The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Stanton Trade Swindle With JackO (Ep. 300)

Episode Date: December 13, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by his old buddy JackO to discuss the Yankees trading for slugger Giancarlo Stanton (5:00), Derek Jeter's secret agent status (12:00), the state of the Miami Marlins (17:00), the renewal of the Red Sox–Yankees rivalry (21:00), Shohei Ohtani signing with the Angels (27:00), Mike Francesa's farewell (35:00), and the chance Holy Cross changes its mascot's name (42:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by SeatGeek. That's our presenting sponsor for $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase on NBA tickets. All you have to do is use promo code BSNBA. Perfect gift for the holidays. Once again, promo code BSNBA. Download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast

Network, which has just added the JJ Reddick Podcast, launched Against All Odds, Cousin Sal's Podcast, House of Carbs, Joe House's Podcast, One Shining Podcast with Tate Frazier, and Mark Titus, our college basketball and more podcasts, and a whole slew of others. All you have to do is go to the ringer.com slash podcasts, and you can get all of the podcasts that we have, including this one where we had, um, we did a bunch of them.

Uh, I think we're getting close to 300 for BS podcast for the last 25 months or so. So, um, all of them are on there and there you go. Uh, on Monday night,

Bloomberg broke a story about a lawsuit filed by a former NFL Network employee that alleged sexual harassment against a number of her co-workers at the NFL Network. One of the names was Eric Weinberger, now the president of BSMG, someone who's been on this podcast before. Here's the statement that the ringer gave on Monday night after the story broke. We said, these are very serious and disturbing allegations that we were made aware of today. We were placing Eric on leave indefinitely until we have a better understanding of what transpired during his time at the NFL, and we will conduct our own internal investigation. Unfortunately, that's all we can say publicly right now. I just wanted to mention that here just in case.

It was a story that was covered pretty extensively, and our statement, I think, was in most of them. But just in case you missed that, that was what we said. One of those weeks where we make content as a website and as a company, and it's got to keep going, and that's all we can do is keep going. So we're going to call my buddy Jacko and talk about a bunch of stuff that happened in the sports world today and just keep going here. Well, we're taping this on a Wednesday,

and there's a lot of storylines going on right now that directly affect my buddy Jacko, longtime member of the BS Report, Once Upon a Time, BS Podcast Now. I don't even know where to begin, but I think we should probably begin with the return of the evil empire, which is not Star Wars coming back, but the Yankees. The Yankees have come back. Walk us through your reactions this weekend. It's magical. It's the most wonderful time have come back. Walk us through your reactions this weekend. It's magical.

It's the most wonderful time of the year, and I got a wonderful Christmas present. I woke up Friday, and I'm looking on the Internet, and there was reports that Giancarlo had declined to go to St. Louis and or San Francisco to sit down and talk with them, that he wouldn't waive his no trade for them. And they had the list of the four teams, the Yankees included,

the four teams that were in the LCS last year. And so your mind starts to think about it a little bit. It's like they don't really need Giancarlo Stent. It would be like a wonderful luxury to have, but it wasn't high on their list of priorities in the offseason. And I'm like, there's really no way this is going to happen because they're going to have to part with too many prospects. I'm now at the point where I'm like in love with these prospects

and I don't want to part with them. It's amazing that I've come to be one of those guys, but I am one of those guys now. So it was kind of like you started to get hopeful and you're reading like John Heyman and Ken Rosenthal and all the usual baseball suspects and hearing these rumors and things. And then I was refreshing Twitter far too frequently, and I'm trying to talk myself out of it.

I'm like, this isn't going to happen. And then I wake up on Saturday, and I'm looking at Twitter, and I see they have a deal in place. And I was just absolutely incredulous. It was so exciting. And then the possibilities, you know, you start thinking about obviously Stanton and judge batting, you know, next to each other, back to back and belly to belly, as John Sterling would say, and you're like, my God, what a lineup.

It's just incredible. And the fact that, you know, they gave up Starlin Castro, who I like a lot and some, you know, lower level prospects. Sorry about that one. I'm sure it's been tough to say goodbye to Sterling Castro. I think he'll be fine. It didn't really hurt that much

to part with him. It must have hurt to give up your seventh best prospect and somebody who's not in the top 100. That must have been painful. It was hurtful. The funniest part was after the trade happened in the top 100. That must have been painful. It was hurtful. But I mean, the funniest part was after the trade happened and it looked like obviously the Yankees were allegedly

on his list of approved teams. It looked like it was going to happen. So I'm kind of all excited talking to my phone. So I said to my wife, I'm like, wow, the Yankees just made a big trade for this guy who was the NLVP and he hit all these home runs. She looks at me and she goes, wow, the Yankees just made a big trade for this guy who was the NL MVP and he hit all these home runs. She looks at me and she goes, don't the Yankees need pitching?

Wow. You really trained her. Incredible. She really, you know, she puts up with me watching these games, but she's not like really into it. But she did know that pitching was more of a priority than Giancarlo. So that deflated me a little bit. But then, of course, I moved on. You know, when you read things like the last time the team with the most home runs added the guy with the most home runs was my favorite, got traded. You know, your mind starts to go crazy with possibilities. So it was exciting. It was great. I'm ecstatic. It came out of nowhere and

it's just been huge. First of all, it didn't come out of nowhere because you put your secret agent plant to buy the Marlins. Yes. I love how you didn't mention him. He would trade them to Jeter, the beloved Derek Jeter, the El Capitan. Yeah, disgraced his legacy. Part of that plan, obviously, was to trade him to the Cardinals and or the Giants first and then have him reject that. It was all part of our nefarious plan.

Yeah, he shopped him around to teams that Stanton didn't want to play for before miraculously arriving at the Yankees, the team that, you know, he's one of the most famous Yankees of all time. He's the captain. Yeah. He goes to Florida. They buy the Marlins for $1.1 billion for some reason, reasons that remain unclear.

He has a 4% stake, which I think comes out to like $45 million of his own money. He becomes the front-facing person of it. The guy behind the scenes is somebody who's, as Michael Bauman wrote about in The Ringer on Saturday, has a history of just gutting things. So they buy this team stadiums already paid for because they swindled the fans.

Jeets comes in as the, as the conquering hero, one of the great Yankees, he's going to teach us all about how to win and comes in immediately fires a bunch of long time employees announces that they're dramatically cutting the budget, gets into a stare down with their best player and one of the best home run hitters of the last 20 years, shops them around,

and it just doesn't look like it's going to work out. And then miraculously, who comes to save them? The New York Yankees. Well, at least the Yankees gave up a lot in the trade. Oh, no, they didn't give up anything. You gave up nothing. I still don't understand. the Yankees gave up a lot in the trade. Oh no, they didn't give up anything. You gave up nothing. I still don't understand if you would just sign Mike Stanton

for the 265 he's due for the next 10 years or so, that would have been a great signing and you didn't have to give up anything. I just don't understand how this trade happens. And more importantly, why would you want to buy a baseball team

and then ruin it especially if you're jared jeter and you had this awesome career people like you you leave with respect you move you you you'd start the players tribune which you know i have mixed feelings about the players tribune but at least it's you can point to something and then he does this i don't understand what's in it for him, this allegedly competitive guy. Why is he doing this? Well, I mean, one of the things that confuses me in this whole thing is that Jeter keeps getting all the heat for these things.

Like, you know, back in October, the Marlins got rid of a scout while he was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery or chemotherapy. The guy had been with the team forever, and they get rid of him then. They get rid of Jeff Conine, who's apparently a beloved Florida Marlin, you know, Florida Marlin's legacy, beloved, and they get rid of him. Jeter only owns 4% of the team. How much say does he have in these things? What I don't understand is if he's calling the shots, it's one thing,

and the PR on it has been horrible, and you would think that after an amazing PR career in New York, where he never had a blemish on him, that he would know better how to manipulate the media and present these things in a better way. Or he's not calling the shots, and he's just being put out there as the scapegoat, which is like, why would you pay $45 million to be an escape goat?

Well, I see. I think... And it just looks awful. But we've seen this happen before it hasn't happened as much recently because the rich guys kind of figured it out where you know they would put together these guys would want to buy a team right to famous people usually famous athletes and it's like i'll buy the team um i'll put up four percent of the money you put up the rest and i'll run it and these these rich guys are like, Oh my God, Derek cheaters calling me on the phone. This is great. I'll do it. And then they realized they gave away all the executive power to this person who owns 4% of the team over the course of the

last 10 years. I think rich people realized it's really idiotic for me to own a team and then give somebody else the car keys. So we haven't seen it as much. In this case, I think the guy's name is Bruce Sherman. Is that the guy's name, Tate? Yeah, I think that's what it is. Bruce Sherman's looking at the Marlins as this entity that he can, he's looking at it like a car that just has all these parts. And the parts, the sum of the whole of the parts

is not worth as much as the parts. So now it's like, all right, I'll strip down the car and get down the debt, pay everything off. And then the parts are actually pretty good because you have this really good park. You're in a big city that you've shit on the fans now three different times over the last 20 years, but ultimately 10 years from now, if you keep the budget way, way down and you try to rebuild, maybe this is an asset with all the TV money and live sports and everything. The part I don't get is how you talk Jeter into this.

How you talk Derek Jeter into being like, you get to own this, but here's the only problem. You're going to have to destroy baseball in Miami for the next seven years. I mean, Jeter is a hyper-competitive guy. He's probably the most competitive guy since Jordan. All right, settle down. Settle down.

Settle down. Throw some water at yourself. Tate Frazier just hung up on me. Sorry. Hello? No, Tate Frazier's a Yankee fan. He's nodding approvingly. You're corrupting him.

I thought it was going to be a North Carolina thing that he was going to be bitter that anybody was compared to Jordan, but he's hyper-competitive. No, Tate's the classic. He didn't have a team in North Carolina, so just pick the best team. He just looked at the standings. He's like, who's on top of the ALEs? He's like, who's on top of the ALEs today? I need a baseball team. Yeah, the Yankees.

So he's a hyper-competitive guy. He wants to be an owner. This opportunity obviously presented itself. He lives in Florida, and maybe he looks at it like it's like a house flipper. Like you buy this dog of a house that's riddled with problems. You're going to suffer through the renovation of it, bulldozing things and knocking down things. You're going to build it up. And in five or ten, maybe not five, ten years, when they have hoarded prospects,

and they become like the Astros or the Cubs or the Yankees with all these prospects that now blossom into superstars, and then you're a hero in Miami because you're the guy that brought baseball back. You suffered through the lean years, and hopefully now you're on top and you're at least competitive, if not dominant. The thing that's bad is I don't understand why he would be... He gets murdered in the press

now about getting rid of scouts and cleaning out the front office of popular people. The thing's a mess. They're $400 million in debt somehow. They had a contract they couldn't pay to Stanton, and they can't put anybody around them because they can't spend any money. But Stanton

is obviously a very popular player in Miami since he's the big name face of the franchise. The only reason to go to the park. Right. They get rid of him over the weekend. It's a tough day for the franchise. And then the baseball winter meeting start, and all these reporters that I was

reading were commenting about Jeter didn't even show up in Orlando for the winter meeting, the new face of the franchise. But we still explain things and give the fans some hope. And then I'm watching the Patriots-Dolphins game on Monday night, and ESPN is showing him in a luxury box watching the Dolphins game. Yeah. You don't think that was a good look? That's a bad look for Jeter.

It's a terrible look. I mean, he's got to be better than that to know, like, I just traded this guy. I'm allegedly running this baseball team now, and I'm watching a football game during the winter meetings. What I don't understand is how he didn't get one of the top three prospects that you have. I'm not saying he had to get Torres, but maybe get the number three guy.

And then reading about the trade over the last couple days, you know, not only did the Yankees not have to give up any of their big prospects, but then they got the Marlins to commit to this $30 million payment if Stanton opts into his contract in 2020. And then you read the articles. I don't know if the Yankees are just bluffing because they don't want to make Jeter look bad, but they're like, you know, we talked about it internally. We went back and forth. It's like, what the fuck did you guys go back and forth on? Mike Stanton had 59 home runs last year. He's 28 years old.

We didn't know. We went to talk to Judge and see if he was okay. It's like, fuck you. Of course you were doing this trade. First of all, his name is Gene Carlo. Stop calling him Mike. I'm going to call him whatever. You know what? He's on the Yankees. I'll call him calling him Mike. I'm going to call him whatever. You know what? He's on the Yankees.

I'll call him whatever I want. I'm going to call him Mike for the rest of the year. That's Gene Carlo to you. He's Mike. I think he had the Marlins completely over a barrel. He was calling all the shots. He has this contract that they can't pay. And he refused to go to any team but one of the four on his list.

Well, hold on. Go backwards on that, though. I don't know if the Dodgers were... Go backwards. Wait, hold on. They couldn't have... They... I want to... Before you keep going,

I want to point out one thing because it's really important. Mike Stanton in 2014, there's a chance he's like one of the great geniuses who's ever played baseball. That contract he negotiated is incredible he he basically the marlins like here we want you to stay and he's like

i don't know if i trust you uh what if we do the contract this way and i get an out after six years and i'll take less money these first couple and we'll backload it and I'll give you a chance to be competitive these first couple years and I want to know and I want to know trade clause the entire time and they're like oh what about half the time he's like nope these are my three conditions so he does it and it was like that one of the articles called was saying he was like Nostradamus Nostradamus Stanton because he basically smelled out exactly what was going to happen and then when it came time to gut the team

and trade him he could decide where he wanted to go and what the situation was and it was kind of incredible not only out thought the owner in 2014 but had Jeter over a barrel so anyway keep going with the teams so I mean apparently the Dodgers didn't want to take on all the money,

so they were trying to give better prospects in order to have the Marlins eat some of the contract. And the Marlins couldn't eat the contract. I mean, the Marlins are basically like somebody that owns a house. They can't pay their mortgage, and they have like a $5,000 leather couch. They can't pay for that either. And somebody comes and5,000 leather couch and they can't pay for that either and somebody comes and I'm like, I'll give you 500 bucks for that couch

and you paid five grand for it but you can't pay your mortgage and you can't pay the couch. So if you say no, you're stuck paying for it. Yeah, but here's the thing. Wait a second though. These guys, it's not like the owner had the team for the last seven years.

These guys bought the team knowing this was going to happen. That's the part I don't get. It's like, what's fun about anytime this happens. I always try to look at it like the owner. It's like, what's fun about doing this? There's so many different things you can buy.

You know what? What, why is this fun? Super duper rich. Cause if you're a super duper rich hedge fund guy, you could buy all the Ferraris and all the Picassos that you want. There's only so many professional sports teams. When you're at the country club and you're with Steve Ballmer

and he owns a team and Mark Cuban owns a team and you don't own a team, at least you can say you own one now. Yeah, but wait a second. But hold that thought. Yeah, you can say that, but you're like the guy with the worst asset in the room. You're like, what team do you own? I own the Marlins, the team that just got gutted.

You look like you're a loser. The whole point of owning a team. It's still a Major League Baseball franchise, though, and you figure it's going to be good in a few years, and so you're riding out the rough years, and then you can walk in with some swagger in a few years. But it's still an ego purchase. You buy a sports team rough years, and then you can walk in with some swagger in a few years. But it's still an ego purchase. You buy a sports team.

Oh, totally. You're basically swinging your dick around and being like, I'm a rich guy, and I have a yacht, and I have five giant houses, and I also have a sports team, and here's a sports team. So you're doing that, and then the sports team is this, you know, like the runt of the litter. And you just traded the best player for nothing. It's like, oh, so what team do you own? I own the Marlins. Yeah, we just took 20 cents on the dollar from Mike Stanton. I'm still calling him Mike.

You're not stopping me. The rough part is going to be, obviously, going to games, if you're the owner and you're sitting in your luxury box and there's 10 other people in the stadium with you that are paid to come in and you're continuing to bleed money. I mean, that's why Jeter ought to be out there doing a sales pitch saying, like, look, we have Jelich and we're going to build around him and we're going to

have some prospects or Ozuna if they don't trade him, whoever they're going to build around. I know, it's not great, but you know, you've got to sell it. Like, look, we're going to have these kids. You're going to watch these kids for the next five years. They're going to struggle and they're going to blossom. And it's going to be like, you know,

the Cubs with Chris Bryant or the Yankees with Judge. Eventually we're going to have some superstars. It's going to take some time and let's build it together. You know, we should be out there doing that. Quick break to talk about Go90. From my friend Peter Berg, the creator of Friday Night Lights, comes QB1, a series that takes you inside the lives of the nation's top high school quarterbacks.

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this whole thing reminds me, okay. Plus cheater. We'll get plus cheater. We'll get to show all the fans is 2018 Yankees world series, right? That they'll probably get in October. So is that is maybe that's just what they should do before every game.

Just show them on the jumbotron waving all four rings. This is what you have to look forward to everybody. Is it five? Oh, I don't really count. Oh, no, no, I don't count on nine. You cheated. Tron waving all four rings. This is what you have to look forward to everybody. The five is a five. Oh, I don't really count on it. I don't count on nine. You cheated. Well,

it's a cheater. Oh my God. It's so many cheaters on that team. I've been, I'm enjoying this hate level from you because it means that you're totally broken. This gene Carla trade has broken. It's fantastic.

You're just a, just a ball of hatred and bitterness. And I couldn't be happier. When you traded for Mike, I was really upset, I'll be honest. I know. I read you. It's sweet. No.

Fantastic. I will say. That's what made it all the better, because he was like the number one guy on the radar for the Red Sox. No, he really wasn't, though. We were never in it. We have nowhere to put him. People were calling.

You have nowhere to put him. We have nowhere to put him. People were called. You have nowhere to put them. We have nowhere to put them. We have the best outfield in the league. Best outfield in the league. You don't trade for a DH. We're fine. Oh, my God. And that's what made it all the better.

The Yankees didn't even need them. It was just like adding a fifth tire to a car. It'd be nice to have another tire, but I don't really need it. And then the Red Sox desperately need them. They have no pop whatsoever. All I heard all summer was EEI about how they should trade everybody in the world for Giancarlo, and then he just falls right into the Yankees' lap. It's fantastic.

So good. I don't think he'll be able to handle a big market. I'm glad we avoided him. Too much pressure. Oh, my God. Never played in a big baseball game in his life 28 years old I think he's gonna

fold like a piano uh well at least I at least I now know where that deflator excuse came from he must have been behind that

with the spin zone you got going so the Jeter doing this to the Marlins fans reminds me of our hero Norm MacDonald

when he hosted SNL and he did this thing with the Kenny G Christmas album Kenny G has a Christmas album coming out. Happy birthday Jesus. Hope you like crap. Remember that?

We did that joke for like three years. That's what this reminds me of. Happy birthday Marlins fans. Hope you like crap. We have Yelich. Come see Yelich for $3. Yeah. It's incredible.

By one ticket, you get three free. You've got to make it really bargain. $2 beers or something. There's a couple of variables with this Judge Stanton thing. First of all, to have two sluggers who might not have peaked at his sluggers is pretty incredible. You had 110 homers combined

last year and they might actually together go for more than that um from from a bench clearing brawl standpoint it's the scariest combination of guys i think we've ever had i remember the yankee team that one awesome fight you had with benitez you guys oh yeah the Orioles. That was legendary. You had the completely insane Darryl Strawberry. And then you had Graham Lloyd, the crazy Australian who I think was like 6'3 or 6'4 and then somebody else big was on that team. Who else was on that team who could throw down?

Jeff Nelson was a big guy. Yeah, and was Chili Davis still on that team? No, he wasn't on the team then. You had one other dude. But this is the combo of Stanton and Judge. Judge seems like a super nice guy, but if it ever really goes down, it's nice to have a 6'7 guy and a 6'6 guy.

Well, you know, I was thinking that last year watching the Yankees. I would see them opening day when they lined up, and you had Judge, who's 6'7, but Tancis is 6'8". Chapman is 6'6", and Sabathia is like 6'6", or 6'7". So you didn't really want to screw with the Yankees.

The problem with Chapman is, because he's 140 years old and he can't run, by the time he got out of the bullpen, the fight's over. It would take him three hours to get from the bullpen to the pitchers, man. let the heat flow through you yes well i think the rivalry might be now they had a judge to that oh yeah so our move is machado's kind of out there right he's he's kind of not

really available but he's a little bit available i was watching sports SportsCenter last night. I think Kirk Jim was on there and he was talking about, they're thinking about moving him to shortstop, but he's also kind of available. And I would, I would drive Xander Bogarts to the airport. I'd help him pack. But I also,

anytime you can trade a Hall of Famer, you know, it's pretty incredible. So I would drive Hall of Famer Xander Bogarts to the airport but I do think you know he was hurt last year I do think he's an asset and I think if the Red Sox

were thinking about an upgrade trade and it starts with Bogarts and then you put a couple other pieces in there the interesting part would be like if Machado probably the least favorite opposing player that Red Sox fans have right now, especially because

he took out our beloved Dustin Pejoria and ruined his season. That part would be interesting, but if Machado is going to be out there, I think there's only a couple teams that make sense. I'm not sure the Orioles would trade him to the Red Sox, but my point is if we're going to bring the rivalry... I don't sure the Orioles would trade him to the Red Sox, but my point is

if we're going to bring the rivalry... You're going to have to get rid of Ben Intendi. They'd want Ben Intendi though, wouldn't they? Would you do that? Andrew Benintendi, the most handsome baseball player on the planet, Andrew Ben Intendi? No, I wouldn't do that. Sure.

You're not getting Machado. We can't trade Jimmy Garoppolo and Andrew Ben Intendi in the same year. What are the women of Boston going to do? Heartbreaking. I think for the rivalry to really come back, and it's inching toward there. I don't know if it'll ever be like it was in 2002, 2003. You have Aaron Boone managing the Red Sox now, who just brings back PTSD for every Red Sox fan. Every, every time I heard his voice doing an ESPN game, um,

every time I see his face, it just brings me to a dark place. Um, you have him, you have these two sluggers, you have the fact that Jeter is still a secret agent who delivered this for you. And now if we got Machado who, who, um, I I'll be honest. I think the Yankee fans are afraid of Machado I think he's had a lot of success he's good yeah he's a very good player I'm not afraid of him I'm not afraid in the least guy named Manny we've had success with the name Manny yeah that part all of this excites me I I hope the rivalry is back because there's really no reason to care about regular season baseball other than your own team anymore.

There really isn't. I don't know who's on any team anymore. I just watch the Red Sox. I really don't. We can't, like, Otani went to the Angels, and I didn't know who else was on the team other than Mike Trout. What? What about your fantasy league?

Yeah, I know all the players, but I don't... I don't... It's weird. I know all the individual players in the AL, but I have no idea how they fold into the larger context of success or failure, unless they're playing the Red Sox. I know the Astros... All you need to know is the Yankees have the... All you need to know, really, is

the Yankees have the deadliest lineup since the 27 Yankees, and they're going to be a juggernaut for the next five to ten years. That's all you need to know. Oh, great. I hope the rivalry comes back. Who bats third and who bats fourth, by the way? Well, you know, there's a lot of talk about, like, they would bat Judge second because they want to break up the righties.

But, you know, to my untrained eye, I want to see those two guys bat back-to-back. I would hit Judge third and Stanton fourth if it was me. I don't care righty lefty. I want those two guys. I want like a, you know, Ruth Gehrig, Mantle Maris. I want them back to back. I would go Judge, Stanton. As a non-Yankee fan, from a TV flipping channel standpoint,

if they were 3-4 in some order, it's just one of those, oh, it's the 2-3-4. I'm watching. I might say a 500 foot home run. Absolutely. If you're at the game... I know you were talking about Gary Sanchez, who hit 35 plus home runs last year and missed a month of the season, and has over

the past 160 games, has 50-something home runs. Can I tell you something about Gary Sanchez? Sure. I can get him out whenever I want. For any good pitcher, I'm getting him out. You know it's true.

Save this recording. You know it's true. Save this recording. I'm getting Gary Sanchez out. Gary Sanchez is out. Guy's on third and second two outs. I have the right pitcher. The inning's over.

Mark this tape. All right. Write that down. Save it. Save it. I like it. The inning's over. Mark this tape. All right. Write that down. Save it. Save it. I like it. The rivalry's back. We might have Red Sox-Yankees podcast this year.

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Otani goes to the Angels. Right. I was fascinated by this story because from what I heard from my inside sources, somehow I have inside sources on this one. And I think he's even said this publicly. He wanted to be the only Japanese player on the team. Oh, really? I did not know that.

Yeah. So that just ruled out a couple teams. So Tanaka killed us on that one? Yeah, I think it did. And I think he wanted to be on the West Coast because he liked warm weather. Yeah. I'm not sure he's been to Anaheim, which is basically Worcester with an amusement park. It's slightly better weather.

But it wouldn't shock me if it came out that one of the three biggest reasons was that he really enjoys Disneyland. I'm prepared for this to go in all kinds of directions, this Otani signing. First of all, he's hurt. That seems important. He's got like a sore.

It's amazing that teams knew that, and teams knew that apparently before they all went and made their presentations to him. I thought that was coming out after the fact, but they were aware he's got a bad elbow. Yeah, he's like, well, they're getting shots in it. It's a sore ulnar nerve. It's usually the type of injury that leads to Tommy John surgery,

but he should be okay. It's like, what? Yeah. So that was strange. And his whole value is that he throws 102 or whatever as a pitcher. That's his whole value. I mean, I guess he can hit too, but I'll believe that when I see it. Well, the good news is no Japanese pitchers have ever come into Major League

Baseball and then immediately hit iron problems. So there's no track record of that at all. Yeah, I love his chances. The thought of somebody pitching and then being the DH the other days, I don't think I've ever been more excited by a non-Red Sox anything. It's a phenomenal story. The fantasy baseball implications of this, it is the most exciting thing that's ever happened in the history of fantasy sports

because there's two scenarios one because the way fantasy sport especially baseball and like the crazy league i'm in you just get the pitching stats or the hitting stats so right when my al pitchers in a three-game series in wrigley i don't get his stats when he goes over for four and conversely i don't get the stats of it's a homer um i don't get his stats when he goes over for four. And conversely, I don't get the stats of Yitzhah Homer. I don't get the stats of Mookie Betts pitches the ninth inning. I don't get those don't count as pitching stats. It's always been historically divided. So now you have Otani.

And the question is, do you count him, does he count as one person? Which if he did, it almost makes any snake draft unfair because you take him with the first pick and you're getting potentially a top-notch pitcher and you're getting two top-notch players. If you're in an auction, what's he worth? Could he be worth $75? Would you pay like you're paying a premium for two players? Or do you split him up and make him two different entirely human two different human beings and

one is otani the pitcher and one's otani the hitter and that's just how it goes told me already that in his league they've had discussions and that's what they're going to do they're going to treat him as two separate players which is one team will have otani the dh and one team could have otani the pitcher i think that's's crazy. I think he should count as the same. When is this ever going to happen again? I just want to know what it's like. And I love the fact that fairytale

baseball, as Carolla used to call it, that we're having serious discussions about this. It's like a senatorial decision about same-sex bathrooms or something. Well, now let's hear from Drunk Tommy. Drunk Tommy, where do you stand on this important case?

Here's my decision paper I've drafted. So that part's going to be fun. The not fun part is that he's on the Angels. What a depressing decision. They've had the best player in the league for five straight years. It's like, you know, you go to Angels-Red Sox game, there's 15,000 Red Sox fans there. I don't know.

I think he's going to be a bust. That's my prediction. I'm not just saying that because he didn't go to the Yankees. I was tweeting out things about, oh, next year when they have Glaber and Otani because, you know, all the hype. But I was never really a believer. I remember when, you know, Dice K with the Red Sox, and he ended up being okay.

You loved Dice K. They made it seem like he was like Roger Clemens and Cy Young and, you know, Sandy Koufax wrapped into one. And the gyro ball, and he pitched in this high school tournament, and he's a national hero, a national treasure. Give me a break. Yeah, I think. There's no way this kid's going to be able to pitch and hit in the major leagues on a consistent basis.

No way, no how. And if he does, it'll be one of the most incredible things we've ever seen. We can't lose either way. And I tweeted out this because I read in the New York Post that his teammate was former Yankees prospect Brandon Laird. And how Brandon Laird was singing his praises and his kids would be the best thing in Major League Baseball. And he's going to hit 500-foot home runs and throw 110 and whatever. And then it said,

Brandon Laird has led the Japanese league in home runs the past three years. So, as I said, if you're dominant in a league where Brandon fucking Laird is the home run leader, I don't think they're making your bust in Cooperstown just yet.

He does throw 102, allegedly. Yeah. It's a fun story. Baseball will be fun this year. It'll be cool to see it. Yeah, baseball's going to be super fun, and I'm still just going to watch the Red Sox and maybe flip over the Yes Network

for the Judge Stanton combo every once in a while, which will be immensely entertaining. I was rooting for him to go to the Mariners for some reason. My dream scenario, I kind of wanted, we were arguing about it in the ringer's slack, I really wanted Stanton to go to the San Francisco Giants because that is a team that is

successful but just incredibly boring all the time. And I really like their ballpark. I like watching home runs go out of their ballpark and I feel like it should be a rule in baseball that you have to have a home run hitter in whatever the giant stadium is called now. There has to be a home run hitter

who's capable of hitting 500-foot homers into the water. The guys have to swim in the boats after it. I just want that. I miss it. I miss that about the Bonds experience, so I wish he had gone there. That's my favorite stadium of the ones that I have been to. It's great.

The location and everything. Oh, it's incredible. The size, the layout is perfect. Yeah, and it's fun for highlights. And it's fun when they're in the playoffs because I just like seeing that stadium. That would have brought all the kayaks back and all that. That's true. I didn't even think about that.

He would have been legendary there. Hidden vault into the, into the day. Definitely. All right. Uh, two other topics for us. First one, Mike Francesa leaves on Friday.

Yeah, it's over. He had the, uh, the farewell tour. He did a lot of interviews. Unclear what he's doing next. We,

we, no, but he's doing something. We did. He, he seems like he wants to do a variety of things i offered him a chance to at least keep his nfl picks alive for the next six weeks either on this podcast or we would create a special six episode podcast whatever he wanted

um he could do it by himself he could do with me and uh we posted on fr. He is considering that. I can say that publicly. I was hoping that maybe for my birthday you could dial me in as a third man, just like a cameo appearance, just once. I could appear with you and Francesa. Francesa and I can just talk about the Yankees. Not only does it not need to be your birthday for that to happen, not only am I planning on doing that, I was going to have you do it and immediately start doing your Mad Dog impersonation.

Excellent. And see how confused we could make Francesa. It's the role I was born to play. And Mike would be like, let's hash out how it would sound. It would be like, I read Detroit, their home against Philly. Nick Foles is in there. I mean, Mike Stafford, he came with a big one. He'd be so confused.

Yeah, absolutely. It's weird times just to thought that he's not going to be the guy anymore. And then they're replacing him with this three-headed hosting combo, one of which is Bart Scott, who doesn't even really have any New York ties, which I couldn't. Right. He played for the Jets for like a minute and a half. I just thought they were going to go with, I forget the name of one of the mid-morning shows, but I just thought they were going to promote those guys I forget the name of one of the mid-morning shows,

but I just thought they were going to promote those guys because New Yorkers want to hear New Yorkers. You know? I think that's one of the problems the fan had before they hired Mike and the Mad Dog is they had these guys that were not New York guys. Yep. And they were almost trying to do a national show

and nobody in New York cared about it. Pete Franklin. And I think, you know, exactly. Pete Franklin. And he was from Philly, and he hated New York. And the fans hated him, and it was a disaster. You know, they got a problem with that in their morning show. I'm no radio producer, but on Monday I'm driving to work, and I'm like, oh, you know, the Yankees just traded for Stanton over the weekend.

I turn on the morning show. And because Boomer Esiason is the lead guy and the football guy, they're doing a football breakdown about the Eagles-Rams game. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, you've got to be doing—the NL MVP just gets traded to the marquee franchise in the city, the New York Yankees, and you're breaking down the Eagles-Rams game? Yeah. New Yorkers don't want that. Francesa succeeded for a variety of reasons

One was that He could go anywhere on any topic So if Stanton was getting traded His Monday show is going to be about Stanton He's fully prepared to talk about that He's not pigeonholed by a sport Two is that He had the New Yorker DNA

Thought like a New York fan Hit the same kind of angles and questions and fears and all the stuff that goes with being a fan. He understood it. And one of the reasons he worked so well with Dog, which we've discussed before, is Dog was the outsider who actually didn't like New York and that kind of natural tension really worked. But the other thing with Mike is he, even to the bitter end, like he did his homework.

He still watches sports. And I think that that's something as we've seen different sports media people get older, whether they're columnists or feature writers or radio hosts or TV anchor, TV, whatever. If you stop doing the homework and you stop actually watching the games like you used to, but the people are going to notice. We've seen that infect a lot of people's careers, especially late. I think that was the biggest issue with Rick Riley last decade where he just became this kind of glib 800-word columnist and it was clear that he didn't really like sports anymore.

And people could sense it. And the stuff he was gravitating toward, there didn't seem to be a passion behind it. I think Francesa kept that passion to the end, to 30 straight years. That dude cares. The most amazing thing about him is his recall of sports, too. You could say, remember Game 5 in 1973'll be like you know he could tell you what the count was basically seventh inning on the third hitter you know it's incredible

a guy called yesterday and said i met you at super bowl 22 on radio row and you know you guys were one of the first ones there and then princess had proceeded to go through like like the super bowls from the early 90s and what the radio presence was like on Radio Row. And you can remember all the places the Super Bowls were and who was there on Radio Row. It's an incredible memory. And you know what's really impressive about it? As you get older, there's just more. Your brain's like a garage.

And you just keep putting more and more stuff in the garage. And eventually stuff starts tipping over and things start breaking and you just can't you get years confused i still have a really good memory but it's not nearly as good as it was 10 years ago your memory with especially with stuff that happened with us in college is still amazing to me um but francesa a couple brain cells left yeah francesa is what 12 13 years older than us and still can be like

yeah that's like in 83 when Phil Simms had that rough stretch when they went 0-5 and he threw 4 interceptions no touchdowns

they were worried about him and yeah I think it's going to be really interesting to see just as a city

New York as a sports city who, who fills that void that he's going to leave. Who is going to be? Is it Boomer Esiason? Has he become the voice of New York sports? Is it some writer that I'm not aware of? Is it Michael Kay? I would say Michael Kay is maybe the lead candidate.

He's the afternoon drive guy. He's the voice of the Yankees. He's got a leg up already, I think. I don't know what kind of numbers his show does. Like when Eli gets benched, who is the go-to voice, though? I don't know. I don't live there, and I don't know. It's Francesa now, but I'll tell you who it won't be.

It won't be Bart Scott. Yeah, I think Bart Scott will last less than a year. Yeah, I just don't think – Yeah, that's my question. You can't be an outsider. And if you're an outsider, you have to play a certain role like Dog did and you have to be such a character that you can pull it off. Right. But that's the only way it's going to work. One more break and then we'll come back.

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Step up your watch game. Go to MVMT.com slash bill. Join the movement. All right. Last topic. Holy cross might change its name. We've not talked about this yet. It's,

it's apparently been going on for the last few months. And from the research, the research I've done, it's, it's apparently been going on for the last few months. And from the research, the research I've done, it's, it's stemmed from some students at the school and maybe some other people. And, um, I didn't really get excited about it or worried about it until Tommy

Heinsohn got involved. I thought that was a bad sign. The 83 year old Tommy Heinsohn was upset about it. I'm at the stage of my life where I don't want anything to upset Tommy Heinsohn or Bob Cousy. I want them to live for as long as possible. They're our last link to any sports glory with Holy Cross. They're two of our national treasures. The Cous is 90 at this point.

The Cous went on the record, and he was against it. Dan Shaughnessy wrote a pretty good column, actually, about the pros and cons about it. Dan Shaughnessy wrote a pretty good column actually about... I did. I read it the other day. Yeah, the pros and cons about it. And basically, Holy Cross's name is the Holy Cross Crusaders. It's the last name of the sports team, which whether that matters or not... Tate, how much would you care if they changed

North Carolina Tar Heels? A lot. Tate would care a lot. So it matters, but ultimately you call it North Carolina UNC. We call it Holy Cross matters, but ultimately you call it North Carolina, UNC. We call it Holy Cross HC, but we also said Seders. And definitely Crusaders, Seders was a part of our college experience. The newspaper was called The Crusader. The comedy troupe that people got selected for that did all the sketches at the end of the year that I didn't get selected for and I'm still bitter 30 years later um 25 years later um that was called the crusaders and it's just been part of it's just part of the college so now they're talking about changing it because it's and i'm just i'm reading

from the internet the crusaders a figure gleaned from the bloody medieval conflicts where Christians sought to expel Muslims from the Holy land, which happened literally. I hate the word literally, but I'm going to use it there. Literally it happened in medieval times. Right. Tommy Heinsohn said, this was political correctness,

run a mock. The necessity of this thing is beyond the pale. Get a life, get a life. Get a life! Believe me. And apparently what started all this is that the school newspaper, which you used to be a sports editor for, is called The Crusader, after the nickname for the sports teams.

And somebody learned that apparently the Ku Klux Klan has a newspaper, which is incredible in itself, because I wouldn't think many Klansmen are literate, and they have a newspaper, and that newspaper is called the Crusader. So if everybody got outraged, like, you know, oh my god, we have the same name as the Klan newspaper. Well, the Crusader of Holy Cross was called the Crusader for years and years before the Klan developed the newspaper and before they named it the Crusader.

So the notion that it's somehow tied in with the Klan is ridiculous. And so that led to a whole thing of we have to re-examine what the crusader means, the crusades. You know, Christian knights went to the Holy Land, and there were some war crimes, as we understand them now, that were taken. And the Muslims were treated horribly by the crusaders, and I'm sure there were crusaders that were captured that were treated horribly by the Muslims. But the notion when we call the Holy Cross crusaders the Holy Cross crusaders, that at basketball games or football games that we are in any way celebrating that or reliving that is ridiculous. But the most ridiculous thing I ever saw was in the student newspaper, where the student newspaper and the editorial said that the name should be changed if it offends even one person. If even one person is offended by something, that you should change it.

I'm offended by 20 things a day. But I don't expect everybody to go and change things. I've been offended by three things in this podcast. I didn't like you calling Gene Carlos, didn't like. I'm sorry, I called Mike Mike. But I'm not going to march in outrage. I'm just kidding. But the notion that you could ever have a name or anything in the world that doesn't offend one person is so naive that it's laughable.

Well, we're going back. And your parents ought to get their tuition money back if you have a thought like that. We're going back a thousand years, which a thousand years is a long time. I'm pretty sure everything was offensive a thousand years ago. I can't imagine there was one non-offensive thing that was going on a thousand years ago. Of course. According to my 11 minutes of internet research about this, the Crusades began in the year 1095. A Byzantine Christian emperor was having problems with Muslim armies on the Eastern Front,

and the Pope called for Roman Catholics in Europe to help him out and free the Holy Land from the Muslims, too. Wars sanctioned by the Pope occurred several times over the next couple of hundred years, all known these days by the more modern term, crusade. Now, we went there from 1988 to 1992. Right. I thought the crusader was just a dude, a knight with a sword on a horse.

When they came up with this nickname in the early 1900s, I believe, it was obviously, you know, they were like, well, how about like the knights, or they thought of something Catholic, or they thought of the crusades. Instead of just calling themselves the knights, they're like, we'll make it more creative, and we'll call it the Crusader. And after the Crusades, because

you could have a knight with a cross on the shield or on his armor. And it wasn't meant to be like, oh, this will be good, because it will really bring back the days of slaughtering Muslims. I mean, there was no connotation of that. It was all about the bravery, or the perceived

bravery, or the perceived gallantry of the crusaders of medieval knights. Well, hold on. Just like when the Minnesota Vikings are the Minnesota Vikings, it doesn't mean that they're going to rape and pillage Europe. Well, and also you're going back to when they created this name. America was horrible in a hundred different ways. It's not like they had all the wisdom that we might have in 2017. But you're also talking about a school that didn't even let women in until 1973. It's not like this school has the same kind of, I don't know,

wokeness that it does in 2017. It's just part of the history of the school. It's crazy that they didn't let in women. It's crazy that my dad had the nickname suitcase because every Friday afternoon he packed a suitcase and went to whatever college had girls. That was Holy Cross 50 years ago. But here's what's really crazy.

A crusader was the one who was said to take the cross. Crusaders put a cross on their chest. They ventured east to free, from a Christian point of view, the land where Jesus suffered and died on a cross. I'm reading this from an article on the internet, which I forgot to... I can't remember what the source was. I apologize, but this is just facts. They believed that Jesus had made atonement for their sins by his death on a cross.

At their best, they dedicated their lives to Jesus by embracing his cross. So it's not just that they're the crusaders. The school's name is Holy Cross. Right. The school's on a slippery slope here

because there are people that don't think the cross is holy, don't like the cross as a symbol of Christianity, as a symbol of oppression through the years. Yes. You know, you're on a slippery slope here if you get rid of Crusader because next thing we're going to be the purple school of Worcester. Well, but that's the thing. If you're getting rid of the Crusaders, then by that logic, you should also get rid of Holy Cross. Absolutely. Everything should go

and they should just call it the Worcester Hills Worcester Hills Academy and then it would be like well actually in the 800s people got killed on the hills and we can't have that either can we call it the Worcester Air Air hasn't offended anyone over the years

we checked I don't know where this ends Worcester Air? Air hasn't offended anyone over the years. We checked. I don't know where this ends. Worcester is named after a town in England, and the England have impressed the Irish for 800 years. So I would be personally offended if they named it after Worcester. Let's take this a full level here. We're playing Harvard in football, and we're Holy Cross, and Harvard has jewish fans in the in the in the audience sure what if

one of the jewish fans was offended by that why are we playing a school called holy cross that doesn't that's closing off you know religious thought but what about my religion and like where does this end is my point it's a thing it's a slip it's a total slippery slope and it's going to eat itself and there's no way you can ever do anything in life that or not one for one person will find it offensive and also i don't want to go out of my way to offend anybody we're not going to use a slur of any kind obviously but but there's no way that you can you can have a name of a school or a name of a nickname a mascot of a sports team and not be offensive to somebody. You could name them the Holy Cross Butterflies and somebody would be bothered by that. Like, I think I, and I've been pretty open about this.

I think that it's crazy that we call the Washington Redskins, the Washington Redskins. That's right. And I think that using Chief Wahoo on the Cleveland Indians in 2017 is ridiculous because it's a gross caricature. That's, I think that'sature. And it shouldn't happen. Yeah, these are different conversations. Talking about this, it's like, I just don't know where it ends. And here's the last thing I'll say, and I know you have to go.

There's better ways to spend your time than this. This has been one of the worst years we've ever had as a country. You know, you see what happened in the Alabama race this week. I would just rather see young people use their energies for stuff like that. That's the only thing I'm going to say. With you, Tommy Heinsohn, Bob Cousy, and Dan Shaughnessy all on one side, I think there's only one decision to make here.

It's unstoppable force. Oh, man. Upward unstoppable force. Oh, man. Upward and upward. Go Crusaders. Johnny, I wish you the opposite of congratulations for Mike Stanton. Thank you. I'll take that. I'm going to call him Mike for the rest of my life.

Your bitterness nourishes me. Thank you. Aaron Boone coming off just an electric ESPN broadcast career. I can't wait to see what he's capable of as Yankees manager. Really one of the greats. I'm really going to miss his student analysis during the Sunday baseball games.

It'd be great to hear him interviewed. It'd be great to hear all the ESPN people suck up to him, even if he does a bad job. Ah, Booney! Booney's doing what he can! I know they're 18 and 24, but it Yeah, Booney's doing what he can. I know they're 18 and 24, but it's not Booney's fault. And last but not least,

good luck to one of our favorites, Mike Francesa, the last couple days here. Johnny. All the best in the future. All right. Thanks for coming on, buddy. Talk to you soon, buddy.

Talk to you soon. Anytime. Bye-bye. Bye. That's it for the podcast today. Download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com and make your first

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