The Bill Simmons Podcast - Urban Meyer, the Little League World Series, John McCain, and the Red Sox Swoon with Mark Titus and JackO | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 406)

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks with Mark Titus about his love for the Little League World Series, then he weighs in on the Urban Meyer–Ohio State issue. He then talks about athletes dealing with depression and other mental illness and how sports may respond to more and more people speaking out (4:00). Then Bill calls up his buddy JackO to talk about the recent Red Sox swoon and Bill's trip to Florida before they remember Senator John McCain (1:00:03). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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how his quads are feeling. Ryan starts dual threat. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, on Spotify, I have been putting up playlists of different music. It's one of my weird talents, Spotify playlists. I don't know why, but I am obsessed with the fact that the Sirius channel has not launched. They have like New Wave for 80s. They have the Lithium channel for all the alternative slash grunge. They have a classic rock. They have yacht rock. For some reason, there's this whole era in music that has not been represented properly. And it is that era that really started when the Strokes and the White Stripes started to take off in 01. This whole indie alternative revolution, kind of revolution that happened.

That was called post-Lithium because it was kind of the children of the alternative grunge era, all that stuff. So I made a playlist to capture the 40, I think 42 best songs on Spotify. I just did this for fun. But if you want to check that out, the username is SPTGUY33. I have a couple of ones up there. I have the greatest yacht rock playlist that anyone has ever put on whatever. That one's on there, Post Lithium, a couple more. So check that out. If you like music, it's my present to you.

It's for free. There it is. It's right on there. Coming up, we're going to talk to Jacko, Mark Titus, maybe a couple more people. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're going to hear from Jack Owen a little bit. Right now on the line, the commissioner of the Little League World Series, a very frustrated Ohio State fan, our pal from The Ringer,

and one shining podcast on The Ringer Podcast Network, Mark Titus. How are you? I'm doing fantastic, Bill. Although I should say, I mean, it's a tough time to live in Columbus, Ohio, but otherwise, that small little issue aside, I'm doing fantastic. Well, let's, we'll, we'll go negative in a second. We'll, we'll go through all the Urban Meyer stuff. Let's go pot. Let's start positive. The little league world series ended last night or yesterday. And, uh, and you wrote about it for the ringer.com. You love it. You

enjoy it. I enjoy it as well. I even have a little bit of a different perspective on it as somebody who has a is a parent of kids that play youth sports and i put myself in that situation but uh first of all what were the highlights for you this time around uh the highlight was just the the entire hawaiian team was just so fun to watch and i'm gonna start venturing into territory where people are like they can't believe how serious I am about this but I should reiterate that I'm 100% serious I got I got very into the league world series this year um and just the the entire Hawaiian team was like incredible with just not how good they were but how they handled everything like off the field and meanwhile there's a hurricane barreling towards their hometown as they're

playing in the little League World Series. And just like the coaching staff, all the players, like everything about it was awesome. And it's so corny and so cheesy and all that other stuff to say. But like it was they represented like everything. Why I like the Little League World Series so much was that like they won the thing. And then they immediately like the coach never the coach never like got excited that his team won he was just like always praising the other teams and always saying thank you to the volunteers for putting on the event and all that kind of stuff and it's super cheesy and it's easy to get cynical um especially in the world of sports that we live in but uh i don't know that

that stuff totally works on me every time i watch that it just like tugs at my heart and it totally works so i don't know if that makes me soft or what but listen one of the secrets about mark titus sentimental guy there you go nephew nephew kyle talks about that all the time he says sometimes you just he'll be with you and you'll just start crying and you'll just be like i just so glad you're in my life nephew kyle i just want why you know i appreciate you and you just have this after like our fourth after our fourth round at dark room that's usually when kyle and i get a little emotional what would you change about the little league world series how do we make it better it's already good but what what tweaks would you have well they already tweet they already made a bad change which is they made

the bats less powerful so it used to be like every kid that had hit puberty already which is every you know every team has like two or three of those kids. That's how they got there in the first place. These kids used to like, like they would hit homers off of the handle. They would just like not put a good swing on the ball at all. And it hit off the handle and they get jammed. It'd be the equivalent of like a broken bat in major leagues. Yeah. They would still like bomb it out of the park because they were just so big

and strong. So they changed the rule. They changed like the back, the composition of the bats to make basically take away home runs. And that was a disaster this year. I was wanting to see the big kids that get a hold of it just completely blasted over the entire hill and make all the little kids running for the balls. So that was one thing.

Otherwise, it's pretty perfect. I really think it is kind of like a perfect just the way it exists in its own little thing where like every kid has to play i love that rule because you get these situations like like no coach wants to play his crappy players first and get it out of the way yeah always like wait to the end so you always are bringing in like the kid who sucks as a pinch hitter and like the the top of the sixth inning with one out or something and it's like the highest leverage situation. And that's hysterical to me. And then you just kind of see how that all shakes out.

Yeah, it would seem like it would make more sense to bring those kids in at the beginning. That's what I would think too. Yeah, but like they don't do that. And that's what's like, it's fun. I don't know. It's almost like, I think their plan is like, we're going to get up by 10 runs

and then I'll just throw in our B team and we'll be fine. But it never really works that way. And the pitch counts are awesome too. Like all these kids have an 85 pitch limit, right? So you'll get a guy who's like dealing and he's unhittable, but then he has to come out and there's no way to – and then the wheels just fall off at that point for a team. And that's entertaining as hell too.

He would be my big change. I think they need, the park itself needs to have more flexibility like with the wall. Like it shouldn't just be like this generic outfield fence. I think they should pick either the left field or the right field. The left field would probably be better and make it their version of Fenway. So bring the bats back. Let the kids hit the bombs.

But left field, the wall is like 30 feet. And you'd have these little 12-year-old kids playing line drives off the wall and homers that could have been homers, but they weren't. You could have seats on top of the wall. The park the park itself i think could be a little bit cooler what do you think of that yeah i would agree with that i think i think i think they're going for understated on purpose i think it's like perfect dimensional like just you know like the whole thing is uniform in the outfield i think that's kind of what they're going for is to and and i guess it speaks to the larger point that like literally has arrived at a point where I think we're in like a danger zone

with the Little League World Series where um guys like me are like really genuinely getting into this but that's kind of a problem because we want it to exist sort of on its own and almost like you don't want the kids to know how big of how much I care but you don't want the kids to know that some 31 year old guy in Columbus Ohio is watching this and cheering for them and thinks he's a celebrity thinks all these kids are celebrities and all that kind of stuff. You want to just be like self-contained and, and you want the free admission to get into these things. But at the same time, ESPN signing like multi-year million, you know, $60 million TV deals to put this thing on and they're sending their MLB crew to cover it. And it's like, is that a good thing? Do we want this? You want more people to watch it, but you also don't want

people to care too much because it kind of soils the whole point of what makes it great. Well, I have a newsflash for you. There's internet gambling on the little world series, little league world series though. Yeah. You can gamble on it. That's so bad. That's not a good thing. That can't be a good thing. Yeah, so if you think it's weird that you're watching it, a 31-year-old guy in Columbus, I think it would be even weirder if you were gambling on Hawaii and you were living and dying with the pitches.

I totally would have gambled on Hawaii too. Not to brag, but going into the tournament, after watching the regional games, the qualifiers and all that stuff, I knew Hawaii was very, very good. that kind of scares me how terrifying i am at projecting this stuff my thing with watching this just from the perspective of having gone to um all these tournaments over the last few years and watching my kids and watching the behavior of parents i actually have two points one is that i would think being a parent of one of these players would be the single most terrifying thing that could happen as a sports fan. Cause it's already, it's already like watching

my son, my son was, he played baseball last year and all of a sudden was good at baseball and he was pitching and watching him pitch just in any game was harrowing. It's like, it's like just, it's a nightmare. You're nervous when there's guys on base, you're nervous. He's going to melt down. It's just this harrowing experience. Now,

if you're going to magnify that where he's it's two years later and he's on ESPN and people like you are watching in Columbus and the bases are loaded and he hits a kid and gives up a grand slam or something. And I'm worried. You're just, you're thinking about it as from a protective point as a parent. I just think that would be incredibly nerve wracking. So that's one thing. The second thing is I've seen so much bad behavior with parents on site. Like my daughter, soccer tournament eight days ago and the mom of one of the players in the other team got kicked

out. And she was screaming at this poor 25 year old ref who was doing the game. Like, we'll see you later. Point of the parking lot. We'll see you later. And the kids are just on the field. These 13 year old girls are just on the field. Like what's going on? And the girl on the other team was standing next to us. We're like, what's going on with that girl on the other team was standing next to us we're like what's going on with that lady and she was like oh that's so-and-so's mom she's crazy she does this all the time so my question is why don't we see that more at the little league world series where is the crazy parent behavior do they just taser them what happens i think it's it's it kind of weeds itself out i think like those parents are not good parents and they therefore do not raise good athlete sons oh they ruin the they ruin the kids yeah like they ruin the the pursuit of the little

league world series like gets tainted on the way on the road to the world series right that's my theory because because that's the other thing is like like again to go back to the hawaii team because they they won the thing so it makes sense to talk about them like their coach was everything you would ever want out of a little league baseball coach like every they they mic him up and they they have every pre-game talk he's never once talked about winning or losing or anything like that he's just telling the kids like have fun try your best that's what's important i love you guys no matter what happens like all that sort of stuff um and by the way like this this guy had no he has no kids of his own let alone on the team he just has no kids he's just like passionate about helping the kids and serving the community, all that stuff.

So I think it's like that sort of thing. Like if you have those parents, they are by nature not good parents and it's going to ruin their kid's pursuit of it. And then to your other point, I think like in a weird way, the screw ups and when the kids get rocked, like this happened when Hawaii was playing New York in a maybe a final four game i think it was at that point um the new york pitcher gives up a grand slam and the game's basically over at that point i think hawaii was already up by like three and then they hit a grand slam and they blow it wide open and the new york pitcher has tears rolling down his face as he's throwing the next pitch and it was like the saddest thing in the

world to see a kid like literally crying as he's trying to pitch a baseball um but then maybe your mind goes to like knowing that these parents that are at the little league world series are 98 like the kind of parents you need to be with this sort of stuff hopefully maybe they there's like a learning moment here and you teach this kid about failure and about adversity and all that sort of stuff that's how i spin it because again i'm a very wholesome person bill and i just always look for the positives in all of this. Well, when I was growing up, the Little League World Series

used to be on ABC and there was this kid from, and we used to lose every year, usually to like Taiwan. And you never knew how old the kids were on the other teams because they barely checked that stuff back then. But then one year,

this guy, Cody Webster, he was in one of the he was in some town in Washington, and he was like the classic kid who seemed like he was 17, who had been through puberty already, and just put- He was like Andy Reid in the punt passing kick video. Totally, 100%. He put the whole country in his back, and we won the Little League World Series.

We actually ended up doing a 30 for 30 about it. So that was the one thing I remember from that decade, other than a few years later, there was this kid, Aaron Garcia, which is the reason I'm telling this story, who got shelled and they left him on the mound. And I think his dad was the manager and he was crying on the mound.

And it was like, really like one of those moments, like, what are we doing to these kids? And the moment, we didn't have the internet back then. So the moment just kind of came and went. He was crying on the mound and it was like really like one of those moments, like what are we doing to these kids? And the moment, we didn't have the internet back then, so the moment just kind of came and went. But watching the kid get demolished on the mound and try to hold it together is kind of the secret sauce slash third rail of the Little League World Series because you kind of can't look away, but it doesn't make you feel good.

I just thought of this, by the way. One change I would definitely make is the umpires. They're volunteers, and so this is a good thing, and it's exalted as like everyone that works here is a volunteer and it's great for the thing, but you watch this stuff, and oh my God, honestly, if the catcher catches the ball, they just call a strike. You'll see catchers turning their gloves every which way and every single pitch is called a

strike so that just came to mind but yeah that it's interesting to me bringing going back to your point of like remembering these things is how everyone i talk to about the lily world series thinks i'm crazy for caring this much about it but i find that people who do watch it like even casually even if it's just it's sunday afternoon there's nothing there's not lot of sports going on. You just kind of throw your TV on and it's on and you don't really think you're paying that much of attention to it. It's crazy how much people remember about things. Like people, like Danny Almonte is like a household name in America and people remember that story. Even though if you ask people, how do you feel about the Lily world series? Most of them are like, I don't really care. Is that a thing? When is that? I

don't really know, whatever. But there are like little, there are character Monet Davis is the same way. Like everyone remembers Monet Davis. Like these people do kind of stick with you for some reason. And that's, that's kind of interesting to me because I don't really know if there's another sporting event like that, where people are just sort of indifferent to the whole thing yet vividly remember certain characters here and there. One of the things that really helps is just when they have it. It's in the most dead sports time of the year, right?

Football hasn't started yet. Baseball, baseball's in the dog days. Basketball's gone. And it's just kind of on. And I think that's really helped it. I feel the opposite, or one thing that's been really hurt. I think the women's college soccer,

the NCAA, like the whole tournament, should be a much bigger deal. But when it's on, it's going against college football, NFL, basketball starting. It just gets lost in the whole thing. It's like late October through early November. But people actually, I think women's soccer could be a thing, but it's just

the wrong time of year. It's bad timing. Whereas softball, softball world series kind of eats up innings during this time where there's like, there's NBA playoffs, there's NHL playoffs, football's gone at that point, baseball started, but whatever. And then all of a sudden the softball world series is eating up all these innings on like this perfect time of the year for it to be on. I wish the schedule is important with this stuff. That's one of the reasons the Big Three tried to happen. They kind of targeted the schedule.

By the way, don't ask me why, but people always ask me why you haven't been in the Big Three or have you been asked. Have you talked about this? No this no i've not i've not been asked it's uh what an insult yeah very insulting uh greg odin was asked odin odin got did dirty we i talked to him about it he uh he was asked to basically be a part and he he he put his name in a draft, whatever that means. And they basically just wanted to use his name to just get some headlines and say, like, former number one pick enters the big three draft.

And then he went undrafted. And, like, basically, like, Ice Cube, or, like, whoever works for Ice Cube basically called Greg and was like, yeah, we don't really actually want you. We just kind of wanted to brag that we have the rights to a number one pick. And Greg was like, damn, that's rough. It was actually stupid that they didn't have you

because you have a pretty good following and you have a podcast and you have all these different ways to promote and push that you would have been. And I actually might be able to, this is the most insane thing I may ever say in my life, but I actually think I could hang with those guys because they're all old and fat

and I'm still in decent shape. And you're still playing. they are much better you know at their peaks they're much better players than I was but yeah I think I could catch them at like the right time where I could actually be semi-effective out there I would totally be I'd be a huge pussy though like like those games I watched some of those games they just turned into like fist fights and the rest kind of shrug their shoulders because they're they're not going to do anything about it I would be a huge pussy I would they would hit me with like a shoulder and i'd just be like okay this is this is too much let's uh let's talk about ohio state but uh let's take a

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All right, back to Titus. All right, we're back. What's it like in Ohio State right now? This is one of the bigger scandals we've had in college football in a while. They suspended him for free games. He's coming back. It's not good. It's embarrassing as hell, Bill, because everyone in – I've got to be careful with how you choose your words

because it's not everyone. But a huge contingent of Ohio State fans not only, like, are excited that Urban Meyer is back and that it's only going to be three games and he'll be back for, like, the meat of the season and we still have national championship like the meat of the season. And we still have national championship and all this sort of stuff. They are very passionate about this idea that he is the victim in all of this. That this was a witch hunt.

And as an alum of the university, it's a very trying time. It's very, very frustrating. Because I should say that like, obviously Ohio State fans, like 90% of them probably didn't go to the school there. And I don't mean to be like pretentious and say like, I'm better than you because I did go to the school there. But there is a different element towards my fandom and my appreciation of the university because I care about the school. I don't just care about the football team. Whereas, you know, like Bubba Buckeye in Lima, Ohio, who's like been to Columbus once in his life and just passionately loves the Buckeyes, all he ultimately cares about is that there's a winning product on the field on Saturdays. So I understand that he has a different point of view, but those sorts of people, they outnumber the alumni.

They outnumber the people that are, you know, stepping back and saying, what does this mean for our entire university? And so they're just sort of has this sense of like, basically the wrong conclusion is being reached. And it's very, very frustrating. So I don't know. I'm pretty fired up about it though. I'll say that much because I seem to be alone in this and it's, it's trying my, it's trying my patience with, with friends and family and whatever else that love the Buckeyes and don't necessarily have ties to the school. Oh yeah. So tell me about that. The family friends aspect of this, it's almost like a miniature version of how Trump has polarized the Thanksgivings at family's houses. This is the Ohio State version of that.

But my point has been, it doesn't have to be either or. Like, we still have these problems of Urban Meyer knowing the coach was arrested in 2009 and then hiring him to Ohio State. He was arrested in 2009 for domestic violence at Florida while he's under Urban Meyer's staff. Meyer comes to Ohio State, then brings him with him. We still have Zach Smith, the receiver's coach in question. They have text messages of him apologizing to his wife for strangling her um and and then all these other run-ins with the law like it's it's pretty clear that urban screwed this up and he's trying to like cover it up in some way to make himself

look better um and so that's i don't know and that's very frustrating because i think most people think if this is true yeah wait isn't this part of the problem that it's almost like the cover-up becomes as bad or worse than the crime? Like the fact that he was trying to cover his tracks after versus just admitting what he knew when he knew it? That's definitely the problem. I think in Big Ten Media Day, when this whole thing became a story, because he was asked at Big Ten Media Day,

like basically Zach Smith was fired, because I don't know how much of these details you know, Bill, so I'm just trying to fill you in and the audience. They definitely don't follow it as closely as I do. He was asked, like, before Big – like, Zach Smith's fired before Big Ten Media Day because he breaks a restraining order with his ex-wife. And so he gets fired, and then everyone goes to Irvin Meyer, and they're like, why did you just fire him now?

Why didn't you fire him years ago when we found out all this stuff? He says, I didn't know about all this other stuff years ago. The first I knew about it, I fired him. And that was a statement. So then it led to people uncovering like, are we sure he didn't actually know? And they started digging up stuff and they're like, well, what about this? This pretty clearly shows that you know. So I think at Big Ten Media Day, if he just comes out and he's like, hey, listen, this coach I had on my staff was the grandson of my mentor um i i trusted him too much like i i had a personal relationship with him he

screwed up i thought we could work through it i i i made a huge error in judgment and so i cut ties and i'm ready to move on from him and i apologize for all like if you just said something like that this isn't even an issue like people are well, that's a shitty thing to do, but I guess you're human and we move on. But he just kept covering it up. He kept saying, like, I never knew about any of this.

The investigate, like, so then Ohio State launches an independent investigation to figure out what he knows. And Urban Meyer deletes, like, text messages from older than a year. This is a thing that happened. He goes to the director

of football operations and says, how do you delete text messages? Right. And then when he turns in his phone all like a lot of his texts were deleted um so that's pretty much that's how we got to this point and uh it's it's people live in and you know this is just the way the country works and i don't mean to make this like a political issue because it's not even that it's like i mean the jordan versus lebron debates the same way like people just want to live on the fringes of everything and not take i i think the people that are like urban meyer's a scumbag you know like that side of the fence is just as bad because they paint this picture that like urban meyer's the one beating his wife which is not happening

and i think it's important to like understand the context of what's going on here uh that side is bad but then obviously the ohio state fans that are like i don't see what the big deal is like this isn't an issue that's also bad and there's like a middle ground and i think like i i was living in the middle ground for a long time and sort of giving urban the benefit of the doubt but also saying like this is this is not a great look for the school and then as more stuff has come out and you find out that like the school is making up excuses like urban meyer has has memory loss i don't know if you saw this. Yeah, I saw it. They said like he had brain surgery one time. So like now he basically forgets everything.

That's not football related, which is like incredible that they would even try that. He's deleting his texts, like all this stuff. It's just, it's just an embarrassment, honestly. Wasn't there,

wasn't there stuff with him? There was a lot of stuff with him at Florida too, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's. And that's the whole other thing is like he he came to ohio state as though like he was reformed and he changed and all this stuff and and and i don't i don't mean to crucify the guy like that's what i i mean like i think i i upset a lot of ohio state fans when i when i made public that i like i was on twitter when the announcement came and i was like i think this man should be fired. I don't necessarily think he's a terrible person or a scumbag or a piece of shit.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. I don't really know the guy. He has a spotty past. He was kind of skating on thin ice in that regard with his disciplinarian issues at Florida. And just the way he's handled this kind of – we've arrived at a point where I think you have to basically – there's no way to spin it other than to say ohio state cares about winning above all else and and the really sad thing is that in a weird way i think that might be like okay i think that's sort of like where we've arrived at college sports which is depressing as hell but like

i mean is ohio state unique in that regard that they want their coach to win first and foremost and and everything else comes second i mean you obviously can't cross certain lines but like if I mean, is Ohio State unique in that regard, that they want their coach to win first and foremost and everything else comes second? I mean, you obviously can't cross certain lines, but if Urban really did report this to his people, maybe that's okay. And he deleted – I don't know. And that's kind of been the other frustrating part is I'm a guy who loves college sports for all of these – all the virtues that are put forth

and turning boys into men and all of this sort of stuff because you have to like that stuff if you like college sports because, like, obviously the talent isn't as good as it is with the pro sports, so there has to be something about college that draws people to love college sports. And I love all the human aspect of it, and I love all of the coach sort of being a leader in the community and all this sort of stuff so for me like this is like a very depressing reality even though I know this is where we've arrived but um I think that's just the biggest embarrassment is that I I wish that my school would rise to a level where they're like you know like the world around

us in college sports has reached a point where this is big business where this is basically just all fueled by capitalism but we're gonna we're gonna take this opportunity to to kind of help the cause a little bit sort of turn back the clock slightly and say that we do care about the humanitarian side of this um and they just chose not to and now here we are so i don't know i'm i'm fired up about it all it's very it's very embarrassing to be an alum i'll just say that much much. I don't know. I got to say, though. And I can't really defend Ohio State fans because I don't know. As somebody who, you know, I don't have a favorite college sports team, a college that I'm attached to or anything like that.

And I loved watching college football and college basketball, and that faded. Now, as you know, I'm a casual jump into college basketball with four weeks to go and the whole thing fan and that's it. I don't really care about college football. The biggest reason for me over the years was how corrupt it was and how many of these coaches that I just thought were like bad people. And it just seems like over and over again,

whether it's college basketball or college football, the people that succeed, not all the time, but definitely more than a few times, just seem to be not great guys. And they don't stand for the right things. They don't stand for what amateur sports is supposed to be about. Now, the whole amateur sports thing is a whole other can of worms, but, um, but it just seems like over and over again, we have these urban Myers, these types of people that don't seem to measure up to some sort of just a relatively decent code of moral behavior. I think Patino is one of the best examples of this. Yeah. Just not a good guy. I don't see how anybody can look at Patino and think like, that's a good guy. I'm glad

he represents our university. You just can't think that. It sucks because I, again, I realized it was a very naive position to be in, but I just, I'm admittedly naive with all this stuff like i know it goes on but there's still that part of you that's just like there's something noble about college sports like we need this in society we need we need like like i mean again i i a lot of people listen or roll their eyes as i'm going to talk about this i know but like just this idea of an extracurricular activity at a university where like students can bring glory to their school and and it's all it's all hokey and cheesy and i understand that but there are still like some people that do do that but it's just overwhelmingly getting washed out by these cases

and it's and again i guess that's where i arrive at the point of like ohio state pretty clearly said that we care about winning and nothing else and especially when you put it in context of they fired thad mata my basketball coach at ohio state who was the greatest coach that the program had ever had like the only reason anyone ever cared about ohio state basketball since the the mid 60s was because thad mata was so good and had like a run there for a while we were going to final fours and winning big tens and stuff they fired him basically he was a plus across the board never had a never had his name mentioned in any recruiting scandal never had like off-court problems never had anything going on squeaky clean program his

winning went from like a plus to like b b minus right and they fire him but everything else was perfect meanwhile you have urban meyer who like it's pretty pretty clearly like anyone within the program i obviously know a lot of people at ohio state that are like within the football program i know people i know former football players that played for him and they'll tell you that this man he cares about winning football games first and foremost and almost nothing else and so you have him who's a plus winner and you know c c minus whatever else and they keep him around that's generous it's to, like, it's hard to reconcile those two thoughts and think, like, how have we arrived at a point where anything at this school

matters than winning? And the saddest part of all is that maybe that is what college sports is now. And I know, again, that's very naive. Wait a second. It's been away for 30 years, 40 years. But that's not how I was like raised on college. You know what I mean? Like that's been, that's been, it has been, but it's, it's so dicey because it's, there

are still like good coaches out there. There are still, cause I guarantee they're going to be people that like tweet at you and they're like, man, I'm so glad we have Bill Snyder at Kansas state. He would never do this. And you know, Virginia basketball fans are like, that's why I love Tony Bennett. He does it the right way. Like, there's so many people that are going to chime in and be like,

our coach does it the right way. They're right. And they're probably right. Like, honestly, there are still good guys in the thing. But I think, so in my mind, it's been like the good guys have outweighed the bad guys all this time. Or at least, you know, it was like a 70-30 split. Like, there's obviously this corrupt wing of college sports but there's still enough good that like

i can and just in the last i don't know five years it just seems like everything is tipping the tipping the other way and it's just becoming very very frustrating and and i don't know and we get to a point where like i i'm up and saying, my university matters more than me. The reputation of my university matters more to me than beating Michigan in a football game. And Ohio State fans look at me like, you're some sort of pussy? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, what? What? You know, so I don't know. So it's tough. But it's definitely not all Ohio State fans. I will defend that. But I think the other thing, if I could call to action, the Ohio State fans who do have some sense about them,

I don't think it's enough to just be like, well, it's not all of us and just sort of dismiss this enormous faction of fans who are like, are going to give Urban Meyer a standing ovation. Like this is going to happen. When Urban Meyer comes back against Tulane in September, he's going to come out of the tunnel. They're going to announce like Urban Meyer, head coach of your Buckeyes, and the entire place is going to give him a standing ovation.

And it's going to be absolutely embarrassing as hell. And I'm already pissed off about it. And I don't think it's enough to just kind of shrug your shoulders and say, well, they're bad apples in every fan base. I really, you know, and I think like I need to do something about this. But what the hell do you do when the board of trustees, the president, the athletic director and the head football coach all think that this is fine

and this is a reasonable outcome? I have no idea. I feel powerless. So I'm coming on your podcast to voice my thoughts. Can you imagine if this wasn't just confined to college sports and this happened in the real world where we had like corrupt people

and this kind of a schism between, I mean, I don't even know what they'll be like. All right, let's take one more break. I want to talk about one more thing with you. Let's talk about our friends with FanDuel. The wait is nearly over. Football's almost here, which means it's fantasy football season. FanDuel has never been more fun or easy to play. If you're not a fantasy expert, FanDuel is clearly the destination for you. It has something for everyone, more ways to win than ever before. Don't believe us? How's this sound? This season, FanDuel is running a free $250,000 survivor contest. It is the biggest free survivor contest ever. Here's how it works. Pick one team to win

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FanDuel.com slash BS. Hey, I wanted to ask you this while you're here. You wrote a piece. It wasn't even a piece. It was a post on Reddit a while back about your issues with depression. And we've seen this year and this summer especially, this has become now a real topic in sports. And you've seen a bunch of people, pretty big platform people like Kevin Love. You saw last week on ESPN,

Jackie McMullen did a five-part piece about mental illness and depression and the NBA. Are you following this stuff and what's your reaction to it? Oh, I'm definitely following it. I think it's awesome, obviously, like everyone else. I will say that I definitely'm i'm hesitant i definitely followed and i support all that it's it's been a really confusing like last five years or so or whatever three years whatever it was when i posted that thing i forget um to to sort of be

the depression guy and i i enjoy talking about it and all that stuff. And I do want to help people. It's just become like, I always like caution sort of glorifying it, if that makes sense. I think there's like a balance to be struck with ending the stigma. And I think it's important that everyone talks about it. But I also like, I'm scared that like, it becomes like almost cool to have some sort of mental illness. That's like the cool, I don't know. I don't know if this makes any sense. No, it does make sense. I've basically been debating.

No, I get what you're saying. And so I sort of, like, I've been stuck in this purgatory where, like, I distance myself from it. But at the same time, I understand my obligation to help people because when I was in the position, I was like, man, if, if just one person would reach out that, that I don't feel as obligated to, you know, like, obviously my family would reach out when I was struggling with stuff, but you sort of convince yourself that they have to, their family, that's what their job is. Um, so you're just like desperate for one person to reach out. And now I realize in my position now where I've sort of gotten over, you know, you never really, you never really cure it or whatever, but I've gotten to a good point. I feel like it's my

obligation to reach back down the ladder and help other people. But at the same time, I do sort of want to, it's, it's, it's, it's all a weird thing. Not surprisingly, it kind of messes with my head. If, if, if you find that as a shocking thing that, that a mental illness messes with your head. Right. We, we've known each other since I think 07. And when you wrote that Reddit post, and I think we've been pretty close over the years, and I feel like we've had a lot of conversations about a lot of things. I had no idea you were going through any of that stuff till I read that post. And I think a lot of people in your life were like that. And I think my reaction one I was

worried about you but two I felt bad that I didn't know but then you know I think that's one of the things with this how do you know how how do you know that you're that you can even potentially help somebody or talk about with somebody if you have no idea they're going through something but that seems to be a recurring theme with all this stuff and the hardest the hardest thing and the one thing i'm like most excited about all these athletes speaking out is beyond just like the the the attention they're bringing to it and and obviously a guy like kevin love stepping up and and and really throwing his himself behind this means so much more than than me doing it um so like obviously that's a great thing but i think it's the fact that they're athletes is is can't be undersold how important that is because i think like being like a high school college age athlete and going through this is and i say this from

personal experience is is the most confusing thing in the world because you've been your condition every single day and practices and and and, and weightlifting and all that sort of stuff. Like you are macho, you are, you are a badass. We're going to compete. We are going to not talk about our feelings. We're going to, you know, and this is how your, your program, your entire life in sports. And so that to have like an athlete like Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan speaking up about stuff like this, to basically say to kids in college that are competing every single day, it's okay. It doesn't make you weak to say, I need help with this. That's the one thing that stands out to me because I think the people that are least likely to seek help for this in my view are high school and college athletes. Like I really think,

thinking back on my experience that time in my life, there was a 0% chance I was ever going to reach out to anybody and say like, Hey, I'm mentally weak. You know? Cause that's how I viewed it. It was like, Hey, I'm mentally weak. I can't handle this. And then I would just view like, that makes me a lesser athlete. It makes me a lesser man. And then I would just view like, that makes me a lesser athlete. It makes me a lesser man. And at that point in your life, you're trying to become a man and you're trying to show the world that I'm a man I've I'm fully grown and this is who I am. Um, so I think

that's huge too, is like, is like having, having someone like Kevin Love who is an athlete and, and, and DeMar DeRozan. And I don't mean to keep talking about those guys, all the other guys that keep bringing it up. Well, think back 12 years to Adam Morrison, right? Clearly was going through stuff. And then it came out after the fact that he was having a bunch of issues. But that situation when he lost in the tournament and he was crying on the court after and everybody just made fun of him, remember?

It was like, oh my God, Morrison's crying. What the hell's wrong with him?, and everybody just made fun of him. Remember? It was like, oh, my God. Morrison's crying. What the hell's wrong with him? I'm sure I made fun of him. Oh, yeah. Then he goes to the NBA, and he's a bust. Oh, my God, what a bust Adam Morrison is. And now you look back, and you're like, that guy was probably,

on a scale of 1 to 10 for somebody going through stuff, was probably an 8 or a 9, and was clearly the reason over anything else that he failed. Cause I still think he should have been a good NBA player. He also got hurt, which didn't help him. But, um, but I wonder now with that people are becoming more and more and more aware of this stuff is I wonder how that translates the next time we have like an Adam Morrison type situation. And now on the flip side of that, this kind of fundamentally alters the landscape of sports. If you really want to go big picture dramatic about it, because part of sports is like,

you sit in the crowd, you yell at the other team, you try to get under people's skin. Like one of the greatest sporting events I've ever been to in my life was game six of the 1986 finals. The day before Ralph Sampson had punched Jerry Sechting, who was like 14 inches shorter than him. Starts this huge brawl, kind of sucker punched him actually. Goes back to the Boston Garden, Celtics have a chance to close and everybody's ready to jump on Ralph Sampson and you go in and it was like a Roman Coliseum. And we like really psyched him out. Like he was,

we took him out of the game. He was horrible. And it was like one of the great fan experiences. Like, yeah, we broke that guy. But now we're in this 2018 context of like, yeah,

we broke that guy. It kind of feels weird to say. And I just wonder how this is going to play out with the fan player experience, the competitiveness of crowds, what people can and can't say. It just feels like we're heading toward a new world. Again, I don't want to be like super over the top about it, but it does feel like something's about to change and I can't put my finger on what. No, I think you're i don't think you're wrong by the way because it's affected like going through it has affected how i do the job i do where you know you and i at the core of our job is we watch sports and we basically make jokes and observations about what we're seeing and

it becomes like what's okay to joke about like like tate and i on our podcast last week we were talking about zion williamson and whether he's fat or not and even that like he's sort of it's it's obviously funny because he's not fat but maybe is like who cares in the ultimate but then i don't know like maybe zion maybe this is something that bothers him that he weighs 285 pounds and is that okay to make fun of maybe that's very very soft i don't really know but i think at the end of the day i think like having empathy is never the wrong answer um well let me ask you this hold that thought though let's say zion williamson dms you on twitter and he's like hey man i heard your podcast they really hurt my feelings. I've been battling my way and I'm having some issues.

Now it's like, now you feel like the biggest asshole in the world. On the flip side of that, on the flip side of that, that's a fun conversation. Who are the best fat guys in basketball? And it's like, I don't know what the balance is anymore. It feels like everything's going to be out of whack the more we start overthinking this stuff. And who was the arbiter of all of this and deciding what's fine? I mean, that's kind of what I've done is, uh, you know, especially when I started out in this business and you took me under your wing and all of this. And I would, I would sometimes be aggressive and making fun of people. I said like the worst example of this was Tom Crean and he called me and confronted me. And I remember that. Yeah. he's like did i murder your family like why are you talking about this to me

and and i remember like hanging up the phone from that conversation and instead of saying like the smart thing because again at this point i was what like 24 or 5 who knows i hung up the phone i was like screw that guy and i like almost wanted to double down on everything. But I think – so what you have to do is – this is what I do is I just step – you step back and you think like, okay, what did I actually say? Is that crossing a line? I think it's fair to make fun of Tom Crane's coaching abilities. I think it's fair to make fun of how he pulls up his pants and adjusts his belt and he just kind of like is licking his lips at all times.

I think these sorts of things are fine. Maybe some other stuff is not fine. And then you take, you step back even a step further and it's like, hold on, who are you to decide like, what's fine at like, why, why does that fall on me? Cause it's always like, am I really going to, to make, have the tough conversation with myself and be like, Hey man, you're an asshole. You should probably stop that. Uh, so it's, it's, it's crazy, man. Cause like, I i i don't really know how to solve all this because again yes this is our job is like entertain people and make these observations and you don't want to coddle athletes like if lebron is like i don't know if lebron sucks in a game you should be able to say he sucks in a game and not have to worry about like we don't we don't know what happened to his daughter at school that day right i mean like

obviously you should be able to be like, LeBron just didn't have it tonight, and you should be able to comment on that. But yeah, where is the line? I don't know. That's going to be interesting to see how everything shakes out. But I think... And the other frontier is going to be player evaluation

and player analysis. And, you know, if part of being a great players is mental toughness. It's just, it's one of the best traits you can have in basketball and football and all these things, like the ability to persevere through adversity. And now we're in this world where these players are saying, I have issues.

I get my own head. I have battles with anxiety. And you have that information. What do you do with it? What do you do with it if you're competing against them? Chris Bosh said this on my podcast when he was there a few months ago. And we were talking about Kevin Love and Kevin Love's revelation that he had been battling issues with depression and stuff. And Chris Bosh basically said, I really feel for him. He put it really eloquently. I really feel for him.

At the same time, I'm a competitor, and all I'm doing all the time when I'm playing against somebody and there's only one title every year is to try to figure out how to get under their skin, how to get the best of them, and if I have that information, it's currency to me, and I think some people are like, wow, that's harsh, but think about it.

Think about the shit we witnessed with Tristan Thompson and Draymond Green. Like these guys are fighting for the title and anything is fair game. And they're calling each other motherfucker and all these terrible things and talking about girls that, you know, that they banged their girlfriend. All the shit they say to each other. But now you have this. So how does that change that whole interaction? It's just the whole thing thing i can't wrap my head

around it for lack of a better uh expression no i i completely understand and then like you know player personnel decisions you know like if if if kevin love becomes a free agent or so or you know he's probably too good for this to be a problem i mean most people would want a skill but you know some some middle tier player let's say michael let's say michael beasley let's say michael beasley comes out and says michael beasley i was battling shit the last nine years i have i have issues and i'm dealing with them now and then and then the the league looks at that like the the general managers around the league are like i don't really want to you know i mean i hope the guy gets help but i don't really want you know if it's going to affect his play i don't really want him on my team necessarily

um does that make them assholes if they really think that it's going to affect how he plays because their job is to build the best i mean you think a guy like royce white remember like his his problem like where he didn't want to fly and he had his anxiety going on and and at a certain point the nba was like well we, we just can't deal with this. I mean, like we wish you well, man, but we can't deal with it. And is that cold? Is that, you know, like, that's kind of what they have to do. But at the same time, you wish that there was a way around, I don't know. It's, it's all very, because, because the, the sport by nature,

like the whole structure of the business is competitive by nature and, and cutthroat and ruthless and all of this. So, I don't know. I think sports is a meritocracy and if he's competing for an nba job against other players and those players are more reliable than he is and the talent is there's no different but no real difference between what he brings as an 11th man versus some other person who just shows up for practice every day and you're not dealing with the drama of whatever they're going through. It's hard for me to say that they shouldn't just take the guy who's drama free. So in a weird way, if you're battling an issue like

this, are we sure it's that different than if somebody has, like Harry Giles, who's had his knees operated on both knees, how is this different? The head is part of the body. So if somebody makes that case to me, I don't really know what my counter is because it's like, ultimately you're buying these guys, it's their bodies and their minds that you're hiring to employ to get the most out of and if one of those things is off whether it's your knee your foot your head any of these things how do we deal with that and that's the part i don't i don't get but i'm willing to be educated on it do you think the league is prepared for the optics of a headline that says like, like Kevin Love is cut and, or like we talked to one scout and an anonymous scout says,

I wouldn't touch Kevin Love with the problem with the baggage he has, you know? Yeah. And that comes out like, is the league hand like, can they, cause that, that looks terrible.

Like it makes sense as you break it down, like you just said. But that's obviously a problem to have a headline. That's like want nothing to do with kevin love because of his mental problems that's like that's terrible that's a terrible look so um well let's say somebody let's say somebody had battles depression and anxiety and now you're thinking about wow we have a chance to win the title this year and now we have to count on this guy in a game seven. Can we count on him? This is why I'm so fascinated by this topic because this terrain that we're now going into is a terrain I never thought we would enter because all of this was like hand in hand with me. It's like mental toughness, physical condition, talent, the ability to come

through when it matters. And like Adam Morrison folds in a title game and starts crying. That's not somebody I want on my team. But now I'm starting to look at it like, well, why is he crying? Can we help him? Can we make him better? And it's just all discombobulating. And I don't have answers. I guess in a perfect world, you'd figure out a way to separate the off-court

and the on-court in the same way that maybe this is a similar conversation to the idea that like now all the NBA players are best friends with each other off the court yeah and and can we trust that can we trust that when the Lakers play the Rockets in the playoffs this year that LeBron's really going to try to destroy Chris Paul because they're friends. And do we really, you know? So maybe there's like that element where like, you kind of have to detach both of them if it's possible in some way. I don't know. I'm kind of just-

Or we're like overthinking all this and like sports should still, I don't know. Yeah, right. That's why like we should talk about this in two months because I haven't been fascinated as fascinated by a random sports topic as this one in a while i read all this stuff and i really put thought into like how's this going to change sports and for one of the rare times could not come up with an answer because i have no idea where this is going i'm with you

it's it's very confusing because hearing you talk about like, you know, yelling at Ralph Sampson, all this stuff, the idea of, of kind of weeding that out of sports is absurd. The idea that like fans can't yell insults at players is the most absurd thing in the world to me.

You can't get rid of that, but there is probably a fine line at the same time. If, if a fan was like yelling N-word at players, everyone would universally agree. Yeah, you're agreeing that that has crossed the line. So a line has been established at what fan behavior, even if it is just words or whatever.

There is a line that's been drawn, but where is the line? Yeah, it's all very confusing i think like i guess my ultimate stance is that empathy is never wrong uh it might be soft it makes you some people think you're a pussy and and soft and and all that sort of stuff but um i don't know just as i've gotten older and i've kind of worked through it myself it's like i don't think you can ever go wrong just having empathy towards something someone's going through um that doesn't mean you necessarily take it easier on them but if you could just stop for a second and think like did kevin love suck in game three because he had mental problems and if the answer is yes that

doesn't mean you can't say like kevin love sucked in game three it's just maybe not rip the guy to shreds and i don't know maybe maybe find the middle ground but where is the middle ground and as you said that's going to be something that it'll be interesting to see where society falls on this over the next five to 10 years. And you're, and you're in pretty good shape right now. I am in good shape. I should, I should, uh, inform the listeners. It breathes this up to you again. The funniest part of me going through, like coming out with, with my struggle with depression and, and kind of talking about how I've reached a good point and all this sort of stuff um i deleted my twitter account for for basically mental health reasons like twitter was just wearing me down at a certain

point like i'd reached a good point and in my life and then every time i get on twitter i'd see some guy with four followers calling me an asshole yeah and i reached the point where i was like why do i put up with this like i'm trying to rise above all of this with my mental health so i deleted my twitter account and within an hour you called me it was it was like the south park episode where you called me and you basically thought like i'd done something drastic and you're like titus are you okay i was like why what's going on you go your twitter account's deleted we're worried about you and i was like bill i've never been happier in my life than when I deleted my Twitter account. So is your Twitter account still gone?

No, I still have it. I deleted it because you told me, I brought it back. Yeah, that's what I thought. I was like,

am I remembering this wrong? Yeah, I felt like that was an overreaction. But here's the thing. Just don't, I say this to everybody, just don't look at your replies. There's no really you have to look at your replies. And by the way to wade in and look at those replies

and see people say and write terrible shit about you and your family and your friends and things you said, that's on you. If you want to read that shit, God bless you. But I especially think with writers, it's really dangerous. And I don't really see the upside. Get your tweets. It's the worst.

And the other worst part about it is that complaining about it makes like no one wants to hear you complain about it either like these people like the people listening to your podcast right now they are rolling their eyes and like you're a public figure this is what you signed up for and in a certain point they're right as well so it's just i don't it's the same sort of thing like guys like you like certainly you're at a much, much higher level than me, but like we are public figures and people criticize us. And it comes back around of like,

do I have a right to be upset for people criticizing me when I criticize other people, the whole thing's, the whole thing's a mess. So I just try to do, I just try to be empathetic and be nice and figure out the rest later. My name, just email me the mailbag at the ringer.com.

Um, I'm happy to read that. I'm not, I have no interest in reading some 80 character fucking shitty comment. Send me an email. Um, I'm available. I've checked my emails.

I read them. I might do a podcast mailbag soon. So that'll happen. All right. This went way longer than I thought, but this is a topic that I definitely want to revisit the more we write about and learn about it. Because it really is one of those things

that maybe reconsider and reconceive a lot of the sports experiences I've had over the course of my life. But Mark Titus, we can hear you on One Shiny Podcast. A lot of rumors about you moving to Los Angeles. A lot of rumors right now. Seeing in the gossip One Shiny Podcast. A lot of rumors about you moving to Los Angeles. A lot of rumors right now. Seeing it in the gossip columns. There are a lot of rumors.

Seeing some blind items. Crazy Days or Nights had some blind items about it. I just don't know what's real and what's not real. They are not unsubstantiated, but they are still rumors nonetheless. We'll put it that way. All right. We'll see. I know Nephew Kyle's excited because he doesn't have enough people

to be out with until two in the morning. You know it. Plus he needs his own, speaking of interventions, he needs an intervention, but not, it's more of a dating intervention and it's not going to be on this podcast.

Mark Titus, talk to you soon. Thanks for coming on. All right. Thanks. See you guys. All right. We're going to call Jacko to talk about the Yankees and the Red Sox,

an impending 1978, 40 years later flashbacks, and also John McCain and Mike Francesco's new app and my trip to Tampa Bay. But first, let's talk about Framebridge. I posted on Instagram, added some new beautifully framed by Framebridge photos to my office where I do all the podcasts, joining the main area, Will Smith, the original cast from Saturday Night Live, the greatest cast ever from 90210, Metallica. Oh yeah. Framebridge did all that. They make it easy and affordable to frame your favorite things from art prints and posters

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Go to framebridge.com, promo code BS. Nephew Kyle's looking at Farrah Fawcett right now. Look how beautiful she was, Kyle. What a great 70s woman she was. Strong, powerful. A little bit scary. Yeah. She's watching you, Kyle. I know. I'm watching her. Courtesy of framebridge.com. All right, let's call Jacko. On the line right now, an increasingly confident Jacko,

my buddy, my Yankee fan friend. One of my only Yankee fan friends. We've been doing this forever. We're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff today, but we might as well start with an improbable Yankee resurgence. I was in Tampa Bay with my son on Friday and Saturday,

which I'm gonna talk about a little bit, watching the Red Sox just kind of lose their luster a little bit. Johnny, are you feeling confident? Yeah, I feel, I feel good. You know,

you don't want to get too excited about, you know, sweeping the Baltimore Orioles who are historically bad team this season. But, you know, given that the Yankees were six and6 against the Orioles up to this point, I'm actually pretty happy with a four-game sweep, even though they've been bad.

I mean, they've played lousy against the Orioles, so maybe we finally turn the corner and we're going to beat up on some shitty teams for a while. That would be nice. Your schedule's kind of favorable coming up. For some reason, Tampa has, I don't know, they've just looked super frisky against the Sox lately. The bats went cold at the wrong time.

I'm concerned. I didn't like what I saw in Tampa Bay. I'll put it that way. I didn't enjoy it. On the other hand, I didn't like the fact that the Red Sox were peaking in August. And I feel like if you're going to go in a swoon, this is the perfect time to do it. You never want to have the swoon happen at the end of September or even later than that, right? This is what I tell myself.

I've been hoping and praying, really, for an implosion by the Sox. So maybe my wishes and hopes have come true now. And maybe we're in the beginning of the implosion. My God, I would be so happy. If we had a 1978, like, collapse now in the age of Twitter and, you know, all the other social media we have, it would be so fantastic. Nothing would make me happier because Sox fans were on top of the world, and why wouldn't they be? The four-game sweep and 50, 80, 60 games over 500,

however many they were, running away with it. So to come back to Earth would be fantastic. I still think it's out of the realm of possibility, but it would be exciting. I blame myself. I was really enjoying the whole 50-plus games, over 500 win streak, and being one of the seven or eight best teams of all time.

I was starting to buy the hype, Jacko. I should have seen it coming. I'm too old. It occurred to me this morning, because I was thinking about it, because the Yanks are semi-back in the picture a little bit here, for the AL East, and I was thinking about modern-day fans. And the modern-day Red Sox fan, the pre-2004, has no idea what the pre-2004 Red Sox fan experienced,

because you grew up and inherited from your father growing up just always expecting the inevitable collapse from the Sox. You know, that it happened in 78 with Bucky Dent. It happened in the World Series in 86 against the Mets, 2003 with Aaron Boone. So the current generation of Red Sox fan really has known nothing but success. So it would really be a fantastic throwback

for them to get to experience some of the misery that older generation Red Sox fans experience for most of their life, except for the past 15 years or so. It'd be great. I disagree with you, and I wouldn't enjoy it at all, actually. I don't think it would be a good thing in the least.

I would enjoy it immensely. They ripped off, they were 51 and 27. And then they were 88 and 36. So they ripped off basically a 37 and nine streak there. And it was feeling really good. And I was enjoying the top 10 teams of all time graphics that people are putting up. You're right though.

I think the biggest thing that has changed in my entire life, and I'm including everything, including the internet, having porn readily available, the fact that Donald Trump is our president. I think the most shocking thing that's happened to me in my entire life is feeling some level of confidence as a baseball fan. It's the one thing I just thought was going to be in my DNA for my whole life,

just assuming the worst thing was going to happen at all times. And between 2004, 2007, and 2013, it was like having this cancerous appendage just severed from my body. I don't think people can quite grasp what a big deal that was because your crusty New England Red Sox fan, the Murph and Sully type, they knew nothing but disappointment when it came to the Red Sox and losing in an embarrassing fashion and catastrophic failures and what have you. I mean, the 2004, to come back from 3-0 down

when everybody was already geared up for the here we go again, to do it against your most hated rival, the evil empire, and then to follow that up by winning again in 07 and 13 and being always in the mix for the AL East and having competent, non-racist leadership is really like all new things for the Red Sox fan to experience. That was a great dig. You worked that one right in.

Yeah, I wrote a column once when I had my own website. And I think it's in the collection that I did with my Red Sox book about this game, the 0-0 or maybe it was 1-0 Cleveland game against the Red Sox in 2000. It was like a must win to keep the Red Sox basically alive that season. And Nomar hit this ball that hit like the very, very, very top of the wall, like within one foot of being a homer, but it wasn't a homer. And it was a double. And he ended up at second with no outs in the eighth inning. We just needed one run and everybody in the park gave up because we're like, Oh, I can't believe that wasn't a homer. We just all quit. You could feel it in the park. And it was like, wow, we,

we need like therapy. So, so, uh, you know, maybe we're due for a come up and so I don't, I don't, uh, I remember making fun of you because I had the 1999 New York Yankees commemorative season. I don't even think it was a DVD. It might have been the VHS tape. And they do the retrospective on the season and the highlights and the World Series and everything else. And they had an interview with Bernie Williams in there. And Bernie Williams was talking about how they were nervous before the ALCS against the Red Sox in 99 or whatever.

I think they played in the ALCS, uh, whatever playoff series it was. I'm old. I can't remember 19 years ago, but yeah, whatever series it was. And they were like,

geez, you know, the Red Sox are good. They got Pedro and you know, he struck out 17 of us earlier this season or whatever. And you know, we're a little nervous. And then he's like,

Yogi Bear came to the locker room and was basically like, why are you guys nervous? We've been kicking their ass for a hundred years. And Bernie Lewis was like, oh, that's right. Yeah. Like, I don't have to be nervous. Sure enough, that held true to form. And all that, you know, the world flipped on its axis in 2004.

So now maybe it's going to bounce right back on its axis and order will be restored. Let's hope. Yeah. And Yogi Bear is dead, so he can't say that anymore. I'm looking at the August stats for the Yanks. So you brought up this guy, Luke Voigt, a couple days ago. They finally decided to stop sending the carcass of Greg Bird out for our bats. It was interesting because crows and mosquitoes were circling him as he was in the batter's box. I've never seen a situation like that before. Buzzardsows and mosquitoes were circling him as he was in the batter's box.

I've never seen a situation like that before. Buzzards. Buzzards were circling him. He was on my fantasy team until a month ago when we shrewdly traded him. Because we were watching him going, this guy kind of sucks. I don't see it. He would have one three homer game

a month and then would just strike out all the other times. We're always turning the corner with he would have like one three homer game a month and then would just strike out all the other times. So they finally got rid of him. We're always turning in the corner with Greg Bird. Like every, you know, the Yankees announcers. He's finally healthy.

Oh, he had a grand slam a couple of weeks ago. And since that time, I think he's hit about 140. So everybody was like, Oh, the grand slam, he's coming out of it.

He's shaking off the injury rust. And here we go. Look out. Here comes Greg Bird. And no, it was not. Here comes Greg Bird. He's, he's horrible. Yeah. He's not coming the injury rust. And here we go. Look out. Here comes Greg Bird. And no, it was not here comes Greg Bird. He's horrible. Yeah, he's not coming.

It's not coming at all. Yeah, what's funny, though, is Luke Voigt and Miguel Andujar, who's been red hot all month. But other than that, like Stanton has eight homers in August. Other than that, the Yates. Stanton was pretty good. He's pressed a little bit now because he's trying to get his 300th homer. And he really wanted to do that in Florida. Like, you could see him, like, gripping's pressed a little bit now because he's trying to get his 300th homer. He really wanted to do that in Florida. You could see him gripping the bat a little too tight.

He was trying to do it last night. You could see he's swinging for the fences. But he had been hot. Other than Andujar, Gleyber Torres kind of came back to earth, although he's been better the past few games. But he definitely came back to earth. They get no production from Greg Bird. They get really not. Hicks has been okay, but they're without D.D. Gregorius, Sanchez, and Judge.

I mean, that's a lot of offensive firepower. Judge looks hurt. They now make a little run. Yeah, Judge looks hurt. He's on my team, my fantasy team now, and they said it was three weeks, and then it's like, there's still soreness. I keep getting these updates. Right, he still can't swing a bat. His wrist still doesn't feel right. It's going to be like three weeks, but it's like there's still soreness I keep getting these updates right he still can't swing a bat

his wrist still doesn't feel right it's not great that he still has pain there and it's still fractured and he can't swing a bat and we're like getting to the end of August

that's a little disconcerting it's interesting in August the Yankees are only hitting like 240 but somehow you feel like you have all this momentum the pitching's been

a little better but now now Chapman now Chapman's hurt. Chapman's hurt. They definitely have had a favorable schedule. The real test is going to be next week. This week, they play

the White Sox and they play the Tigers, but then they go on the road and they play three in Seattle and three in Oakland. That's really going to be telling. Oakland's red hot. Seattle's good. That has wildcard telling. Oakland's red hot. Seattle's good. That has wild card implications. So it's on the road.

Now, they're allegedly going to have Didi and Sanchez back, supposedly, which helps things because Austin Romine has been pretty good, but he's just not meant to be an everyday catcher. And you can see he's kind of wearing down at the plate now because he's not used to playing every day. Every once in a while, Oakland has one of these weird Billy Bean teams where they just get the Mike Fears, Edwin Jackson. They just kind of cobble together this pitching staff.

They get this lights-out closer out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, just things start happening. And you can't figure out how it's happening, and you watch them play, and you can't figure out who the dangerous bats are, but somehow they're winning 3-2 and two to one. It's really crazy. Major League Baseball salivating over the prospect of a Yankees, Red Sox,

you know, civil war in the playoffs. They're going to end up with an Oakland Cleveland ALCS. Yeah. Oakland Rockies in the finals. The Rockies, the A's. Talk Rob Manfred off the ledge, right? The judge thing, every time somebody gets hit, this happened with Bogarts last year too,

the guy gets hit in the wrist and they're like, yeah, there's a small fracture, there's a hairline fracture, there's some tendon, but it's going to be three weeks, he'll be fine. The person's never fine. Either it takes them forever to come back or when they come back, they have no power at all.

Like Bogarts was never the same last year when he came back, but it just never, never seems like it works out for them. So I went to, I went to Tampa. I was in Florida with my son. We went to go see everybody at Full Sail. Shout out to them. Went to the WWE NXT event, which was awesome. Took my son, went to the WWE NXT event, which was awesome, took my son, went to the performance center

the next day, my son did a wrestling entrance which was impromptu saw the ramp asked if he could do it and did this two minute wrestling entrance and everyone had 70 wrestlers cheering this is awesome for him we're at the point of no return

where I think he's going to be a professional wrestler and it's like the Miz on the real world 20 years ago, I can't stop it he really is, I can we're at the point of no return where I think he's going to be a professional wrestler. And it's, it's like the Miz on the real world 20 years ago. I can't stop it. He really is. I can't stop it anymore. The good thing is I won't have to pay for college. We'll just get them going at age 18. Um,

but then we went to, we decided we could have left or we could have driven to Tampa for the Tampa Red Sox series, which is like a two hour drive. So we did that and went to the trap, which I had been to 10 years ago, which was terrible 10 years ago. And has not changed in 10 years.

So it's gone from terrible to 10 years older from being terrible. But they have these weird thunderstorms in Florida. So you need the dome. So you're there and all of a sudden there's like thunder for five minutes. And it sounds like the stadium is being attacked. And then it just goes away. It's the strangest environment for sports,

not only in baseball, but arguably in out of all four of the professional sports, it's kind of indescribable. I've never been there mercifully, but it looks, it looks terribly depressing on television. And, you know, we live in a golden age where these weather situations can be rectified by having a retractable roof now. Yeah. I understand they're exorbitantly expensive, but I mean, down there, you know, you could also have like beautiful day, beautiful sunny days in the spring and in the fall, you could have the roof open. And then if there's a threat of thunderstorms, which there

is pretty much every day in Florida in the summer, I guess you could close up the roof. I think they're trying to get a new stadium, but I think that they're running into difficulties with financing or, or, you know, location or something. I know there's a big battle down there. I don't think it's been resolved. Maybe mercifully they can just be put out of their misery and moved somewhere where it makes more sense. Yeah, so it's in St. Petersburg, which I always forget. It's really like a half hour from Tampa. I mean, there's stadiums like that where obviously Giant Stadium

is in New Jersey and things like that. Right. It's not even in Tampa. It's in St. Petersburg, which is, you know, kind of a lesser part of that whole area. And Florida just in general is you just forget how strange Florida is until you go back. There's a reason they don't charge state income tax in Florida. They really want people to live there. And there's just like random hurricanes that go on for like five minutes and then go away where all of a sudden you're in the biggest, craziest

thunderstorm of your life and then it ends. And the stadium itself, you know, put this way, Johnny, tickets were available. Always. Yeah, so fortunately we were just able to go on SeatGeek and

you know, there's seats everywhere and you can kind of pick where you sit. We're in this era now with baseball where depending on howatGeek and, you know, there's seats everywhere and you can kind of pick where you sit. We're in this era now with baseball where depending on how much money you spend, you can basically, you can decide I'm going to sit there, whatever you want to do. So I want to sit behind the Red Sox dugout. So we got seats right behind the Red Sox dugout. Dick Vitale was two rows down.

Yeah, he's the four season ticket. So I ended up sitting with him for a few innings. He's doing great. It's weird to talk to the toned down Dick Vitale, who's not on TV. He was just like a normal guy, but he's such a nice guy. Yeah, so he's Tampa's biggest fan. He's been coming 20 years.

They have the banners up over the left field wall. And it's basically like, you know, they have the three, they put up three banners for 08, which I thought was funny. Like division champs, AL East champs, division champs, and then 08 pennant. And then there's like two others. So they have five banners total. They've been there for 25 years.

They have three retired numbers. Can you guess, can you guess what the three retired numbers. Can you guess? Can you guess what the three retired numbers for the Tampa Bay Rays are? One of them is Wade Boggs. Fred McGriff? No. I was going to say Evan Longoria,

but he's still playing. Boggs has to be one of them, but I couldn't give you the other two. Can't give me the other two? no I actually have to look up who the third one was because I couldn't remember one of them is Jackie Robinson

okay yeah sure I should have guessed that so that happened I wasn't counting that I was thinking they were actual Rays players the second one is Wade Boggs who played there for two years. Right. And retired

and he went into the Hall of Fame with a Rays hat because they bought him a Cadillac or something. Isn't that the thing? The third one is Don Zimmer. Really? They retired number 66 in Don Zimmer's honor because he was a special advisor for them for a couple years. Near the end.

So those are their three retired numbers. Wade Boggs literally played his entire career and then went to Tampa to try to get 3,000 hits and ended up there the last two years of his career. Retired his number. So that's it. As a fan growing up of the mighty Hartford Whalers, I know where you speak because the Whalers,

and still hanging, I believe, to this day in the Civic Center, is a retired Gordie Howe's number. Now, I'll give you Gordie Howe. He was a legit whaler. Gordie Howe was one of the five best hockey players of all time. Of course. I'm not killing them for retiring Gordie Howe, but they the five best hockey players of all time. Of course. I'm not killing them for retiring Gordie Howe, but they also had John Pye McKenzie,

who was a legendary Boston Bruin who played for the Bruins for like 25 years and had a cup of coffee with the Whalers on the last legs of his career. He wanted to play with Gordie Howe. They were both like 50, and they retired his number. Now, Gordie Howe, I'll give you, who was a legit Whaler in the New England Whalers, played with his sons, Hartford Whalers, the whole nine yards. I love Gordie Howe.

I yield to no one of my love for Gordie Howe. But as a franchise, they had to retire John Pine McKenzie's number because they were grasping at straws to have anything. So I think the Rays are in a similar boat. Don Zimmer, retired. Don Zimmer, retired. Don Zimmer, 66. So on Saturday, was Wade Boggs bobblehead night? Nice.

And so we get in early and not realizing they're going to honor Wade at the game. And this time we're sitting pretty close too, because you can kind of sit wherever you want in Tampa. And so Wade was there. Nice. Have you seen Wade lately? Not recently. No, but I think the last I saw of Wade is when we, last time I was on

a podcast, we talked about the Ted Williams biography on PBS and he was involved in that. Yeah. But I don't know when that was filmed. He looks phenomenal. I mean, he's like, he's 60.

I would describe him as kind of, kind of looks like a retired porn actor. Nice. Like he, a little Kenny Rogers thing kind of going on. Yeah. He's got, he definitely dyed his hair to keep it like the Dr.

Pepper. Um, but just looks very Florida. And, uh, my son is one of those kids that anything he gets for free, he's super excited about. Yeah. You know, like any sort of, oh, this could be worth something.

Like he has no context of when anything's worth. So we get these bobbleheads. He's like, we got to bring these home. And then by about midway through the game, he decided to leave them under a seat. No, he left the Wade Boggs bobbleheads? He did. He did.

I think even he grasped that there wasn't a lot of magic in the Wade Boggs. Did you keep yours? I did not. Wow. I did not. That's unbelievable. Did not. Some lucky kid made me scoop them up.

Snatched up two Wade Boggs bobbleheads. The other thing with- Beloved Red Sox, beloved Yankee Wade Boggs. Unbelievable. The other thing with them, and I'm not the first person to make this point. I wrote this piece maybe 10, 12 years ago for Page Two, just making a lot of jokes about the fans that go to Tampa games.

Is that a young crowd, Johnny? No, no. I wouldn't think so. And now we're getting up there in age two. So it's harder for us to make those jokes. Because I went from, you know, 15 years ago thinking how hilarious it was that all these people were so old. And it's like, oh, people park their walkers in left field and you make all those jokes. I remember, yeah.

And now I go to these games thinking like, yeah, 20 years from now, Johnny and I can get season tickets. Absolutely, we're retired in Florida. We're living in Florida together. We have our Blue Point special podcast. But it's really surreal. My big takeaway is I'm not sure Tampa should have a team. It was like 60% Red Sox fans there.

Yeah, that's the thing. Every opposing team, it's a big... And the Yankees have had spring training there for a number of years now, so there's an enormous amount of Yankee fans. So anytime you watch a game, it's like a Yankee home game, basically. Yeah, it's definitely a unique vibe.

It's hard to imagine we're in the major leagues of that team, but we are. The other fun thing is batting practice because barely anyone's going, so you could just go in left field and my son brought his glove the second day

and just watching people hit bombs, hoping he got two balls. Yeah, it was a good time. Let's talk about John McCain. Okay. Why did you laugh nervously? No, I don't know. I thought you were nervously? No, I don't know. I just, I did.

I thought you were going to say, I thought you were going further with that. I didn't know that was just it. Like John McCain go like just that. I was like, Oh, I was expecting. It was just a funny, funny intro. That's all. It's not funny that John McCain died, but. No, I mean, you're, you're getting real delayed out of it.

I didn't, this is awkward. No, I'm not. Oh my God. No, I'm not. No, you delayed out of it. I don't know. This is awkward. No, I'm not. Oh my God, no, I'm not. No, you had a rare sentimental tweet about him over the weekend. And it's funny because in life he literally drove me crazy because he, you know, he did things that I despised and he, you know, he was semi detrimental to the prospects of conservatism that I love. But, you know, when you think about, like, what he and other, you know,

POWs and the Vietnamese War went through, like, I read this book when I was a kid called What Hell Was in Session by Jeremiah Denton, who was a pilot. It was shot down, and he was over in the Hanoi Hilton. And he later became a Republican senator from Louisiana for a minute. And, you know, the stuff that they went through, like just brutal torture and, you know, isolation and not being able to speak to any other American for literally years. Like there's guys that went years in solitary confinement and couldn't talk to another American. And the only people they talked to were mistreating them. And, you know, they would do this thing where they tied ropes around your arms

or your shoulders, they'd pull you up by your elbows and would dislocate both shoulders. I mean, just excruciating pain. And McCain endured all that because his father was an admiral and they wanted to have the PR value of letting him go early. They said, well, you know, we just found out your father's a bigwig and we're going to let you go early to show how gracious we are. And he said, no, I'm not leaving early. I'm going to, you know, we're going to go out in the order that we came in. So guys that

have been here years longer than me, three years longer than me, they get to go first. And then they beat the hell out of him some more, knocked his teeth out, broke his ribs, uh, et cetera, just, just brutal torture. So to think about living through that and experiencing it and the incredible will and courage it takes to withstand that is nothing short of inspiring because you can't help but put yourself in his shoes. And he was 30, but I think back to guys I knew in college or guys I knew from high school or any guys I hang out with, you know, people that I love and like, who has the strength to endure that, you know?

And if given the chance, like nobody's going to blame him if they say, well, they let you know, they chose to let you out, you get to go. And he, he said no to that. I mean, that's just incredible courage and, and, and just determination. Amazing. Why did he frustrate you? Well, because he, he, in 2000,

when he, he was a fairly reliable conservative for a while, and then I think he got a little too inside Washington, and he liked this Maverick label, and he was like the press's favorite Republican because he was half a Democrat.

He got enamored of things like campaign finance reform because he was involved in this thing, the Keating Five, where it was, you know, semi-shady with campaign donations. Semi-shady? Yeah. I'm going to go with outright shady. Yeah, it was shady. I don't think he was the shadiest person involved.

No, the other three of them were really super shady, and he was like kind of less shady, but still shady. And he liked being the press's favorite Republican. He played footsie with like running as John Kerry's running me. And, you know, on days like when this goes way back when Jim Jeffords, who was an outright Democrat with a Republican label as the senator from Vermont, switched parties. And McCain was like, you know, oh, this is, you know, this is our problem and we're too far to the right and everything. And so he over time, he got more liberal and he liked being the press's favorite Republican. Didn't help him when he ran for office because then they still castigated him,

and the Obama administration made fun of the fact that he couldn't type emails, which is because he was tortured in Vietnam. Did that happen? I don't remember that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because he couldn't type, and they made it a big issue as to, well, how can we have a president in the 20th century that can't, you know, 21st century that can't type emails. And it was because he couldn't raise his arms above his head or couldn't use his shoulders properly to type or to text. Well, now we have a president who's illiterate. So that's even worse. what happens exactly so and really like you know when you when you compare and you know it's it's if any of us make a comparison with john mccain and like what he what he endured and what he went

through willingly for the country we all come up lacking but when you look at the current occupant of the white house and i understand mccain didn't love him and he didn't love mccain but mccain's dead and now today like the flags are at full staff like he didn't even he sent out a tweet of condolences to the family, but like nothing about McCain. Because McCain fucked him over on that vote. So he's being like a spiteful asshole as usual. And the notion of Trump spending more than like three minutes in a Vietnamese prison camp,

like the first moment he could have ratted anybody, he would have turned. And he, he's like the fakest, he and his crew are like the fakest tough guys, you know, with all this New York swagger and like talking like they're mobbed up. And he doesn't have any real like courage of any kind, you know,

so to be a fake tough guy, I'm sure he looks at a real tough guy like McCain and thinks about like what he could have endured in a North Vietnamese prison camp, which wouldn't have lasted very long. The McCain Sarah Palin combo remains the weirdest partnership, I think, in the history of mankind. Maybe there was one weirder partnership. I just can't remember it.

It was weird in the moment. Now, 10 years later, it's super-duper weird. I know. Looking back, and he never said a bad word about her. He could have gone behind her afterwards and been like, boy, that was a disaster, and I screwed that up, but he never did. He never sold her down the river and she never, you know, really turned on him. Although she, she's fully embraced Trumpism and become what we thought she was. But yeah, in retrospect, that was an odd thing. Yeah. He's,

she's, I mean, I think she's been pretty solid as, you know, he gave me this wonderful opportunity and he was a wonderful man personally and whatever. So, yeah, it's and he never said it was a mistake. I mean, and actually at the time he picked her because she was a novelty at the time. It gave him a little little bounce in the polls right off the bat. Didn't last long, but I mean, it did help him initially. And it helped to solidify him with conservatives who were doubtful about him. So who replaces him as the quote-unquote maverick in the Republican Party? Well, there are none anymore.

I mean, I guess now a maverick is a guy like Ben Sasse from Nebraska, who I actually love, because he does not toe the MAGA party line in any way, shape, or form. But, I mean, the scary thing is, if you look at what makes me absolutely despondent any time I take a look at it, is Trump's ratings among the Republican Party is like 90%. He gets a higher rating than like Ronald Reagan or Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan, like beloved figures of the Republican Party. And I'm like, is this really what it's become? It's just like, I mean, I've said this ad infinitum on your podcast, but like, it's Donald fucking Trump.

He's a moron. Like how anybody could look at him and think like, oh, this guy's this wonderful leader to be revered. And he's so fucking stupid. I mean, just aside, politics aside, like he's just a moron. At base level, he's an uncouth crass moron and you have decided to like hitch your wagon to him and your fortunes to him and adoringly like they love him i i just don't get it it's like i i was to god i feel like you know it's like a twilight zone episode i just don't understand it and i guess you know maybe i was maybe i was a delusional one because i thought

the people in the party had more brains than that but they all lockstep for him the other day he comes out last week and says something about like you shouldn't be allowed to flip anymore like you know like he's a mob boss like snitches get stitches and they go to ask republicans for comment and they like run down the hall and avoid reporters to get out of the way like a basic thing would be like we're like in favor of law and order, and snitching on criminal activity is encouraged. And they couldn't even give the straight answer to that because they're scared to death of him because he has the minions

that support his agenda such as it is and vote for him. It's downward frightening and depressing. It does seem like people are genuinely afraid of his fan base now. They are, and I guess if he know, I mean, he's, you know, if he endorses somebody in primary, they win. These people, I mean, for the life of me, I don't get it. These people in the heartland or in the south that, you know,

they claim that he speaks for them and he's the first one to really, you know, recognize our plight and it's like Donald Trump, he cares about Donald Trump. He couldn't give a good goddamn about anything else but his own self-aggrandizement. It's outrageous, but they believe, like, he's our champion. And whatever he does, I mean, you know, there's people that were enraged and inflamed about Bill Clinton's behavior in the White House, rightly so.

And this guy's doing things with porn stars and Playboy models and paying them off, and they're like, well, you know, nobody's perfect. What? He has really invented this new strategy of debunking any possible thing that could come out about him by just saying the news is wrong. Like even if that tape came out, he would just say the tape got doctored. Right.

Because that wasn't me. Somebody, the fake news media, they doctored that tape. That's not me. And if there is a video of him He's like, that wasn't me. Somebody, the fake news media, they doctored that tape. That's not me. Right. And if there is a video of him coming out of Nicole Brown Simpson's house covered in blood the night of the murders. Right.

He'd be like, that's not me. They doctored that. It's fake news. I mean, the truest thing he ever said was when he said, I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and they would still support me. And he's absolutely right. Did he say that? I could shoot somebody's family on Fifth Avenue and the person would still support me. And he's absolutely right. Did he say that? He could shoot somebody's family on Fifth Avenue

and the person would still support them. Well, he's going to be in trouble when the midterms come because it does seem like there's some mobilization from the other side. There is, yeah. And I think people are definitely ginned up to vote against them and you could see a Democratic House. I don't think there's going to be a Democrat.

I think the Republicans are going to still control the Senate. I'm not so sure about the House, but I think they'll still control the Senate. And he'll just whip that up into some victimhood thing and, you know, get everybody. I mean, he's basically, he's sort of inoculated at this point because it's like the Tyson zone. Like, you could say anything about him and people are going to believe it, but, like, his loyal minions, they just don't care. Yeah. I mean, when everybody's like, oh, this tape is going to come out, but his loyal minions, they just don't care. When everybody's like, oh, this tape is going to come out and this will be the thing that destroys him,

try to think what would come out about him. What more can we learn about his character or lack thereof? What more could come out that his minions would abandon him? I think he's completely indestructible. I don't think one thing could come out. I had a tweet the other day because he sent out a tweet about, you know,

he came back in June and said there's no more threat from North Korea. And now he's not meeting with North Korea because guess what? They're still testing nukes. But he says in this tweet, he sends out and he's like, you know, my highest respect and honor to Chairman Kim Jong-un. That's the head

of a communist police state with blood on his hands right it's like a gulag state and he's sending him he can't lower the flags for john mccain who politics aside was an american hero but he's sending all his honor and respect to kim jong-un i mean and the republicans who were the anti-communist party for 50 years oh well it's just negotiations he's wonderful a wonderful negotiator. Oh, okay. We're just embracing that now, too. Fantastic. Are there any principles we stand for on anything?

Or because he says that it's all good. It's just... Thank God I have this new Luke Voigt tattoo on my arm to look at and distract me in these troubling times. Just wait till the Yankees are in the playoffs and Trump's at the games. Exactly. I thought the thing I was the most shocked playoffs and Trump's at the games. Exactly. Exactly.

I thought the thing I was the most shocked for was when he launched his app next week, last week, and charged $9.99 a month for it. Oh, wait, that was Mike Francesa. That's right. That's right. Wow. The fucking Pope. What a dick drop from the Pope.

Just fucking dropping dick on that one. It's like, look at the size of my dick. Unbelievable. And he took over the New York Stock Exchange to do it. The funny thing is, he touted this morning, because I follow him on Twitter, of course, and he's like, I'll have my over-unders on the NFL live in my app at 9 o'clock.

And then I was scrolling through Twitter, and at 10 o'clock, he then put the same over-unders on Twitter. And I'm like, I'm not sure 10 bucks a month was really worth it to get it 45 minutes sooner, you know? To the extent I was waiting with bated breath for his over-under picks, which frankly I wasn't, but maybe there are people that are. And like, ooh, thank God I spent that 120 bucks a year

so I could get that 45 minutes early. 120 bucks a year is basically Netflix and like high level porn. It's 10 bucks a month, but I think he has a deal. If you send him for a year, it's only like 96 or something. I think he saves you some money. Yeah. 20 bucks for the year. I think browsers.com has the same deal.

And you could watch him. You could watch the video feed of his radio show. And I guess you get his NFL Sunday game, his NFL show on Sundays, but you really got to be into it to make that financial commitment. It's really pricey. You could listen to it for free. It's funny why like the subscription model is starting to become a thing and because it's worked in certain situations, but people keep leaving out the part that it's worked when it's something, when it's something like a Netflix or when it's like the newyorker.com and you get all of their awesome writing plus their entire archives, or you get

the New York times and you get their entire newspaper plus New York time magazine, or you get Washington post. Um, it's a little harder to make the subscription work when that, when you don't have the scale of the content. Right. You know, when you're asking somebody to shell out money for every month for something, it's,

you really got to deliver the value on it. So, like I, Vinny, Vinny, for instance, who likes the Giants to win more than seven games. How do you know that? I got the app. Oh, oh.

I'm, uh, I'm rooting for it. I just think he charged too much money for it. And he's got enough, he's a big enough name in New York and has enough fans. I mean, they have conventions that he sells out. So he's going to get enough people that this will be a viable thing for a while. I mean, they have conventions that he sells out. So he's going to get enough people that this will be a viable thing for a while. I just, you know.

I wish I could charge money for an app to let people hear my wisdom too. My hope is he gives us updates on how many people have signed up for the app at least once a week. Hopefully. We're up to 4,200 people in the app. Hoping for 5K by November.

I wish people would pay for my app or I could go on a 10-minute rant about how Luke Voigt sucks and then they could tune in next week and I could say, scratch that, Luke Voigt is the second coming of Luke Gehrig. That's content worth paying for right there, folks.

You're giving away those rants for free on Twitter. Absolutely. I was actually worried. Sometimes I worry for you on Twitter that you're going to snap, that you've had two glasses of Pinot Noir and Greg Bird struck out for the fifth time. And you're going to snap like you did in college where we would all be scared. Right. I know.

I am a little worried about that. Sometimes I'll wake up and I'll be like, what did I say about Greg Bird last night? Was it really bad? I always stop short of an actual call for violence. I tweeted something about my two people I go after the most are Greg Bird and Sonny Gray. Somebody sent me a response on twitter and it was like there was a yankees pitcher cory lytle and he was a pilot he crashed his plane into the apartment to the like you know some building in new york city and died unfortunately somebody's like do you think it's time to get

sunny gray cory lytle flying lessons oh no freaking internet like don't say things like we're not wishing death on sunny i think he That's horrible. I think he stinks. I'd like him to pitch for another team. But I'm like, my God, how far have I gone where these are the responses I'm eliciting? You know, like, no, no, no. We don't want anybody to die or be injured. We just want them to go play for another baseball team, not the Yankees. That's all. Or improve at their craft.

Or get better, right? Like Luke Voigt. He's back in my good graces. Nothing makes me happier than when you have a starting pitcher that you can't stand or a reliever that you can't stand. Who was that guy? Who was the guy last year, the reliever you couldn't stand?

Oh, Tyler Clippard. Yeah, I love Tyler Clippard. Yeah, he was last year. Who was the all-timer? Tanyan Sturtz? There's somebody from last decade. I didn't really have strong feelings about Tanyan Sturtz. Somebody from last decade that drove you absolutely bonkers. You couldn't handle it.

Oh, there's a lot of guys on that 2004 Yankee team pre-podcast that would have heard from you. Kevin Brown. Oh, God, yeah. Kevin Brown, absolutely. Randy Johnson, I didn't love. His tenure as a Yankee. Yeah, yeah, a lot of guys.

Greg Bird is a disappointment because Francesa, the aforementioned app, he has been hyping Greg Bird for years and he's been saying the Yankees, of all these guys that are now blossoming, the Yankees were the highest on Greg Bird. Aaron Judge was like an afterthought. They liked Sanchez,

but they were like, oh, Greg Bird, he's the top. He's the top. He's going to be the next big cheater, the next guy. Suffice it to say, he's not lived up to that billing. And Sonny Gray has one good start against the Orioles the other day, and then he gives a post-game press conference saying, well, I'm capable of this because I'm one of the best pitchers in the league. What?

I'll have what Sonny Gray's having if he thinks he's one of the best pitchers in the league. Based on what metric is Sonny Gray the best pitcher in New York, let alone in the league? He's got good stuff, Johnny. His stuff's really good. Too good. Well, this is the last week before baseball really heats up and the casual fans start pouring in. I've really enjoyed this baseball season, but I also have one of the best baseball teams

that the Red Sox have had. But I really do enjoy just the night in, night out, seeing Betts and Martinez and Benatende. I genuinely enjoy all three of those guys, and I'm glad they're in my life. I hope they're setting you up for an epic collapse, because it's been a while since we've had one of those. So let's hope for another one.

Before we go, you didn't mention Chris Sale at all, and I'd like to thank you. Because I don't believe he's really hurt. I think the Red Sox are being smart, and this is like resting him because last year he fell apart towards the end of the year in the playoffs, and this year they're, I'm doing air quotes about injuries,

that he has injuries, that he has to rest his arm. It's a very smart maneuver by them. So I wouldn't be too worried about him. I hope you're right. Johnny, always a pleasure. Say hi to everybody in Connecticut for us. Talk to you soon. Will do. Bye-bye. Alright, thanks so much to Mark Titus.

Thanks to my buddy Jacko. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to check them out. ZipRecruiter. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right. Thanks so much to Mark Titus. Thanks to my buddy, Jacko. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to check them out. ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to FanDuel. If you're not a fantasy expert, FanDuel, clearly the place to play. FanDuel is something for everyone. More ways to win than ever before.

This season, free $250,000 survivor contest. The biggest free survival contest ever. Pick one team to win each week. If you can't reuse that team again for the rest of the season, you got to keep going to the next one. Locks before week one. Don't miss your chance. Sign up right now. Fanduel.com slash BS. You get a new $20 bonus if you're a new user when you make your first deposit on Fanduel. Come play with me. Fanduel.com slash BS. The next time you hear from me, the cuz and I are doing AFC and NFC over-unders.

AFC is going to be on this pod. NFC is going to be on Against All Odds with Cousin Sal. It's a special two-part episode. You won't want to miss it. See you then.