie when a... He had just heard news that was... A sick young person. has inspired him to win one for the gipper. And I just thought to myself, as president, the team, why didn't I line up like 162 sick people?

Like, forget, like, worrying about sliders down and away and a one-two count, just line him up. And he laughed. I get it. It's so ridiculous. But you think now I went back into my president's mode for a hot second. And you're like, wait a minute. What if I held Giancarlo's stand emotionally hostage with an unending series?

of sick children. Could this be the new money ball? It can't be. It can't be that that was in my head. It just can't. But of course it is. That story in a nutshell, right, is a reminder of two things.

One is that you are always you. But the second thing is that who you are, we've really pressure tested. And the thing that I keep on thinking to myself as you sit there and fiddle with the labels that say control on them. always been there? I don't know. I'm sure it has been. Is that you are, for those who were wondering, at your core, Lebedard likes to say, you're a bunch of wires and, you know, circuitry

and all that stuff, you're a fucking dad. I'm a dad. And I never thought, and am I that cliche that it takes something bad to be reminded? I mean, it can't be that I'm that. Am I the guy who on my deathbed is going to say, I shouldn't have worked? so much. I don't think I'm going to be that. But I'll tell you, it's, uh, it's control. I, it keeps coming back to that and I don't want this to sound wrong because I'm trying. I can't make it better. And when I make things bad, it's on purpose. When, when I am stirring it or when I am trying to accomplish something that people may not realize that I'm trying to accomplish, I get that I'm that way and I'm fine with being that way. It doesn't bother me.

You can call me whatever names you want. The situation I'm in now that I can't wrap my arms around is when I'm in the hospital, I want to be out of the hospital. When I'm not in the hospital, I want to be in the hospital. And I've always been someone who's so happy and comfortable where I am. Always. I've just always loved whatever I'm doing because that is the ultimate and how selfish I am. I'm always doing what I want to be doing. You get to choose. That has been my principle. You working to get to the point at which your life is one way,

and now on September 12th, it's another. 6.42 p.m. That was that. And there's no other that's to be had. You have tried for your entire life to transcend, optimize, avoid, account for, deliberately win the game against the human condition. And you are stuck not in control of what happens to one of the people that you would give everything to help. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop.

So that's the other issue I have is I'm not giving up the thought. My assumption is that I have no control because I haven't found the right. path. So what I spend my days and nights doing is figuring out, okay, that's not it, dead end, next. Okay, that wasn't it. And so I, so I'm going to keep going. And I can't stop. So it's causing me to be tired and grumpy and to transfer anger that I have towards something that I shouldn't be angry about because what can I do? The guy that kind of just trying to sell you some smoked fish, man. Right. And also like and subscribe. Do you know Pablo Tori? If you would have seen me at Sables that day,

you would not have believed what happened that day. Oh, man. 20 people online fighting over the last bit of herring. Ahead of the holiest day of the year. Do you know Pavel Torre? John Skipper just texted, are we taping yet? Oh, no. Did you not call him?

Wait, does anyone work for you? Dude With you You tell me you do things I don't want to Whatever John I am sources close to the situation

Tell me that John Skipper has been informed That we're doing a very different episode Than the one originally planned Can I give you one more thing to think about What you got Do you know I didn't know the number of episodes You had done on Balmer Until our friend at Sables said

Wait, are you recording number six And I paused by saying, I'm sorry, he said, well, there's been five episodes, and now are you taping a sixth? Think about that for a minute, when he's surrounded by lunatic people trying to get food before the fast. So, I was thinking about the way you are with bomber,

the way you are with investigations, the way you've built this show, and I need you to teach me because you have to, as an investigative journalist, run into dead ends. You have to run into, okay, that wasn't right, that's not right. What happens? Do you ever run out of the path? Of course. I think the thing... Did you drop the story then? Well, this is, this is, I'll tell you, it's such a good question. And my staff sometimes laughs, I think, at what my solution tends to be, which is when you try

really, really, really, really hard at something, and it's a dead end. The question I ask is, is that attempt to try really, really, really hard, that doesn't come up with the thing you want? Is that attempt now part of the story? To you, everything's part of the story, though, no? I've come to realize that that's my way of making peace with this. I'm not at peace, Papa. No, and you shouldn't be.

You really shouldn't be. And you're the way that, look, as far as I can tell, as someone who loves you, the way to think about this, and not that I've ever gained the credit, ability to talk or advise on this. But the way that I see you intuitively living your life in the way that unsettled me and jarred me and made me afraid is, I think, exactly what you should be doing, which is inefficiently and hellishly and unrelentingly stopping the other shit that you'd prefer to do

to be a dad. it's the can you imagine the failures I've had as a dad this is the monster of all failures I don't I mean I'm going to be the person who who says the obvious which is that

of course this isn't your failure I mean it's but that's if you're a consequentialist you're a consequentialist so we had dinner um you me Liz

Kara um in August or whenever it was that we were together, and we talked about consequentialism and how for you, drunk driving, is something that you don't grade on a curve. What was the outcome?

If someone dies, that to me is, it's not manslaughter. I mean, the legal code doesn't agree with me, but I'm a consequentialist in that way. But there's a concept in law called the eggshell skull, which you may be familiar with. I am not. Although this feels like a thing that I should be.

Yeah, so if I tap you on the head and it crushes your head, but I didn't realize that it would crush your head. It's called the Eggshell skull. I'm still liable for that. That is still a crime of a different level. Even if I argue, wait a minute, when I touch everybody like that, they're all fine. You find your victims as they are. You're somebody who thinks that the Eggshell skull defense is not a defense.

I am. The people who drop stuff off overpasses on a highway is the example that I often use. It's fun, just kids having stupid fun. You drop a little stone, you drop a penny, it goes through a windshield, and the car crashes, and the person dies. That, to me, should be the end of your freedom. And so, when you think about your daughter now, all I want is for her to have health and... freedom i just want i want for her what i've had that's the train i want to make i want to take it from her because if we were doing a show because i was sick i tip my cap and say my god i've done a lot i've had i've had the most fortunate amazing life and you know i i just don't want why i want her and i want my kids i want people i love i want you like i want people to have the opportunity

to do everything they want to do. And I've had that opportunity. And the harsh reality is that opportunity ended September 12th. It just ended. And I don't have the path yet to have that return. As a matter of fact, I'm almost positive that there is no going back ever. There will always be a new path. But this path, it's so dark to me, triple entendre,

that I can't see around the corner. I can't manufacture how to maneuver through it. I can't control the result of it. And it's so unsettling that I just have a permanent stomachache. Anyway, I don't know what we were talking about. No, we were talking about eggshell skulls. Yeah. The consequences that you wish to prevent.

The last thought I have is that how you do this, how you've been doing this, how you've been doing your career, strategizing, scheming, finding the ways to win. It just makes me think that even if the consequences are not controllable, guaranteed, any of that, it's hard to think of someone better to have leading their team. Your daughter has you doing your best, and I don't know if there's a better draft pick than David Samson. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, you're going to try

everything. Every path. You're right. It's not going to be because you didn't fucking try. Thanks. I got to go. You got to go. All right, thanks. I love you. I love you too. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by

Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenlo. Studio Engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.