Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 141 | Jeff Passan Discusses Trevor's Tidbit

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

ESPN's Jeff Passan jumped on the podcast to discuss Plouffe's reporting on baseball's potential return in June and July. 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 are joined by Jeff Passing today to talk about breaking news. And the newsbreakers. A lot. What's up, everybody? Welcome to talking baseball. We hope you're having a fantastic Friday morning. We hope you're excited for the weekend.

We hope you are ready for baseball to be back on the screens in a couple months. because as you know, it's about to be. And we have a very special guest joining us today. Jeff Passon from A.F. Pong. To talk about newsbreaking. Trev, one of your now adversaries in the newsbreaking world? I think he's more of a colleague, I would say. Okay.

It's an adversary. I'm not here to fight with anybody or compete with anybody. You know who I'm competing with? Myself. I just want to be a better version of myself every day. Mm-hmm. That sucks when you have a good day. And then you're like, shit, I got to beat this tomorrow.

I haven't thought that one through. So maybe I'll stop trying. Jake, how are you doing? I'm good. And yeah, I think Jeff is a, I'd call him a teammate. Because I think it wasn't officially written down on paper, but I think what we agreed to was kind of that, like, when they talk about it in the office and, what was it, office space when they're like, hey, we're going to take the 0.00.0.1% of every

transaction and count it as our own. Basically, every Jeff Pass and news breaking from here on out, we get 0.001% of it. So now we're a team. Yeah. We're like his like farm system a little bit. A feeder program. We're just going to funnel stuff through them. All right. Hey, it was really kind of Jeff to sit down with us and talk about it. I think it was a fantastic conversation. If you don't know, Jeff, we met him at winter meetings.

Jake and I had talked to him, DMed him a couple times and kind of had somewhat of a rapport, but we never met in person. We met him at winter meetings. He was awesome, funny, and just a cool guy. So here is the interview or what's not even an interview? Are we going full cold open? because I don't know if you remember that.

We came in. Yeah, yeah. Came in with kind of a different intro. He basically said, I want to say something. Can you start recording? And then he led the way. So here you go. Yes, sir.

Thank you, sir. He's that. Just get into it, baby. No, I have no problem doing this. This is something that is kind of freaked me out. We're rolling. Sure. Rolling. I'm wondering if it's like, is it an optical illusion or is it something you did?

There's a picture I saw. you i think it's your twitter profile picture okay and you've got your thumbs up right yeah do you have the longest most disproportionate thumbs in the world compared to the rest of your tiny little body or somehow just like it's like a illusion seriously look at the thumbs they are right i think i haven't i think i have an answer The batting gloves don't fit your tiny hands. I think we are with Jeff Passing, the bride of stolen Ohio, making fun of my Twitter avatar. Yeah, dude, that's straight batting gloves.

I wish I could take credit for that. Oh, there we are. That is really, it was freaking me out. I was like, what is Jake's thumbs? Oh, my God. I don't know. Yeah, Jake, that left thumb. Yes, yes.

It was the left thumb in particular. That's hilarious. Hey, but your bod is popping right there. I mean, I'm covered in milk because Goch ballgame's a psychopath. And we're off the rails before we started. Did you expect any less? I came in to student. I didn't know.

I did. Dude, I wanted you to come in. I was going to say like coming with a jersey or something, but I mean, it's your life. It's your life. I actually wear this 24 hours a day. I'm like, I'm like, Barney Stinson, like, sleep in the suit. You know, I have a suit underneath this suit right now, actually, for what I eat spaghetti. If someone tweets you a scoop, you're like, hold on, let me get my suit on.

You know what I wish ESPN would do? I wish ESPN would get me the John Clayton commercial suit. Do you remember, like, Mom, I'm done with my segment, and I could just, like, slide it right on. It doesn't exist that way. And the thing is, Jake and I have sort of been going back and forth on this. I actually need to do SportsCenter in 30 minutes or so, which is why I figured get the flow going, get the suit on and move on with my merry life. What are they asking you about on SportsCenter? You want to just give it to us first?

Squash. All squash. It's going to be fantastic. Quarantine squash. Like, I'm glad that we're getting toward the point where something substantive is going to start happening. And it's not just me speculating on plans that are being thrown out there. Right. It would be really irresponsible for someone to tweet out something, like, kind of early, right?

I got to tell you, man. It was the most stressful, like, 48 hours I've had in a long time. It's the worst. It is like, I have always thought whenever I get to like a game seven or a 163 or something like that, how did these guys get in front of 40,000 people in the stadium? who are either screaming for them to do something that will enrich their lives or screaming against them because they hate them. How do they step into a batters box and hit a projectile being thrown at them by the 99.999% best in

the world person doing that? One that can either go straight at 95, can cut at 93, can tilt at 88, can tilt at 88, can can go 12 to 6 at 75, can fade at 81. You know, how do you do that? And then I realized that the stress of that is equaled only by when you drop something on the internet and nobody immediately backs you up. I think I saw you say it. I felt like I was out on island. And listen, I felt terrible for you.

I wanted to be able to come out and say, yeah, he's right. Because I don't like knowing that anybody has that feeling that I have felt before. Because it is a horseshit feeling, man. It is as rough as it gets when you feel like, am I crazy? Did I say something that was wrong? And by the way, you did say something that was wrong. Journalism, tip 101. Do not go too far?

Make sure that your words perfectly, reflect what's actually going on because you as someone who had been in the major league player uh major league baseball players association had to know that in order for any plan to be in place that the players would have to have been told about it now i didn't know information was correct you just went too strong with it and and that's the lesson that you will take away from here and it's a hard one to learn, man, especially. Like, here's the thing. I was, I, I will admit, this is how my day went.

Somebody from, I think it was the news desk at ESPN, which is like the sort of central hub of news gathering there, said, hey, is there anything to this? And my first instinct was there might be. but my second instinct was it's a former ball player who wants to be a newsbreaker and so he's probably full of shit Oh!

Okay. If I stick in the box and try and swing, the same thing's going to happen. I could train for a year to try and hit a tank and Trevor would look at my one swing and say amateur. So I made a few calls and they were probably

calls to some of the same people that Keith Law did. And we were all told, no, it is not true. Like, we were all told that. And I think we were told that's not true because of the way that it was phrased. You had just hedged a tiny little bit there and a little bit more judicious with the words. like I the way I put it the reason we didn't reference it that night is because I said you know it's probably true

that mid June is what they're targeting it's probably true that early July is what they're targeting I just don't have those specific dates from anyone but what what sold me and in the end what got you the credit that you wanted you need to thank the Cleveland Indians

because the Cleveland Indians on their phone call with their players use June 10th and used July 1st. And had they not used the exact dates, I would not have been as inclined to say whoever got it right. But when they got those exact dates,

like we couldn't deny that you had put those out there first. I appreciate that. And I do want to say, like this wasn't some like off the hip, I'm just going to tweet this shit out right away. You want to know who helped me tweet that? Yeah, yeah, I'll take a lot of

blame. I helped him phrase that. Oh, which is not a surprise at all because I have given Jimmy shit in the past for saying incorrectly on Twitter too. He's the worst person to go to. Oh, I know. In that situation, he's not going to be the angel

on your shoulder. I was, no, it was a mistake because even Trev was like, even like these are tentative dates, but these are the dates that I've been told. So we should have put tentative. But it's still like, I don't know, it's weird.

We're not trying to be you and then Rosenthal. Oh, of course. He did pass along good info because it's, that's what all the teams are hearing. It's just the, and some people will never, like, you know, we're at a point on Twitter and in a newsbreaking where people will never believe Trave or me first.

They'll be like, I'll wait till passing and Rosenthal confirm this. When did you get to that point? When did you bypass that and become the authority? It's a good question. I don't, yeah. Like, am I? I don't know. Yes, you are.

You and Ken are the only people I trust out there. Well, I appreciate that first. Thank you. And Tim Kirkson, I like him too. Kirk's best. It's a very weird place to be. And I don't know when that happened because I'm not like trying to be modest and say, oh, little me? No. It's just weird for me to acknowledge that because all it does now is set me up in the future to feel like Trevor did for the last 48 hours.

That is not, like, you do not want the guillotine hanging over your neck with every word you write. But if I am, if I am going to like trace it back, it probably was when I started with ESPN. Like that is the power of ESPN right there. It's the authority on sports, and it's looked at that way. And as much like as much impact as I could have had at Yahoo. And as others did, like, you know, Wodge was at Yahoo too. We had an unbelievable staff there. but it was never the kind where if you have something,

you know, Scott Van Peltz is going to ask you questions about it at night. Or, you know, Kevin Nagandi and Sage Steel at 6 o'clock or Boucher Gross and Kenny Maine or just this litany of people whose faces we've grown accustomed to and whose voices we trust. And I think there's like this gravitas that comes with the SPN because our job is to get things right. And very rarely we don't. And when we don't, it is just the worst.

It sucks. And the scary part for you, Trevor, is there's a psychological element to it. You knew if you weren't wrong, you just couldn't prove it. And that really sucks. So I had two guys who I trust a lot. Tell me those dates. And that's kind of when I brought it to Jim and we we hash that tweet out. And then what the scariest part for me was when guys like Flaherty and Trevor Bauer and a couple of Josh Redick, I think was another guy.

We're like, I haven't heard any of this. And I'm like, oh, man. But, but then like literally. Flaherty came after me on Twitter a couple months ago for suggesting that we should have an automated strike zone. Oh, boy. Don't forget that. That's a big. topic of debate. But later that day, then I was like the tech started rolling in from a bunch of

guys. And that's when I started to feel a lot better about it. It was like five, six, seven other organizations all telling the guys the same date. I'm like, dude, I don't know. Like, I'm just trying to relay information, dude. Like, that's all I, that's all I cared about. Um, we also knew why. So, so here's, here's another thing like, you know, tip for the future. I hope you don't get too many scoops because that means I'm not. But what you have to do is understand just how big the information is. And you need to almost balance it.

And when a story is as big as humanly possible, I'm not saying to play it down lower, lower and lower. Just know that every word is going to be parsed. Every word is going to be parsed. going to be ripped apart. This is a perfect example. I'm not going to use the person's name who did this, but I am indebted to him forever for this.

You guys remember the mutiny against Bobby Valentine? Trabb, you were playing at the time. Red Sox, Bobby V? What's that? Red Sox Bobby B? Yeah. I'm sure you guys' Yankee fans probably were enjoying it. It's a fun year.

So I had gotten wind of this meeting that had taken place where the players essentially were going to ownership and saying, you know, this guy is not working. And it's a big deal anywhere. It's a really big deal with a guy of Bobby Valentine's stature in Boston. And for about a month, I had heard about this and didn't have a corroborating source. And finally, I got a corroborating source. and I'm like, gitty up, let's get this thing out there. But before I did, I had to call up somebody in the Red Sox organization and essentially say, hey, this is what I've got coming. Do you guys, you know, essentially do you guys have anything to say about this?

So I called up somebody in the Red Sox organization and read the first two paragraphs of the story just to say, hey, this is what this is going to be. saying. And he said, all sounds right except back in the first paragraph, I had mentioned a particular player's name as being among those who had complained. And I was told that that player did not lodge complaints against Bobby Valentine. And what that did right there was completely save me. Because the second that one player can come out and say, I did. not do this, that casts doubt on everything else you write. Every word, every comma, every period, every paragraph, everything else is cast into doubt, which is why, like, you got about a thousand in this job. And that is the, it doesn't keep me up at night because I don't sleep much. So when I

sleep, it's wonderful. But it's what makes the job as consuming as it is. That's why I'm out. Yeah, and a thousand I'm out I'm retiring from the game We already talked about this Any scoops that I get Guess who they're going straight to This guy Friend of the pod

So So you think I You think I decided to come on today You think there were Yeah We're all playing that chess game baby Everything that Jeff breaks in the future Just know he got that from Treff

I don't I don't I don't want any credit man I don't What was interesting for that. What was interesting and that we loved and was respectful was, like you said, you and Keith Law probably went to the same person and got the same answers.

And we knew what answer that was because like Trev knew it wasn't officially proposed and officially accepted yet, just knew that it was going to be proposed and going to be accepted. By the way, can I jump in here for a second? Keith is getting raked over the coals here. I don't know how this podcast feels about that. Probably not great. I tried to stop it today. I mean, listen, we're all always just trying to do our jobs.

Well, here's the difference, though. Keith was like outwardly saying that it was false and liar. You got asked that very night on the KBO broadcast, and you were like not disrespectful or not even like denying it or anything. said it might be true but it's not a fisher yet and we're very you went a much more appreciative route from trev's perspective on it yeah no i was i was extremely disrespectful behind the seed that's fine that's okay we don't that's fair i that's right i see it was that's even worse actually because i'm just being a dick to you to everyone else lend to your face i'm dressing up in a suit it's perfect

You listen to Pink Floyd, so I'm okay with you. All right, all right. See, that is a... If ever we're going to bring the Red Sox and Yankees' fandoms together, I feel like you're going to be the glue who does that because you know Jared Karavis is an enormous Pink Floyd fan, actually. And if you could get him to do a crossover here, I mean, listen, if there is any time.

time. Like, Jimmy, Jake, we're never going to get Astros fans on here. Like this, this right here. I'm huge. I'm huge in the Astros community. I'm down with John Boy. I'm all in. It's funny. We like, I get, Jimmy, I get lumped together with you all the time. Maybe we found the common denominator, the problem here. Yeah, it is such strange bedfellows too. Because I think like in our approach, we could not be any more opposite than we are. It's true. Like couldn't be in any way, but they hate us just the same. I understand why they hate you.

I do too. You're terrible to them. All I've done is just say you cheated. Yeah, you troll them pretty hard. Like, if we're being honest now, like if I'm being the independent adjudicator in this situation, You absolutely troll them all the time. And you take joy in it.

I take no joy in going on ESPN and, like, standing in front of their 2017 world champions logo for like two and a half straight weeks. Like, spring training was definitely a very odd time. I will see this. I kept saying, you know, people are saying like, these are fellow reporters saying, like, how long you've been? here. And I was like, I've been here for a long time, but I'm getting paroled in a couple of days. I had driven cross state to Atlanta's facility. And that's where like all the GMs were meeting and they had the managers there too. And, you know, it was, it was like spring training media day. And I was looking forward. I was supposed to meet with someone from the Braves organization,

have lunch the next day. And I was just going to like live the normal life of spring training that I'm used to on the other side of the state. And then I got a call that night. And the call that night said El Tuve is going to walk through the clubhouse with his shirt off tomorrow. Oh, my God. And I'm like, really? I miss those days.

I like, really. Yeah, don't you miss like how bad is Jose Altuves tattoo actually? And so that night got back into the car, went to the nearest gas station, bought it. pack of sunflower seeds and a couple of 20 ounce Coke zeros and drove three hours to watch a grown man walk through a clubhouse. Oh my gosh. That was organized like that. It wasn't that's funny. I mean, the tattoo stories. I think, I think what it was is people had been saying after Carlos Gray's interview with Ken Rosenthal, people had been saying, okay, but this tattoo. So he wanted to say, yeah, I actually have a tattoo. Here it is. The whole thing was.

so comical when he was doing it too. He walks into the clubhouse. It's just like Baywatch. He like stripped the shirt right on. And his daughter's name is just like right there. And he just walks through the clubhouse. That's awesome. The tattoo stuff was like the first thing that fully added up.

Like all of the parts of it. It was, it was like regular print when he didn't like it. He blurred it out in a picture of him on the beach after he got it, which proves he was embarrassed of it. Then he played the whole game shirtless, put a shirt on right before the celebration. And like actually added up. It was like, oh, my God. It's kind of embarrassing that he was so embarrassed of just a simple tattoo.

And then he got it redone with cursive in between the World Series. I gave him credit. I was like, hey, that's weird. but it adds up. You have any embarrassing tattoos? No, I've none. I just got Burns. Burns?

What? Jeff, Jeff. Just got dark. Can you tell us like what Ken said to you after that Correa interview? It's like got to go down as one of the greatest interviews in sports history. Like that was like a WWE promo. And like I felt like Ken was like, are we rolling? Like what?

So here's how. Here's how that went down. That was a very weird day in the clubhouse because Verlander had talked that morning. And he had said some things. And when Verlander talks, you know, you don't want to be the only guy in the clubhouse that day who has said something, right? because you know that everything you say is going to be on the local news, is going to be on ESPN, it's going to be on MLB Network, is going to be replayed and replayed and replayed. By the way, is my video feed not coming through?

I don't know what happened. I don't know what I can hear you fine. All right. That's all that matters. Honestly, this is better. You don't have this. This is better. This is what I wish I had all the time.

So, you know, Verlander, I think Verlander at that point is kind of like, okay boys who's actually going to come out and talk right now and a bunch of us were in the clubhouse waiting for korea because he was like the logical person to speak you know he'd been pretty outspoken on the apology day uh and we figured he was going to be the one to talk and he leaves the clubhouse and some of the local guys are getting like pissed off like and i don't blame him like where's korea going what's Correa doing. Little did we know that right outside the clubhouse

he is just giving this I don't even know how to So that was planned? He went out there too touch to Ken. Yes. Or to Ken follow him? No. I'm pretty sure this had been

arranged. Go Kenny. All right. Oh, Kenny is I hate Kenny because he's really, really good. And I don't actually hate him because he's a terribly nice and kind and thoughtful and generous human being.

And that makes me hate him even more actually. Yeah, sure. Because you wish he was terrible and you wish you actually had reason to look at him and be like, no, I don't like you. I want to go out there and beat you every day. That was the wildest, like whatever interview for baseball. that was so weird. Yeah,

it was the best. And I thought, you know what? I thought he handled it really, really well, too, like pushing back on some of the stuff that. Oh yeah. Kenny did.

Yeah. Yeah. Like it is, that's a hard thing to do in the moment because you have questions that you want to ask. And sometimes you have to deviate from those questions in order to follow up. So you almost have to be thinking and listening. and formulating new questions at the same time because you don't want to come back

when somebody says something and be like, like you can't stumble. You have to have things ready in that moment and you can't miss your opportunity. That's crazy. Well, we know you've got to go. Jake, what you got? I was going to say,

have you taken a step back yet and been like, okay, you know, this would probably be NFL, NHL playoffs. you're getting run on SVP late night. Have you been like, hey, this has been kind of nice for Jeffrey P? I mean, I work at ESPN and cover baseball. When is life not nice for? This is true. Good perspective, Jeff.

E.P. Is that what you call me, Jake? You know, I mix it up. I call you an assortment of names. Wow. with the MLB flag? That's tough. Wow.

I just Googled it. I just Googled it. I think the other thing we wanted to get out of you before you have to go for Espin or whatever you were talking about. Do you have anything that you want us to break that you have like one source on that we can get out there and look like we can look like assholes about? But it won't be from you. It'll be from us. I've got like 25 of the. Oh, yes.

And I will not let any of you near any of it. If I wore this hat on purpose, I do have some breaking NBA news if you want to put it out there. No big deal if you don't. I've heard from sources, there will be no more regular season. It'll be straight to the playoffs. Book it.

I can't tell if you're being serious or not. That's a serious one. That's a serious one? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if you want to take and run with it, go ahead. I love that you have sources. I love. I think I just more of like friends.

They'd have to play a couple games, like warm up games. Here's the thing. I always, Trevor, I always thought that from those twins teams, it was going to be like perk who was going to be in the twins booth. And it was going to be like Slowie, who was going to be an analyst somewhere. I honestly don't know if I had you pegged. And Tori, I thought Tori was going to be like in the World Series booth if he wanted to be. He could if he wanted to.

Yeah, of course he could. He could do anything. Like, and you guys had, Poppy predated you by a little bit, right? Yeah, he did. Okay. A lot of bit. Like the beauty of the twins teams is that like the early Tory era and the late Tory era all mixed together for me. and it was always like the twins were always my favorite team to come to Kansas City where I live

and I don't think you and I pretty much ever talked so good to finally chat I appreciate I wasn't good enough as a baseball player but I think I'm getting good at like a media guy you are respect I mean listen you were as a baseball player uh one of the one of the best in the world. Like that's literally true. It doesn't matter what your numbers were. It doesn't matter. None of that matters. You are one of the best baseball players in the entire world. So that's like a sea pill to climb in this industry. And you got some work to do. But you've been doing this for how long, six months? Since November, baby. Yeah. It's working. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. We'll have you on later. We'll do a whole two-hour

session with you. Yeah, it's not going to happen. I'm going to do real TV right now. Oh, no. Enjoy it. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Jeff. Hi, Jeff.

And there you have it. New colleague, Jeff Passon, joined us. I mean, that was a lot of fun. I mean, it's cool to have someone of his stature recognize us and also shit on us because I think both are appreciated. If it was just one or just the other, it's either it's insincere or just being a jerk. So you need both here. Trevor, how are you feeling after all that?

I came to this conclusion after the interview we just did. It was a conversation. Yeah. A bit of a schooling, if you will, on journalism. But I'm happy to report that much like my career against position players pitching, where I batted a thousand, I will be leaving the sports journalism world also batting a thousand and that's not something a lot of people can say

so I'm happy with where it's at we'll still get some tidbits though because the song's too good to not use anymore I know you know I'm just kind of we just told Jeff that I was going to get out of the game but I think I lied to him I think you're so much deeper in the game

I think I'm a dick to do it now yeah yeah because I I resisted maybe it'll do pot only because when Jeff came back and he was starting to fluff you up and he was like, you know, talking about your baseball career a little bit. There was some jokes to be made about your batting average compared to your batting average with this. And I mean, hey, man, you can, now that you're on top, like, yes, you could go out or,

I mean, I think you just keep grinding that stone, my man. And like, I don't have sources. I have friends. And I think that's better. I think that might have been the best line of the interview. I think you can't say that too much because then people that don't have friends and only sources they're going to be like, wow, I'm so sad. I don't want anyone to feel sad.

I really don't. This is what I want. And I tell people this about baseball too. I want everyone to do their best because that's when the game is the best. So I want all you reporters out there keep grinding and keep working hard. And just know that when you're sleeping, I'm working. I got friends. I got friends.

Then they didn't all sleep. I got friends. That is cool. Yeah. Like the tide's turned now because everyone's putting out this same June, July dates. And then a lot of people are saying why not July 4th like we talked about, but. Yeah. I think Jeff made a good point.

Like the verbiage in our tweet. And I'm going to say it's our tweet, Jim, just because you can't get away from that. No, I'll take full responsibility. I feel bad because the thing is, and it's not a question I didn't want to, I wanted to ask them. because he says you need to leave some, I call him a scape words, but you need to leave some flex words or something like that,

like a potentially, I've heard, sort of, you know, this. I think the biggest one was you should have went wood instead of will.

It would take place June 10th. It would start July 1st. I think, I think if you give it, but that's what sucks about it. I'd say, I'd say May instead of, then I'm like everybody else.

And we're better than that at John Boy Media. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, but I wanted to ask him like, because some reporters, I won't say their name, John Heyman, only uses escape words. Like every tweet is always maybe or might be or potentially or interested. You know, he never puts anything concrete out there. So like, where's the balance?

What's the point? Yeah. What's the point of that? That's why you said, you don't follow Hamer. Don't follow him. It's the worst Twitter account. It's nothing but word salary. it and like a skateboard's galore.

But like so like where I like that we did know escapeboards because we were being all brave but maybe we should have added like one or something like that. But I want to ask him like where's the balance? If we had like 10 more minutes, I would have liked to ask and like, hey, how would you type that tweet with the amount of info we had if you were. Oh, that would have been a good question. I think we had like five more minutes we could have. I think he wouldn't have.

Yeah. He wouldn't have tweeted. Yeah. he was going to be hitting send. And I think that's the best, I think that's the best part of that conversation that happened is I don't know if a single question we wanted to ask was asked

because, I mean, I know Jeffrey P. as I called him and he hated, which I'm proud of at this point. He, I mean, man, he looks so young. I think he's 40. He's one of the people that's old. Yeah.

Dude, he stays up to my standards of youth, which is impressive. I look 14, he looks 18 But dude, he ran like Yahoo Baseball for 13 years Like he was like that was my fantasy baseball coach For like a decade And yet now he's like

He's a peer equal He's our teammate like I said So hopefully we do get him again Because I mean we could have I know Jimmy mentioned it again And he shot us down with a big ESPN drop But like I mean we could have genuinely talk to him Like he said a real TV

Yeah that's just a half hour's easy Yeah, that. That was big. And I wanted to come back and say, you mean Tim Tebow and LeBron James Network? Like literally all you guys do is talk about those two people. And now Michael Jordan. Good thing the interview ended then.

Yeah, I like Jeff. I was a fan of- Because I said no, because I said we were going to get him for two hours, which is, which is like an escape-ask by me. Because I say, you're going to come back on the show. And he probably says yes to that. But then I say two hours, which allows him to be like,

good for you, Jim. Look at that. Playing chess. Wow. So he says yes, but just not. Also a subtle dig when you put the MLB network microphone in his hand for the picture. Way to go. I mean, I just Googled Jeff Passing and took up a picture.

What happens next, guys? Do we think the big MLB drop comes like Monday, Tuesday? Do we think something comes out like tomorrow? Well, they have to propose it, which they're announcing the proposal this week or next week. coming days it's going to be proposed and then they need there's still going to be a fight over money we know that the biggest thing yes there's still going to be a fight over money and and it's all the contracts and it's actually i'm like super interested in it as if it's a game itself to see how it plays out because i think both sides have some good points i think i think it's going to come down

to actually what our good friend jeff jeffy p said in his article i think it's going to come down to the deferred money i think they're going to say we'll get you your money money, it's just got to be next year or two years, whatever it is. And I think players would be like, what I've heard and what we've talked about is there's no room for negotiation on the player's side. That's the way they're approaching it. But push comes a shove. They get that deferred money.

It's still paid in full. I think you can handle that. But we'll see. Yeah. I loved the deferred money. The deferred money. even that idea being brought up, which was in Passon's article, made me think, okay, there is going to be a creative way that this gets solved where

both teams give and take. Because like the players union signed a deal saying that they would just get the pro-rated thing. And I think it's all well and good that they can say, we're not going to renegotiate because when you signed this, you knew the potential for not having fans in the stands. So why would we open up negotiations again? Then there's also the saying that billionaires beat millionaires all the time. And it's 30 billionaire owners versus a bunch of millionaires.

And their henchmen. And their henchmen versus a bunch of millionaire baseball players. So interesting. I think what they're going to have to do is if they, I don't think now that I'm really thinking about deferred money is not enough. It's going to be deferred money with interest. Like that's the only way they can do it. So we will see, man.

We will see. All right. Thank you guys very much for tuning in. Go thank Jeff for coming on the show. And just, no, don't tell him. Don't remind him. But no, anything he breaks in the future, he definitely got from Trout. Should we have our people tweet something fun at him?

Like one of us or Ploof's Posse or something? I don't know, something weird. He's not going to enjoy anything. None of it. None of it. Yeah. That's why it's perfect. Perfect.

Like, would he go drink beers with us? Yes. He's got to be on the clock, though. He's got to bring all three of his phones and shit. Instant tap out. Is he a wine guy, a beer guy, whiskey? He just like...