PTI - U.S. Open, New York Mets

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser discuss the U.S. Open, Dabo Swinney, and the New York Mets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Pardon the interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. Dancing with the Stars announced this latest competitors, Tony. Would you ever dance on that show?

I'm Tony Kornheiser. No way. I only dance in person for cash on Wednesday mornings. That's it. I'm tempted to ask you who's in the audience on Wednesday morning. Maybe don't answer that. Not now. Family shot. Don't answer. I don't think you want to know.

Right. I don't think you want to know. But there's a lot of people there with single dollar bills. I know that. You can't say it. Welcome to PTI, boys and girls. In today's episode, Brian Kelly responds to Davoswini. Mike Gundy goes after Oregon, and Framber Valdez apologizes for somehow drilling his own catcher.

But we begin today with the U.S. Open and last night's quarterfinal where Novak Djokovic beat American Taylor Fritz in four sets. Djokovic razz the New York crowd for cheering for Fritz. Jokovic is now in the semifinals of a major for a 50 third time, the most of any player in the open era, and this is his 14th time in the semis at the open. Well, Von, what did this match say to you about Jokovic and Fritz? Nothing that he didn't already know, Tony, and I watched it. I watched it with interest, and I liked it when Fritz got a set

and forced it to four and all of that. But Jokovic, I know you don't really want to hear this or agree with it. Jokevich is likely to go. I mean, Nadal and Federer have gone into the, you know, the late night night in terms of career. That's right. And Jokovic is still out there at 38 years old or whatever he is being his sports version of Tom Brady and LeBron.

He's great and he's better than Fritz. That's the deal. This is like running up if you were, I shouldn't use Stockton and him alone and Ewing and Charles, but I will running up against Michael Jordan and you couldn't beat him. And it didn't mean you weren't really, really, really, really damn. good. You couldn't beat this dude. That is what we've got with Jokovic. And we could, look, he's

probably not going to win the U.S. Open, but he could. He's 38 and he's still in there. So let me just, let me just dismiss one thing you said right away and be on the other side of that. He's not the goat to me. It's not the goat to me. I know he's not. I know he's not. I know he's not to go to you. This was a foregone conclusion because Jokovic always beats Fritz. And when I say always, I mean always, 11 and 0 lifetime. That's always. So you could tell right away, I watched the match too. Jokovic went out three loves.

So he broke Fritz, the first time Fritz was able to serve. He broke him right away. He won the first two sets. So that when Fritz won the third set, it didn't really say to you, oh, he's serious in this match. And if you're looking for any sort of symbolism, Fritz double faulted on match point, I believe. Now, again, I'm going to agree with you. Fritz is a very good player.

Jokovic is a great player. Don't tell me about the seedings. They are meaningless. He always beats Fritz. And again, let's repeat this. This is the 53rd time he's in the semis at a major, which is the most of anybody ever. I mean, so the question, the looming question now, and you alluded to it, is how far does he go? Can he beat Alcaraz in the semis?

Well, he's 3-0 against Al-Karaz on hard court, lifetime this hard court. That's what this is. I know Alcaras has not dropped a set, but Djokovic has personal history that he can lean on in a match like that. Going further, do I think he can beat both Alcaraz and Sin if it comes to that back to back?

No. And no, I don't. And it's because that he's 38. Didn't you boy, Shaq? He may not have used the number 38, but he used a close number when he said 38, you know, 28, you know, 28, bro. So, yeah, I don't think he makes that double.

That doesn't mean that he's not one. of the greatest players anybody has ever seen. I can't let this topic go without having you tell our dear viewers who you think is the goat. If it's not Joker, and I don't think you're going to put Federer or Nadal ahead of him, who you got is the goat. No. No, I'm going all the way back to Lever because of what I saw, but I'm old enough to have seen Rod Lever.

And you can come back to me and say that the competition wasn't as good. And no, it wasn't as good. And they didn't hit it as hard. And the rackets weren't the same. but in his era, his domination was the best. I'm old enough to that too. Let's move to some college football squabbling beef, we call it, in the wake of LSU's week one win over Clemson.

Clemson head coach, Dabo Sweeney, graded his team as a 58 out of 100, and LSU's as a 65, adding that, quote, neither one of us was great, close quote, to which LSU coach Brian Kelly responded, I thought we dominated them in the second half. So he's either a really good grader for giving himself a 58 or he's a really hard grader on us, close quote.

Tony, is Kelly right? Is Dabler right? Is anybody right? Okay. So let's just hold on a second and examine this. Davos Sweeney gave his team a 58. That's an F, an F grade, a 58. And somehow, Brian Kelly thinks he's being good to his team.

Brian Kelly, and I want to get this right, I'm pretty sure at some point he said, did he see the second half? Yeah, that was good. I like that. Because Kelly is so convinced that how good, LSU wasn't the second half. Mike, Brian Kelly is killing Dabo Sweeney here. That's what he's doing. He just beat him by seven points, and he is killing him. Davoswini has won two national championships. Brian Kelly has one last time I looked zero national championships, and he's killing this guy.

I mean, what is next? A steel cage death match for these two? I want to remind people that Brian Kelly left Notre Dame to go to LSU to win a national championship. He said that specifically and said it that would be easier to win at LSU than Notre Dame. He said it with a southern accent. He's been there three full now. This is his fourth year. He has not made the playoffs.

This was the first time he even won his opening game. And I will repeat, he's killing this guy. He's killing Sweeney. one of the things you should never really ever, ever, ever do is pay much attention or put any real stock in anything a college football coach says. Unless it's like Lou Holtz and he was being so funny. Remember when Lou Holtz was like a pre-dinner speaker like 50 years ago and Lulose was funny?

And me make you laugh. Other than that, stop quoting college football coaches because they're going to say things that infuriate you. They say things full of agenda. This is agenda on both their parts. It's okay if all you're going to be is entertained, which is what you and I are by this to some mild degree. I'm not paying attention to their grades.

I don't want them grading me or anything I'm associated with. I don't want grades posted by their institutions particularly. So I just look at this and say, you know what, let them just keep back. We're going to go on to another topic. I will say this, though, and that's fine. I will say this, though. It is ridiculous to give LSU a grade of 65, which is a D grade.

They just went on the road. They beat your team 14-0 in the second half on the road. So you've got to give them at least a C. You've got to give at least a 70 or a 75. But again, the larger story here is that Brian Kelly is specifically killing Davos-Sweeney. We move now to baseball where last night Houston pitcher, Frambere Valdez was apparently livid with his catcher, Cesar Salazar. Yankees had the bases loaded.

Salazar wanted Valdez not to pitch. Valdez ignored that and threw a pitch that Trent Grisham hit for a grand slam. And then on the second pitch to the next Yankee batter, Valdez seemed to deliberately throw a pitch his catcher was not expecting, hitting him in the chest. Valdez turned his back on the catcher without inquiry. After the game, both Valdez and Salazar insisted the cross-up was not intentional. Oh, well, about what did you see? Tony, I'm confused because I don't believe the explanations.

I played enough baseball and covered enough baseball to have some sense of the miscommunication that occasionally happens between pitcher and catcher. Even in these days, when you're not putting down fingers signals as they did for the first 150 years of Major League Baseball, catchers get crossed up. Pitchers either can't control a pitch or they change their minds or they throw something.

something they shouldn't have thrown or the signals, either newfangled or old-fashioned, get crossed, and catchers lunge. The ball tips and goes somewhere else and it looks like a pass ball. But this was not a breaking pitch. And usually when there's some kind of cross-up like that, a breaking pitch is involved. It wasn't. The ball is straight and it hits them. But okay, I don't remember what?

Valdez did what? What did he do here? We see these miscommunications. I don't understand what happened is what I'm saying, and I don't believe that there's just one party here who's a bad guy. I'll take Valdez still, by the way, to open my series in these pitching poor times and pitching uncertain times, where in the postseason you have bullpen days, I'll still take Valdez.

Yeah, and, you know, we're going to disagree on this one to some degree here. When I look at this, I see that Houston has a problem. a pitcher cannot dislike his catcher. A pitcher cannot throw at his catcher. In this case, Valdez is a Cy Young quality pitcher. This catcher, I was told this was only his 14th start in the major league. So if I'm throwing somebody over the side, I'm going to throw the catcher over the side. But having said that, you can't do what that pitcher did.

It's wrong. It's bad. You could have hurt the catcher. There was reporting, additional reporting, that says that Valdez had a problem with a different catcher last year and that he is demonstrative when people make bad plays in the field car. No doubt. So maybe there's a problem here, but I will say this.

When I look at it, I understand that they say it wasn't intentional. Mike, when I look at it, it looks 100% intentional. Okay. A fastball down the middle shouldn't be that big a deal. And that's what it was. The pitch had no discernible break, so move your glove. When he turned away. But when he turned away, he didn't even inquire.

Oh, you and Valdez turned away. Yes, so we differ on that. We differ on that. Let's take a break. Coming up, the Mets appear to have a rookie phenom on the mound. What's the word for his performance so far? And as Oklahoma states, Mike Gundy, uh-oh, have good reason to go after Oregon's finances. I would, I mean, look, I would take Valdez in a heartbeat.

He's a terrific pitcher. But in this case, I thought he threw at him. There's such a Carlos Zambrano to him, but I'll take him too. It's time to get down and wordy with Wilbon, and what's the word? What's first? Nolan McLean's rookie performance for the Mets has been blank. I'm going to say sever-like, either sever-like or good-and-like. Either one is okay.

They were spectacular pitchers. when they were young on the Mets. McLean at the moment, Mike, is 4-0. He just beat the Tigers as a first-place team. His ERA is 1-37, and he has 28 strikeouts and 26 innings. The history of the Mets is such that they always had really good pitchers. They had Seaver. They had Gooden.

They had John Matlack. They had Jerry Coosman. Didn't they have DeGron? They had David Cohn and our favorite guy, Ron Darling. Their pitchers have always been better than their hitters. Now, I know you want me to say Nolan Ryan, because I go back a long way with Nolan Ryan. But with the Mets, Nolan Ryan was the sort of average picture. He became a great picture with the Angels and then Houston and Texas.

This kid at the moment looks like this year's Paul Skeen's. Not your boy, the Ms. this kid right now. I'm stunned at you. I am so stunned. I'm speechless. Because you compared this kid to Siever and Gooden. You should be put on some sort of. probation for doing this.

We're comparing him to either one of them and we can call Ron darling at the end of the show. I'm gonna say, Ron, please make sure you go back and review Kornheiser's performance for absurdly saying for overstating.

I was a met stand. And so my word is overstatement. Four? Okay. Four starts. Are you kidding? What? Good starts. You're on probation. No good starts. The white coat

should be taken off. of you and put on a hanger for comparing this kid. You're doing him a disservice. This kid is now going to go nuts and say, oh, my God, a lifelong Mets fan has compared me to Zever and Goodman. What? They were good. They were really good.

It's 4 and O. Come on now. He's 4 and O. Looks pretty good at the moment. I'm not saying he's going to be 9 and 0. I'm saying he's 4 and 0 at the moment. What's next? Mike Gundy's comments about Oregon.

football budget are blank. Well, they are self-serving. Mike Gundy is complaining, I guess, about all the Nike money that ends up at Oregon and ends up in the various programs, football, basketball, whatever. And I think he's also suggesting

that it's sort of unfair for a school like Oregon with all this money to play against Oklahoma State. Now, this is Mike Gundy of, I'm 40, I'm a man. And this is Mike Gundy who last year was three, and nine, and now he's trying to tell us that Oklahoma State should apply for food stamps. This is ridiculous.

They did a very competitive team for a long time under Gundy. They have been. Look, this is the way of the world now. You can overtly pay players now. That's how it works. And I mean, I think that Gundy knows that. And he's got to go out and pay players. And don't make it seem like there's no money in Oklahoma.

Don't do that. I mean, first of all, go to the Oklahoma State golfers on the golf tour doing so well and get some NIL money from them. Or go to the Oklahoma City Thunder and say for the good of the state, give us some money. But this is self-serving. It's also jealous and hypocritical because Coach Gundy, coach is at a place where T. Boone Pickens lorded over the entire department and all the programs as the greatest sugar daddy in the plains for years until he passed away in 2009. So there's a hypocrisy. You're pointing at Oregon when you had one of the richest men in the world

lavish your program and all the programs at your schools for how long? I mean, it's just unbelievable how hypocritical that is and jealous because all he wants to do is have that much money to do it again now that you can pay directly

the players, as you mentioned. Just let me say this one thing. The last time I looked with all the money Oregon had, they didn't win the national championship last year. Texas A&M's loaded. What did they win? It's not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee just because you have money.

That's the final word. By the way, they're playing U.T. Martin. U.T. Martin's got that big budget as they go against Coach Gundy? Huh? Who do you think is playing U.T. Lewis for people old enough to remember them? Let's take one last break still to come. Kyle Frill, Wilburne to remember, Kyle Flewant has a problem. I gave him.

Raphael Devers. He's not the only one with a problem. He's not the only one. And the socks get some bad news. A prized rookie Roman Anthony. He's stuck. Who remembers Martin & Lewis? I do.

Me. Me. I do, but I'm on probation. Yeah. Probation. Ron Darling's on line six. Happy time, people. Happy 94th birthday Dick Mata.

It was Mada, who while he was Mada, who while he was, was coaching the Washington Bullets uttered the great phrase, the operain over till the fat lady sings. As a way of telling Bullets fans, we're still in this. Indeed, Mata won a championship in Washington, beating the Seattle Supersonics in seven games in 1978. Mata started his coaching career in college at Weber State, then went to the Chicago Bulls,

where he coached from 1968 to 1976. Wilbon, you remember Mott's teams with Van Ler and Sloan. Yes. Mata went from Chicago to Washington, where he was in two finalists. He also coached Dallas, Sacramento, and Denver in all Model 1, 935 NBA games and lost 1,017. Everything I believe in basketball came from my time as a kid watching Dick Modis teams with, as you said, Sloan Van Lear, Love Chet Walker, Bob Love, Chet Walker, and Tom Borwickle, everything. And it's just, man, I'm just glad that we can celebrate a 94th birthday, any birthday for the great Dick model. Happy anniversary Panthers and Jaguars.

On this day, 30 years ago, the expansion Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars played their first official NFL games. In the ensuing years, despite early successes for both franchises, neither team has won a Super Bowl. The Panthers have gotten there twice, the Jaguars not at all, even with playoff teams four straight years from 1996 through 1999. Neither franchise has any real sizzle. The Panthers' biggest star was probably Cam Newton,

The Jaguars have been largely unknown. Neither team is close to 500 these 30 years. Carolina is 219, 264 and 1. Jacksonville is 202, 282-1-0. And neither team feels like a playoff team this year. It's a great spin move we saw from Fred Taylor of the Jaguars. But the most famous Jacksonville player has to be Tony Buccelli. Right?

Hall of Famer of Tony Buccelli? Yes. Tony Buccelli got to be. So not entirely unknown, but I hear you. Yeah. Happy trails to last night's game for Rockies pitcher Kyle Freeland. Freeland was ejected along with two giants after a big beef in the top of the first. It happened after Raphael Devers pounded a Freeland pitch over the right field wall.

Freeland barked at Devers for standing and watching it. Devers yelled back and the bench is then empty. After the game, Freeland said he felt Devers was trying to show him up, calling it, quote, extremely disrespectful. Devers said he didn't do anything different than he usually does. Personally, I thought Devers pimped it out. little bit. What did you think? I think these are two irrelevant teams and I was

annoyed that that story got so much attention last night. We're in September. It's time to look at real teams playing real baseball even if they're not in New York in Boston, but don't give me those two because those two are out of here. I'm going to tell you that I thought that

that whole thing, I think it took Devers ultimately like eight minutes to go around the basis. Nine, nine minutes. And the thing with Framber Valdez, those two stories were visually tremendous for me. They were great to, I wouldn't have normally seen them, who cared about the teams. Let's go to the big finish if we can. The athletic report that Yukon coach Dan Hurley

considered retiring for a booth job last season. Are you surprised by that? A little bit, but you win two. You went back to back. I mean, how much is left? How many have won that much more than that? I'm just asking. Coach Cage took around.

Wow. Red Sox rookie Roman Anthony will be out four to six, weeks with an oblique strain. That's significant, isn't it? Yes, he's batting 2.91. His on-based percentage is 396. Look, Washington Nationals player, Dylan Cruz had this, was out for months. The Cubs are resting Kyle Tucker tonight with calf tightness. Is that cause for concern? Yes, Tucker won last night's game with the rerun home, man. He had just come out of his earlier slump and start hitting these last couple of weeks. Hate to see Tucker out of the lineup. even for a game or two, Ohio State

tops the new AP College Football Bowl. You okay with that? Yeah, they beat Texas, which was allegedly number one. I'm okay with it. Won't last. Last one, Shoah is the fastest Dodger in history to 100 home runs. Are you impressed? Yeah. And then I start thinking about it. How many

great Dodger home run hitters are is? Is Shoah like going to be number one in like a week? Yeah, Duke Snyder is it. That's a pitching team, just like the Mets. We're out of time. We're trying to do better the next time, and I'm Tony Corny Hunt. I'm Mike Wilbon. Same time tomorrow, knuckleheads.