Ten Thousand Losses - Tipping Jawns feat. Alex Bazeley and Bobby Wagner

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

In this very special episode of 10kL, Tom and Liam are joined by Alex and Bobby from the wonderful Tipping Pitches podcast. In this baseball-packed podcast your ears bare witness to the beauty of the Philadelphia accent in an atypically erudite discussion about the MLB owners' lockout, Phillies ownership, all while Liam tries and fails to not swear! Then the boys predict (wrongly) that the Harden trade won't happen. Also Tom has covid. Again. Support your local teacher's union, folks! Follow Tipping Pitches on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tipping_pitches Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tenklossespod Leave us a voicemail: 267-371-7218 Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tenthousandlosses

Accused of punching a police horse. CTE! CTE! CTE! Those negative fans. Make himself vulnerable. Go Bears! Go Bears! you gotta think the fanatic's gonna go down to her and give her a bunch of hot dogs or the snowball starting to come they'll boo us but they won't let anybody else boo us hello there everybody welcome to 10,000 Losses, your only labor-centric Philadelphia sports podcast. I'm Tom Payne, who is also dying of COVID.

And with me, as always, is my special handsome co-host, Ye Liam Anderson. And both our pronouns are he, him. And we have on this special regular episode today, two special guests from the Tipping Pitches podcast, Alex Baisley and Bobby Wagner. Hello. Welcome. Hey, guys. Hey. Thanks for having us.

What is a special regular episode? I got to ask right off the bat. I was wondering that as well. This isn't behind a paywall. We're just happy to have you here really yeah we we we've been putting um bonus episodes behind a one dollar paywall but you figure this is a this is a regular special episode because we need to talk about something very important to all of our lives and that is very frustrating the burning dumpster fire that is mob negotiations well i was i was under the impression that we were here to sing the praises of all 30 billionaires who own baseball teams so i'm actually gonna leave uh it's well it's been good good talking chatting nice to adjust the intro uh liam put them on the the wall list just put yeah i would got it got it yeah

like big letters um yeah uh so uh could could you two um introduce yourself for those who might not be familiar with your podcast uh alex whose whose turn is it to do it this time we uh we like to pass the ball back and forth for who actually has to do the very convoluted elevator pitch of our podcast but i can't really remember who's on on the clock this time i i can't either but i'll i'll give it my best shot and you can go jump jump in if if i miss anything okay sounds uh yeah we we host tipping pitches uh which is a a labor-oriented baseball podcast comes out every week. We, you know, the long tail of the podcast has kind of been one that looks at the sport at the intersection of politics and pop culture. And especially over the last couple of years,

the labor element has really seeped in and taken a stronghold as it's become harder and harder to ignore the influence of 30 billionaires over the sport that we love to hate and hate to love. So that's really kind of the gist of it. We've had on players,

we have on reporters, our fun episodes usually involve talking with uh with a lawyer or an academic trust me it's a it's a blast over here and you did have famous guests uh dave from dave from delco called in the one time yes and from his panel van on uh the blue route exactly it was was like music to my ears hearing that accent. It was like I was back home, you know? Suddenly in my voice mailbox. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's, you know, Delco, you could just spot it like... From a mile away. Any actor, anywhere in any interview within the first 10 seconds, I can turn to anyone who I'm in the room with and I can be like, that person is from Philly. Look it up. And they look it up, 100% 100 success rate i've never gotten one of those wrong yeah it's it's kind of the sleeper hit accent that um i mean it's getting more popular these days

there's like like on 95 um there's like ads for uh that those drops you put in water and it's like uh yo philly put these johns in your water and it's spelled water to make it taste to make it taste good like anything the brands have come to ruin it yeah yeah we do the same shit up in boston too or the same thing up in boston too hi alex's grandmother uh they they they're just like you know the r's and places they don't belong uh dropped r's that sort of thing billboards talking like my dad that's that's the what's the worst oh man put this in your water to make it taste wicked good wicked pisser uh yeah every podcast that i do we just evolve into accents almost immediately um alex you want

to share any of your great great accent work you're really i consider you to be more of the accent specialist between us you have a great a great london accent which liam hates the british accent so please jesus christ i absolutely am I absolutely am not going to open myself up to this ridicule. This early on, at least. We'll see how off the rails this podcast gets. Already. We should have a gush. Actually, now I see why he hates the accent so much.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm being oppressed here uh so uh speaking of oppression this this is a little bit of inside baseball pun intended uh um here let me play the drop all right uh we were so there's a podcast that um in the liam extended universe called 10 000 posts and they blocked our podcast account devon i'm coming for you yeah hope he listens to this you just did a podcast with him i know i know i can't believe he would do this to us saying we stole the name we don't we did steal the name oh and well we got to do 11 000 i guess but. Saying we stole the name. We did steal the name.

We'll get to do 11,000, I guess. But I'm not changing the name now. It's the name of the feed and everything. Yeah. Well, the feed is under my... Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, we're coming for you. So watch out.

So I know... One of you is a MES fan, right? Yeah, that's me. All right. So I have a story uh from citizens bank park this year um well i have two stories from citizens bank park uh that tangentially related to your podcast i guess okay at least one's related to the mets um so first time back at citizens bank park this was like i want to say like maybe bay last year

and a guy with a mets mask on just spits on the ground like right in front of where everyone's eating nice and and in in great george costanza-esque fashion i thought of the best comeback after he already left so i wanted to say ah this isn't fucking queens you can't spill on the floor but he was like you know 30 feet away at that point just like running after him yeah i have a joke for you i have a joke for the cardling fences yeah um so that's the first one and the second is uh uh that's just me like like having a captive audience want to talk shit on the mets was it a mets game or was this person just wearing a mets mask it was the mets game you know what it was it was the game right after that this person wearing a Mets mask? It was the Mets game. You know what it was?

It was the game right after that. There was like a almost fight between Jose Alvarado. What's his name? I don't even remember. I feel like Pete Alonzo was involved in this. I don't I don't remember who he actually threw at first, but or who he lost his command to. I should say on the Philadelphia podcast. But yes, I recall that little scuffle that

i was so young then the mets were in first things were good yeah yeah there we had a good job uh booing and what's his name i always is it don brown or dom smith dom smith don't set that one keep on calling tom brown uh dom smith yeah we had a fun time booing him um as you're wont to do in philadelphia yeah uh but yeah so sean do a little which i know you guys have had on in the past uh so my my aunt taught him ccd wow yeah what a special bond yeah and so he's warming up in the bullpen um when he's on the reds and i wimped out to you go yell like yo what's up you know my aunt says hello and so i'm just self-effacing myself here because he probably would have been totally cool um but i got scared of because there's cops around so pathetic i feel like he would have been cool but he might have just ignored you because he would he would have wanted to lock in if he was warming up in the bullpen and getting ready to come in

the game but if you had a chance to talk to him after the game he would have been very cool about it that's for sure yeah oh no wait he's on the mariners now or is he free agent i think he's i think he's technically a free agent he did end the year on the mariners last year after he was cut by the reds well sean do a little if you hear this uh please come on the podcast dm me yeah come on the podcast um and uh yeah barb says hello all right uh uh all right lame you want to move on to the mailbag oh yes uh i i did y'all have to splice this in i just had the window where'd it go oh i have the audio um ready to go in the uh um so speaking of accents we have ourselves a real live uh yinzer oh nice i know you know john from pittsburgh but i do i do like

that he he calls in sometimes at like 2 30 in the morning yes yeah most of his times he calls in it's like 2 3 in the morning i was like what are you doing why are you using us as a sleep aid that's not good yeah um all right let's uh hopefully we'll all hear it and i'm gonna click hey how you doing over at 10 000 losses uhard you ask some more questions. It's your favorite yinzer, John from Pittsburgh. Yeah, I got a serious one for you these days. How do you think this lockout is going to be affecting some of the minor leagues over here? You know, some of us are going to Iron Pigs games here regularly. But we worry about them boys up there, you know, and we worry about them players and them workers.

So what do you think the impact is going be all right hail to pit have you guys a good one jesus wow he didn't drop the h2p at the end i love it yeah he usually also drops the fpsu so uh he didn't do it this time uh well pit cured polio in Penn State didn't so yeah uh yeah I I I feel like I'm I'm out of my wheelhouse on this but didn't financial consolidation from the majors towards the minors screw these guys over quite a bit already uh so I I'm I'm out of my wheelhouse but I just want to say, I love John for Pittsburgh. You guys know far more about this than I do. Yeah. Um, I, I don't know.

Um, maybe I'll have this as a, we'll, we'll segue the story. Guess what do you guys think? Put you on the spot. Um, I mean, so I think the lockout technically does not affect their season at all. Now, obviously, it makes it awkward because they're having to come to work and not covered as members of the MLB Players Association, they don't have any of the same protections that the union has. But therefore, they're not affected by a lockout of the MLB Players Association. So I think MLB actually announced last week that they're going to expand the minor league season while locking out the major league season, which is just, uh,

the minor league season is now 150 games instead of 144, I think 152 games or something like that. So I think that that had something to do with, according to them, something with player development, um, and lining it up more closely to a normal major league season. But yeah, they're, they they're they're coming to work they are getting their below minimum wage salaries

and they'll be there playing games in all those towns iron pigs will be playing i think uh if if a guy's on a 40 man um but it's like on a minor league roster would he be affected uh yes yes he would yeah that makes sense although i don't really it's kind of unclear what happens to those guys then so then are they just like hanging at home then because like they're on the minor league teams the minor league teams are playing and he's just chilling at home i don't know that's that's kind of the confusing part about well it's the confusing part more generally and existentially about why minor leagues are not included in the players union but that's that's a larger question that we try to tackle pretty often on our podcast

yeah um yeah that's that's interesting i mean yeah um that um we'll see because i did hear something about like they're still calling minor leaders to spring training so why uh i i don't know is it just to torture them um i guess to get them in shape for the the minor the minor league season i guess that makes sense i just that feels so rude man like i guess you have to if they're not being locked out that just feels like i can't imagine like going to work in the minor leagues like and the fucking majors are locked out too just like why am i even here man like there's no chance of you getting promoted right now yeah it is it is like this weirdly precarious situation that they're in right because because

every day you are effectively taught to to wake up and scratch and claw and fight for your place at the major leagues and then all of a sudden there are no major leagues so what does that do to like your perspective yeah it's just like if i know that the highest i can get is like single or double a ball like i don't want to fucking be here i mean it's all part of like the dream being a sham right like if the dream is to make it to the major leagues but also this is how they treat you once you get to the major leagues they lock you out the first minute that they possibly can then why are we you know going off like hope and change like why are we not actually paying them a livable wage at each step of the process yeah i mean that that kind of segues to something i've said on this podcast like several times

is is the mlb owners just have this pernicious like shittiness um like more so than almost any other sport um and i'm you know nfl owners are not that much better but the yeah mlb owners are just absolute nhl owners are pretty bad yeah nh, I mean, we had the first canceled season, right? The NHL did. I forget which season, but I think it was the first. For the lockout? Yeah, it lasted a whole season. Hang on.

Doing research. Well, while Liam's doing that research uh i'm gonna i'm gonna kind of segue from the minor leagues to the to the the sort of the the thesis or the topic you know question of of uh having you on today which is why are we fans of the stupid sport and its greedy owners uh-huh like why do we do this to ourselves every year like loving baseball and i'm a little i'm a little more into baseball liam is like i like baseball to me is like you know like an existential you know thing and my hockey is your baseball yeah and you know it's something that i get you know chills over you know if i go replay like the 2008

you know call the world series yeah it was just a big joe buck fan uh well the harry callas calls uh but uh we talked the last podcast about how stairs rips went into the night actually is was pretty good um um you know so like this sport holds so much like you know history and love and yet it is just in the control of these just absolutely like you know i don't want to get too purple prosy here but like you just ridiculously stuck up and you know selfish ownership and and and why is it like this you know like the eternal question yeah the the question that we made a podcast to try to answer um still have nothing nothing foreign change years in i don't know alex you take a stab at this one first i'd love to see how much your answer has changed

because i mean it's it's interesting like we ask ourselves this question. We get asked this question a lot. And I actually think I used to have a much more cynical view on it than I do now. But I'm curious if you feel similarly, Alex. I mean, you know, I think that you guys touched on it in how crucial the history of the game is to the present of the sport today. And that, I mean, that can go in many different directions. Um,

but I think that there is such a generational aspect to baseball. Just it's simply because it is, you know, the, the longest running professional major professional sport right in in the current form it's largely been the same for the last century plus uh and and because there's so much history imbued in that um i feel you know the game feels like it carries a lot of weight you know it's baseball but

it's but it's more than that it's i mean we have been told it's like going to the park with your dad and like yeah right exactly in a way that like and i think not to stop me i think part of it i had two thoughts on this part of it is that tickets for baseball games are still relatively affordable if you're a family of four which like isn't true of any of the other three major sports. And also it was a 2004, 2005 NHL season that didn't get played because of a labor dispute. Anyway, we've gotten our answer. Like you can still go as a family of four and like get a beer and like get a hot dog and not worry if you're going to break the bank.

But I was thinking, and this is uh almost like a just spitballing but i feel like baseball careers like once you're an established star tend to last much longer than like a like especially a like a hockey career with some exceptions or like especially a football career yeah like tom brady is the greatest football player of all time i think not not in the least because of his longevity but it feels like in baseball all these dudes have longevity so like you'll have a father and son where the dad can remember like watching you know that guy playing like single a ball because you're getting drafted at 18 and you may retire for this 22 years that's an entire generation i can remember seeing like albert pujols you know when i was what 12 13 years old yeah yeah yeah and it's and

it's just that right it's it's these memories that you can share with your your your mom or your grandpa or you know whoever it is there is's, there's a real narrative kind of arc to the sport that I think is kind of lacking, not for, uh, for any particular reason, but from, from other sports, you know, we still talk about Babe Ruth to this day. Um, I mean, getting to the second part of the question, like, why do we hit this sport and it's greedy owners? I think it's, it's because the owners are very very good at whipping up uh public opinion in their favor and they've been good at that for for 75 years right i mean going back all the way i'm an ace

fan and i think of uh of charlie finley who was like the owner's owner. I mean, he was a whack job and he thought outside the box, but like whether you loved him or not, you at least had an opinion about him, right? And in recent decades, I think they've gotten very, very savvy at turning public ire towards the players when anything goes wrong and then sitting sitting quietly when when things are going well i think there are a couple things i mean because of what you're describing alex because of baseball being around for so long and meanwhile if you can hear

some background noise here it's because i'm currently in the suburbs and they're of course grinding a tree right around the corner from my house. Anyway, I think that because it's been around for so long, the types of owners who get in to the sport are like the very true blue American style businessmen who are like, I'm here as an investment or like I'm here to capitalize on all of these emotions that people feel around this sport it's like it's like entertainment it's like film it's like theme parks it's like and then and baseball like we can they saw an opportunity the original class of owners who turned it into the profitable sport that it is today i think there's a lot of consternation about the popularity of baseball and meanwhile it's super super super profitable as profitable as it's ever been because it's such a long season and it's on all the time and it has a built-in devoted fan base because of what we're talking about even if that fan base is not the size of football nothing is the size of football right and they saw an opportunity to

be like oh we can we can siphon some money out of this like and you can't you can't deny that they're very good at doing that there are a lot of structural problems as to why they shouldn't be doing that i don't believe that they should be a part of this equation at all but you know baseball owners saw that first and they saw like a community drive towards the sport. And they were like, hey, I see dollar signs here. And we're still kind of like dealing with that decades and decades later. And the players union is still dealing with that decades and decades later.

They started like way behind the game. You know, they had nothing to start out with. And like several like aborted attempts at starting unions, like starting back. I mean aborted attempts at starting unions like starting back i mean you had like the players like way back yeah like you know um with the the mlbpa didn't really exist until when um it really came you know it really came to prominence in the 1960s with marvin miller okay yeah so that's very late yeah yeah and especially when you compare it to like the other you know most notable american unions who who like were getting their largest wins at the turn you know around the industrial

revolution and then in baseball it's like while all these businessmen are developing union busting strategies or anti-labor strategies baseball waits 60 more years for their union to really get any more strength and then all of a sudden you like have a disadvantage and the owners are always going to be operating from you know a a slightly strategic point of view because there's fewer of them so they can afford to like align with each other or they can plan to align with each other a lot better than a thousand players can and then that's kind of like the story of american labor right yeah i mean they can collude they can collude all the time so easily they can collude legally too because they they have an antitrust exemption

which is another right embedded element of this i i was gonna say too uh i i was just looking right before we started recording at uh garrett cole tweeted something about like about the negotiations essentially and about the union and someone was like it's really hard when to to be sympathetic to you framed as millionaires versus billionaires and it's like you like i've said this to corinne i've said this before you have much more in common with lebron fucking james than you do with like whoever owns the boston red sox yeah like that's the thing it's just like this guy was like not born into generational wealth just by his sheer natural talent and ability and getting certain breaks like is he now worth that much as opposed

to like doing all sorts of shady tax shit and you know not paying stadium employees when coven hits on and so forth yeah yeah well yeah uh sorry just step on you there i will say lebron james uh is fully into charter school so as a teach as a proud teacher uh i do have to i don't hate lebron uh but yeah i forgot about that the charter school thing you know he can uh yeah you said it it's sorry i'm sorry again swearing uh oh i'm there's like a 50 chance my grandma is actually going to tune into this i think she's she might just be a dedicated tipping pitches listener i don't know if she listens to the

features so we'll have to be like my grandma who would be like my grandma she's like i don't read curse curse words in books i'm like gram you can't not read the curse word like you can't not decode like i you don't know what it is unless i have a degree in education like i have a master's degree in this and like i know how reading works you can't not read you can't turn it off unless you get like a brain injury and she's like i've been around longer than you and i fucking can yeah yeah basically he's like ah well shit and then you know turns around i think one of the elements that we haven't really hit on, too, is that it's like it's it's so fraught because not a lot of American workers have any solidarity demonstrated in their life. And so when they're asked to show solidarity for players, my girlfriend, toilet paper, that's a real thing.

I have to say on this podcast. OK, so we lost Liam. All right. Please continue. It hasn't been derailed yeah no i mean i just think not a lot of american workers are asked to show solidarity with people that they work with or with people in different industries than they're in and so these conversations always become fraught the fans who are replying i i can't show sympathy with millionaires because i only make thirty five thousand dollars a year whatever they're replying and saying i don't think that they've had have fun editing that out i don't think that they've had any opportunities to

like learn what it would actually mean to show solidarity with baseball players who you actually do like liam said have way more in common with than owners like what owners are not providing anything for your life at all but the baseball players are they're providing you baseball i mean here's the thing is like when when i see fans saying i i don't have a lot of sympathy for the millionaires in this fight. A part of me thinks, look, I get it. In any other context, I probably wouldn't either. And even if you think about baseball players outside of a labor context, I may not have a ton of sympathy for them. Not the most sympathetic dudes in the world. Right. Yeah, exactly.

But what we, what we always have to say is like, yes, that's, that's one dynamic. But if you drop a few zeros from each of their net worth, from each of their salaries, the owners and the players, this is the exact same dynamic between you and your boss it's on a much larger scale and i understand why it's frustrating when you the you know the the working class fan doesn't get to watch baseball but but bobby is like as you were saying there's a lack of like labor kind of literacy in understanding like what solidarity actually does mean and what it

what it means when the the labor is actually going to the mantle for for what they feel that they've earned that's a really that's really frustrating about those reply those reply guys the other thing that frustrates me a lot about the millionaires versus billionaires reply is well like then do you have solidarity with tom the well like then do you have solidarity with tom the teachers unions like do you have solidarity with the nurses unions no no they don't i i exactly of course not oh well but it's not about their net worth though it's about the fact that they don't want to have to think about anything except themselves like people who reply like that they don't and that's what i'm saying is like they haven't had to learn what it means to have

solidarity with other human beings other than themselves and people they personally know i've told the story in the podcast before but uh when the when covid um we shut down in pennsylvania last march um you know and we were we were going virtual uh back in 2020 actually this back in 2020 um that um i go to the beer store as one does like like the day of i'm like all right i'm gonna be working from home grab some beer and you know i was talking to the guys at the beer store i know and some old head like listens over here he's like oh well you get to teach from home now you guys get all this time off for work and all this kind of you get off the summer and all this stuff and i'm like i'm like yo um how much like what do you do like what's your job and he

you know says a bunch of stuff like yeah i work six yard weeks and i was like all right cool do you know what it sounds like the problem is the problem is that i get summers off the problem that you don't have a union yeah i know and he doesn't yeah he did you know it's like oh yeah well i could just talk to my boss and i was like all right yeah whatever dude and you know he walked away but like yeah that's like it's like almost like it's like on this individual level because we're so divorced from we're saying we're so alienated right from our labor that we don't have solidarity and like we're not even allowed to have like solidarity strikes anymore like that's a leak that's technically illegal i mean if none of us do it it's fine but yeah no we get we get you know shit on all the time you know the you see anything in philadelphia kind of kind

of walking it back to our city now philly's a very union town right and you mentioned a union on like you know reddit or twitter or something like that you know like electricians union or steamfit or something and the first thing you hear is talking about how corrupt they are how they get all these breaks and stuff like that that's like yeah yeah you know you're don't hate them like because they have that what you don't have you need to unionize your job and it's hard it's it's hard on purpose you know but yeah we i was uh by by one union gig uh was that i uh i worked for the pennsylvania liquor control board nice uh yeah it was because we have state control in pa as you know and obviously forbidden from going on check this now you get

people who are just like oh you know you you make way too much money for just like selling liquor and it's like blah blah it's like what what kind of fucking attitude is that man like and these are just like liquor store consumers who have the the anti-union sentiment like you have it bred into you in america i think and it's just all these people who you know down to like general motors collapse because they were paying too much in union costs and that's why like you know this and that happened to the g it's like no gm was just making shitty cars in the 80s and never caught up. Like that's what happened. But I feel like it's so easy to see it as like, fuck you. I never got mine. So why should you get yours? Yeah. And then, but then ultimately

that becomes like, then why do we ever make anything better at all then? Let's just never make anything better than like baseball players have it good great imagine if you had it that good with a billionaire who owns your sector you know what i mean like it's it's a very unique labor pool i will give you that they have a very unique set of skills they get paid more than probably they should but that's a conversation that we need to have about capitalism then and i don't really think the billions of dollars that are poured into this industry, which by the way, going to 30 guys are splitting half of that and a thousand guys are splitting the other half. It's a zero sum game. You're not getting any of it.

It's not going back to the club and you're not in it. Right. The owners made the choice for it not to go back to the fan, by the way. Like, it's not like the players got together and they were like, we want to raise prices for fans. That was the owners who did that. Right. And it's not like and there's no like you know i mean green bay packers aren't really i mean they're community owned but they're not

kind like that you don't get like returns on your shares um like which you probably should now that yeah like there's nothing like there's no um there's nothing like that yeah like like like you know philadelphia has done and like stadiums are a thing that i get like boy hot mad at same and um you know they're trying to shit with like redding with the redding uh fight phil's um trying to get the town which is very poor and does not have money to contribute most of the money to build rebuilding the double a stadium back to what you know the new standards are and um but yeah like there's there's just this lack of lack of awareness lack of understanding um so i we kind of covered some of the stuff i want to talk about especially like public perception because i think the thing right now is you see

i mean even like in the post that um i made today with the podcast account there was some guy like oh send it write this petition so that both parties will get to the table and it's like that's all that yeah yeah it's not the player's fault that they're not at the table it is mlb reneging on the promise to come back with a counter and now going to like like asking for federal arbitration and they're doing this because the by the players not responding, you know, not fighting with that, it makes the owners be like, well, hey, we want arbitration. Right.

And it's just that bullshit. Like, see, we're trying, guys. And the players who have effectively like very little power are bullying us around. Yeah. It reminds me of the SEPTA strike from a few years ago where management started appealing directly to the public with like, don't you want to go back to work?

Like, you know, talk to, well, it's not our fault. It's just like, no, it is entirely your fault. Yeah. And I don't want to scab driving my train. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think the federal mediator thing, and maybe we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves if we're going to talk about like how negotiations have been going to this point. But we just spent a lot of time talking about the federal mediator and why it was kind of like a PR sham move from the owners.

But the thing is, it takes a lot of time to explain that because most people don't have, as we talked about, first-hand experience with the union negotiation in which a federal mediator was a part of. I've been in a union negotiation where a federal mediator was helpful. So my first thought when I saw this was like, oh, this could be helpful. But then it takes the extra step. It takes the extra effort to learn, oh, MLB and the MLB Players Association have a tortured history with using a federal mediator in 1994. And that federal mediator was appointed by Bill Clinton, who is Bill Clinton. And that federal mediator did nothing for months and then made a shitty suggestion that the players wanted nothing to do with. So why would the players sign up to do that again?

That was their experience in the past. But, you know, it takes less time for the owners to say we want a federal mediator for help period and then most fans just internalize that and then it takes the extra effort which the media is not going to do like most mainstream media is not going to go the extra mile to explain why federal mediation is not wanted by the players and i wish that they would but they didn't you know they just had that opportunity to do it last week and i didn't see a lot of people talking about that right but local news definitely isn't doing that i mean oh absolutely not it's just well

they're still not talking to each other yeah oh but they will they will play a a goddamn draft kings ad now during door like on panel six news they literally do it's the worst fucking thing in the universe it takes up like the bottom third of the screen i hate it so much that shit should be illegal man go go back just make sports betting illegal again or actually make it legal but if you talk to anyone about it you get the wall i i would i would say that the league man like in an ideal universe sports betting is legal but because you take it out of like bookies and shit but that the teams can have absolutely like nothing to do with it otherwise just just uh put pete rose in the hall of fame then you know like

yeah why uh you know i mean john he's a giant jerk you know yeah but but but if you're gonna have you know what was it the cubs are trying to put in a uh like a betting uh oh yeah the sixers they're building a sportsbook yeah the sixers the sixers have one at uh wells fargo that's gonna that's gonna something's gonna happen there's gonna be someone loses out big time and there's gonna be someone throws a you know a can of soda dwell and beat or something like exactly. And they just don't care. Yeah. And I mean, it's already been accused in the NFL.

I mean, it wasn't directly tied to betting, right? But the Brian Flores thing, if he's being paid by the owner to lose games, then he's throwing games. You know, like the team is throwing games, which it only takes one more step for sports books to monetize that and for it to be completely corrupt as opposed to just normal to everybody normal everybody else corrupt i mean we see it we see it with like fantasy sports already as like a precursor right i mean athletes will post screenshots of the the awful things that oh yeah oh you went you won't oh for four with four k's today i needed this you you know like insert slur here right yeah and then you start to think about okay when people have tens of thousands of dollars on the line abuse of the athletes sorry is gonna go up and

yeah just the the chances of some sort of corruption in this process is like like it's gonna happen eventually it's an it's a when not if, like it's going to happen eventually. It's an, it's a, when not if it's way easier to catch someone. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I was going to say. It's like, especially with,

you know, I don't know what the, are there any agreements on like how to split the money gain from gambling or does the league not take it? Or I think it's a bigger question in other sports baseball doesn't have a salary cap so there's no oh right a salary cap or a salary floor so there's no like percentage split that is required within the cba but in basketball yeah it has to be split by whatever their cba dictates i think it's like 52% of the owners, 48% of the players or something like that.

I'd love to find out that someone like the shittiest umpires are on the tank or something like that. Well, that was, there was an NBA ref that was on the tank, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And that was before sports betting was even legal. Now that you could just have a phone call with the sports books. They could have an app in their phone. They could be clicking you know the balls and strikes counter on one hand and then yeah oh we have very little time so do you want to talk about tom specifically uh philly's ownership as a microcosm of the game at large yeah i was gonna make a joke about sean barber being one of the worst umpires i've seen in real life but we'll we'll move um to to philly's related ownership shit grievances um because because we have a we have a grievance with um john stupid money aka money bags middleton the majority owner of the philadelphia phillies where's my bullpen John where's my

where's my left fielder where's my center fielder where's my playoff appearances where's someone to compliment Bryce Harper in his prime because this is like a big thing here is that we're like you know

Philly sports talk radio where, you know, Delco Dave calls in. And one things I think that the listeners get right when they call in is that Middleton is afraid to go over the luxury tax and is wasting. I mean, we had an MVP, an MVP, literal MVP and Cy Young year, or Cy Young caliber year, you know, from the Phillies. And we still didn't make the playoffs. So.

Because to him, he's spent the money already. The win should come naturally. Like, that's got to be the logic, right? Like, the Adam Haseley breakout is coming soon, I swear. In OTP, he ends up he ends up uh the last time i played in otp uh uh philly's franchise he ended up becoming like just you know perennial gold glove i was like oh i wish i could make this reality and then nick maytime uh left to go play basketball sure yeah of course naturally yeah uh but but yeah so so is this like a you know i paid i got you the guy kind of scenario or is this is there something else that we're not seeing here

i think it's i mean i think it's interesting when like middleton is an interesting case right like it's an owner who's pretty recently acquired the team i don't remember what year it was but it's it's not it's like still new and interesting to him presumably like more interesting than his family's cigarette business was or whatever he like however he got his 3.4 billion and comes in there's a lot of talk about how much money he has he's like on sort of like the middle to upper end of wealth but he's also like a perfect case for when alex and i talk about like owner wealth and owners personal finances have nothing to do with any of this stuff like no owner is spending from their personal money, with maybe the exception of Steve Cohen now,

because he's an office rocker. But in a good way. Like, all of his other Wall Street shit aside, like, the fact that he's maybe going to spend $300 million on the Mets is like one of five good things that he's done in his life. But Middleton, like,

being so afraid of the luxury tax makes no sense to me in a way that like i do wonder if these teams it's just like accepted that they're not supposed to go over the luxury tax and if you do you're really not supposed to do it for very long otherwise the other owners will start to lobby and put pressure on you and owner and you don't want to do that like you don't want to betray your owner class they actually have class consciousness when it comes to this kind of stuff and so middleton is like i don't want to like pay the tax because i'm i don't want to like fork over that money but also i don't want to pay the tax because the other 29 guys in the room don't want me to pay the tax like and that's why we see so few teams go over and the teams that we do see go over they go right back down underneath after right because the red socks went over and won a world series he got penalized whatever pick i then immediately started

gutting salary like they were the fucking rays it. It was like, we have a core that could have won at least another one. What are you doing? It was just like, here, you got your shiny bobble, you got your World Series trophy. Now be grateful as I cut apart the team that won a World Series. It sucked to watch. The big thing that confuses me

and maybe I just haven't thought about this long enough, but if you're in it to make money right yeah having a dynasty is going to make you like it's going to be a return on investment you know and i mean maybe i'm wrong on this you know maybe it's like well i'm making money anyway so or do they not even care about making money? Like, I think at this point, the market is so detached. They're just waiting to basically sell the team for the highest price.

They're detached from winning, but they're almost detached from it. Cause you could win. I think it's so fucked up now because messed up because you get money with or without a winning record. So like what incentive is there to win besides like not pissing off your fan base but like these guys are so detached from reality they don't care about the fan base like alex that's what rob mains told us or like that's what when we had rob mains who's a writer for baseball prospectus who is a former like financial analyst who now writes about baseball and he does a lot of writing about how owners make their money and why they act the way they act and we had him on and we were basically like, hey, this is our work cited for when we're

talking shit about why owners do what they do. Can you answer some of these questions for us? And we were like, what happened to the idea of a loss leader? We're like, you spend money, you go over the tax to try and win so that you can do what you're describing, Liam, is create a dynasty, make it more valuable, and then sell your franchise for more. And I think somewhere along the way, and I think you can make a pretty convincing case that it was Moneyball to the early 2000s. But a lot of owners were doing this before Moneyball, but it became the dominant ideology in the room is that somewhere along the way,

owners realized they can save money year over year so they can pocket 30 40 50 60 60 million by not spending that on payroll because they're not telling anybody how much they're making in revenue they're not like being honest and disclosing those numbers team by team they're only doing it league wide right and also the franchise will go up in value so they're like winning on both ends and they're like well as a business person i have to make that decision because i'm an animal like that that is just i'm a simple creature who only knows how to make the choice that will make me more money i'm a small small being who has anxiety please do not pay attention to my net worth but like bully john middleton now but like that's the thing is like i i it this the philly situation feels like more complicated than that right because it's obviously yeah that's the thing is like I I this the Philly situation feels like more complicated than that.

Right. Because it's obviously. Yeah, that's it. It's not like an A's situation where they are just trying to cobble together the best team they can with an 80 million dollar payroll and just try and luck into a playoff spot. Right. Like they went out and got Bryce Harper. They went out and got Zach Wheeler. And it seems like they have tried to field a somewhat competitive team over the last few years. It just hasn't been successful. But you don't really see them trying to build off of that. It's kind of just like, well, we made our moves. It's going to happen eventually, right? One day, Bryce Harper will have his MVP season again. we made our moves right it's it's gonna happen it's gonna happen eventually right one day bryce

harper will have his mvp season again you know and and it's like that's you need to compliment this isn't basketball you need to compliment your stars yeah with actual good role players who can who can provide support sensitive subject though alex joel and bead need some good role players too though we're on a philly Philly podcast like we got it yeah anyway uh we're already mad about that the Phillies are really I mean it's interesting it's like a half built team you know

but Middleton I mean I'm not gonna like you know disprove any of your feelings or anything about Middleton because I agree with what you guys are saying and that it's ridiculous that he hasn't gone the extra mile at least gone up to the luxury tax like why stop at 190 why not stop at 210 it doesn't 20 million dollars can get you a lot of other stuff particularly bullpen pieces since that's what the phillips have needed for years it's really weird that they won't do

that but on the other hand the flip side of this coin is just why it's so confounding middle the way that middleton and the phillips have acted for the last five years is that they hire dave dombrowski who is like an all-in guy who's gonna spend money and who's gonna do that stuff so when we did our least terrible owners draft which is very tongue-in-cheek the tongue is all the way in the cheek when we did that episode a few weeks ago yeah uh our friends jake benson jordan schusterman selected john middleton as one of the least terrible owners in baseball because they will do stuff because he will do stuff like that and because he's not completely broke and because he you know will spend at least 190 which is better than a lot of guys right now i just think that there's a lot of factors that are sort of mitigating that like that he won't let that like it's not

en vogue for teams to spend way over the luxury tax on a sustainable way i guess if you're an owner it sucks to hear that's not good enough, but like, that's not good enough. We're not even making the fucking playoffs. I agree. And the idea of like commitment to the team is completely divorced from winning right now because the rays win, but their ownership doesn't commit to the team and the Phillies don't win,

but they kind of committed by signing Bryce Harper and Zach Wheeler. So like we need to pull those things closer together again, which I think is what the players association is trying to accomplish in bargaining right now. It's like losing needs to stop being financially incentivized so that we can care more about winning and get back to fans. Like give back to the fans who are paying so much money to come see our games.

I've had this proposal for, for a while. That's sort of my nuclear option for american sports which is that attacking should be punished by like your draft picks should get taken away and shit like that and if you continue to be a team like the jets or someone where every year you're just hopelessly incompetent eventually you're forced to sell the team. I know it'll never happen, but I can dream big. I was just like, no, if you go like in football, if you go fucking freaking four and 13 every year for like five years,

like somebody's head's going to roll. And I mean, literally. And the fans get to go down to MetLife and use whatever implements they want. And the owner has to have a nice time. Oh, I mean, I'm kind of I'm kind of on board with that. Yeah. And you're not going to get that. We got to get that guillotine they have down in Puerto Rico whenever they protest stuff in San Juan. Roll that one out to the square. I think abolish the draft is a completely reasonable take for what we're talking about um but in baseball it's not quite as perfect to fix tanking because

the those draft picks don't pay off quite as quickly and so i think owners often owners and gms and front offices whatever stat people they often make the case that like it doesn't even matter if we get the first overall pick because the baseball draft is so weird so yeah and you uh how many rounds is it still like 32 or whatever it was 40 and now it's what 25 is it yeah yeah i think so yeah i mean yeah and it's like it's the same thing in hockey because you're just you're drafting guys who aren't going to be like meaningfully good at hockey for another seven years unless they're like like sydney crosby or alex ovechkin and there's not usually more than one of those guys a decade not like even a year i mean we were all drafted in the 40th round um they looked at my middle

school uh walk rate you know that was pretty pretty good yeah that's a big country that's big country tom pain everyone i saw alex's uh little league change-up which has been much discussed on tipping pitches it was it was a fastball at the time although in retrospect yeah just really dropped off the table but not by any doing of his just kind of gravity got to it i will say i do appear uh i think i've told the story but i i'm not i don't know where you guys have got to it i will say i do appear uh i think i've told the story but i i'm not i don't know where you guys have got to go now um but i appear in a hype video for a clemson prospect i like on the word on the bad end yeah on the receiving end of the clemson prospect this boy was like six six and probably like 320 330 and there's a video in his

like high school like highlights mixtape of me getting i don't think he went anywhere the president he ended up going undrafted but he he just absolutely fucking flattens me like i'm a big boy what are we talking about here football okay i was like was this baseball are you playing first and he's rounding first like yeah you know how it is just slides into me i can't remove from this earth you got drowning pool with the bodies of the floor play and it's just like like him plunking you like illegally we're just hitting you in the face like brace harbour got hit oh that was it was brutal i'd like sometimes like when i need to humble myself i go back and watch that oh god no thanks i just i just go back and listen to one of the first episodes of this pod oh yeah okay things do get better alex and i's first couple episodes were like so we got into

the studio we started when we were in college you guys have a studio no we started when we were in college so we were at our college radio station it's where the show began um and now we record from home but we would like get into the studio and be like so what do you want to talk about and then the other person would be like you know there's a lot of good short stops these days maybe you want to just do an entire podcast talking about how we like the short stops that are in baseball and uh our show has since taken a much more refined direction i would say there are there are episodes of early podcast early versions of well there's your problem that are that are like borderline unlistenable yeah yeah my first mic with my first mic yeah ah that's not true thanks tom it's all right well that's that's why you guys sound so good because

you have like the college radio experience there well yes and then also i went into podcasting in my actual nine to five professional job too so i i learned a lot in in that crash course that is being an american worker sorry yeah mood oh yeah i forgot you were dying of covid yeah uh thanks for coming on you guys were fantastic yeah thank you guys for having us so much um i'm sorry i have to cut it short because i have to make it to a dinner in good old king of prussia at 7. Oh, where are you going? I actually don't know. I wasn't the person who selected that. I'm just showing up. But thank you so much

for having us. This was a lot of fun and we'll have to do it again sometime. Yeah, we'll have to get us back on and dive deep into some, you know, maybe when there's a season. If and when there's a season. Yeah, that's right before this we we hopped on i because you guys are a philly sports podcast you just caught me googling like

philly's roster like who's even on the on oh yeah bryce harper is he's still in in the three hole right that's it he he plays every position uh jt real muto um alex bohm yeah who i like but is i like but is terrible um i have to say before before i hop off here just how much i miss zach wheeler and how happy i am for you guys that you get to watch him every stud five days he's an absolute stud and um enjoy him the mets earned it though they let him walk and they didn't regret it at the time thanks brody van wagon and thanks noted player agent not gm brody van wagon i forgot oh god i forgot about oh and we enjoy when he makes Mets chase to that Nancy Toosie. All right. Thanks again, guys. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you so much, guys. Hey, yous. It's Tom here in post. So at this point, we let Bobby and Alex do the pitches, go get their dinner and whatnot out in the wilds of King of Prussia. Thanks again for them to come in on the podcast. Definitely check them out. It's tipping pitches. Like we said,

it's a great podcast. I'm a big fan of it. And preface this year, you know, segment coming up where Liam and I talked about the rest of the four sports. We clearly recorded this before the big news today. Ben Simmons, Seth Curry and Andre Drummond, and two first-rounders from the Sixers, going to the Nets for James Harden, Paul Millsap. We did not think this trade was going to happen.

You know, we thought it was kind of just rumor mill stuff. But it looks like it did happen. Liam and I talked about it. Kind of begrudgingly okay with this i think liam's a little happier than about it than i am but we gave up ben obviously you know that was something that had to had to happen but um seth you know i'm kind of sad to see him go but we are getting another perimeter shooter james harden drummond we do love our big, large hero ball guy, but it is what it is. So hopefully Harden's going to be a team player and we won't have any issues.

And we're all in, guys. We're all in. And maybe we will get Joel Embiid dunking on Ben Simmons as a buzzer beater to send us to some round of the playoffs or to some higher seed. All I know is that Ben's first game back in Philly. I would be surprised if he plays because it's going to just be absolutely insane. All right. Sorry for my rough voice again. I'm still this is a day later.

I'm still recovering for COVID. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. Oh, they can still hear us. That's all crap. I heard they eat their own poop. I can't say anything about poop today.

I'm not going to share the story. No, you should. It was funny. I laughed at your pain. You're Tom Payne. Where's the drum And I laughed at your pain. Yeah, you did. Your Tom pain. Oh, where's the drum? All right. All right.

So why don't we. So that was a lot of Phillies content for you guys. And I'm sure some of you who are not the biggest Phillies fans might be mad. Might, you know, you can,. You can just be mad all you want. I guess we could talk about... Do you have anything for Super Bowl preview? I think we kind of covered that last week. I don't know. I'm just going to go off feelings on this one, which is that

I think it's probably going to be the Rams. What I saw in that titans game like they allowed like the titans beat themselves not the bangles beat the titans in that game they sacked burrow nine times and the fact i mean obviously losing a game in which you sack a qb nine times is basically organizational malfeasance yeah uh but i i just think like even with jamar chase i think the rams are probably a little too stacked for like and i think it'll be a close game but i think you have much more playoff experience you have sort of a group that knows its role a little better i think it's probably gonna be the rams in a tight one uh i want the bangles to win obviously i think we've made that very clear here but i just

i sort of don't think they have the juice to sort of put themselves over the line if that makes sense yeah i think it'll be a fun game though i think um yeah it'll be uh oh it'll be a... Oh, it'll be fun, I think. I think there's a very good chance that it's like, you know, I'm hoping for a shootout. I'm not really... I know I'm not really going to get one, but I am hoping for one. Yeah, that's the best option. I don't want like one of these like 10 to 3 kind of...

Like Super Bowl 53 was just grinding misery. Yeah, just absolute trash. Yeah. But yeah, I don't think there's anything in eagles news that we haven't covered um or any new commits to to uh the temple the temple uh but we do have nba trade deadline mania the Oh, the rumor mill. And the Harden rumors right now are like the biggest. They're out of control, dude. And I don't think it's going to happen. I will be shocked if it happens.

No, I think the thing is that like, you know, there's these rumors going around where packages don't look anything like each other, where it's like, oh, it's Harden for Simmons one-to-one. No, now it's Simmons, Matisse-Thibault, and a first-rounder, and Seth Curry for Harden for Simmons one-to-one no now it's Simmons Matisse Thibel and a first rounder and Seth Curry for Harden which is insane and just like I'm a believer like I I understand this is gonna sound very critical to LB in a way I don't want it to be like I understand the big man's window is closing like in I think in a lot of sports you don't really know the window was even open until it's closed right i have said to karen and i've said before that i don't believe this sixers

roster as currently constructed can win a title but i think in a couple years if you left the like you have to get ben's salary off the books essentially yeah but like if he if i could like wave a wand and make ben simmons salary hit disappear like that's what i would do but like training for harden who's like a very needs the ball in his hands at all times like and i understand that he's still like a very lethal shooter but like i just i don't see harden and beat i see them getting to the eastern conference finals and losing in the eastern conference finals with harden or without with harden with harden yeah yeah and and the things that you have to give up for hard it's a mortgage the future of

the team i i don't like you know i think i think matisse is not an option tyree shouldn't be meaningfully yeah he definitely is he's he's no he's he's going to be something special yeah and you know give him a year or two you know he's ready to come so he's playing so far above his level um you know you don't want like a you don't want to get perimeter guard like Tease. You don't – and with Curry, I mean, again, there's a perimeter threat. Danny Green is playing well. They click right now. I mean, even Tobias is playing a little better than he has been so far. There's a good unit together, and i think you need to honestly i think

the best thing is add someone in free agency like get dump in right at and add someone in free agency i think that's probably it i because i think if maxi continues to progress sort of at the rate or maybe a little above the rate like yeah that dude is special and matisse plays like harden doesn't play defense as we know that was sort of my criticism of like trying to trade for dame too is that okay but dude can't really play defense and the sixers identity is a very defensive team doc rivers is a very defensive coach like yeah this is not going to be a team, I think, with Embiid or without him, that wins games 140 to 130 every night. Right. Like, the Warriors can do that,

and they have two of the best shooters the game's ever seen. Right. Yeah, yeah. I think it's, like, the Harden thing is, like, just one of these, like... I'm just sick of hearing about it at this point. Last-ditch sort of, oh, you know, we got to go all in. And I find it. Go ahead.

No, go ahead. I'm very, always very critical, probably like overly so. My knee jerk reaction to, oh, we're one piece away, which is sort of like certainly what Flyers management seems to believe is like a curse of this city that like we're just one piece away like if we just had this one piece we'd win a title like well we've had the current lineup before and they never gotten out of the second round like why should i believe that like harden is the answer like it's not that this team doesn't

score enough really it's just that like the roster depth isn't all there. They gave a lot of money to Tobias Harris that they probably shouldn't have. Oh, yeah, that was a mistake. Yeah, and to me, that's the worst mistake Sixers management basically made, irrespective of drafting Markell even, was that choice to let Butler walk and give the

money to Tobias Harris I think will haunt this franchise for a long time yeah I yeah I think I think I mean even now if you took Jimmy Butler and put him on the team it's a uh it's an LA finals caliber just with him as the addition to shooting guard like that's just his ability to like make his teammates better by I don't know what he does but that Jimmy Butler secret sauce works yeah that like

I don't know like you know that psychopath energy it's going to be like you know but you need to have it like at least one dude on your team needs to be a dead-eyed competence like super competitive sociopath and i think that's why him and beat got along because they're both very into being just intense competitors right yeah i'm like i will say the like i'm and i'm sympathetic to Ben man but like the story that came out about oh basically Doc Rivers

wasn't nice enough to me I'm like I understand you're struggling but at the same time this dude's job is to like field a competitive basketball team and if you're not willing to do that that's that's fine go get another team but like what you're doing now is truly only hurting your own like value and yourself yeah yeah it's not like this oh the dude's soft or whatever bullshit nonsense but uh we talked about shaq last week which yeah and i and i realized i think that he was um doing a i think he was making fun of simmons with the glasses yeah because simmons got an nf nft profile picture with him with those same shades of course he fucking did so i think that was that was shack just being like a troll um but yeah no like that they're soft or whatever like i'm done

with that like because they they they never say that about white players right that is a criticism that only like no one calls like alex caruso soft right or whoever that is only for black players and very harmful weird interpretations of what a masculine man should be yeah you know and they talk about entitlement and stuff like that well it's the same people that called like i will say they do say it about white football players because people called lane johnson soft i'm just like that man could bench press your whole family and then eat them and you know he was you know um i mean my my i'm gonna make if i'm gonna be on the side of what a real man is whatever it's gonna be a guy who's open about his struggles and pain and that's what lane johnson is and um

i don't like saying stuff like that to begin with um we're gonna start a you know the philly manliness podcast where we uh um where we read jordan b peterson and uh i'd do a bunch of benzos and just see what happens to us um well have you ever read his book have you ever like looked at it no i refuse to um i looked at his his maps of meaning like being someone who's kind of familiar with the whole um you know monomyth thing you know and you have to be on benzo's to understand what he came up with yeah oh man it's it's it's you know cool yeah uh the guy's wearing too he's wearing like a waistcoat like come on just stop we wore tux to be on uh rogan so yeah and uh he can't shoot a gun to save his life no hell he was i don't know if you saw that picture with the night vision goggles on

indoors with the light on um it's like, yeah, I did. I did. Yeah. You don't know how to shoot, dude. Which is fine. Which is fine. It's fine. You know, but me as someone who's pretty, you know, into,

into that and has taught many people how to shoot. Whoever's teaching them does not give a damn about him. Anyway, you know, we're getting. Getting in the weeds. That's fine. Getting in the weeds. That's fine in the weeds. My brain is foggy. The Flyers play the Red Wings tonight. The Flyers are horrible, although they did win against the Jets.

And they hired Danny Breer as the assistant GM. I saw. It's not going to make a difference. This roster is trash. Trade Claude Giroux. That same message I have and actually sell the team that's a that's a new one for me but sell this team please give it to me give it to me sell it oh please give it to liam because then he's going to hire all of us ah that my gm will be bras

when it was not that much about i'll do that i'll do i'll do the beer uh selection oh yeah that's it's i like that well we yeah you know um have some weird like you know just a pint of some weird wow i've never heard of english bit uh english bitters at a hockey game. Half labat blue and half fruited sour. Yeah. Every guy's walking like, I'm Munich Dunkel here, Munich Dunkel. Oh, I could go for a Dunkel.

I can't drink right now. I know. Why don't we wrap this bitch up? Make dinner. I'll skip the union talk. The union union season starting at the end of the month excited uh yes and you're going to be watching it yep we're going to go down and we're going to start in the antifa ultra club uh oh we missed temple for time but uh they're still not really that good temple football is making me believe again more next week yeah we'll we'll go back more

we'll have our super bowl recap um next week um uh our reactions to the hardened trade that's definitely not happening no i do i am i am interested you know to see what what'll happen um all right he's gonna go to the nets for Lillard just to piss off Philly fans. That would make me laugh. I would love that. That's what I'm, I'm leaving that into existence. Well,

isn't he already on the Nets? Who, Harden? Yeah. Yeah. I was talking about Dame. Oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Oh, brain is working real good right now. Brain bug. Oh, yeah. Want to get to the interesting fact that we found about Father Judge? Sure. Why don't you read that one to me? Why do Father Judge grads keep their diploma on the dashboard?

Because it doubles as a FOP membership. Critton almost got ran off the road by a cop today. Going to work. Sounds all right. It's awesome. I love this city. They're too busy, you know, not prosecuting anybody. They're not pressing charges because Krasner.

And that's what they blame it's i mean the phillies got a a low-key police strike going on right now yeah exactly uh they don't want their jobs but that's fine no no and i'd rather they don't do their jobs honestly abolish the police you need something else um uh plugs so definitely listen to Tipping Pitches. Thanks to Bobby and Alex for coming on today and making us feel a lot less intelligent about everything.

Yeah, I feel pretty dumb now. Very well-spoken young man. And so go listen to the Tipping Pitches. Great podcast. They go into depth to all these things regularly.

Listen to WTYP. They just put out a great episode on bike commuting. Thank you. Let's see. Listen to Lions Led by Donkeys. Yeah, listen to that. Second episode of the Romecast is out. Oh, I can't wait.

I'm very excited. Don't listen to 10,000 Posts because they blocked us. Yeah, fuck them. Come for you, Devin. Devin, I was going to make a joke about how we would play like Welsh cricketers or Welsh rounders or whatever weird baseball thing is, you know, to see who gets to keep the name just out of a joke. But again, blocked. See how it is. Listen to, I guess, what?

The rest of the extended Universe, Trash Future, etc. Kill James Bond. Hell of a way to die. We got to get them on to... What's his name on to talk? Francis. Yeah, Francis on Talk About St. Louis. Anyway, so that's it.

Like us on Apple Podcasts. Rate us up wherever you get. Just give us five stars. Don't give us anything less than that we will come for you and send us dms or leave a voicemail and if you don't want to be a feature i had someone asked me this if you don't want to be featured on the pocket like you want me to play your voice just you could tell me i won't play your voice or say your name whatever like like we got you uh other than that i think that's it goodbye Billy, fucking Billy, no one likes us, we don't care.