Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 140 | Trevor's Tidbits: Baseball's Back

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

The guys discuss Trevor Plouffe's report that baseball will reopen on July 1, with Spring Training 2.0 beginning on June 10. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to talking baseball. We have a lot to discuss today. Baseball is coming back? Insider Trevor Plouffe joins us, as always. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Talking Baseball. Thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it.

It is myself, Jimmy Trevor Plouf, Jake Storelli, and producer BBD in the corner. As always. And we have a very fun midday episode. if your first time listener, the Wednesday episode is usually just a little hang cess with the three of us. Monday has been interviews. Friday has been interviews three episode week. And this episode is brought to you by some lovely new Patreon members, Alex Emmett, Sarah Mahoney,

Carl Dorazo, Dorazo Jr. And Kathleen Arias. Thank you very much to those special people for supporting us on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Johnboy Media. We'll get you there. It gives you live access to the show. So if you were dying to hear the scoop about the scoop of all scoops, the patrons are listening live.

You got everyone else waits a day. Anyway, Trev, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. I'm excited to kind of get into this because really kept quiet over the last, you know, 16 hours. But, yeah, I feel good. good. Everything's going good. Jake? I'm good. Nobody wants to hear from me anyway. We got a

society's reporter, the commissioner of the world, TPP. Yeah, man, but the story of the sports world yesterday, pretty cool. KBO. You into the KBO at Alltrap? I am. I actually know a couple guys that are playing over there right now. So it's cool. Like Tyler Saladino, I got to work out with him a couple off seasons ago, and he's like over there doing his thing. He's like a super cool dude. Um, you know, a couple other guys I know too. So it's cool. It's just cool to see baseball back. And like the way they play is like very enthusiastic and it's fun to watch. I don't know. Trev, uh, do you would, hold on. What was he going to say? There's rumors about Manny going to Taiwan. And we're going to get into the big thing. Just need a little buffer combo. Do you, uh, do you? think it would be awesome if manny went to the kbo or taiwan and played 48 year old manny or whatever 46 i mean yeah hasn't he kind of been doing that already like that's he's already like he's already yeah i think he has played in the league already but yeah i mean counter argument yeah i like i like i like him over there anyway really right how are there other guys like should should that be a thing

like all these old m obb is just influx over there dude if there was like a league in the states i think like maybe but like that's you really have to be an adventurer to want to go over across uh the pacific and yeah especially right now that's definitely true like you know maybe i could see a big three league for baseball although i don't know man it's a young man sport yeah did anybody watch the big three no some highlights um it i you know that MLB has spun their wheels on what uh what the their version of the big three would look like. But yeah, I think father time and how it would look, I think it's a no-bueno situation.

Like a bunch of guys throwing 84 miles an hour and like pulling hamstrings every other day. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you'd have like the three guys that still got it. They just can't do it for a buck 62. And then everyone else would be like, oh, no. Oh, no. But was it on talking baseball?

We said our greatest idea was to make, make a national old-timers day after the All-Star game, instead of the Celebrity Softball game, do like a 40 through 60 Legends game. That'd be fun. If people took it seriously, it'd be a lot. And they do that already. They do a Cooperstown game.

Yeah, but I've never seen that televised. I don't know if it's televised. I definitely have seen highlights. But I don't know. I should do that. All right. Let's get into what everyone's here for. All right.

That song has been stuck in my head since I tweeted it out yesterday. Like just fucking, fuck you, Bubak, who made the song. It's time for, Trey. It's just been stuck in my head all day. Pissing me off. Anyway, Trev, some tidbits. What you got? There's a little story out there right now.

Look, the first thing I'm going to say is being a newsbreaker sucks. It's horrible. I told you that. You know, all I wanted to do is put some stuff that I've been told by multiple people out there for the world. And since then, Twitter's been unusable. People are calling and trying to like yell at me. I don't want any of this shit going on. Like, I have a pretty good life.

I just want to come talk baseball with you guys three times a week, do my show. And that's it. Make sure you check out Sequence. Yeah, shout out sequence. I guess we'll just start for the beginning. Yeah. Okay. Number one, when the MLB originally pushed back like opening a day two weeks,

if you listen to talking baseball, we said that's ridiculous. And at that point I had heard July is kind of where they realistically thought at that time they could open back up. Now, I think at that point, that was like way too early to say anything about July because we didn't really know what was going on. Now we've had, what, like two, three months into this thing, we kind of have a better idea of what's going on across the country and what other countries are doing to open back up. So anything I get now about the opening day, I take a little bit more seriously. But again, we've been saying early July this entire damn time. So, yesterday. I'm at Costco.

I have to get stuff. I'm a father and a husband. Samples are out, bro. No samples at Costco. They're done. I mean, they're probably going to be done forever, which sucks,

but. Yeah. Damn. I worked across from a Costco after college. I would go over there and get samples for lunch every Friday. I mean, if Costco wants to sponsor our podcast, like I'm a big Costco guy.

I'll give them all the rave reviews. No free ads. Trevor's out shopping next. I love Costco. Anyways, I get a text and it says, big update. And I said, okay, what is it? And it goes on to kind of describe what I tweeted out. You know, June 10th was a date that they wanted to start the second spring training on.

I don't know what we're going to call it, spring training two. Spring training the second coming, whatever. June 10th was that date, July 1st, was the date they wanted to start opening day. So I read it and I'm like, okay, this is great. You know, this is something that we've been talking about for a long time. It's just kind of more confirmation on that date. So I said, how do you know this? Like tell me like, I'm digging now. I'm like, tell me, tell me why you know this. And I get people want me to tell like who told me this but it's just like how it works dude like i'm not bringing anybody else into this like i've already

i don't want anyone to feel like the way i feel right now which is like i'm on a fucking island that's the funny thing when you break something people like well who's your source it's like uh yeah so that's the thing i can't tell you i ask him i dig in he kind of gives me some more information about it kind of where he got it from so then that's kind of when i texted you guys say i got a tidbit for tomorrow it wasn't like I'm going to blow the world up with this information. So I got a tidbit for tomorrow. We got tidbit show coming up.

Let's do it. Well, then I get another text from somebody, and it's the same thing. So now I got two people tell me the same dates, and these are people that I know and trust, different levels of the game, but definitely involved with Major League Baseball. not like MLB MLB but like involved in the game of major league baseball so then we start talking about it and you know we're like hey I said Jim I think I need to tweet this out let's sit down and brainstorm first like should we do this should we not do this and you were pretty adamant like this is going to blow up and I was a little scared about that yeah so we sit down and we sit down and we We tweeted out.

And just like you said, because you are the fucking king of blowing shit up on the internet, it did. And immediately, I mean, almost immediately, like I'm talking like 30 seconds after I tweet this thing. My phone is blowing up. Players. Guys in front offices. guys at other offices like people i don't want to i just don't want to bring anybody into this all walks of MLB all walks of MLB you're calling me so i pick them up i have nothing to hide you know so i start talking to these guys and essentially yesterday after having a couple

guys confirm it to me i had uh i'd say throughout the day probably like six or seven other guys again varying levels of involvement in baseball players front office alike all essentially confirming it so now here i am having to like defend myself over a fucking tweet and i'm sticking to it i've had people ask me to retract it and i said no i'm not going to do that because i believe it's true I don't know what the journalistic rule is with the sources. There's like a fucking saying, like one source, not good enough,

like fucking whatever. It's something. I don't know if you guys know. Yeah, but you're up to like six. A lot. It's a lot. And like,

even the people who were trying to get me to recant it, essentially confirmed it. Yeah. Yeah. In the same breath. Yeah. It was insane.

So here we are. Yeah. I mean, can we, I mean, share why they want you to recant it or share, because I just got mad again because I went to the Reddit thread because I wanted to thank everyone that was like in the Reddit thread saying like actually I, you know, I listen to talking baseball and Trev's not the kind of guy that would just throw this out there to get people to go on to the, you know, clickbait. Like there's a lot of people that had your back and that listened to the show and understand you've been doing these tidbits forever and you're just letting people who listen to you know what you hear. and so I wanted to thank everyone in the Reddit thread. And like even on Twitter, there's a lot of that. And then the fucking mod with moderator baseball pinned, according to Keith Law, this rumor is false.

So I'm fucking hot again, Trev. And I know we said I wasn't going to do this. But can we, can you tell like why reporters, why Pisan, Passon and Keith Law and all them wouldn't share this? and you did because it's different. Well, I'm assuming that these guys have heard the same info because... 100% have. Well, I don't know about Keith Law.

I honestly don't know who Keith Law is. I have heard his name. Okay, I'll bet that. I for sure heard his name. I have no idea who he is. Obviously, he doesn't, he's been, he's said that that's not true. That's fine. But I think what they're saying is, and I knew this,

this has not been formally proposed to the MLBPA. Okay. I understand that. I knew that. But let me tell you something. When this gets proposed to the MLBPA, barring unforeseen circumstances,

what are they going to do? They're going to say yes. Let's do it. They want to play. And we were talking earlier. You don't need to start every tweet with barring unforeseen circumstances. That's just implied.

If there's another jump in COVID cases throughout the U.S., guess what? These dates aren't going to work. Okay? If MLBPA and MLB can't come to or are going to start fighting over salaries and the pro-rated pay for these guys, it might not happen. But if all things are the way they are, a month from now, we will be playing, screen training. baseball. And this is the plan number one. And there are people that put on uniforms that are 100% prepping for these dates. Yes. Like they've been given the biggest thing that we learned. They've been given the warning saying, hey, get your body ready for these dates. They're not going to

do that on a whim. So I just want. So, like, there's so much good info that Trevor got on this. It was not just thrown out there. And it's still 100% the number one plan in place that they do this and start spring training and do like a three week spring training, which is what we've been saying that it would take three weeks and then start the season. Like, so the fact that Keith Law says this hasn't even been proposed is just playing on the caveat that it hasn't officially been like, like the players are preparing for it guys managers and stuff are preparing for it the only caveat that the reporter saying you know is that it's not like this is the plan okay yes we agree to it

you're just using a brain knowing like oh well they basically they're going to because everyone's getting ready everyone's getting ready and i would say probably in six organizations This has been, these are the dates that guys have been said, like we're gearing up for these dates. And again, like, that's not something that they would say lightly to players, okay, because guys have to get their bodies ready, especially pitchers. If you're telling me, hey, we got to be ready for July 1 or June 10, then I'm specifically going to tailor my plan to those dates.

So I don't know if you want to talk about, I guess Nightingale put out about screen training because that's another thing we had yesterday that it was just like do we even put this out like even trev before before we get into more tidbits let's we we still we still got a flush it's done i want to personally uh commissioner manfred if you're listening i had no involvement in this um i have no idea what they're talking about i was just finishing my steroid cycle so i'm still ineligible from games this year. No, I mean, you, uh, like you're saying, uh, you know, everything your saying is true. Keith law, I mean, technically from his angle, the rumors are false, but we'll, we will see how father time deals with that. But, uh, yeah, man, uh, no, you, you were there.

I think, uh, you know, people will latch on to some of the verbiage because they always do, whether it's Will or Woods or however you want to do it. And yeah, I just, I think the biggest thing, because you guys knew this would be big, but, you know, everything we've done and some of, some of the bigger videos and some of the bigger things, it's when it leaves baseball, it's pretty cool. When it leaves the world of baseball, it's pretty cool.

But I think what's funny, whether it's Boone Savages or, you know, even the Girardi news a little bit. And I guess that didn't really leave baseball. But it's cool to see that happen. But this one is so big because society has such a hunger for thirst. This left sports. And it was wild to see. And yeah, again, for any of those that aren't familiar with you, you know, this wasn't a headline grab.

This wasn't anything. This is the information you have. And, yeah, I hope. that like you said, you know, there's no COVID spikes or no anything. Because, yeah, I mean, people, people grasp onto this stuff super hard. I know the gentleman, Dan Clark reported Machado to the Yankees and he's been slaughtered for, like, that's what he's known as now. But I think you're good and you did good society.

And then, I mean, hey, I heard second source. I mean, Phil Hughes reported the same thing. What's funny about you talking about Phil is he like tweeted out like oh I made that up you know like that was a funny thing that was under that tweet or whatever and then we started talking and he said he had guys reach out to him too

after all this so it's funny I think what's funny is I think you and Phil had crossed over on to your bad side. I think him tweeting out that I've heard this too. That was like the machissimo form of apology. Like Trevor Pluf, you will never get me to actually say,

I'm sorry to you, but I will tweet this out to half have your back during this time. So that's, no, he's still out. I'm still out on Phil. Oh, I know that. It didn't work. But I want to say this. I want to say this. I'm going to look in the camera right now.

Oh, wow. The people out there. Okay. I promise. I will never say stupid shit so you click on a headline. So you watch a show that we do. We don't need that. I don't need that.

We do good stuff here. We put out good content. And I don't need to scream and shout or grab headlines. That's not what we're trying to do here. It won't be what we ever do here. This is good information. And I just passed it along. I don't know how else to say this.

I don't know how else. What really makes me mad about this is people are going to say that I'm trying to grab headlines because guess what? We have another episode of sequence with Mustakis dropped today. We got freaking incredible guests coming later this week. And you know what they're going to say? Oh, that's why he tweeted that out. And that's going to really fucking piss me off because that is not what happened.

And I don't want anything, anything, especially some tweet about the date that baseball is starting to ruin what we have going here and what's going on on sequence. Like those, like I don't want that. Like I will never, ever, ever grab headlines.

This is the number one plan. All that needs to happen is they officially propose it and the players union agree and say, yep, cool, we're going. That's the news. Teams are preparing for it. for it. Now, the tidbit that you said that, I guess Nightingale reported, which isn't the best of company, but whatever, is what's the tidbit on spring training? Because I think this is not my

source on that. I think this is the, this is really interesting on how they plan on doing spring training. Well, they, I heard this is like, they're split on this. They're not sure yet. But even them thinking about it, I think is news. And I also think it makes sense. I think it makes more sense than the alternative. So what we've heard is they're discussing holding spring training for every team at their home park. Like go to your home park. You know, um, Royals, you're going to Kansas City, blah, blah, blah, all the way down.

And essentially you'll have inner squads for two weeks, 15 days, whatever it is. There's like 18 days or whatever. Yeah. So that's, and I think that makes sense. Let everyone get acclimated. Spring training is a joke anyway. It's just about getting reps in. You don't need to fly guys back out to Arizona,

figure out rentals again. Fly them out to Florida, have them figure out rentals again. Go get your shit set up at your home park. Let's practice a little bit, get our bodies back in baseball shape, and go. So, again, that is not, that is still up in the air, but they are discussing that, and I think it makes sense. that that excites me so much just because we have an office right by yankee stadium and like i don't i don't know how they're letting press into spring training and all that but if there's a way we can get

credentials again that would be fantastic or jake and i can just wait outside the players exit for spring training be like how'd you how to go every day yeah on the credential thing i mean i might i might have messed that up yeah yeah you pissed off baseball blacklisted why did i piss anybody off that's like what I don't understand. Who is, why are people mad at me? Dude, because they have,

it's this weird, fucking societal, journalistic thing. Like, I understand that we have a, were held to a different accountability. Then the top top brass, like Passon and Rosenthal.

But fucking Nightingale made up an article two weeks ago. Like, we hold ourselves to our higher regard than him. we hold ourselves to a higher regard than a lot of the people that try to catch breaking news and stuff. It's very weird thing. I wrote a whole blog about this. Trev, I don't know if it's still up there because I was like,

I think I'm done sharing what I know because you just get so much shit for it. And all, I was like, I wish there was a, maybe it's our Patreon, but then you just hope it doesn't leave that. There's a community of people like, hey,

do you want to know what I heard? But don't fucking be a dick about it because I'm just telling you what I heard. But Twitter and everyone, it's like you can't really do that. It's tough. And I think that's again where this, like, yes, this is baseball and then it kind of leaves into sports. But, I mean, this leads into society right now. And I think that's why people are so geared up about it.

Because, Jim, when you did the Gerardi stuff, it's just like, oh, you don't have any sources. What do you know, bro? I mean, Trevor's pretty well connected cat. And I just think this is, this goes into something people have been. bickering about for months. When is the world going to open again? And baseball is supposed to be kind of the key that unlocks that door as it was in 9-11, as it was for World War II. So, I mean, you're, not only are you opening up the world of baseball sports, but you're opening. And I think that's where I was doing a puppet motion when you were talking about why people don't like this. I think the people up top,

whether it's the commissioners, whether we're starting to get into the government. those people like to control. And you, you injected a little chaos. Trevor the Joker ploof. You definitely injected chaos, which is awesome. Well,

you know who, you know, loves the Joker, friend of the pod, Jack Flaherty. Former friend of the pod. You guys are beefing hard, huh?

Oh, yeah, he was one guy who came at me on Twitter and said, I haven't heard this. But then he texted me and said he's sorry about that. he just hadn't heard it that's all yeah i got i got i got i got several of those texts as well

from players i haven't heard this and then i got several that said oh yeah so i mean i don't know this this this fucking i have this i have this reddit thread up and this this pin tweet from the moderator of baseball is making me so mad i was mad last night trav like i was like walking around my apartment like i kept texting you guys like i'm seeing i was fucking mad like this I would personally believe a reporter with accountability over an ex-ball player podcaster

without accountability. Why? Why do you think a fucking reporter who players and the MLB hate because all they do... And himself, Jim. And Keith, yeah. Why would you think

that they have better access than Trev who has been liked every step of the fucking path. We went to every spring training with you. You had a friend inside every fucking clubhouse. That's cheese. You had juice everywhere. And that mindset, like, reporters aren't loved within the walls of base of sports.

They literally try to tell reporters as little as fucking possible. Like, how many players have this news right now? How many did they text, Keith, call tidbit for you? No, but Trev's got guys everywhere. So, wait, you don't think. Lance Lynn, the guy that said he has two pre-recorded interviews after each start, isn't reaching out to reporters with any news? I think, I think it's...

The guy that didn't have a smart device on his premise. It's just dumb. It was just like, use your fucking brain. You think Treb doesn't have more friends within the walls of MLB across every section of that than Keith Law? I feel like a lot of the guys who are trying to break news on a consistent. basis. I get it. That's their job.

And they have people. They for sure, these guys have people in place. And guess what? It's probably pay to play. Like, if I'm guessing, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. But like,

in my mind, that's what makes sense to me. Like, why else, like, would someone just go to a reporter and say stuff? Like, there has to be some,

you know, tit for tat, you know. So I don't have any of that. There's some guy. There's some guy. where you can you can the writings on the wall of where and who they get their stuff from yeah i don't i don't know if necessarily pay to play is the phrase i think i'll scratch your back if you scratch mine

yeah whatever that's whatever whatever the payment may be but we we don't do that we don't need to do that john boy media flies a black flag like we any info that we get is just kind of tint of blue there yeah don't talk about my flag i have a very nice colorful private Is that like a, like a Yankee blue or something? Is that as color, Yankee blue or is just Navy? Just Navy. I mean, the color is Dodgers have Dodger blue. So the color code is 1C4827.

They have to have like, that's proprietary, right? I don't know. I think, I think Rovel. Yeah, I don't know about that. Anyway, that spring training tidbit is cool. Can we talk about like if this didn't come from us, what would we be saying about the functionality of the plan itself? I would say that it sounds quick.

It does. That's what I would say. I'm thinking about it. We've been saying July forever. So then I'm like, well, this has probably been in the works for a little bit. And that's kind of what sounds like has been happening.

And these guys have been prepping to get this ball rolling. The home stadiums only weirds me out. Like I wouldn't have. I don't know. I think that's what helps expedite this. process is the fact that they're like just go to your home park like that to me is the easiest solution and it's the quickest solution if you have to go back out to arizona and fly everyone back to the home parks that that's that adds an extra couple of days at least maybe a week

people got to move in move out like a lot of these guys are already where they're playing yeah we also talked about the for players to accept a deal one of the main things is going to be like the quality of day to day. And that's what we talked about with these, you know, playing on the spring training facilities and minor league facilities they might not enjoy it. Treves frozen on not the best. I think it's a good look for them. Okay. But what I say at the end is like, you know, playing at their home park, their home clubhouse, all the amenities they're used to.

Maybe, you know, the players will be quicker to be like, yeah, that sounds better. Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting dynamic. And again, you know, how many players do you have come there? I think that's going to be a funny, would be a funny internal discussion of, you know, who from AA gets, gets the invite and who doesn't. But yeah, I think it makes sense. I think you do, you know, when baseball comes back, there would be that obvious initial excitement that baseball is back. But it's kind of what I was saying. I said this on our, our, our John Boy Jake Radio podcast earlier today. Like I tuned into the KBO a little bit today, and it still kind of had some spring training rule vibes to it. Like I saw a lot of guys after the seventh inning were getting pitch run for. And I think you'd see a lot of that in the first couple games, just as guys are building up, the players are building up.

You know, I think a lot of teams, and maybe Trevor would correct me on this, but I don't know. If you only have inter squad practices to get you ready for a season, you know, I think you're not going to see a lot of balls flying up and in. Like I think you're going to get some, a slightly different product than when that game day hits. And, you know, the starting pitcher on the other team is trying to get that up and in fastball on Luke Void, Aaron Judge,

any, any slugger across the MLB that has that loopy swing now where that's where you to go. But if you miss there, it's right at your wrist. I think the product would be interesting. And I think I think there'd be a couple games you'd look at in the first week and be like, oh, boy. But then I think you start getting into the flow and it starts looking like real baseball again. Yeah, it would probably take, yeah, it'll be a buffer zone. Or like, I think the public will understand that and kind of accept it as its own quirky thing, though, right? You back, Trev? Can you hear us? I'm back.

I don't know what happened. The other thing, it's interesting, is, like, the money for the players and the pay cut and the renegotiation and the negotiations and all that is still somewhat of an obstacle. What I said while you were gone, Trev, is that doing the home ballpark and the home clubhouse and having the home amenities, I think is much more comforting for the players than to be, like, in a hotel in Arizona. with sharing clubhouses and sharing everything. Yeah, like I said, I think that if I'm, if I was still playing and, you know, I'm sure they're going to like get the players input and vote on it, I for sure 100% would be like,

yes, let's go to our home park. And I did hear Jake, what you were just saying about like pitches coming up and in. And I agree with that. Like it won't be as an aggressive of a game. But once the last time you saw a spring training game, it was like a real kind of aggressive game.

Pitchers will work inside in spring training. But I think they'll still work inside here. These guys are big leaguers. If one gets away, that's going to suck, and that might happen. You know, we might see some guys get hurt, and people are going to be like, oh, my gosh, can you believe they did this? But then it's like, dude, that can happen any game. Exactly. Any game.

So, yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's going to be, we've already known this. It's going to be a crazy year. Like, baseball is going to come back. And it's going to be, and I think it's going to be more fun than we've had in a long time. just because there's some pent-up aggression everybody's got. You're just going to relish it. You want to talk about the umpires?

That's the other big story that we heard that Rosenthal wrote about in the athletic. It was actually a really sad read because the umpires right now are also, they had an eight-hour Zoom session, which had to be all my fucking, boring. Like, how long was our company Zoom session hour 15, hour 20? At the end of that, I was like, sorry this went long, guys. But eight hours? Oh, my God.

fuck that anyway but i don't know if you guys read the article but it read kind of sad because the umps are like hey like we deserve what we're owed and they're correct in that like we deserve like because they're trying to say they're trying to do a 35% pay cut uh for the ums you know so like well dude pay us our contract like prorate it but like we deserve it we're owed which is fair i think but they're so scared because the last time they did this MLB just called their bluff and it was like fine with they like the umstriked and then we was like all right you guys are out and they just hired like 10 new ums and also they're already saying you know oh well this season's going to be short and different anyway so maybe we just test out robot um so the umps are so scared

with how to approach us because they have zero leverage but think they want what they're like you know do it's a sad article the public perception is bad for them too so So it's, yeah, no one likes them. They were like, even the fans don't like us. Like, no one likes it sucks. But they should get ahead of that, man. Come on talking baseball, guys. We'll have a few you on.

I think that would help. I think it really would. And correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, which I normally am. But I think an article came out the next day that said the umpires settled. I think that that piece came out and it was the umpires. Get this out in the public. We'll have the public behind us and that'll be able to set our price. and then they saw all the reactions were like, oh, no, the computer umps are going to get every call right.

And I think they reneged. And I think the umpire contract got taken care of. I forget if I saw that from Olney or someone else. Okay. That's good. But you're right. I mean, that initial article was brutal. Yeah.

I don't know if they thought they had ground to stand on or whatever that was. But sheesh. It was eight hours for them to be like, well, who can be on our side? No one. Do you guys remember when they wore the white wristbands? That quickly got like, it was Angel Hernandez, right? No, they were all wearing them. But I think he started it.

Like him and Joe West, like about, like standing in solidarity against like players berating them. And they were supposed to do it for the rest of the year. Last of the day. Damn. I think something. happened at the same time. Like some actual injustice took place.

And then like in juxtaposition of the umpires and then like the actual like in the real world, not sports world, I think something happened. And then it was like, oh, this is a bad look. I forget what I forget that whole time. But yeah, that was wild. They need to work on that. There's a lot of cool umpires. A lot of like guys with awesome stories and like these guys have seen so much baseball.

Like I think fans would be like super into listening to a guy that's. you know umpired world series games and has made these calls like right or wrong like i got this call right or i i rung up the guy to end the world series whatever it is like those are awesome stories like why aren't these guys doing stuff like that yeah i don't know but you need to get people on your side obviously they know that because they they know that people aren't on their side like do some PR man who's that one there's one umpire he's got like he looks got like a a jacked surfer look. I think I think everyone likes him.

Ted Barrett? Ted Barrett, that rings a bell. He doesn't, it's like a jack surfer. He's big boy, but, uh, he's awesome. Wasn't he like the boxer and stuff? Yes, he's Mike Tyson's sparring partner. And I'm like, people would love to hear that. He's like, he's awesome.

He's not this, he's not the surfer guy, but he is also a guy that I think, like, people like him a lot, right? They love him. Joe West, Angel Hernandez, ruining it. You know what? Like they could play that card too. Like they need to figure that out.

Dude, Joe West has been an umpire for like 40 years. Let Joe West just go like talk some crap. And like people would eat it up, dude. Joe West came on the show. It'd be fun. For 20 minutes, I think. Yeah, I think you say that. And then it's, oh,

No, the rumors are real. Do you think about what you'd be like, tell me about the time you threw Lou Panella out and he threw a base at you? Like, you know, or like. What's that emotion feel like? Yeah. Like, when is it that you feel like you, like, how, what's the leash? Like, is there like a chart like, oh, this guy's been a manager for 10 years. So here's his leash.

This guy's a new rookie manager. He has no leash. Like, I would love to hear stuff like that. Yeah. Anyone that knows an umpire. Get them on the show. Do they have agents? I don't know.

I like Chris Guccioni. Guz. I like Wolf. Jim Wolf. Randy Wolf's brother, right? Yes. He's not allowed to call Randy's games. Like, how funny is that?

Like, that's hilarious. Can you imagine if he just was like ringing everybody up? Oh, man. That's good. Cool. All right. I think Michael Kay told the story last year that he was like he was in town. He was getting dinner with friends. He was really excited to do it. He doesn't get to do it a lot anymore. Wife kids. And Joe West was like at the restaurant and he came over and said hi. And I think he said Joe West sat down for two hours and told his own stories for two hours. Like to Michael K. in a group of his friends. He's like, he's like, it was. He's like, it was. It was kind of the rudest thing I've ever seen in my life.

That's what they say about Joe West, all right? He'll just talk. He'll talk a lot, yeah. Perfect podcast material. Yeah. Did we do a good job, like, explaining, like, what the hell was going on? I think so. We can ask the chat.

Did we thoroughly, I mean, I think anyone that listens now is, like, completely in the know of where everything stands. I got nothing to hide. Yeah. Nothing to hide. Yeah. I mean, I guess we didn't lay out a lot of the details. I mean, within that, games are supposed to be at everybody's home stadium,

just traveling to different stadiums like a normal series would be, or what? Or do we not know? That's what I'm hearing. Okay. I mean, that is, was the, that was a plan from the beginning, like, just pick the season up where it would be by around the All-Star break. When? Let me ask you this.

Didn't we say that like so long ago? We've been saying it. Let me ask you this. I need to get my calendar out. Hold on a sec. All right. It's May 5th. Just wait a sec.

And I know. And another part of this that we're obviously not going to address because it gets political. But I mean, California, which was supposed to be the most locked up, I know Newsom's opening up some businesses on Friday. So like there's there's some stuff on the other side of this. politically that makes it kind of real. Yeah. Again, it's barring unforeseen circumstances. We've said that.

But I think we all talk in baseball for commissioner. Because if you want to open up July 1st, I think it's a missed opportunity. Like I get that you don't want to just skip over three days, but why not to a July 4th, dude? Like, let's start this thing with a bang. Fireworks. but like they don't want to lose those three days yeah but like if i'm commissioner

i'm like baseball's back fourth of july firework shows maybe ratings would be ratings would be fucking terrible because people would actually be doing fourth of july it's a good point people i don't think people will be able to right jimmy stop stop americans from celebrating fourth of july yeah i just think that's a missed opportunity but hey again can't lose those games can't lose those three days no that'd be cool I mean it just fucking goes right into baseball as normal well not normal bro there's no gonna be no fans in the stands but normal schedule no you know normal's everything besides the fans is normal not not double headers every day

not all living in a remote village, no 30-man of rosters. Oh, we don't know about the rosters or the double-headers. Yeah, I guess not. But if they do, if they just want the 81 game season, I would guess they just play it out. Which didn't we say, like if this, when this gets confirmed, confirmed,

we got to go through strength of schedule because the A's and the Astros, all of their games were in the first half besides like three. Yeah, that's very interesting. There's some weird stuff like that. I don't know how they'll do that. They would have played like 15 of their games would have been Orioles, Tigers,

and some other very bad team by now. So they're losing that month. Something like that, yeah. You know, it's funny, it's my understanding, and please people, this is just something that I've heard. Like, not like yesterday. Like, this is different.

But I heard there's just like a couple and they like create the schedules. No, no, that's what it used to be. The internet, when the internet, there was like that for years, Trev. There's like a 30 for 30 on them, I think. But when the internet became a thing and like the couple lost their jobs. Oh, okay.

That's crazy. Really crazy. For a long time, though. Yeah, they stayed past internet. Yeah, I think it was like 2002 or something like that. All right. Well. But that couple was crazy because you have to like coordinate not with the team,

but with the venue because they host concerts and stuff. So you got 30 venues and then it's a big job. It's crazy. That's a couple used to just do it. It makes sense to me for them to like revamp the schedule. But then again, like logistically, they already have all this stuff mapped out. Like I don't, I mean, I know it's a lot. I don't know how the hotels are going to work.

But I assume they're just going to be like if they can contact trace everybody and tests, like they're going to have to do that. And I mean, we've said it from the beginning. There's a lot of money involved. And when there's a lot of money involved, things tend to get figured out. Yeah. Cool. All right.

Well, there you have it. The tweet flushed out for everyone to fully understand what's going on behind the scenes and all that. I think we did a great job, Trev. I'm going to play the outro music. We got another interview coming up on Friday. And if you haven't, go listen to the Lance Lane interview and the do little interview from the last two episodes because those are really fantastic. Both were awesome and really open with their insight and thoughts. Cool. Have a good week. I hope we did a good job. I don't know, man.

Yeah.