The Dale Jr. Download - 402 - Dale Jr. Talks Next Gen Safety; Ned Yost Shares Never Heard Dale Sr. Stories

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

In 400-plus episodes of The Dale Jr. Download, guests have brought a lot of Earnhardt stories to the table. But on this week’s edition the mold has been broken as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis welcome longtime MLB player, coach and team manager Ned Yost.After being drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1974 and playing in the majors for a handful of years, Ned retired during the ‘85 season. When he was at home in Mississippi figuring out his next move in life, he received a call from the Hank Aaron that would change the trajectory of his life forever, inviting him to be a coach for the upcoming pitching prospects of the Atlanta Braves.It was during his time with the Braves organization that he first made the acquaintance of Dale Earnhardt Sr. Ned and friend Jody Davis had made plans to go deer hunting and Davis invited Dale Sr. to come along. Ned and Dale Sr. became fast friends, bonding over their love of hunting and the outdoors and Ned would become a confidant for the Intimidator for years to come.Dale Jr. and Mike pick Ned’s brain about the transition from being a player to a coach, and he explains about how his time with Ted Simmons on the Brewers helped teach him the nuts and bolts of the game. When it came time for Ned to try his hand at team management, he leaned on his experiences of working with Bobby Cox, longtime manager of the Braves. And when he needed to turn a losing organization into a winning one, he depended on the lessons he learned from a brief stint of working on Dale Sr.’s race team in ‘94.Ned recalls the instance that occurred during the ‘94 MLB strike, where Dale Sr. invited him to come on the road with his Richard Childress Racing No. 3 team as they chased their seventh championship. While Ned merely worked as a “rehydration engineer”, he gained first person insight into what it takes to win at the highest level. The education came in handy as he went on to win his first World Series title with the Braves the following year as a bullpen coach.Another lesson that Dale Sr. instilled in Ned was that you never leave a winning team for a losing one. Ned explains that during a hunting trip in Texas, Dale Sr. was talking about his ongoing contract negotiations for the following season. When Ned suggested that he drive for his own start-up D.E.I., Dale Sr. explained that they weren’t ready to win yet. Ned pondered eventually having to leave the Braves to get his shot at managing a major league team and Dale Sr. implored him to stay put, explaining that winning is everything.The time came for Ned to leave in 2002 when he was made team manager of the Brewers. Ned breaks down the time it takes for a young organization to grow confident in their ability and start winning consistently, about a two-and-a-half-year process. Unfortunately, he was let go by Milwaukee before this concept came to fruition, but he found another opportunity to prove the system when he became manager of the Kansas City Royals in 2010. Ned would have the last laugh, as the Royals would win the ALC Pennant in 2014 and the World Series championship in 2015. The first thing Ned thought of was his old friend and how proud he would be of the persistent road to success.This episode has many never before heard Earnhardt hunting stories, as well “the rest of the story” of some of the most memorable tales told on The Download. Listeners should tune in for unforgettable insight into what it takes to win not only a World Series but a NASCAR Cup Championship, as well a better understanding of who Dale Earnhardt Sr. was away from the race track.DIRTY AIRBefore Ned joins the show, Dale, Mike, Alex and Morgan chat about:Tame TalladegaDrivers speaking outImprovements for the NextGen carWhat can be better about driver’s headrestASKJR presented by XfinityFunniest experience with another driverWhich racing pioneer Dale wants to interviewNASCAR Cup Championship patchesDeer hunting trips for the rest of the year Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production, is a production of Dirtymo Media. Yeah, I got the plan, I got the fan, I got the keys, I get to work, I ain't a man, you know what I'm saying, so leave it to me, because I get it first. That's curing in Paladaga. Episode 402, Mike Davis, Dellenhart Jr. in the Bojangle studio. What's up, buddy? What's happening? Hey, not much. You good?

Yeah, pretty good, I guess. Good mood today? I mean, you know. Good. We'll see. We'll see. It could go either way. I'm going to try to keep you there.

It's time for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. And we've got a great guest today. Ned Yost. Ned Yost is a World Series winning manager and coach in the Major League Baseball and a great friend of my dad's. And apparently they spent a lot of time together hunting and doing all kinds of stuff. and dad was a big Braves fan and connected with several players back in the 80s and the 90s

made friendships with a lot of them would go visit the team and so forth and so he's going to tell us about that Earnhardt stories man I love Earnhardt stories that's what it is this is the Earnhardt story episode all right well you know we think that we've heard them all

but I don't think we've heard any of these So Ned's going to share a lot of specific things with this. And I think we're really going to enjoy this. So, you know, some of the stories we've, you know, when we hear the Earnhardt stories, typically we've heard like a version of it, right? And we get somebody in here to kind of clean it up a little bit or tell their side. But this is, this would be new because we haven't heard any of these stories. That's right.

That's right. Ned has an incredible life of his own. outside of the Earnhardt connection. I mean, you know, and when we interviewed him for this show, I get the impression that he really wants to tell his experiences with dad, but we also really going to have to, we're going to have to implore him to share with us some of his own experiences as a World Series winning manager in Major League Baseball. That's amazing.

We don't get that opportunity. No. Right. Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, we are a NASCAR or racing or motorsports-oriented podcast, but man, it's fun. Fun for me when we step outside that box every once in a while for the right reasons, and this feels like a good one. So let's get some dirty air.

Dirty Air. You Got It. Dirty Air is brought to you by Filter Time. There's no better way to deal with Dirty Air than with a filter subscription service that takes care of the hassle and takes that out of buying air filters for your home. They're delivered right to your door. So every time they show up, you know when to change them. Go to filtertime.com and subscribe now. But this is our dirty air.

So let's go. So at Talladega this weekend, pretty busy. A lot of storylines, a lot of topics, even leading into the race. A lot of conversation and concern about the race car. We had a lot of guys talking about the hits being hard. and man, that has really been a big, you know, if you haven't heard about this, I mean, I don't know what to tell you, you're not paying attention, but apparently the drivers are absolutely sure without question that the car is way too stiff.

And when you actually dive in and look at the design of the car itself, you can kind of see how that absolutely could be the case. And we're having guys that are, so here's my opinion. So we're having more people step up and say, I've got a concussion. And those are the, we got Kurt Busch and Alex Bowman, who's out of the race car this year alone with a concussion. And those are the only two we know about, right? We are, there is, that's not fool ourselves, right? Drivers will get a concussion and race with it and would not shock me if several of these guys

either got a concussion unknowingly and got back in the car or knew that they had, you know, suffered some sort of a concussion in a crash and continued to race. And so, but we only know about these two. And that's a big step up in percentages of people. speaking out about having a problem in a certain in any particular year and so we absolutely have a problem with this race car they're going to you know NASCAR is going to fix it they need to you know they need to get the back of the car but it wouldn't hurt for them to focus on the rest of the vehicle as well but get the car where absorbs more impacts denny went right into the media

and he went uh scorched earth like He, you know, said things like there needs to be new leadership, change the leadership. He then, you know, clarified on Sunday. He didn't mean that they need to fire Steve Phelps. He just feels like that the people that are in charge of this particular design on the car failed to see some very critical things as the car was being put, you know, the car was being tested in all these things, right?

and maybe he is telling the truth. Maybe he's backtracking a little bit. Maybe he got a little bit too, you know, too personal or too frustrated in his media session, and he doesn't really want Phelps out of there. Phelps doesn't have anything really to do with design in the car, but, I mean, these type of things do fall on those, the shoulders of the people at the top.

Sure. Chase Elliott also backs his, you know, backs all this up. All the drivers, I think, would admit that this is a problem, but Chase Elliott went into the media as well and said that the new car is taking a step backwards in regard to safety. And I think that's a fair statement. So they made this, you know, the car,

the car is designed very well in terms of being a, you know, being a race car, the independent rear suspension, the transaxil, when you look at this car, I mean, they created this thing from scratch, but it can't, you know, it can't take a crash very well. They did crash test the crap out of this thing, but I remember way back when William Byron hit the wall and a test at California and got out and said,

that was a really, really hard hit. That comment kind of stuck with me and a lot of other people. And the drivers have been talking about it all year long. And so now finally I think it's gotten to a point to where with all of the crashes and hits that we saw with the tire issues at Texas, drivers now know that it could be their heads being concussed any minute, any moment, right? I think that, I think the, it was a concern. we go to Texas, we have a lot of tire issues,

we have a lot of guys hitting the wall, backing into the wall, which is basically probably the worst way you can hit with this car. And now drivers are almost in a panic for NASCAR to help them, right? They're going to the media because the media is kind of the last resort to get something done, right? To really get somebody's attention.

You really don't want to go to the media. You want NASCAR to react and things to get fixed without having to go to that situation. So when a driver feels like he's out of options, it feels like he's not being heard or really has to have something done immediately or really needs to get his message across quickly, urgently, they go into the media, and they overspeak, right?

When you get into the media and you're going to try to, when you're wanting to be heard, when you're wanting somebody to understand this is something important to you, and you're a driver, you go to the media, You overspeak. You pour it on thick. Right?

Because that's your only shot. Standing there in your media session, you're going to get this point across. And so you kind of overdo it a little bit with the hope that this doesn't fail. This attempt to get attention or get this message across is not going to, it's going to work. I think that, you know, that was a little bit of what Denny was doing. It was a tactic to get this message out to the public so that the fans and everybody, would understand the severity of the situation and the importance of some action. And so with that said, I mean, NASCAR has been working on a new rear clip for some time.

They have been understanding that this is a problem and have been trying to fix this for a while, but it's just not happening quick enough. That's what I wanted to ask is that there's more media sessions and there are opportunities to fix the car quickly, right? You know, they're continually in front of the media saying it. Well, there's a lot. One of the problems is the car is dangerous. If you back it into a wall, you're more than likely going to get a concussion than when you would in the old car.

That's not an exaggeration. No, it seems accurate, yes. And you want it changed right now. Is that possible? No. Okay. NASCAR can't change it right now. If they go in there and make adjustments to this car or cut bars out of it for the next race,

and you go back it into the wall and bust the fuel cell, and now you're burning your own fire. So NASCAR has, you know, they've been in this business a long time. They know that they could create more problems or even more severe problems, believe it or not, no than a concussion by making the wrong move here they have to make sure they get this right they are in they could be held liable if they were to make a mistake um and that's that that that to denny's point all of this kind of does go back to the original design of the car so there is a little bit of you know they want all this to crush right they want this back in to crush, right? So that's great. I mean, the old car did that, but this car's a little bit shorter in the

back. There's not a lot of room between the bumper, the fuel cell, and there's really no room between the fuel cell and the, in the, um, transactional. And so the trans axle can puncture the fuel cell. If you shove that fuel cell into the ground, like with the old car, it's going into that trans axle. There is a steel plate between it, but do you know for sure that it will protect Do you want to try it? Do you want to be in that car? Nope. When that fuel cell erupts?

Nope. And so if they make the back of the car to where it absorbs too much, it could also, you know, you get close enough to that fuel cell, you burst the fuel cell, or something can protrude and puncture it with, you know, another race car or part or whatever. Some of these, you know, when you look at the back bump of the car, you'll see these little struts, these aluminum struts that are, that those could puncture the fuel cell. Yeah.

That's all scary. It is. Right. Yeah. So think about it. I remember at Bristol one time, Sterling Marlin and his team, backed our car into the wall,

the number 22 Maxwell house car, Ford, Jr. Johnson. Back the car into the wall. Push your fuel cell down, the deck lid and everything. To get the arrow back right, they set jack stands on the back, they set jack stands on the fuel cell.

raised up the jack stands to hold the deck lid up bungee corded all that into the car right sent him back out on the racetrack he spun out back into the wall again and shoved the jackstand through the fuel cell through the top of the fuel cell and giant ball of fire turns one and two at bristol and uh he gets out but it was a big nasty thing chocolate mires runs over there to pull him out the car it was a really really big ball of fire so when those fuel cells puncture if you got a lot of fuel in there, it's going to be intense. And so they just have to get that right. And that to me is another like, oh, well, I want to personally me, I want to go, well,

damn it, you know, why did we have to go this far with this design? Why did this car have to be so far removed from what we were doing to begin with? Why did we have to jump to the other extreme? I mean, we've basically got a sports car running around these ovals, a car designed for road courses now racing at a mile and a half oval tracks. That's right. You know, this is an EMSA car pretty much. And the EMSA guys run their cars on road courses.

They don't run around ovals with walls. They don't smash into walls every time they spend out. And so that's a little frustrating for me personally. Me personally, I wish we hadn't went so far away from where we were with the overall design of the car. But, and I agree with Denny to a point that the whole thing needs to be revisited in terms of being able to absorb impacts. When we look at the rear impacts, we need to fix that, of course.

But we also want to try to also improve the, side impacts, frontal impacts. Hey man, just because Cody Ware gets out of that car after a nasty, head-on. Vicious impact at Texas doesn't mean that, oh, well, that checks that box. We don't need to really look in that area. If we find and learn and improve the rear,

we need to take that understanding and everything we've got better and try to find other ways around the rest of the car to implement that same sort of understanding. You know, everybody has said, you know, the big talking point this weekend has been, well you know safety's a never-ending quest if that is really your truth then what you learn at the back of this race car when you fix what is obviously wrong you apply it around the rest of the car as well because i don't like the side impacts kevin harvick's side you know has a side impact at st louis earlier in the year said it's the hardest hit of his career yep so this thing is a tank from front to back the headrests don't even get me started

I never, never like these big giant headrest that we have in these cars today. I don't know what the answer is on that. I do know that, so think about this headrests when you look at it. You know, somebody that's just never, somebody that's never actually set in a car or grabbed a hold of these headrest, you look at it and you go, well, that makes a lot of sense. You know, there's a lot of foam around you, right? This foam, it's like, it's like, it's comfortable like a shoe. Absolutely not.

Wow. It's hard as a rock. The phone that we use in these cars is a very, very hard, hard. It doesn't, it's not this nice, it's not like a, you know, roll of toilet paper. Yeah, got you. It's not a pillow. It's hard. And almost, you know, as hard as this desk, in high impact moments, it does give a little bit.

It does dent. But in my opinion, you know, the headrests, and absolutely improved. We never focused on the back of the headrest. There's very little material between the actual carbon fiber surrounding hard shale and your helmet. We never looked at that and said, that needs to be padded more. That needs to be softer. That needs to absorb better.

We never did because the rear impacts were never really a problem. we had a ton of absorption absorbing energy in the bumpers and all the rear of the car would just crush away so the rear impacts weren't never there an issue it was always that right front 45 30 degree angle hit that you were working on and that's why on the headrest they got wider and wider and the foam got wider and wider and more and more in just the right side we we would have as much as we could possibly fit on the left side without the headrest sticking out side the car, but on the right side, we've got this, you know, we've got a foot of foam between us and the actual carbon surround. And so while that looks proper, I always felt like having my head in that headrest, it might as well be right up next to a roll bar. I mean, it's as hard as it you know, it's hard phone. And so if you have a, you know, a 45 degree right front impact at 150 miles an hour,

it is doing you some good, but it is not protecting you from an injury. Certainly not protecting your brain from, you know, running into your cranium. I mean, like, that's bruising. That's concussions. Yeah, it's not. And so that's always kind of been my problem with it is like, you know, yeah, I mean, it's going to protect me.

in a in a in a in a in a short track you know 50 90 80 mile an hour wreck but in a big mile and a half track I really never loved having my head in that big freaking headrest as hard as that phone was because in those high you know 130 above in those type of crashes I mean I ain't I ain't I ain't want my head up against that that's interesting so never even thought about that yeah they're going to talk about the headrests a lot because you know they're understanding standing with the rear impacts and the lack of material in the back of the headrests, this all needs to be revisited, right? This headrest thing needs, and get ready because the headrests are going to change a little bit.

They're going to start making some mandates on thickness of the foam in the back and all kinds of different things. So, you know, while they improve the back of these cars, they're going to ask the teams and the drivers to make some adjustments as well to that surround. And they're going to start, you know, testing that and say, hey, this is what we have to have there to improve. Now that's going to change. That could change actually the cage of the car to be able to incorporate whatever that change in the headrest surround is to be able to get more material in the back.

But again, you know, you get into, you know, 130 or, you know, I'm just guessing. You know, I'm just throwing a number out there. When you get into a high speed collision, you know, I would rather in my head not be up against anything. And I know that's not the answer. I know that's not going to save me from a concussion. We've had drivers have head injuries for as long as this sport's been around. And you don't have to bang into your, you know, you don't have to hit your head on something to get a concussion. Just the quick motion of the car spinning around.

We've had injuries to drivers of cars just rotating. A quick rotation of a car can spin the brain inside the head and damage it. And so you don't have to have a collision. of your head into that foam headrest to create this issue. But I think we got these headrests the way they look now, and we kind of quit working on it. We kind of quit trying, at least visually, looking at what the headrests look like. We haven't made that better.

And I've never loved where we are right now with this surround, This head rests around. A lot of drivers try to sneak them down so that when you do have an impact, it's in the cheek area of the helmet. I mean, honestly, Mike, if you're trying not to get your head wrung, you're willing to take your risks

with what that might do to your neck or whatever, right? You obviously, in NASCAR, the officials will walk around when the drivers get in the cars. There's officials that are specifically walking around and looking at the hell, helmet and the headrest and how they relate to each other and they will go up to you and say you got to raise your headrest. It's too low. I don't like where it's at. It's way too low and they'll tell you. And you have to get some new mounts and you have to get that headrest up. And I always tried

to get mine down as far as I could, not only to be able to look visually over the right side of the headrest with my eyes so I could see the driver next to me on the racetrack, but I also felt like as I got that headrest down, then that my brain was in a better situation during a very high-speed impact. That my lower, the, you know, my jaw, cheek, all of that would would be where the impact was, was, was, was felt the most. And that would, that would, that would lessen the movement of, of my, you know, what my, that would lessen all that was happening inside my head with my brain in a very high impact situation. You know, this is a tough, this is a tough thing because I think we can get, this is tough and frustrating for me because I think we can get a lot better there

in terms of the physical build of the headrest, how the headrest functions, how it, how it functions in a low speed plus a high speed crash. when I and I'm like I don't have the answers trust me there's my and I understand my thinking is flawed in some areas and I've learned that it's flawed in some areas because in 2017 when I was going to come back

and run that final year I sat down with NASCAR I had a couple of NASCAR safety guys come into junior motorsports and I was going to sit down with them and I was going to tell them this and I did tell them this I said you remember those old breakaway headrest there you know that have a we had it basically was a sheet of aluminum and it you know you let

it was strong enough that you could lay your head against it in the corner and race but if you crashed it would bend away your head would bend it away the weight of your head in an impact would fold that out of the way and we went away from those back in the early 2000s or mid-2000s and we started using these big heavy-duty aluminum surrounds and then we got And that came right around the same time we started using the head and neck restraints, which I think the Hans device is probably one of the most important devices that you'll put on when you get inside a race car. So in my thinking, I was going, I told NASCAR, those safety guys in this meeting on an off weekend in the off season before 2017,

I said, I'm coming back for my final year, I'm going to run this old style breakaway headrest. and I said, I know that's probably sounds stupid to you because you know, you're head of safety and you've gotten so far away from those but I think with this Haas device on my head, it's going to keep my head from flying off of my shoulders in a crash and I really don't want to

put my head up against the big giant headrest that we have that don't go anywhere that don't move when you hit. I don't want to hit that anymore. And I want whatever, I want it to be strong enough to hold my head up in a corner so I can lean on it a little bit save my neck muscles somewhat on a 500 mile race.

But when I crash, I want that to get out of the way and I want this Hans device to do the rest. And so they said, no, we're not going to allow you to have that type of headrest, but we will help you understand why the headrest you were using maybe wasn't functioning as well. I think if you're a race car driver, you want to really listen to this part because this made the most sense to me. When I was racing earlier in my career, I wanted to be able to move my head around and be able to look left and look right and look at the mirror and all those things inside the car.

And so to be able to really do that with the Hans on and all the clips and all the uniqueness of the shape of a helmet, you need a little room between your headrests on each side. You know, if it's a half inch, maybe it's an inch, whatever, right? You want to be able to be able to move around. and so that gap right between my helmet when I put my helmet back in the surround if I had a little room on each side that was no big deal to me it allowed me to move my head freely and in the corner I'd lean up against the right side and I really didn't care how much room that that meant there would be between the left side headrests and my helmet there was a good gap there you can put your hand back there and I learned that that was a massive problem in terms of head injuries and high-speed crashes. And so when you, you know, if you're leaning your head up against the right side of the headrest

and you hit the wall with the driver's side, your head goes flying at a high rate of speed into the headrest on the left side. And there's an impact to the wall and an impact of your head into the headrest. And so it's a bam-bam. And it spikes that number in terms of what you're, what you're, your, the G's, your helmet, you know, and your head feel, right? It really spikes. And so, if you're blowing a right front tire and you're headed to the wall at a 45-degree angle with the right front of the car, your instinct is to pull away. Your instinct is to pull your

head away. Cori Lejoy talked about this. He blew tires at the same place back-to-back days or something like that at Charlotte this year he had back-to-back hits like in in in within weeks I think it was a I can't remember what the scenario was but he crashed a car either to either either either days within each other in the same scenario with the same right with the same tire issue and he said the first time it happened he moved his head away from the impact and so when he hit the wall his head flew into the headrest and So he gets this big spike, and he felt it. And so when it happened again, days later, he remembered that moment, and he put his head against,

he leaned into the impact and put his head against the headrest. And so when the car hit, he said he felt much, he felt way less of the impact. Wow. Well, there was one fewer impacts, right? I mean, first of all, he had it already. That is amazing. And so, okay, so go back to this meeting in 2017 with NASCAR. I'm telling them I want those breakaway headrests.

They're like, yeah, we're not going to let you do that. That's, you know, that's old shit. And we're never, you know, they're not going to let, we're not going to let one car in the garage have those and everybody would be wondering what the hell's going on. But I'll tell you how to fix the headrests you got. They said, make that, make that area between your helmet and the, and the padding as little as possible.

Literally, it should be touching, if not tight on both sides. So when you put your head back into it, it's touching and it's there, right? So when you crash, your helmet is against this padding, and you can't move from it or be, you know, you can't run into it or be slammed into it. And so that made a lot of sense to me, and so that's what I did. I made my helmet really tight in the headrest. I thought it would annoy me because I wouldn't be able to turn and look and move my head around and be able to see.

That's not true. Once you get up to speed and you're racing along, oh, you're moving your head. You know, you're looking around, and you can, even in that tight, confined space, you forget all about that once you're up to speed. And you can look and your head does kind of slide around in the helmet somewhat. So, I mean, there's plenty of movement. I didn't notice that it wasn't a problem. I went that whole season.

I had crashes. I had bumps. I had bangs. And I had no problems. It helped a lot. Now, it's not a perfect solution. It's not the answer. I'm just saying it helps.

When I watch these guys race on Sunday, I see a lot of guys with a lot of helmets that got a lot of room between them. in the headrest. And I don't want to really call any drivers out, but I'm telling you, if you're a race car driver and you're listening to this show, get that helmet out,

put it in that headrests around, and look at the room between there and how much your helmet can bounce around in there. Wow. All right. We've had drag, we've had injuries and even deaths in drag racing

from the, the, the tire shake, right? And the head being kind of banged around. That's right. Right? That's right. As uncomfortable it is to talk about these things, you know, apply that same sort of

understanding to the head surround that we have in our cup cars or our race cars and try to get your head to where it's not able to be bounced around inside of that space. And so, you know, that was one of the things that, that's one of the things that I think we could apply more critically to a lot of the cars. that come across the tech shed. I think that we could be a little more stringent in terms of, hey, we're going to have some specifications here. We're going to have some expectations here

of how your helmet fits in this headrest. If they're going to redesign the back of these headrests or try to apply a new way of thinking and improve what the driver experiences, I think we could really kind of bring in tighter parameters in terms of what these drivers are doing. how much freedom they have to be able to, you know, have their own creativity and the way their helmet and headrest, you know, work together. So anyhow, kind of got in the weeds there, but.

I'm glad you did. I think it needed to be said, and I just wanted to hear it from your mouth to these driver's ears. If anything happens, having drivers listen to this is too important not to be said. And I'm, first of all, just learned a lot about being inside a cockpit of a race car. But second of all, I think that you bring up some very valid and things. some practical things that can be applied until there's a bigger fix to the overall car. Yeah. I wonder, you know, I would love to know in the scientific testing that they do, right,

in the, when they sled test a crash and, you know, they have dummies and all those things. I'd love to know if we had some sort of a head rest that did break away, what does that do to the brain? if the head, if you got a head restraint on and that's going to save you from a basal skull fracture, right? But we have the headrest allow for the head to break, you know, the head to move in certain directions. Say at a, you know, a 90 mile an hour crash and under, this headrest wouldn't fail, but at a higher rate, the headrest would, you know, would have a break away a function to it. so that the 150-mile-hour crash wouldn't have, you know, your brain crashing into your skull.

That, to me, is where I want to, I wish we could improve. And I don't know what the answer is to that, but like when you pop a tire and hit the wall at 180-mile an hour, 150 miles an hour, can we figure out what's better than what we got? Yeah, something that engages at a higher rate of impact that dissipates that, energy and dissipates that motion. So, you know, and it doesn't necessarily like, you know, an airbag, how it engages when you hit something,

but then maybe, you know, fender benders, it doesn't even, you know, doesn't engage. I know this is really so, this is silly as hell, but the thing that pops into my mind when I, I've had this conversation a million times, right? I've had it so many times. And I've had this, I've had this sort of thought going on in my,

I mean, I've thought about this over and over and over. over so many times in the last eight years about how to how could it how could we get it better the head risk situation um and every time i think about this you guys when y'all were in school man did they ever had the thing where you you use a challenge among your classmates to drop the egg off the roof and figure out how to so they you at my school we had a you know we had it in science class we or physics, whatever it was, you were challenged, your group of kids get together,

and you're challenged to basically drop an egg off a roof without it cracking. And you could build any kind of apparatus to allow this egg to land safely, but it couldn't be a parachute or anything else. It just had to be encased in something that would stop the egg from breaking. And I know that, you know...

This is actually a great analogy. Yeah, that to me is, what my head goes my brain thinks about that challenge right that that really basic school yard challenge right and that's what we're up against that's like trying to figure out how to stop that egg from breaking right right now we've got it we know we can carry that egg around in the case and it won't break but when you drop it out of the case onto the ground what can what can be there to protect it from breaking at that moment. And so that's a great analogy

because instinctually you're like it's impossible, but then you know what? You know it's not impossible. There is engineering out there. There's some idea that actually would make it where you can drop an egg off a roof and it actually not crack. What is that idea?

And it's just a matter of finding it. I know. Yeah, exactly. So there's there is an answer out there. All the kids fail, but one group always seems to be the one group that gets it right. And you drop it over and over

and the egg doesn't crack. And usually their idea is a really unique build, right? And so where I feel like we look at the headrest today and go, well, that looks fine. That's plenty of foam. A lot of foam there. We don't have guys falling out of the car with their brains all a mush. every week, right?

So this headrest must be pretty good. I don't love it. I don't love it. I want it to get better, and I think it can get better. I think that we can work harder to figure out how to make that headrest work better. And while the car will improve,

I think that we can, you know, we can improve the cockpit and the surround as well. All at the same time, man, we could be in a really, really good place. in just a short period of time for these drivers in terms of impacts. These drivers have given us a wake-up call, and I appreciate it. By the way, the fact that you went through all these concussions, and it's well-documented, it sort of put me back in that place over the weekend,

because Talladega is a place where you had a really horrendous crash and suffered a concussion. And it reminded me, I'm hearing drivers say something for the first time that I just don't recall hearing, and that is that they're not going to race as hard. we saw some drivers that you can argue that chose not to get up there and engage in fear of the big one right we didn't have a big one this past weekend at talladega and i had to wonder you know is it because they're just not making the moves that they typically would make because of fear of crashing it's possible i also don't want to go assume it i just know it's possible but there was something i remember happened to you and you documented this in your book racing to the finish still available at all places you buy books um and that was that at Talladega for the first time, you, you throttled off. Like, you, it spooked you, right? Like, you thought, oh, my, it all came into your head and you, you laid off the throttle and got out of that pack. And I wonder if that happened this past weekend, because we heard Noah Grixen say a few weeks ago,

he wasn't looking forward to getting in the cup car and that he told his team that he's only going to run about 80%. That is not something you want to say. Or, I mean, listen, it's just, it's, and by the way, I don't, I don't know, I'm not saying I fault him. I'm just saying I'm hearing drivers seem scared. They're scared to get in the race car, and that's not a thing you want to have. And so it's such a wake-up call, and everything you're saying makes total sense, and I appreciate you saying it because I think for myself and for probably most of our listeners, we're never going to have any of these types of vantage points that you're talking about,

but it makes sense to us. And I also think that NASCAR is absolutely listening to these drives. I think that, you know, I'm sure that they're working on the problem. And, you know, unfortunately, we've got to be patient to, you know, allow those things to kind of manifest. Find the person that's able to find how the egg doesn't crack off the roof, right? It's got to happen. The car, these fixes will be there for next year. The drivers would love it to be here right now today so that they can move forward with the remainder of this season.

without any real concern. They want to feel like they can go out there and, like you say, Mike, take all the risks. I've been around the sport a really long time, and I think there was something to the way this Talladega race played out, the lack of the big crash, the lack of the big risky moves. I think it absolutely correlates between the conversation around safety, the danger, the concussions. I've seen this in the past. This is history repeating itself. where there's been, you know, there'll be this sort of either a safety conversation going on in a sport

or some concern that's came about, a rose to the surface, or either we've had a, you know, we had some serious accidents. And we'll go to those two tracks or one of those tracks at Daytona or Talladega and have a very calm race where everybody sort of, everybody races hard, but they don't race. recklessly. There was no bonsai blocking this past Sunday. You know, stuff that we usually see at these plate track. They just didn't, and I actually appreciated that. I enjoyed not seeing that. There was a, there was a lot of reasons why that happened, Mike, and I think that absolutely the safety conversation was a part of that, an ingredient to what we saw. The car itself, you know, that's a whole another conversation, man. Denny mentioned it. The car has so much drag on it, nobody wanted to jump out of line. As soon as you jump out of line

and the drag, it's like pulling a parachute. You're going to the back. Nobody's going to go with you. And so you pull out of line, you're all by yourself. But that's a whole other conversation for another day. We'll wrap it up with this. Then he said on pit road before the race that he

felt great about the concussion protocols in NASCAR. The NFL, the recent incidents in the NFL, had brought some attention to protocol. and I feel like that NASCAR has a pretty solid system of, you know, checks and balances that when a driver has an impact, they have contact of any kind, even if they can drive the car back to the garage or whatever, they are required to go into the infield care center and we get checked out.

And at every infield care center, at every racetrack, there's a neurosurgeon who is tasked with, making sure that that driver passes a impact test or he is examined for a concussion. And so while it's not as thorough as one might get if he were to go visit a medical center, it is a little, it's abbreviated, but it is a, it is a, you know, a safety net, if you will to protect that driver. And while I think we can always be visiting that and revisiting that to try to make sure that that net is filtering as good as possible so that a driver can't slip through and get back out onto the racetrack with an injury, I feel pretty good about where it is today

compared to where, you know, it was completely absent in the past. There was nothing to protect the drivers. You can't, you know, you can't put this on anybody but the safety medical personnel there. I mean, you know, if a crew chief sees something, absolutely he needs to point it out. If he sees, if he, you know, I got out of the car at Kansas after I blew that right front at the tire test and my car chief saw me and he goes, you're not right. He ain't right.

Yep. He knew it right away when he looked at me. He said, you're staring right through me, man. You got a weird day's look on your face. And I was like, do I? And he's like, you ain't right. So, I mean, if you're a crew member, crew chief, or whatever, right, you see this. right you visually understand that there's something wrong here uh you you you ought to speak up but

you know it's not really on their it's not really their responsibility or that's not part of our protocol that's not part of the safety net the safety net is the neurosurgeon in the medical center those guys need to make sure you know when a driver comes through there that they uh recognize an issue and uh and and and and and and and and and and and And drivers are not, you cannot depend on the drivers to protect themselves. Well, then perhaps those crew members need to be held accountable a little bit more than they are. Listen, I'm telling you, if these teams love their drivers, and I know they do, help them protect themselves from themselves. Because, again, listen, if we can assume that there's people out there racing with concussions right now,

which we started this whole conversation and assuming that, and I think you're right, then, then, The protocols also must be continually revisited and improved, just like all the other things. That's just what I said. But I don't think you can, we can't sit here and go, all right, man, that crew member let that slip through. Didn't say nothing. The crew chiefs, the crew members,

all these other people outside of that medical staff are not part of the protocol. And so, therefore, while that's unfortunate, it if one of them sees something and doesn't say something, they're not part of the protocol and not, that's not, that's not, that's not part of the filter to say, to, you know, it ain't.

It can't be expected to be. Because like, they're not doctors, they're not, you know, you're not going to go see a carpenter to, you know, to, you know, to get your car fixed. No, but maybe there's some sort of mechanism or protocol that allows, allows for somebody, a team member, somebody to almost confidentially go and just say,

hey, check out, could you just, could somebody go take a look at my guy or could take a look at this? I don't think they're right. And then maybe they get cleared. Maybe that's fine. But just something that allows people to speak up and maybe do that extra check because those people, those neurosurgeons don't check on a driver unless they've crashed, right? Yeah. Yeah, maybe there's some sort of mechanism that people can, you know, get that started before a crash and hopefully avoid it. I don't know. All right.

We don't have the answers, I know. Well, I just think that, you know, I think that the drivers are never going to be 100% transparent. You can't, you know, they won't. And for better or worse, right or wrong, it's obviously wrong, but it's never going to change. Drivers are never going to start speaking up immediately. You know, if you've got five drivers, right, they all crash, and every one of them is

concussed. One of them might say something. That's generous. I almost think all five would say no. I mean, listen, and it's not just drivers. It's all athletes. I mean, Tua Tunga Voloa was the example this past week. I mean, that guy shouldn't have been playing,

but he was the first one to know he shouldn't have been playing, and yet he wants to be out on the field. I mean, I think that's just a natural instinctual thing from athletes. All right. So if that's the case and the drivers aren't going to be transparent in that moment, I think that the neurosurgeon and the people that are responsible have to be at a heightened awareness and alert in those moments, right? And I'm certainly are. But it just, it's critical, like, that, that, that, that, they really give that driver a good evaluation in that, in that, and I, that still doesn't, that, that still doesn't save, that still doesn't fix everything.

That's a tough part about concussions, man. It's because you can look at a guy and he looks perfectly normal. And he could be having a war going on in his head. And you'd never know it. And they can, you know, and you can almost, you know, it's really that, you know, that guy, that car chief, that friend, that wife, that brother, that person is the one that's probably going to notice anything. That neurosurgeon is not spent time with you.

They don't know your, you know, they don't really know your personality and the way you are. But that person that stays with you every day or is with you or around you all the time, like, you know, like if you had a concussion, Mike, I'd probably pick up on it before a doctor would, you know, because of your mannerisms and your personality and all that stuff changes, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if it's like, if it's a moment, if it's like, hey, man, we got a five-minute window to figure this out. Who's going to figure it out?

Your wife. Yeah. Right? Your daughters. Right? The people that know you to the core. You're right. It's a tough thing, man.

But I think, you know, hey, hopefully we get these cars better. It's going to take a little bit of time. And because I'd love to not be talking about this. Pretty excited to have this next guest come into the podcast studio today. Ed Yost is a. is an ally. He is an absolute ally. I've been in touch with this guy for a really long time. He shared with me about how much his friendship with my father meant to him over the years. They became great hunting friends and buddies and spent a lot of time together.

And Ned's been wanting to come on to the show for some time to tell us about that. So we're going to bring him into the studio. I want to thank Ally. They do it right, man. They do everything right. And they help us with this guest segment every single week. We want to thank them again. Let's get Ned Yost in the room. Let's do it. I'm a race fan at heart.

I don't watch football. I don't watch basketball. You know, I watch a little baseball. But my passion is NASCAR racing. Ned Yost has ejected for the first time as Royals manager. You've been watching the Royals be ready. He swank first pitch. And he swings and hits it into left center.

Back at the track, it is. Man, this looks different. Yeah. It looks great. Yeah, thank you, man. in. We're on your time now. You just take it in. You, you know, been here for the first time. Yeah. Sometimes people just like to look around. Well, I've been here for the first time. I've been actually at junior motorsports probably 10 times. Have you? Really? Yeah. Because my son went to UTI.

Oh, wow. And became a diesel mechanic, got his diesel mechanics certification of Ford diesel mechanics. So we would come up and visit them. And every time we did, I stopped buy the shop and get a foundation hat or get some kind of Dale Jr. Did you tell anybody that you were here? No. Well, that's the problem. No. I wouldn't do that.

Why not? No, I just wouldn't. I just wanted to come in and see the place. So it was really cool. Yeah. So where are you living at? Greenville, Georgia. Really?

Yep, Greenville, Georgia. All right. It's a little town of about 650 people. We've got a 500-acre farm out there, and we just, I absolutely love it. We deer hunt every day. Bow hunt and fish. You got a 30-acre lake in the middle of it. Got five, six-acre dove field.

So just enjoying the outdoor life. Yeah. So when you were working in Kansas City, did you have a place there? So Georgia's been home for how long? Since I was with the Braves. You know, Bobby Cox hired me, and the winter of 1990, my first year was 91.

So I was there 12 years. So my kids grew up there. So, you know, all their friends, my oldest son was in first grade. So when you're moving from organization to organization, what do you do for a place to stay? You just get your townhouse or something? Yeah, just rent. Yeah, I didn't buy anything anywhere. When I was in Milwaukee, I didn't buy.

Well, I take that back. And when we went to Milwaukee, I thought it was really good that we'd stay together as a family, right? So I moved my whole family there for two years. My kids hated it. You grow up in the South. It's a different mentality than Wisconsin. So we ended up moving back and we stayed there, you know, until they all graduated from high school. So let me ask you this question.

So while I was looking at your career as a player, how does somebody know, I don't care if it's baseball, football, whatever, how does a person know that they would be a good coach, right? Yeah. And how does that develop? And I really want to know only from the ones that were players, right? Right. So players are typically, I'm ignorant about all this. But anyways, when I watch, you know, players, they have to understand the details of the game. But what makes them a great, what makes that player become a good coach?

You know, like Byron Leffert was a great quarterback, right? Now he's a coach of Tampa Bay. And so I'm always fascinated with. when I see those guys get into coaching, and I wonder, all right, what makes them so good? Is it the leadership skills, getting guys to really buy into their thought process? And, I mean, let's be clear. Like, I guess if you were, you know, if you had won a lot of championships

or something like that, it would be easy to get guys to buy in, right? But your playing career was quite brief. Yeah. You know? And it was a second string playing career. Right. How are the guys look at you at first and go, well, what do you know? No, I think for me, Dale, I was really, really lucky in a lot of ways.

As a player, I came up as a minor league player, made the big leagues in 1980. But I was always a backup, right? And I always wanted to play. I wanted to play. But I was a backup. I was a backup. I was a backup. And I played with a guy by the name of Ted Simmons, who was just inducted to the Hall of Fame,

this summer, right? And Teddy came up to me one day and he goes, hey, I want to see you tomorrow. This is spring training, right? I want to see you tomorrow. Be here at 7 o'clock. So I'm like, okay. So Teddy had been with us all year to year before and I'm like, he had said 10 words to me last year. Why does he want to see me now? Go to my locker, right? And I'm looking through it seeing if anything of his is in my locker. Maybe he thought I stole something, right? Really? Yeah. So nothing, right? So the next day I show up. And he says, listen, he said, I've been in this game a long time. And he said, I've learned a lot.

People have taken time to teach me this game. And if you want, I will teach you this game. And I'm like, okay, yeah, that'll be cool. But I'm thinking in the back of my mind, what's he going to teach me? I've been playing baseball my whole life. Right. Well, I didn't understand. I knew nothing about the game.

I mean, absolutely nothing. Teddy told me I'll have something for you every day. So I'm like, okay, every day for the next. two and a half years, Teddy had one, two, three hours worth of conversation on things that happened in the game and talking about, you know, defensive lineup, outfield play, in field play, inner diamond defense, pitching moves, running counts, all this stuff, right? So he handed me a blank piece of paper when we started, and he said it had a baseball diamond on it.

And he said, I want you to start with nobody on base at the left field. and you write down where every player on this field is supposed to go. And I wanted to go from base hit the left field, nobody on, to bases loaded, triple down the line. I want to know where everybody's supposed to go. So when I was done, I had a stack like that big, right? Teddy got me thinking about the fundamentals of baseball and understand the ends and outs of the game. And when I left Teddy, I was a far more knowledgeable player than I ever was in my life, right? and still hadn't thought about coaching still to this point.

Oh, is that right? No, never even thought about it, right? Okay. So in 1985, I got sent down to the minors. I played three or four months in the minors, got called up to the big leagues. At the end of the year, I went back to spring training and got released. I said, that's it, right? I do not want to be bouncing around.

I had a family at this point. I'm 30 years old. My problem was I didn't have a college. education. I went to junior college to play baseball, so I wouldn't really focus on the academic standpoint of my education. So I'm like, what am I going to do? I'm home for two weeks, and I don't have any idea what I'm going to do. And I'm out, and I come back, and my wife, when I got home, said, hey, you got a phone call today. And I said, really? She goes, yeah, from Hank Aaron. So I'm like, okay.

Which one of my buddies is, you know, saying they're Hank Aaron, right? Well, the next day the phone rings again, was Hank Aaron. Hank Aaron was the farm director for the Atlanta Braves. And he said, listen, Ned, we've got some young prospects in AA, which is Greenville, South Carolina. And he said, we're looking for a veteran catcher to come be a player coach. Would you be interested in that? And some of our best pitching prospects are there. And this was 86.

And I said, well, yeah, I'll give it. it a try? You know, I never really thought about coaching, but, you know, maybe I'll, you know, maybe I'll like it and the thing about it is it's only like five hours from home. If I don't like it, I'll pack up and head out, right? So when I got there, I found out that the young pitching prospects were Tom Glavin, Kent Merker, you know, Tommy Green, Pete Smith, Jeff Blauser, David Justice, Ronnie Gant, Mark Lemke. Oh, good heavens. All these kids that formed a nucleus of a 12-year run when I was at this club. Well, of course, I loved it, right? And being a veteran guy, being playing in the big leagues, and being able to help mentor them through that, I just loved it. And I did that for two

years. But the problem was I still had to play, right? So I'm like, okay, at the end of two years, I'm like, I don't want to play anymore. I want to move on. I want to be a minor league manager. So they said, okay, so they gave me a minor league manager's job in Sumter, South Carolina. I was there three years. And now I'm thinking to myself, you know, moving fast. And I told my wife, I said, look, when we get into this, just get ready because I'm probably going to have to be a minor league coach for like 10 years before I get a shot. And Sumter, South Carolina, is that a single A team to the Braves? A. Low A ball. Low A ball. Not even high A, but there's low A. Okay. So you're dealing with them straight out of either college or high school or whatever that is. Yeah. Most of them

most of them are second and third year players depending on who they were. Got it. So young, young kids, right? So I went to Instruction League after the third year, and I get a phone call from Bobby Deuce, who's the player development head, right? And he goes, hey, St. Louis called, and they want to talk to you about their double-A job. So I'm like, ooh, okay, I'll give it a shot, right? So he said, but Bobby Cox wants to talk to you first before you decide.

And Bobby was the GM. So I said, okay, so I called Bobby. And I said, hey, how you doing, Bobby? He goes, good, Ned Lewis. And I know St. Louis called. He said, this was like 1989, going into 90. He goes, look, we've going to have some movement next year. And he said, if you stick around, he said, it's a great opportunity.

You go, man, it's double A. It's a big jump. But if you stick around, you could be right in the middle of some of this stuff. So I'm like, hey, I'm not going anywhere. And sure enough, in the 19, in the 1990, and he, Bobby hired me to be the bullpen coach. So it was a fantastic experience, you know, being in the minor leagues. And I remember for the first time, my old agent came in spring training one time,

and he told me, and this was the first time I ever thought about being a major league manager. He said, you know, if you keep your nose clean, you've got a chance to be a major league manager. And that's the first time I thought about that. And I thought, you know what, he's right. He's right. But that experience with the Braves set me up because when I went with Bobby, I was there 12 years. Went to the World Series five times. I won a world championship.

But I was there for the first eight years as a bullpen coach. So I had the opportunity to catch every side session that Greg Maddox, Tommy Glavin, John Smoltz, all these kids through, right? Eight years of that taught me the fundamentals of pitching. taught me understood mechanics of pitching, understood pitching philosophy and the art of pitching. And then four years as a third base coach that taught me how to run a game being with Bobby. Because Bobby and I, you know, we got to the point where we were dead on, the exact same thought pattern. I knew what he was going to do before he was going to do it. And those four years taught me how to run a game and how to handle a game.

And, you know, at that point, I was ready to move on and become a major league manager. myself. Yeah. And so was there anything about that intimidating? You know, I want to ask so as a player, you're responsible for you, your responsibility, your job, your mom, you know, you're responsible for what you can control, but when you're placed to, you know, sort of over the umbrella of the entire team, I mean, is there any of that that was overwhelming at all? Not really. And I'll tell you why, because when at the end of 2002, the Milwaukee Brewers called, right? And they wanted to know if I'd be interested in interviewing for the Major League manager's job. So I'm like, yeah, you know, sure, that'd be great, right?

So I called Bobby real quick, and I said, Bobby, Burris called, they want to interview me for the manager's job. I said, what do they do in an interview? Bobby said, Bobby goes, Ned, I hate to tell you, they've always just given me my jobs. I got no idea, right? So I was real nervous about it. am I ready? Am I ready to move in? Am I ready to do this? Am I ready to run a franchise,

especially a franchise that had lost 106 games the year before? And I went in to do the interview, and I'm still nervous about it, right? I don't know what this interview is going to be about. And the general manager asked me the first question. He said, who are your mentors? And as soon as he asked me that question, all anxiety left me.

Because I knew at that point, some of the stuff we just talked about, Ted Simmons, Bobby Cox, Dale Earnhardt. And he looked at me and said, really? And I said, yeah. Teddy Simmons taught me the game. Bobby Cox taught me how to treat people and how to run a game. Dale Earnhardt taught me how to compete. And from that point on, I knew that I was prepared,

that subconsciously I had had lessons from some of the greatest teachers on the face of the earth on how to be ahead of an organization from these people. And I was absolutely prepared and I was never intimidated. I was never anxious or upset except for, you know, when I first put that brewer's uniform on for the first time. Then I was a little hesitant because, and I'll tell you why, Dale, you get a kick out of this. Your dad and I were deer hunting in Texas. So we were driving, we would go to this place called Encino Ranch. I remember the name of that.

Yeah. He went there a lot. A lot, right? So we would get on this high rack, and we would drive around looking for deer. So the majority of the time was spent having a beer and looking for deer, right? T-shirt idea. Yeah. So we were sitting there one day, and he was going through his negotiations on it.

contract and it was having a, you know, it was a rough negotiation. About what years is? Man, Mike, I don't know. I can't really remember. All right. Didn't matter. But it was before, well, I don't know. Okay.

But he was going through a negotiation, right? And to the point where there was a rumor or two that he might move to Ford. What? Right? So anyway, he was like, I ain't moving to Ford. But somehow another, when he went to the racetrack, you know, he'd get rental cars. the only car left was a Ford, and he showed up in a Ford, and that started at all, right?

I got you. So he wasn't going to do that. But anyway, we're sitting there talking, and he's telling me, you know, he's going to get it done, but it's tough right now. And I said to him, I said, hey, I said, why don't you just go drive for yourself? He goes, no, we're not ready to win. So what are you talking about? He goes, we're not ready to win.

He goes, I'm not leaving. Let me tell you something. he goes, you never leave a winner to go to a loser. RCR is a winner. We're proving it. DEI is going to be a winner, but they're not a winner yet. So you never, ever leave a winner to go to a loser. Never.

Well, I'm sitting there, and I told him, I said, hey, let me tell you something. I'm going to have to leave a winner to go to a loser. And he goes, no, you're not. And I said, the only way I'm ever going to get a chance to manage in the big leagues is I'm going to have to go to a loser. And that's the only way I'm going to get my shot. And he goes, no, you're not. You're going to stay right there in Atlanta and you're going to take over when Bobby retires. I said, Dale, Bobby's not retiring for 10 to 12 years. He said, I don't care. I said, listen, I'm going to have to go to a loser. He grabbed me and pulled me

over to his face. And he said, Ned, you never ever leave a winner to go to a loser. Do you understand? You never do it. Well, I was done with this conversation. Okay, yeah, I get it. I get it. So in 2002 is when this happened, right? Yeah. So the first time I get this job, I put on this uniform, and all as I can do is hear your dad in the back of my head like, what in the hell are you doing, right? What in the hell are you doing? And it went on like that. I had a picture of your dad in my office, and it was one of those pictures that wherever you are in the room, he's looking at you.

right? Yeah. He was one of those. We would come in after losing a tough game. I'd throw my line-up cards on the table and I'd look up and he'd be staring at me and I'd, I mean, if this happened once, it happened a hundred times, they're like, what the hell you're looking at? Because I could hear him. I could hear him, right? So it was, it was a little bit, you know, tough for me to do that. Yeah. But my goal was to go from a winner, go to a loser. and make it a winner. Yeah. And we finally, we were on the verge of doing that in Milwaukee.

And, you know, it didn't work out, but we got there in Kansas City. So when we made that last out in the World Series in 2015, all as I can think about was your dad. Really? That's it. See, Dale, I left a winner. I went to a loser, and we made it a winner. And I just knew how proud he was going to be. So that speaks to the...

the profound effect that he had on you, and let's go, let's learn how y'all met. So do you remember the first time you and dad crossed fast? Yeah, absolutely. We, I had lived in Mississippi, and Jody Davis and I came up together in the Mets organization, right? Jody was a year behind me. So Jody was from Georgia. I'm from Mississippi, or my wife's from Mississippi, right? And we loved to deer hunt. So we would talk about deer hunting all the time. And in 1975, I get traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. Jody gets traded to the Cubs. So we kind of split that way, right?

Well, Jody's career was much better in mind. Jody was the first-room catcher. I was a second-string catcher. But back in the mid-80s, or the 86 or 87, right in there somewhere, Jody signed as a free agent with the Atlanta Braves. And now I'm with the Braves, right? So we're kind of back together again.

And we're talking about hunting, and Jody's I'm in the Mississippi to hunt, and I had this place. One of my best friends was a timber buyer, and the guy that owned his lumber mill was a guy by name of Warren Hood, and he had a fantastic place to go hunting, right? I mean, just a phenomenal deer on place. I always wanted to go give it a shot. Found out the guy was a huge Dale Earnhardt fan, right?

So I didn't really know your dad from Adam at that point. So I went to spring training, and I'm talking to Jody, and I'm trying to get in. I want to hunt this place, right? So I said, hey, you know, you guys got to come. If you bring Dale, we'll be able to hunt this place. It's a really cool place. So he's like, okay, all right, so he talks to Dale.

Well, they set it up, right? So the winner comes along, and Jody, we're getting close and we're getting closer. And Jody calls me and he goes, hey, okay, we're coming Tuesday. And I said, okay, cool, we've got everything set up. We got standing. This is going to be a blast, man. We're going to have fun. He goes, hey, let me tell you, you know, this guy, he's a little,

different now. What does he mean? He says, if he don't like where he's at, he'll get up the middle of the night and go home. He'll leave, right? So I'm like, Jody, the hell with it. No, forget it. No, I'm not playing this game. I'm not. He goes, no, no, it'll be cool. It'll be good. It'll be good, right? So I've got this mindset. Okay, who the hell's coming in here, right? So sure enough, they fly the King, they fly the King, Arian. And we absolutely had a blast. I mean, we hunted for like four or five days. Dale went home, came back the next weekend, and we hunted again. And from that point on, we just hit it off, you know, and we just became good friends.

And it was all for the love of the outdoors, I think, together. And, you know, the cool thing about it was when you sit back and think about it, and I think this was why Jody was, you know, was such a good friend, too. The more you are around your dad, it just seemed like everybody wanted to compete with them, you know, because he was the intimidator, you know. They wanted to catch the biggest fish or shoot the biggest deer. And, you know, I made a point that I'm not competing with this guy.

You know, we're going to be friends. But if he kills the biggest deer, that's fine. He catches the biggest fish, that's fine. If we're standing in the urinal, he pees longer than me, that's fine. I don't care, right? We're not going to compete. And I'm not going, you know, to deluge him with racing questions. And he didn't deluge me with baseball questions.

He was a praise fan. Yeah. And it was just a great relationship between the two of us. And I think the education, watching him, somebody told me one time, if you want to be successful in a field, find the person that's the most successful in that field and do everything exactly the way that he does. And that made sense to me at that time. Now, I knew that I wasn't a race car driver, right?

But I knew that he was a champion, a champion's champion, and had to try to figure out what made him tick, right? So some of the questions I would ask him was like, who's your friends in racing? And this was early, late 80s. He goes, I don't got no friends of racing. What do you mean you ain't got no friends in racing? He goes, I ain't got no friends in racing. You got to have friends in racing. He goes, let me tell you something.

I don't ever want anybody to look in their rearview mirror. see the black three behind him and think for an absolute second that I'm their friend. And that was his mindset, you know, back in those days. It was that he was going to give no quarter. He wasn't going to let up to anybody. He wasn't going to give anybody a break. And I started to understand his mentality on, you know, what it took to be a champion. Now, his idea of what it took to be a champion was a lot different than mine, right, at this point.

and I thought it was cool because in baseball, it's tough. And in racing, you can probably understand too, because I've thought about this, the definition of what is a win? You know, and in baseball, you play 162 games, right? And you play every day. It's a failure-driven sport. If you're going to be a star, you're going to get three hits for tenet bats. It's the seven outs that drive people crazy.

It's the ability to handle failure that drives people crazy and makes a difference between success and not success. So if you look at a contract and thinking through this in any sport, soccer, basketball, baseball, football, whatever it is, probably racing. The contract states your name, your address, right? Then it's got some stuff you can't do in there, ride motorcycles or whatever your sports. And then at the bottom it says, we're going to pay you X amount of dollars. right? So I asked my players all the time, do you understand what the contract says? Well, yeah, I'm going to make this much money. I said yes. But if you ever looked at it, because the contract simply states that we're going to pay you X amount of dollars. It doesn't say anything in there

about hitting 300. It doesn't say anything in there about hitting 40 home runs. It doesn't say anything in there about 120 RBIs. It doesn't say anything in there about 200 strikeouts. What the contract simply states is that we're going to pay you X amount of dollars. for your very best effort every single day. So if you give your very best effort every day, that's all you can do. So you get these kids that don't understand that the seven outs are part of the game, and they think that, you know, I'm such a failure. No, the way that you learn how to handle failure is to gauge yourself every single day.

Are you giving your best effort at the end of the day? And that was my one rule to my players. At the end of the day, when you walk into the bathroom, you look yourself in the mirror eye to eye, and you know if you've given your best effort every single day, that you were prepared, you were focused, you played hard for yourself, for your family, and your teammates. And if you can answer yes to all those, you've done your job, absolutely done your job, right? So go home, get a good night's sleep, come back and let's do it again tomorrow. But your dad was different.

It was a different set of standards for your dad. Yeah. Because when 94, we went on strike and we'll talk about that a little later, my first race was Darlington, right? So he ended up finishing second behind Bill Elliott. For me, second is really, really good, right? Really good. We got in the truck because we were going back to his house.

Man, second place was really good. He was pissed. I don't know. What are you joking? And he goes, no, second place, what are you talking about? Second place is good. Second place is really, really good. And he goes, second place is the first one to lose.

He said, there's nothing great about second place. And I thought it was a joke, but the more I was around him, it wasn't. He lived it. I mean, that was his mentality. And how he could handle that, the failure of not winning all the time, but he was a different person. You know, I've met a lot of, I had the opportunity to meet five presidents and a bunch of different people. I've never met anybody like your dad. Yeah.

You would come up with the idea that you're not going to compete against him when you guys are hunting. But it sounds to me like he wanted the competition, even in hunting or fishing in any of that stuff. Is that accurate? I don't think so. So it was an escape then from that competitive, the high-octane, just kind of, you know, he's always at a 10. It was a reprieve. Yes. Okay.

It was absolute reprieve because this is two different guys. I mean, at the racetrack, I mean, this. guy was totally focused and committed to what he was doing. I would walk in and go in to hauler and he'd like, hey, how are you doing? Give me a hug. Hey, hey, hey, everything good. Yeah, you good. Yeah. Sit down, right? Crickets for 15 minutes. Yeah. All right. I'm sitting there. I'm going to, I'm going to get up and go, no, no, no, sit down, sit down. Right. So after a while, you start to understand that he really wants you there, but he's so. focused he can't engage. And, and I mean, it was just, he was so focused. Now, race is over. We get on

the plane. By the time we land where we're going, he's starting to be human again, you know. And then the next morning, he wakes up, and he's a total different person. I mean, a total, total different person. He's fun to be around. He's joking. He's relaxed. You know, it was, it was neat to see. Yeah. That's a great, that's a great example or explanation. for it because it's so true and when you would go to these uh when you go hunting with him he didn't he didn't bring that competition with him never did there was no yeah there might be a little fun game or something at some point in the weekend a little challenge but yeah you know it was never you know i'm gonna have the i'm gonna have the better hunt or you know i lost a hundred bucks to him one time in a little right

because we we got to the point where you know shooting deer with a rifle just it was easy, right? So I bet him a hundred bucks that there was a dough standing out there at 850 yards. He couldn't shoot it, right? First shot. Your dad was phenomenal. I'd had to whip out a hundred bucks. 850 yards? 850 yards. Good heavens. He smoked it. That's half a mile. Yeah, he was, and then, you know, he would lay down, got all squatted, like the sniper to do, right? And we're all watching, and boom, and that deer falls over, and then all of a sudden you see that much trash grin turned right around looking at us.

But yeah, it was really fun to be around them when there wasn't that pressure of being at the racetrack. It wasn't that pressure of, you know, being Dale Earnhardt and funny everybody, you know. We were out in the lobby, and Jeff Foxworthy's a real good friend of mine, and one of the people out there said is, Jeff is funny in person.

And I said, no, because he doesn't, He's not on in person. He's just Jeff. Yeah. And we have a really, really good time. But he's not the comedian, Jeff. He's just Jeff. And that was your dad.

Your dad was Dale Earnhardt at the racetrack. And he was just Dale away from the racetrack. And was really a, really a fun guy to be around. Did he ever talk to you about his fandom for the Braves? Oh, yeah, absolutely all the time. So what was his, what was it with the Braves? Well, him and the Braves. Okay.

Well, we started out, when we first met, right, we were starting to get into some prominence. And when we went to the World Series in 91, it seemed like just about every other playoff game that we would play. I'd call him at night, and he'd be watching them, right? Here, you watch that game and go, yeah, it was that. What I did was I had JR send us a bunch of good wrench hats. Yeah, J.R. Rhodes. Yeah. That's right.

Yeah, JR would send us a bunch of good wrench hats. And I would pass them out. Now, during the playoffs, which is when you get all the national attention, when our guys, after the game, after a win, they'd do all their press conferences in Goodrich hats. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that was really cool. And Dale, you're done.

Oh, I'm sure he loved it. They thought it's the greatest thing ever. Everything, right? So all these guys would be doing interviews in Goodrich hats, and he absolutely loved it to the point where, you know, he would start wearing Braves hats when we were doing that stuff. Yeah. So that's kind of how that got started. And, you know, we've Awesome.

I would talk to him all the time. I introduced him to Bobby Cox, and Bobby loved him. He really loved Bobby. You know, they did really, really well. So one day, he wants to come to a game. So I said, come on, man. He brings R.C. and, you know, seven or eight, ten guys. And he gets in the locker room.

He's talking to Dion Sanders and Terry Pendleton. And we're having a blast, right? So we go to the game and we lose. So he's like, oh, the heck with that. He comes back to the next. next day, right? We lose again. So I talked to him after the game and he goes, man, I ain't ever going to a game again. He says, why? He goes, I'm a jinx. I said, you're a jinx. I said, let me tell you something, pal. I said, if I come to a race and you finish 38th, it ain't my damn fault,

all right? So, like, you ain't no jinx. We just lost two in a row. But he got to be a huge fan and loved it when Bobby came in. I think what was so cool was when he won the Daytona 5 Bobby had a bat made for him, and it was a black walnut bat with a mother of pearl car in it, right, with the three-inched in. And it said, you know, Daytona 500 champion and had the whole team sign it. He loved it, right? So when we won the World Series in 95, your dad loved knives. So he had this huge knife made, right, for Bobby. And it was a really, really cool in a case. And, you know, 1995 World War. Champions had the World Series logo on it. It was just a really, really, he was so proud to give Bobby that, that knife.

But the cool thing about it was he liked it so much he had one made for himself. So that was how we kind of got together, you know, between the two. And I would sit on Sundays with a little radio, transistor radio, with a little air plug, and listen to his race, you know, during the game. You know, listen to how he was doing. But it just got to be where it just became a really match where he got to know Terry Pendleton and a lot of these guys. And it was cool to be able to root for him

and for him to root for us. Those teams were magical too, right? I mean, when you're talking about Terry Pendleton, I mean, those early 90 teams, even before they won the World Series, I mean, those were some fantastic baseball teams. Fantastic with the pitching that we had. Oh, my goodness. You know, in 91, we lost game seven, in 14,

Means. It's Minnesota, right? Yeah, against Minnesota. Yeah, and then we lost to Toronto in 92. We went to the playoffs, but we didn't win, didn't go to the World Series. 94 was a strike year. 95, we won the World Series. That's right. So we ended up going to the World Series in 96 and won the first two games and then lost the next four to the Yankees and 99 got swept. But he just absolutely loved the Braves. And we'd do stuff like, you know,

after Bristol when he hit Terry Labani, and everybody was pissed at him, right? So it was like 10 minutes. We're playing a Sunday night game. Bobby, come on, let's go in. We went into the office. We called Dale. He goes, hey, he goes, what are you guys doing?

He said, I'm sitting in front of the TV. You're going to play in 10 minutes. He said, yeah, we just wanted to call you. And he goes, all right, see, we wanted to call and tell you we're proud of you. You're proud of me? And I said, yeah, that was a great one. We're proud of you. Bobby's here.

Bobby's proud of you. Well, I'm glad you guys are proud of you. to me because everybody else is pissed as hell at me. That's hilarious. Yeah. So it was a cool, it was a cool relationship there. So he had, you know, he had that friendship with Jody Davis, and I remember Jody coming to some of the races and being around and your friendship

as well. And you mentioned Blowser. I think him and Blowser hit it off a little bit. Were there any other players that he made a connection with? Terry Pendleton. You know, Terry would come to the races all the time. And Bobby and those were the main ones. Yeah.

We would go to a lot of the races, and we would spend some time with them. Yeah. And Blouser went actually hunting with us one time out in Texas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember him mentioning him.

And Chipper was always afraid of him. For real. Yeah, he was scared of him. Because your dad, you know how your dad was, right? Well, he would, like, jab him, right? And Chipper would be, you just, oh. Plus Chipper's like 20 years younger. Yeah.

He was way 20 years younger. And your dad liked to try to make people uncomfortable. Yeah. You know, we'd be driving down the street, and I'd be driving, and all of a sudden your dad would reach over with his foot. I don't know if he ever did this to you and slam down the gas pedal, right? Yeah. And you'd be driving all of a sudden that foot coming like,

like this, and he wanted to see you panic and pull your foot off. And right? Every time he did that, and he only did it like twice. He'd slam his foot down. I'd just take my hands back. Oh, my goodness. He'd take his foot off, real, real. He loved to see you panic.

He was at that guy. When you go to Kansas City to manage that team, I guess at that point you're feeling pretty confident about your abilities and all those things. I'm trying to compare winning the World Series possibly to win in like a Daytona 500. I can't, I wouldn't know what winning the championship feels like, but I know how winning, I know how much Dad wanted to win the Daytona 500. So do I. and me winning it and how that felt.

You don't know whether that's ever going to be your reality. When you start to see, like, this is, I remember Dad's saying in 1980, middle of the year, in an interview he goes, it dawned on me. Damn, I could win this championship. He's sitting there leading the points for a lot of the first half of the year, but it never clicked in his mind. He just was doing, right?

And finally he had a moment of clarity where he's like, holy, this is, I could do this. Yeah. And so I imagine there was a point. in that experience with Kansas City where you were like, damn. It was experienced, like you said. When I came to Atlanta in 1991, in 1990,

they didn't even draw a million fans, right? They had 800,000 fans in dead last place. But in 90 and 89, these young players started filtering to the big leagues, right? And you watched their progression. It took them about two and eight, and a half years, so they got to the point they understood big league life, they understood the pressures, they understood what it took to win, and they got to the point where instead of thinking they could win, they knew in their heart they could win, right? Two and a half years.

And then they took off. We went on a 12-year run divisions. They actually went 14. They went two more after I left. So when I went to Milwaukee, it was the same type scenario when I got there, right, which gave me hope. Yeah. We had a core group of really, really good young players in A ball. They won the championship in A ball. They won the championship in AA. They won the championship in AAA. So when they got to the big leagues, you knew if you give them enough time that they're going to get two and a half years is about it.

They're going to get to where they can compete, right? Well, they got to the two and a half year point. And now here we are. We hadn't had a winning season in 25 years. And now we're on a verge of making the playoffs. the last step was getting to the point where instead of thinking you're good, you know in your heart that you're good. And there's a difference between trying to convince yourself you're good

to wake it up in the morning with the dead knowledge that you're good and you can win, right? And we were just at that point. And we had gone into August, we were like 21 and 7, right? We had a great. But going into September, they're still thinking that they're good. They're starting to feel the pressure a little bit, and they lost 10 out of 13. And I'm like, okay, come on, we'll write the ship. The owner calls me and says, we're making a change.

I'm like, what? He goes, we're making a change right here. He didn't understand that we were just right at the verge of getting over the hump. And we went this year to a 40-year reunion to the last time they went to the World Series. 40 years since they've been to the World Series. And I believe, just leave us alone because that was our last little hump, let them gain that experience that it takes through that adversity. The next year there's no telling what they can happen.

I ended up getting fired, and then they ended up going 40 games under 500 the next two years. So I knew the process worked. Yeah. So when I went to Kansas City, same scenario. We had a group of really, really good young players in A ball, and I knew you just had to buy time, right? AAA AA, AA, AAA, AAA, one championships, two and a half year point. I'm thinking, okay, well, the two and a half year point for us came at the All-Star break,

and we were flying into Yankee Stadium. We were three games under 500. In 2015? 13. 13. Okay. So we're three games under 500. So I'm like on the plane, I'm thinking, we're going to go in there.

We're going to kick the crap out of the Yankees. We're going to go into the All-Star break at 500, and we're going to take off. We're at the two-and-a-half year mark, right? We go into the Yankee Stadium and get swept. So now we're six games under 500 going into the All-Star break. And I'm thinking to myself, damn, well, maybe it's going to take this group a little longer, right? We came back from the All-Star break, and from 13, the All-Star break to the end of 15 when we won the World Championship, no team in baseball won more games than we did.

And it was that two-and-a-half year mark. Now, the difference was they were going through their adversity in 14. and we were scrapping, man, trying to make the playoffs and just make the wild card. And they got to a point in the wild card game. We were playing against a pitcher named John Lester, and we could not beat John Lester. He's pitching for Oakland, right?

We were down like three runs going into the eighth inning. And Lester's out there pitching. We came up for the bottom of the seventh is what it was, and Lester's out there just sticking it to us, right? Hadn't beaten them all year. So I hear a little rumble down on the end of the dugout, Little rumble, little rumble, it's getting louder, it's getting louder. And then all of a sudden I'd look down there, and our guys are down there,

and they're getting worked up, right? And they're sitting there screaming, we're not losing to this guy, not tonight. He's not beating us, not tonight. Yeah? Not tonight. That's not happening. Let's go. Get on, get them over, get them in.

We're not losing tonight, right? I'm like, well, cool, they're fighting, right? They went out there, scored two runs in the bottom of seventh, one in the eighth to tie the ball game. And then they scored the ninth, we scored in the ninth, right? we ended up winning the game in the 12th inning. And for me, that was the point that they went from thinking that they could win to the point knowing they could win. And then we went on a, I mean, it's a record, eight-no run.

No team has ever gone eight-no in the playoffs. We ended up sweeping Anaheim and sweeping Baltimore and had a great World Series in 14. You know, we ended up losing game seven, but then came back in 15 and won the world championship. it was all part of the plan. And again, going back to some of the stuff that your dad would always stay focused. And he taught me, look, there's little picture,

there's big picture. Little pictures today. Do whatever you can to take care of little picture, but don't let it affect big picture. And your dad's big picture was always winning that championship. And he would focus on whatever it took to handle little picture today to win that race. But he wouldn't take chances if it was going to screw up big picture.

I mean, it was always a championship on the back of his mind. So for me, when I'm managing these young players, my whole focus was if I can't win a championship, it doesn't matter. So a lot of fans want you to do everything you can to try to win baseball games, everything, right? For me, I was doing everything that I could to put these players in situations that would press them, that would test them, that would push them. They always got on me, why don't you pinch it for this guy? This guy can't hit landing

come. I said, because you know why? Because there's going to come a time down the road where we're going to be in the playoffs, where we're going to be in the World Series, and this guy's going to need that experience, right? And sure enough, that guy was at L. Sadie's Escobar. And they just, why don't you pinch hit for him? Why don't you pitch hit for him? In the 2015, he ended up being the most valuable player of the National League Championship series, because they gained that experience and I would do everything that I could to give them experience.

If it meant losing a game, I didn't care. Big picture was what I was focused on, was winning that world championship. I wanted them to have as much experience so when they got to that point, they were ready to compete and it absolutely paid off.

Can I ask you this? When you know you've reached the point of where your team knows they can win or knows they will win, their willing wins, what are the biggest challenges as a manager that would cause disruptions to that whole process? Inconsistency.

And what would cause that? In the lineup. Panic from the manager. Never panic. Never. Guys, we'd go through tough streaks, right? And you'd always get, like, players together, right? And fans want you to go in, they want you to go.

And all the foods that they want you to throw the food and yell and scream and go crazy, right? You do it umpires, right? Because the sense was like if you're not winning, it's because you're not trying. Right. So what I would always do, we'd have a tough streak, right? I mean, we'd lose like five out of six or six out of seven or something, eight out of ten or something like that. I'd get my guys together.

And I learned that because it was a different generation, when I came up, if you made a mistake, the manager would scream at you, right? I mean, he'd let you have it. He'd blow your hair back. But you just took it. It was like water off a duck's back, and it didn't bother you. You didn't get butt hurt about it. You just took it, right?

Well, players nowadays, you can't yell at them. They crawl into a shell. So you had to kind of look for different ways to communicate to them. But my goal, again, when I had my players, my only rule was you show up and give me your best effort every day. That's it. You be on time. Don't be late. But all I want is your best effort.

Now, I don't care if your best effort's an O for four. four with four strikeouts or a four for four 16 RBIs. I want your best effort. And I know that your best effort and ain't going to be real productive on given days. Just give it to me. And these kids did. And we would lose like eight out of ten.

I'd get them all together. And they're expecting to get an ass chewing, right? And I'd get them all in the locker room. I'd shut the door. Nobody in here but us, right? And I'd get up and come over here. I don't want to scream. I'd get them all around in a circle.

And I'd say, look, I want to tell you guys something. I can't tell you how proud I am of you guys. You guys will be lost eight out of ten, but you guys are playing your hearts out. You guys are playing your tails off, and this will turn for us. You just continue doing what you're doing.

We're going to work our way out of this, and everything's going to be great. I want you guys to go home, get a good night's sleep, and we'll be ready to go get them again tomorrow. So instead of getting a butt chewing, they were like, man, you know, I'm going to run through a wall through this, for this guy.

Yeah. And that was it. Take the pressure off of them. And what we did for years, Mike, is that we taught them how to play the game. We gave them the freedom to play the game. We gave them the freedom to steal bases. I didn't have to stand there and put steals on all the time. I didn't have to put pitch outs on or call pitches.

I didn't even have to put hit and runs on. I would. But they would get to the point where they understood what it took to win, and then they took it. They could steal a base on their own? On their own. And you wouldn't have a problem with? thrown out and it was a bad choice. We'd bring them back. We'd explain to them why it was a bad choice and then go again. Okay. Wow. That's interesting. It got to the point in 2015.

I'd sit there, drink a cup of coffee. Those boys would go. They knew what it took to win. They knew how to win. And sometimes it would drive the fans crazy. I remember at a fan fest one time, a guy goes, why did you bunt Lorenzo Kane and Game 4 of the playoffs? And I'm like, Let me tell you something. I said, first of all, there's runners on first and second. Lorenzo Cain's hitting third. Lorenzo Cain bun it. Then Billy Butler got a base hit.

We were ahead two to nothing, right? I got a newsflash for you. I didn't put the bun on. Lorenzo Cain knew what he needed to do to win a ball game. Now, we had 58 sacrifice buns. I guarantee you I didn't put 10 of those on. Wow. You know, that these guys knew what it took to win,

and they went out and they played to win, and it wasn't selfish baseball. It was winning baseball. And it was fantastic stuff to sit back and watch them grow, watched them have the confidence that they need to take control of their own game and their own destiny and then have success at it. Now, let me ask you this. When you won the Daytona 500, what did you feel like? Elation.

Elation, okay. When I won the World Series, I didn't feel that. No? I felt a very strong contentment. I felt very content because I had the ability, like I said, to go to the World Series eight times of my career. We'd won it in 95. So in 15, every time we'd win, the champagne celebrations will go on. I'd let the players go, right?

Go have it. I mean, go have fun. So, hey, you come into the champagne celebration? I'm going to come to the champagne celebration when we won the big one, right? So sure enough, I'll never forget, we were playing in New York. The score was tied 2-2 in the 12th inning. We just got the game-winning base hit, right? So now we got a one-run lead, and I'm thinking to myself,

we just won the World Series, right? Well, for the first time of my life, our guys kept hit and kept hit and kept hit and we scored four more runs, and I'm screaming, well, somebody making out, let's get this thing over with. Somebody making out. So finally, put Wade Davis out. Way Davis won, two, three. They came in and they said, okay, we're going to give you the World Championship trophy.

Nobody popped champagne to the commissioner leaves. I'm like, okay, that's fine. The commissioner gives us a trophy. We're all on national TV. My owner's there, my GM, me. So as soon as the commissioner leaves, I leave. And I went, and I sat down in my office, and I looked, and there's my GM, Date Moore, and we had fought this thing for years, you know.

Kept trying to tell people what we believed. People had heard it before. They didn't want to hear it. I'm like, all right, we'll just have to show you, right? But it was a very strong sense of just, you know, content. I never did go into the celebration, right? I just felt really, really good. Finally, the Mets finally kicked us out at 5 o'clock that morning.

So we went back. Now, I did have, that didn't mean I wasn't drinking. Yeah. You know, I was still drinking, but I wasn't champagne in, right? So by the time I got back, it was like 7 o'clock. our plane left at 10. So I got everybody on the bus, got on the plane, and I'm sitting there. And I had my son, and at that point, I had the air blowing on my face because it was getting a little warm, you know, from the night before. And my phone rings.

When I look at it, it said no caller ID. So the only people I know with no caller ID are Robin Yacht, the Hall of Famer, and Joe Tori. Well, I figured it was Joe Tori calling to congratulate me, right? So I pick up the phone, and go, hello, and he goes, yes, is this Ned Yost? And I said, yeah, this is Ned? Can you please hold for a call from the President of the United States? And it was Barack Obama calling to invite us to the White House. Wow. That was the first time that I understood that we might have done something special.

When we got into Kansas City, the next day we had a parade with almost a million people in downtown. I mean, they had to park their cars on the freeway and walk to the parade route, is when I started to understand that we did do something special. And it was really, really cool. A couple years later, what happened at Kansas City a couple years later? How does that all work out? Okay, what we did, and probably for me, my biggest regret was that we couldn't win back-to-back championships.

Because we won in 15, and we just kind of really ran away, that had the best record in the American League. Well, we had the same team, maybe a pitcher or two that had changed. We were going to push through 16 to try to win the world championship again. Well, we ended up not doing it. 17, okay, we got these players, let's do it. Well, we got through 17 and trying to win another championship, we didn't take any of our really good players and trade them off for young prospects.

So all of our players left for free agency, and you don't get anything back. So our cupboards were kind of bare. Yeah, and so how is that unique to, or not unique, how is that different to the run you could have had in the 90s? The players are there for a much shorter period of time today. Right, they are, but it's a smaller market. Kansas City is a smaller market than what is Atlanta, too, and we just couldn't afford, you know,

we couldn't afford to go out and spend on, you know, really big free agents. We had to develop our own team. And the thing about it was, once we got these kids to the big leagues, you got six years. You got six years to make something happen. And if you don't make it happen, then these guys are moving on and becoming free agents. Because we didn't have the money to sign our best players to big contracts.

We just didn't have it. So I knew going into 18 and 19, it was going to be tough. And I told Dayton, my GM, I said, look, I know this is going to be tough. There's no better person than myself to be able to take it because I've got that equity in the city, you know, and we'll just do the best we can. And we really, we struggled. One lost 100 games both years in a row, but the beauty of losing 100 games is you get top draft picks, right?

And we got some kids that are, we got a kid named Bobby Witt Jr. That is a Chipper Jones type player. And we've got some really, really good young pitchers that should develop into something, you know, moving forward. What are you doing now for baseball? Nothing? Nothing, really. So how come, so listening to you talk, it's, there's no question that you're a savant of the

game. I mean, just you're, and you're, with your motivational ability, with your, I mean, you could be a public speaker for any, for, for us, for anybody, you know, you could, you could go around and motivate the hell out of people. How do you get, how do you step away from that, something you've known your whole life? Yeah. Knowing that you, you would have a, you know, an asset somewhere. You could be a, knowing you could make a difference in some, in some

organization in some way somehow. How do you, how do you not? I'm not completely adverse to that right now, but the situation's got to be right. And to be honest with you, you know, at the end of 18 and 19, losing 100 games, I was burned out. For sure. I needed to go home. I needed to go home and I needed to rest. And the game has changed so much from when I came up, you know, but, you know, but, But the problem that you run into is, now, again, what defines a win? You know? And a lot of times these owners, you're not going to win, and you can't get them to understand. You're not going to win without talent.

So you either go out and buy a bunch of talent or you develop your own talent. Developing your own talent takes time. And if you just think you're going to go out and win, win, win, that's not going to happen. Yeah. Right? So it takes time. It's hard finding somebody that has the patience like Mr. Glass did to get through whatever it takes to become a world champion. And, I mean, he had his doubts.

I mean, Zach Granky had his doubts. You know, Zach wanted to be traded, and I told Zach we're going to win, Zach. He was a Cy Young Award pitcher. He goes, I don't believe it. I said, we're going to win. He goes, I don't believe it. You know, I've heard it too many times before. And we ended up trading Zach, and we got some players that were key guys in our championship run.

But, you know, guys, it just takes time to be able to build that championship. So the situation has to be right. One, and two, it can't be about numbers. It's got to be about culture. It's got to be about family. It's got to be, to have a championship caliber organization, you've got to be able to develop the talent. But you've got to be able to develop the person, too. You want them to be a good son.

You want them to be a good dad. You want them to be a good husband. And, you know, that's all part of it. Instead of just looking at you thinking, okay, if you don't go two for four tonight, your butt's on the bench. You know, you've got to care for them. And you have to find, it starts at the top. And if you've got somebody at the top and the GM and the manager that all have the same philosophy,

you can develop that. It's just hard trying to find that nowadays. You mentioned the Labor Strike in 1994. You ended up having some time. So dad says, hey, man, come hit the road with us. You became part of the team. Right. The cool thing about it was we went on strike the middle of August.

And they sent all the major league guys to minor league teams, right? So I ended up going to rookie ball for like a week, and their season got over. So it was August 24th, something like that, 28th. then your dad and I were going to go hunting in South Carolina. So we were going to meet after the Michigan race. So I'll never forget this. That Michigan race was the race that Ernie got in that wreck. And Ernie was really going to die, right?

So your dad flies in. It was 3 o'clock in the morning, and we were calling every half hour to see if Ernie had passed away. and we're sitting on this back porch. It was a beautiful night. I mean, a South Carolina night in August, it wasn't too hot. It was just beautiful. And we were sitting back there drinking a couple of beers.

And your dad looked at me and he said, hey, you know, if this can happen to Ernie, this can happen to me. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes, Ernie's got a 30, Ernie's 30 points behind me. Ernie's got great equipment. He's a championship caliber driver. He's got a great team. If it can happen to him, it can happen to me. And I'm like, no, that can't happen to you.

Because you know, he was bulletproof. He was 10 foot tall, right? You never thought that that would happen to him. Right. Never. Yep. Right? So the next week, we ended up hunting and we're having these, like, conversations

and stuff because it really affected him that Ernie was that hurt. Next week, the minor league season's all over. We got nothing to do the first of September he calls me. He goes, what are you doing? I ain't doing nothing. He goes, come work on my race team. Help us win this seventh championship. I'm like, well, yeah, maybe that'll be cool, right?

And he goes, yeah, you get to see nine races. You get to see some tracks you probably never see again. He said, come help us. So I'm like, okay, sure enough, well, first race was Darlington, right? And I'll never forget. I was the rehydration engineer. People would ask, what do you do? I'm a rehydration engineer.

Keep walking, right? They didn't know. I just, like, gave them the water. water, right? During the pit stops. Yeah. So anyway, I didn't know what I was doing, and nobody told me anything, right? Yeah.

So they give you this gallon of water and you mix in this electrolyte solution. You can't give them too much. Give them three inches. Give them three inches. And because you don't want them pee in his pants during the race, he just to sip it, right? So I'm like, okay. So I'm standing where with this pole and the first pit stop, I'm nervous as hell. So I'm here, like, inching this pole out.

When I mention it, the water's going like this, I look at your day, I look this, he goes, stop, stop. So stop like this. He goes, all right, so put a little stop like this. He goes, hey, tell Ned to only put three inches of water in that cup, it's going to splash on the radio and short it out. And I'm thinking to myself, I only got three inches in there. Just give me a chance to get used to this, right?

So after that, I figured out real quick that you extend the pole, get it under the rear tire changers butt, And when he jumps, you just swing that pole, boom, into that little hole right there. Well, I was a natural rehydration engineer from that point on. So it was really cool to be able to watch your dad work and his mindset. And like I said, it started there when he finished second. And, you know, I'm thinking, okay, this has got to be a joke, but it wasn't. he was serious about it.

The next week, you're at North Wokesboro, right? And that was the day that Jeff Bodine lapped the entire field. But the thing that I enjoyed about that was your dad was just busting ass, man. He was fighting. He ended like four or five laps down, but, I mean, he was running like he was leading, right?

So the spotter came on and goes, Richard, when there's an ex caution, I need to tell you something. And Dale goes, tell him now. and he goes, No, I'll wait for the cause. He goes, I said, tell him now. He goes, Bobby Hamilton came up and said you're being too aggressive with him. If he catches up to you, he's putting you in the wall.

Dale goes, you tell Bobby Hamilton that if he wants, I will gladly meet him under the grandstands after the race, but don't be wrecking no damn race cars. And I'm like, oh, wow, this is my type of sport right here, right? And he never ended up catching up to him. But as the races went on, I would watch his competitiveness, and I would watch how he would never quit. It didn't matter what the situation was. I'm starting to think, you know, I'm playing in a baseball game, and we're down seven or eight, nothing going into the eighth inning.

My mind starts to wander, well, like, okay, maybe we'll get him tomorrow, right? That never entered your dad's mind, ever. He just, if he was 10 laps down with 11 to go, he was running just as hard as if he won. So I'm watching all this, right? And we get into Charlotte here, and it's the October race. I mean, I'll never forget this because this was one of the coolest lessons I think that I learned from your dad. Was that I remember it was a gorgeous day. We pushed the black three out onto Pitt Road, and the crowd was going nuts, right?

So get your dad ready, get him in the car. At this point, he qualified 38th. Rusty Wallace was second behind him. 208 points behind them, right? So start the race, they go five laps and there's a huge wreck, right? And your dad is in the middle of this wreck, and he ends up hitting Bill Elliott lifts up his car and the whole front end of his car's messed up, right? Well, he comes on the radio and he's like, my front end says, my castor, my got four flat

tires, my castor, my camber. I'm like, oh, this is all Greek to me, right? I got some water for you if you want. Three inches, three inches. So he comes in and I'm like panicking, right? I know that he's got a 200-point lead. I'm looking for Rusty Wallace and Rusty's running like 10th. He comes in and not to get lapped, he comes in like four times, right,

trying to beat and bang the car out. By the time they started the race again, he's right back to 39th and Rusty's running like ninth, right? So as the race goes on, he's getting a little better. He's getting a little better, and he comes up to, you know, 35th and 32nd, and the race is coming. He comes up to 30th and 25th and gets up to 19th. And, you know, getting towards the three-quarters of the race, and you hear NASCAR come on the radio going, caution, caution,

we got a smoker coming out of four. And I'm looking, and all of a sudden, this car billowing smoke comes out of turn four, and we all look, it's Rusty Wallace. He just blew up, right? So now, like we're giddy, right? All these points that we thought we were losing, we got back, plus we're going to gain more points. So we're like excited, right? So your dad's out there busting his ass, busting his ass, they get down to 25 laughs to go,

and they bring them in and gets two tires. Goes back out and gets to the point where there's 10 laughs left, and Ricky Rudd wrecks Jeff Gordon. When they come in and, I mean, Jeff Gordon pushed up on him, Ricky gets behind them and then squirrels them, boom, they both go into the wall, right? So there's 10 laps left. Andy Petrie comes on the radio and Dale's running fourth. There are nine cars on the lead lap. And Andy comes on and says, Dale, see if we can't get a jump. See if we can't finish third.

Your dad comes on the radio and goes, Andy, I want four new tires. He goes, no, no, no, you stay out there. You don't stay out there and see if you can get a jump. See if you can finish third. He goes, no, I want four new tires. He goes, Dale, this is crazy, man. Just stay out there. By the time you go, there's going to be.

four laps left, right? Or three laps left. You're not going to be able to make up the time. There's nine cars on the lead lap. You can conceivably come down to ninth place. See if you can get a jump and finish third place. And Dale came on the way. He goes, I didn't come here to finish third. I'm at the entrance of pit road. And he goes, okay, come on in. We're going to put four tires on this car. We're going to sit back and watch you finish eighth. Your dad said, I tell you guys, what? Put four tires on this and you guys sit back and watch me win this race, right? He pulls in like this. I'm trying to give a little water, right?

He won no part of that. He was glaring at Andy, right? Just glaring at him. Puts the four tires on, drops the jack, he takes off, right? They started up with four to go, and he's in sixth place. And he comes around, and he's in fifth, right? And he comes around, and he's in fourth. And they're running, and he's in fourth.

He comes around, and he's in third. And he's starting to make some ground up on Morgan Shepherd when the race ends. He finished his third, right? So get out of the car, he goes upstairs. Well, I could tell he kind of had the ass, right? But I thought it was cool. I thought he was doing great, right? So I did.

I went back and I watched the replay this week of that race, and I watched his interview afterwards. And they got out, and they said, Dale, why, why did you come in? It was four to go. And he goes, well, he said, I knew 25 laps that I only took two tires. I knew I was dead in water with those two tires. I wasn't going to do that. And I felt like if we got some good tires on this car, I could win that race.

The problem was I got long run tires instead of short run tires. If I had short run tires, I for sure would have caught Morgan Sheffering, and I might have had a chance of winning a race. But, you know, we ended up starting 38th. It was good. And at that point, they had a 330-point lead going into the last three races, right? So he goes upstairs to the condo, pull the car back to start tearing apart. I'm going to go up and see Dale.

I go upstairs, and I'll never forget, I walked through the door of the condo, and Teresa, Taylor, and your grandmama was standing in the corner. And I should have known, you know, that he was pissed, right? Because he had his back on this table looking out at the racetrack. He was eating. So I came over, and I put my arms around him from behind and put my head on his shoulder. And I said, man, that was awesome. That was a great race.

Right? He goes, great race. What was great about that? And I said, well, he goes, do you know what happened out there? He said, do you even understand what happened out there? And I said, no, I don't know. He goes, they wanted me to be mediocre. That's what happened.

Yeah, we started 38. Yeah, we got in a wreck. Yeah, Rusty blew up him. And everybody was satisfied with the points that we got. And they lost sight of the fact that we could have won that race. And he said, they wanted me to be mediocre. And again, this was the only saying. second time. He pulled me face to face and he said, Ned, you never, ever settle for mediocrity.

Never in your life do you do it. You know why? Because you don't have to. That's why. And to that point, I got it on my arm. Never settle for mediocrity. Never. It's my thought. It's what I lived by from that point on. And he was right. You know, I was guilty. I was so happy that he finished third starting 38. I didn't think about winning. I could care less if he won. He was going to finish third. But he changed my mindset and things like that.

Yeah, there's days we're going to be mediocre. But you don't settle for it. You work hard the next day so that you're not. And that was your dad. That was what he thought. And that's how he lived his life. It was crazy. So when you say that he taught you to compete,

This was the moments during that little run for that seven championship where that was instilled. No doubt. No doubt. I learned so much about never giving up, staying focused, staying at being a leader on that team because he drug us along. Yeah. You know, if we slacked off a little bit mentally, uh-uh. He wouldn't have it. He pulled us along.

He got us all back in line. And it was, that was, you know, he taught me how to be a leader of a group of guys. Young players, what they want is discipline, they want organization and structure. And if you provide that for them, they're going to follow along with you. It's the same thing your dad did. I mean, he made sure that you were going to be on the same page with him. And if you weren't on the same page with him, they were going to be a problem. But RCR and his group, 98% of the time, we're on the same page with him.

They never quit. Staying focused, never giving up, staying hydrated, am I right? Oh, for sure. That's right. You got to stay hydrated. You got to stay hydrated. Hydration engineer right there. I've never heard of another hydration engineer, so you did your job.

I knew I did good. We were in Phoenix, and I knew that I hydrated him good because at the end of the race, he come boiling, I mean, into the holler, right? Jumped out of the car, and I'm standing there. He's going like this. Open up the refrigerator, took out a half a gallon of milk, and started peeing in it. He goes, oh. He had nowhere to go. And he was about to wet his pants.

But I'm thinking, okay, I did my job there. That's hilarious. Yeah. So that was cool. I selfishly wish I knew how many Major League Baseball players that you educated about my dad or... All of them. Yeah. I'm wondering how many of them, like, may connected with that.

All of them. Yeah. They all, every spring training. Every one of my meetings about what I learned on that race team and the commitment that it took to be a champion and the focus that it took to be a champion. So there was in our conversations with you on our pre-interviews, you mentioned a story on a hunting trip in Texas the year I won my Xfinity Series championship. So y'all were on a hunt when all this went down? Really? Yeah.

It was your first championship. And we were hunting, and it was cool because earlier in the day, all these times we'd gone to Encino Ranch. Your dad never bought Swisher Suites, right? So he bought this little pack of Swisher Suites. So I'm like, oh, I'm not smoking them cigars. I mean, I've tried them before. So anyway, we're sitting there, and we had a beer, and he lit up a swisher suite.

and he's sitting and all of a sudden he throws his head back and he goes oh man you all right man you're all right and he goes oh he goes you ain't going to believe it and i said what and he goes the smell of the dirt the beer and the cigar smoke took me back to when i was 10 years old watching my dad race a dirt track he said the feeling was as strong right then and there as it was when i was 10 years old he goes what a weird feeling that was And I thought that was really cool, you know, that he could relive that. So we go back later in the afternoon, and we're watching you in Victory Lane. The championship, right?

Yeah. So I'm thinking to myself, why aren't you there? I mean, why are we off hunting, and Dale Jr. is getting a championship. Why aren't you there? And he said, you know why? He goes, because he's worked his ass off. That's why. He's had a great year.

That's why. and I wanted to be all about him. If I was there, they'd be interviewing me, they'd be wanting to know what I think when it's his day. And I wanted all to be about him. And that made sense to me a little bit, especially when you won in Texas.

And then all they wanted to do was interview him. And he finally got out of there. And I'm like, that makes sense. Yeah. But, you know, he would, we would laugh because there at the end, he'd complained that, You were on a computer all the time.

He did, yeah. Dale Jr. is on the computer all the time. What the hell is he doing on the computer? I ain't playing some damn racing game. And I'm like, what racing games is he playing? I don't know some damn racing game, right? I got, listen, I got the one. That sounds pretty fun, right?

So I figured out it was papyrus, right? Papyrus, yeah. Yeah, papyrus, yeah. I bought one. Son of a bitch, I'm on the computer all night long, racing this game, right? I didn't race. You raced against people, right? I'd set the number down to like 85.

That's the only way I could compete. And I was on that thing hours and hours and hours. Hey, Dale Jr. still on the computer? He goes, yeah, he's on the computer. That damn kid. And I'm sitting there on that. Yeah, I got my steering. So then when eye racing came out, right?

I'm like, okay, this is really going to be cool. And you probably were on that beta group when it first came out, right? I want it on it bad. Really? I want it on it, right? I couldn't get on it. I kept sending in emails. Can I get on this?

No, no, no. So the one that headed that up was John Henry, the owner of the Boston Ritzels. Right? So we're playing in Boston. This is so funny. All the roads are leading here to Ned Yost. We're sitting in Boston, and my owner's in the owner's suite right next to it, right? And John Henry comes down to say hello.

So I'm sitting there right in the middle of the game, sixth inning and I go, Mr. Henry, hey, I'm Ned Yose. Hey, nice to meet you. I've been dying to get on that beta list. Can you please help me get on an ira racing beta list? And he goes, you'll have it tomorrow, right? My owner's like, what the hell are you talking about? But that was so much fun for me at that time. I mean, I was on it all the time.

Absolutely enjoyed it. And I could see how you would enjoy it. Now, your dad wouldn't enjoy it because he got to do the real thing. And at that time, we weren't really, we weren't being able to race. But it was fun to be able to do that. And actually, for me, in eye racing, I had no idea how to set up a car, right? Sure. So I would search the internet, and I finally found a setup where I could run a truck race and win at Daytona.

And I won like five or six races there. And that was my only heyday. But my first race that I ever won, we pushing, going into the finish line, and I was like, I'm not lifting, and I pushed up, and I banged the guy next to me into the wall. Well, the guy's cussing me after the race. Jay, you bang me, I just simply tech back suck on it, meat. My first win, right? So he was pissed.

But, you know, it was stuck on it meat. Another T-shirt idea. I mean, you're just dropping them left and right. Suck on it, meat. But, you know, he, at the end there, it was really cool to see. Because it was so weird, Dale, when you were little, right? And it was a different generation, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the thing that I'd really enjoy now is that guys like you, guys like my son, players nowadays, they're breaking the cycle. You know, back then, if you watch Leave It to Beaver, dads wore coats and ties to dinner at home, right? And our day, when we grew up, we worked hard. And that was we're to provide for the family. But nowadays it's about being a dad. And your dad to your girls, my son's a dad to his girls. By the way, I got Isla Jean too. Really?

Yeah. And my players, when I played in the big leagues, wives never went on a road trip, ever. But when I managed in the big leagues, the wives went on every road trip. And the kids went on every road trip. And the wives would get up and go shopping, and the dad's had to babysit. So it was a different. The cycle was kind of broken on the mindset where we just focus on our task at hand and being successful because I was just guilty of it too. But at the end to see how his mindset was towards you was remarkable. I asked him one time, I said, and you know, just a figure speech. I said, how's your boy, how's your boy Steve Park doing?

You know, this is, you go, Steve Park ain't my boy, Dale Jr's my boy. And I'm like, well, I know Dale Jr's your boy, but I'm at, now he's not, Dale Jr's my boy, Steve Park ain't my boy. And I'm like, okay, well, then how's your driver, Steve Park doing? But he would get to that point and he would call me and say, hey, Junior, we're out in California, right? He goes, Junior wants to move to California. And I said, why? He goes, because he can get up at 8 o'clock in the morning there. He says he can't get up.

He can't get up until 11 o'clock at home. In California, he's up every time at 8 o'clock he wants the move out there. Yeah. I remember telling him. Yeah. I'm like, I think I was born on the wrong side of the country. Yeah, but he was starting to get a kick out all that stuff. Oh, really?

Yeah, I mean, he was coming around. Coming around. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he really was. And it was interesting to see all that. You named your, you have a daughter named Ayla? No, I've got a granddaughter. Granddaughter named Ayla?

Isla Jean. Really? Yeah. How about that? Yeah. Well, you didn't think you were the only one that named their kid. No, but I'm just wondering like the coincidence is here. How the, how him and dad became such great friends.

Dad didn't, not a lot of people connected to Dad. Right. All right. He didn't give people the time, but plus it took a certain type of personality. It did. He likes eye racing. Yeah. Has a grand don't named E.

Yeah. I mean. Let me ask you this. Some weird, you know, universe, moon. I'm trying to remember the name of this. guy, because your dad told me a story when we were on a hunting trip. Do you know much about your dad's career when he was like 16 and 17? Not really. Do you have any idea who he was working for at that time? Because he told me that your granddad got him a job working on a race team when he was

17 years old. And the guy that owned the race team had been in a pit road accident and had both his legs cut off at the knee. And he said he was a cocky, 17-year-old was working. And back in those days, the race shops were like behind a house. Yeah. You know, like something. He said he would park, have to go through this fence to get into the race shop or the garage, and there was a goat there.

And your dad would get the goat all whipped up, right? And the goat would be chasing around. He kicked the goat, and the goat be chasing around. He'd go flying through the door. and the goat, bam, would hit the door, right? So one day, he gets the goat all riled up and can't get the door shut quick enough, and the goat's in the race shop, tearing stuff up.

The guy with no legs tries to stop it. It hits him, knocks him to the ground, right? And finally get the goat, pull him out the door. The guy told Dale, your daddy goes, look, knock it off. He goes, I'm tired of this crap. I'm about to whoop your ass. Dad said, my ass. Okay, right?

Next day he comes in, gets the goat whipped up, comes flying through the door, and your dad said, here comes the goat. Look out, here comes the goat. That's it. The gut was outside, but here comes the goat. The guy walked over to your dad and said, let's go. He was, I'm whipping your ass. Let's go right now.

He goes, okay. Goes outside, right? Your dad said he walked out the door, and as soon as he walked out the door, this guy jumped on his back. He said, I went to the ground, and before I knew it, bam, bam, he clicked his legs off. He said, you ever fought a guy with no legs? And I said, no. He goes, this dude was on me every time I'd move.

He was pounding my head into the dirt. He was smacking my head. He was hitting me on like this finally to the point. I said, look, I give. I'll be good. I'll be good. I promise I'll be good. And the guy rolled off me and he goes, look, I'm not happening to this.

You shape up. Dale goes, I'll be good. He said, I had hair and dirt on my face. He said he looked at me and he pointed his finger at me and goes, Dale, don't ever make me take my legs off on you again. And I always thought that that was such a cool story. Wow. You know, back in his early days.

And, you know, he didn't really, we didn't really discuss much about the relationship with his dad. You could just tell that he worshipped him and loved him. For sure. Yeah. You've got a couple things that you wanted to share with us, and we're going to call it the rest of the story. Yeah. You've listened to the podcast a little bit.

For years. Yeah. And so there's a story from one of our episodes about Dad getting in a fight with someone who shot a deer on his property. Right. Oh, I love that story. Yeah. Blaney told that story.

Yeah. Well, we talked about it with Blaney probably, but I told the story. So basically, you know, there was a dad had a high fence on his property. He has a bunch of deer that he's, that he's raising a herd that he's managing. And a guy that came to work on a tractor or a repair man. Bulldozer guy. Yep.

He came out there to work on it and fix it. And saw some of the deer, went back and hung out with a buddy that evening and got brave and decided to jump the fence and shoot one. And they did. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure if they, I think they shot it through the fence. Oh. because your dad heard the shot and the farm manager was with him your dad said that's it let's go

they went out there and they found the deer right so they sat back in the woods and waited and they waited for like two hours really and all of a sudden truck pulls up guy hops the fence walks over to the deer starts to bend down to drag it right so your dad jumped up and told him to hold it right there well the guy turned around and hauled ass right well your dad had a gun and he shot, boom, hold it right there. And the guy kept running. He ejected the shelling, was so pissed, he jammed it. So he said, luckily for him, he jammed.

Through the gun on the ground, ran after him. The guy was climbing over the fence when your dad grabbed him and started just beating the heck out of him, right? He said he knew he broke his hand on the second punch, but he was letting him have it. I mean, boom, killed one of his deer, right? Boom, letting him have, letting him have. And he said, the only reason he stopped is because the farm farm, Foreman had a bad heart. And he was screaming,

Dale, stop, you're killing him, you're killing. And your dad said he was afraid he's going to give him a heart attack. So it was funny because he ends up getting his black cast on his hand. And he said it was a race shop incident. So that Daytona, that next Daytona, of course, your dad was always winning all the stuff going up to Daytona. And the Daytona 500 might have been the, I don't know, might have been the 90 Daytona or something.

They asked Ernie Urban, how can you stop Dale Earnhardt from winning the Daytona 500? And Ernie said on national TV, just get a really, really big guy and go shoot one of his deer. So it kind of went over everybody's head. Well, a couple years later, I mean, I just envisioned you've been in the deerhead shop. There's monsters in there, right? And I've actually mounted three or four of those deer in the deerhead shop for them, right? On trips that we'd go, we'd kill them out of mountain. So we're in the deerhead shop, and we walk through the door,

and then there's another little door right there. I think that was like the dino or engine shop or something right there, right, where the bays were over here. And on the wall was a little horn mount. And, I mean, it was a little eight point about like that. Yeah. So in the deerhead shop, I'm like, dad, gum, you got all these monsters. What the hell is that?

I said, I said, dear, that guy shot. I said, you beat the hell out of that guy for that little eight point. He goes, that was the biggest deer I had on the farm at that time. He goes, yeah, it was a little big. That was that big. I'm stunned at this, by the way. So was I. What a development to this story.

So was I. He wouldn't have none of it. He shot his deer and he was going to pay for it. God, almighty. That was his biggest deer at the time. In my head, I just assumed it was bullwinkle out there that he just had to go whooping some guy's ass for. Absolutely.

So did I. What's the rest of the story about Rusty throwing a water bottle at dad? That was at Bristol, right? And we laughed so hard when Rusty threw that water bottle. The next day, we next day aired at Atlanta Braves' dual earflap batting helmet with the instructions wear this in all post-race interviews. Really? So in case he got another water bottle off his head.

He'd have at least some protection. That's funny. So there's a story about Ron Hornady getting fired and his blowout with Ty Norris and Dad. Yeah. out that was because I asked your dad about that, you know. He didn't let on that that was happening, but I kind of got a little bit of a sense that that might happen. And then when I saw it happened, I called him.

I said, how did that go? He goes, oh, he goes, that was rough. He didn't say anything about taking a phone call, right? But Ty, when they came in, Ty was sitting there and Hornaday started getting really pissed at Ty. And, you know, like, if you, Ty, you knew about this, why didn't you tell me? about this and it was just really going off on the tire noise right so your dad your dad told me he goes look i told him hey ron calm down just calm down take it easy ron hornaday looked me square in the eye and he said

yeah well fuck you too and turn around and walked out the door wow i had a whole new appreciation for ron hornaday after that sure he did and uh dale your dad called him that night and they you know they talked it out and they were they were fine after that but you know tie was i mean ron was so pissed that he wasn't he wasn't taking no prisoners that day out of curiosity out of curiosity like which episode did that come up that made you think to tell that so it was hornaday because we've had tie and ron so what did ron say to us that that that didn't finish the story like how far did he get he got to where he was getting all over tie but he didn't say anything about Dale and what really pissed him off was that Dale took a phone call when he was getting

fired. Oh, he took a phone call. That's what he said. Yeah. He took a phone call when he was firing your dad, but your dad said it was from Bill France. So he had to take the call. That's right. He had to take the call. And then he was telling him to calm down, and that's when Hornerday looked him square in the eye. He said, F you, buddy. Yeah. Good Lord. I can totally see Hornaday doing that. Yeah, me too. Absolutely. Yeah, because Hornaday was kind of a version. a dad in a way, you know? He was. Very, very, very, very leathered and rough and pretty honest. No bull's bullshit. Yeah, he was. I liked Tornaday, but I liked him just a little bit better after that. Because I don't know, as good of friends as I was with your dad, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even

go there with your dad. No matter how mad I got, and I never got mad at your dad. And your dad never got mad at me, but I would never, I would never go there. And then the last one of those was Jeremy Mayfield. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. And Jeremy Mayfield was talking on the podcast about the race of Pocono. Oh, yeah. How he came in. Rattled his cage.

Rattle his cage, right? And he goes, yeah, your dad was cool with it, right? I just said, I'm going to rattle his cage, and your dad was cool with it on Sunday. And then Mayfield on Monday, I just rattled his cage. I just rattled his cage. Your dad was cool with it on Monday. Tuesday started to get to him. Rattle his cage, rattle his cage.

Wednesday. he heard, rattled his cage, rattles his cage. Your dad got on the phone and called Jeremy Mayfield. And they said, look, I've heard enough of rattle your cage. I hear it one more time. I'm coming over there

and I'm going to bloody your nose. And that was the last time you heard Jeremy Mayfield say, I'm going to rattle your cage. No shit. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah.

Ned, can you just move here and be part of our interviews? And anybody that has an Earnhardt's story, you can go ahead and tell what happens after that because I think you pretty much have a vantage point nobody has. We did. And it was cool to be able to have that friendship.

It's amazing. And he tried to be so sly. Like when I first knew your dad, the only thing was there was the old bush shop. You know, and he built the house. And then all of a sudden the truck shopping, I'm going to get into truck racing. So we drove by it one day, and the truck was outside. And I said, who's your sponsor? He goes, I can't tell you that.

Your sponsor's Napa. How do you know that? Look at the truck. It's Napa. of colors. And he goes, well, you better pull that truck inside that if you can figure it out. Yeah. But it was fun to be able to do that. But I want to, you know, kind of go back a little bit too, if it's cool with you. Talk about Daytona, all right? I mean, I know it's tough, but it's tough on all of us. But I remember that day in Daytona, I called them that morning. And I said,

good luck man wishing lake and i'm going to wish you luck and he goes you coming to the race i said no i'm not coming to the race i said but i'll be there tonight afterwards to spend the night on the boat and he knew what that meant because if he didn't win at detona or one of his cars didn't win at at Daytona he was the first one on that plane headed to morseville right he was going home so when he won the Daytona 500 i finally got a hold him about 10 o'clock that night and he was well into the celebration, right? And he's like, where are you? Why aren't you here? You need to be here with me.

I'm like, hell I can. It's 12 o'clock. I'm 60 miles away. And by the time I get there, it's going to be 12 o'clock. I'm going to get drunk. I've got to be back here at 5 o'clock. I said, I can't make it. He goes, you should be here.

You should be here with me. You should enjoy this with me. And I made a point from that time on that if he ever won or one of his cars won, I was going to be there. You know, I was going to enjoy it with him. So I called him that day, told him I'll see him that night. He laughed. He said, okay, he knew what that meant, that either he was going to win or you were going to win or Michael was going to win, one of those two, right, or he's going to be gone.

So the race is going on, race is going on. And I'm sitting there like timing it, right? All right, we got five laps left. Mike's winning. Dale Jr. second. Big Dale's third. Oh, man. If Mike wins this race, I'm thinking to myself, what a party we're going to have tonight.

I mean, Mike's never won a race. We're going to have a blast, right? We're going to have so much fun. We get down to the last lap, and boom, that's when everything happens, right? Well, Michael goes on to win. You finish second, right? So I'm thinking, well, Dale's going to be pissed, but we're still going to have a blast. Mike's, I mean, your dad really got to enjoy Michael Walshry.

We were going to have fun, right? So I'm looking, thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to give it an hour, and then I'm going to get my car, I'm going to Daytona, because he's got to put Mike's car in. He's the owner, he's got to put Mike's car in Daytona, the next day. So I'm looking at it, and then they pan back to Kenny Schrader, and Kenny walks up to the car, puts the window net, and jumps back, and goes like this.

So I'm looking at them, what the hell is it going on, right? So all of a sudden they got people all around the car, and they're looking at it, and they start cutting the roof off. and I went into severe panic at that time. I mean severe because a couple of years earlier, your dad was racing at Talladega and Ervin clipped them, right? Hit the wall sideways. They hit in the windshield of the car, and the car just blew up, right?

And they wouldn't even show the car on TV. They kind of figured the worst, all of a sudden they panned to the car and they're pulling your dad out like the back window. right, and he's all hunched over and he's all bent up. Gets in the ambulance, and I finally get a hold of him that night. And I said, man, you are all right? He goes, man. He said, you know how they say things really slow down in those situations?

Because it was like slow motion. I hit the wall. I could see the sparks coming up through the window net. I could see the car's coming at me. And he said, the car hit my windshield. If it hit the roof, I'd have been done. But it hit the windshield and just exploded. He said, by the time I got stopped, I'm trying to figure out what pieces I have left, right?

So I said, well, what's going on? He goes, well, I got a broken collarbone. I got three broken ribs and a split brisket. That's your dad, split brisket. I said, you dumbass. I said, broken collarbone, broken ribs, split brisket? Why are they pulling you out the back window? He goes, let me tell you something.

He goes, I will never allow them. to cut my roof off. I don't want my family. I don't want my friends. I don't want anybody to think that I'm in trouble. So if you ever see them cutting my roof off, you know your old buddy's in trouble, right? So I went into severe panic at that time. And like the old cartoons, I went in four different, boom. I mean, one arm went that way. I'm just panicking, right? Run and I get in the car, and I'm driving to Daytona, and I get a hold of Mike Collier. And I said, Mike, what's going on? He goes, I don't know.

They just took him to the hospital. I don't know. I don't know. I'll let you know. I don't know. I said, okay, all right, well, let me know. I'm on my way.

I said, if he's got to spend the night in the hospital, we'll spend the night in the hospital. If we get to go back to boat, we'll go back and have a good time. He goes, all right. So about half hour later, we just passed a sign that said, 30 miles at Daytona and the phone rang.

It was Mike. And Mike said, he goes, Ned, he's gone. And I said, gone. What do you mean? He's gone. Where did he go? He can't go anywhere. He's got to put the car in Daytona USA. He can't be gone. Where did he go? What do you mean he's gone? What do you mean he's gone? Where did he go? And he goes, he didn't make it. Right? I pulled over and I must have cried on the side of that road for a half hour. Went back home. And I think I cried all night long, right? By the time I got up the next day at 4.30, I went into the ballpark. And I mean, I got right to the door and I just broke down crying again, right? But it was a weird feeling because I could hear your dad say, knock it off.

You know, so I kind of got it back together. And that week, the only salvation that I had during that time that I could kind of really live with this was we had gone on a hunting trip to Iowa in December. And I remember watching the Winston Cup Bank when he finished second, and he finished his speech. And he said, all right, I'll see you all next year. I'm going hunting. And I was sitting downstairs in my basement all by myself, and I'm thinking to myself,

I'm going with you, right? So I fly in to Iowa the next day. He had already been there. Him and Mike were there. They went into town. So I was sitting there talking to the guy that owns the farm, Don Kiske, and I could hear the door open. It was your dad. And he walked in, and I'm talking to Don.

Well, your dad came over, and he put his arm around me, and he kissed me on the cheek. And I hugged him, you know, and I'm thinking, okay. Okay, this is cool, you know, I guess, you know. So I'm hugging them, right? So we're hunting and we're having a really, really good time. After the second day of hunting, it snows 16 inches, right? So your dad had a sponsorship deal with Budweiser in Texas, and him and Mike were trying to talk about, you know, is it safe to go?

Is it safe to fly, you know? And Bill Jordan's over there in the corner going, you can't go, no, you've got to stay here, Dale, you can't go. Too dangerous. Nope, too much eyes. Too much now. You can't go. Mike and Dale are talking. They're talking. Bill's, you can't go. You can't go. And finally, your dad had to know him. He turned around and goes, Bill, shut the hell up. He goes, I'm trying to make a decision over here.

He said, I got a sponsor that is waiting for me to be there. It's a $10 million sponsor. You don't give me $10 million. You stand over there, shut the hell up, and let me make my mind up what I need to do. well Bill sit there got like real weird in the room and quiet right Bill kind of hunched down like this why I jumped up I said hey

the only reason he's saying that there's only one reason there's only one reason we want you to stay all of us and that reason is we love you that's why we love you man we just love you we don't want you to leave we love you you're a great friend you're fun to be around we love you

and I walked over and I hugged him he got this big smile on my honest face, right? Well, Bill Jordan still sitting in the corner going, well, I don't feel the love. But when it was all said and done, I got a chance to tell him I loved him. And that helped me a lot, you know, to get through it. But going through that week, it was tough, but the worst part for me was Rocky Now. And the reason for that was your dad would never miss a race. It didn't matter what. I saw an interview one time, and they asked him,

Dale, if you couldn't be a race car driver for some reason, what would you do? And your dad looked right in the camera, and he goes, I'd be a race car driver. He wouldn't miss that race. So when your dad wasn't there, I knew it was real. Yeah. You know, to this point, on he is, I wore number three in memory of him because what he taught me and what he helped me achieve. You know, I don't think I would have achieved near what I achieved without him in my life

and how I got the opportunity to, you know, be around him and learn from him some of the stuff that, you know, that I learned. I don't think I would have had near the success that I had. Do you think, do you look back on that moment where you're in that hunting lodge and you told him how you felt about him? Do you look back on that moment, like you say, like you're coincidental. or unknowingly you're able to tell him in that moment something that it was weird dale i mean he's never i mean he's never put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek i've never told him that i loved him right when i watched that race and i still kind of flashed back to the way he put his arms around you before the race and hugged you and was hugging teresa i i've never seen him really

do that before to that extent yeah you know it was just it was just it It was real, it was just kind of surreal, you know, at that time because, you know, going back to that night in South Carolina, I just didn't think that he could get hurt. I just didn't think he could. I just thought that he was, you know, I just thought he was bulletproof. It really, really just, I mean, and to this day, I think about it all the time, how proud he would have been of me when we won the World Championship. more than ever, when I look at you now, I just can't even imagine how proud he would be of you, the man that you've become, the person that you've become. I mean, we talked about it early. You were so shy in the early days. You wouldn't even look at me. You wouldn't talk to me.

You know, it was just you were, it was hard to get any engagement out of you. I mean, look at you now. Look at the man you've become and look at what you've accomplished. And everything that he ever wanted for you back in the day you've become it you know and i just can't imagine how proud that he would be right now with his granddaughters and with uh you know what you what you've accomplished and what you're doing in your life right now um i just think that he would just be beaming yeah man i'm telling you it's a treat for me to hear those things especially from you and it's hard to explain how nice this has been to sit here and listen to to your your comments and just listen and I knew y'all were friends and I knew that that meant a great deal to you and I knew that he only had a couple people in his life like that and I regret that I hadn't connected with you more.

That's fine. I mean, I knew you were busy. And like I said, I wanted to tell you these stories, but there's another reason too, which is cool, if I may. Yeah. All right. I wanted to show you some things. Okay. I know how much you love vintage T-shirts.

Yeah. I don't know if you like vintage hats, but I brought you a vintage hat from back in the day. And you might have some of those, right? Yeah, that's awesome. You know how much your dad loved knives. Yes. Loved. Every, anytime it was, anytime, anytime it was a ceremony or a gift giving event or an occasion,

dad's very favorite gift was a knife. If he was giving you a knife, that was a sign of his appreciation, respect to friendship. It was, but he always made sure if you were his friend and he gave you a knife,

you had to give him a penny. Because if you didn't give him a penny, that was bad luck. I didn't know that. It was bad luck. So every knife that I ever got, I had to give him a penny. And if I didn't have a penny,

I wouldn't take the knife until I went and got a penny. Now, what he would do, as he swore it was bad luck. He'd come up to competitors in the garage. He'd say, hey, I got something for you. Drop a knife in their hand in their hand and haul ass before they could get a penny. That's funny. I've got these knives, and I brought them for you. These are Winston Cup's seven-time championship knives,

and I've got three of them that just been sitting, And they're really, they're just really cool. Pass them over, Mike. And I wanted you to have these. You don't want them? I want you to have them. Oh, goodness. So another little thing that I brought you,

when your dad won the championship, the seventh championship, we were all in Victory Lane, right? Yeah. And we had these little sevens. We all held up for the seventh championship. And I brought you mine. Oh, wow. What?

I don't know how many of those. are out there. You're looking at them probably. Yeah, but I don't even know if they kept them. Right. Right. That's so cool. Yeah.

So now, I was with your dad when he won the 1993 Once in Cup champion, and there's a hat. How many. I was with your dad, of course, when he won the 1994 seven championship. Now, that hat, if you'll notice, is champagne show. Yeah, it is. Now, the cool thing about it is that. here's your dad in Victory Lane. See him?

Yeah. There's me right there. Right? Yeah. Okay. So your dad sprayed the champagne, took a swig, handed it to me. I took a swig. I handed it back to him.

He took another swig, and he handed it back to me. And he said, Ned, I want you to have this. He said, don't give it to anybody I want you to have it. And I promise him I wouldn't to this day. and I want you to have this. Wow. That is the champagne bottle from his... From the win.

In the win. In Victory Lane. They won an only one that was there. Really? And I never wanted... Somebody said, why don't you get him to sign it? Because that wouldn't make it as cool if I got him to sign it. It was just a gift from him to me because, you know, I was there to help him.

Yeah. And I've been wanting to give you that for a long, time. How about that? I'm speechless, man. That's an amazing gift. Yeah. Amazing. But I'm glad that I had this is cool. I'm glad I had the opportunity to come and share with you guys the relationship that I have with your dad and what he meant to me because, you know, you kind of look back and I kind of, there were times where I felt like I was stealing them from you a little bit, you know. Yeah, a little bit, but, you know, I've kind of gotten over that a little bit because, you know, you look at the times and they're, They were just different.

Yeah. I've got to know Carrie a little bit and love Carrie. You know, I've got to, of course, Taylor and you and your sister, they're just all great people. And Kelly used to come to the games. I'd leave her tickets. And, you know, it was just, it was fun to be able to get to know the kids. And Randy and Danny, you know, I knew them. I knew your ground mama and, you know, all these, through.

him. It was just a cool. It was fun to be able to meet these guys and to be a part of it. This has been incredible. I mean, you know, we've had, we've had a lot of people that have touched dad's life or being connected to him in many ways, but nothing like this before. I knew that when you were coming on here, we were going to hear some stories that we have never heard. A lot of times we hear stories that we've heard, but this is a new, you know, their version or a new version of events and they clear up some details or something like that. But it's a lot of times. It's a lot of awesome to hear new stories for the first time and it's awesome to meet somebody that had such a genuine connection to dad the person the real man you know the real person yeah like I said

he didn't let many people into that that world but he trusted you and and you were paid him with an amazing friendship that I imagine he enjoyed immensely we had fun yeah we had fun um it's been such a such a good time sitting here listening to you man well good I'm glad I'm I could do it. I've been wanting to do it for a long time. I've been listening. I put that podcast on when I get on my tractor, it burns three hours really quick. Yeah. Man, I think you would love to hear some of this stuff. So when you're, so hunting season's starting? Yeah. Are you, uh, I was in the stand last night and I've got two or three bucks that I'm hunting and one of them came out and poke us out, and looked around right at dark. And yeah, he went back in. But yeah, we've been bo-hunting since

September 10th. No kidding. So, yeah. So, yeah. So it's been a lot of it. been fun you stick around your property yeah I hunt my property or Jeff Foxworthy's and you've been to Bill Jurdens right have and it's right Jeff says right next door okay so if you ever head that way again you need to let me know so I'll come I'll come visit you oh come on wherever we yeah wherever we end up's where we end up yeah that'd be great I got my bow and that's about all I do is oh yeah me too me too I appreciated dad's appreciation for bow hunt he you know we we would have a you know we would go use our rifles from time to time, but I think the challenge with the bow is a good time. Plus, you can sit in the yard and practice and piddle in a lunch time and all that way.

Does your heart beat crazy every time a deer comes out? You know, the first several times it didn't, but the more I, the older I get, I guess, and the harder I, now that I realize just how challenging it is, I think the first times maybe it came a little bit too easy, and I didn't really understand what I'd done. Yeah. But now that I see how, because we've got, me and tricks, got a piece of property we've had for about six years. Yeah.

And I've pulled one buck off of it. Yeah. And, you know, it's really made me appreciate just how special and challenging it is. Yeah. And so, yeah. I always wondered if I could manage Game 7 of the World Series because I got so nervous every time a dough came in with my bow. I'm not going to do it. Managing game seven of the World Series was a lot easier than bow hunting.

Trust me. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. Well, man, what a treat. I know everybody's going to love this. Ned, thanks for coming all this way to Vibbush. visit us. You're a gym, man. You're a real, you're a real pleasure to sit and talk to, and

you've, you've, we've got a great, great, great, great show. Yeah, people are going to enjoy it. They are. Thank you, Ned. Ned Yost on the Dale Jr. Download. You know, Mike, whether I've been in the garage, right, as a driver or in the studio as a member of the media, the biggest lesson I've learned over the years is that we are all better off with an ally. A friend, a partner. My favorite part of the download has always been the opportunity it gives me to connect with such a wide range of people. They love racing as much as I do, and it means so much to me that when we leave the guest segment, I leave it with a feeling that I can call each and every guest on the download a true ally. Thank you, Ally, for your

continued support of the show and the entire Dirty Mo Media team. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr., and we're live. Here at the Bojangles studio for Dirty Mo Media and Ask Jr., the segment that we all love here on the Dale Jr. down low, me and Mike have been having our conversation about our dirty air brought to you by filter time, and we talked a lot about the concussions and the car and trying to get it fixed and everything that we feel about all of that.

Anyways, we've got some great questions from you guys that you sent to Xfinity Racing on Twitter, and we really appreciate that. Love the engagement. We count on y'all every week to bring us some great stuff to help us make us a great segment and you do it.

So we're going to get it started. All right. Question number one from 48 NASCAR fan. What was your most funny experience with a driver, whether it's during a race or off the track? Funniest experience with a driver? Yep. That's pretty...

That's broad. It's a long career and a lot of drivers. Maybe boiled down into. to the funniest drivers like Clint Boyer. Maybe we can isolate him funny moment with Boyer or something. Surely there's one of those. I think me and Clint hung out one time down at my saloon one night. And we were drinking and got into the sauce pretty good.

And I was like, man, you know, I took him up to the house and I put him in this theater. I got this little theater room for him to sleep because it's super dark, no windows. and I was like, man, you'll love it. You won't, you know, if you ain't got nothing to do in the morning, you might sleep till noon. It's so dark in here. And he woke up at some point in the morning, and I had him locked in.

He didn't know how to get out. He was locked into the basement. Like, he could get out of the theater, but all the other, I don't know why he couldn't figure out how to unlock a door, but. Child locks. It was funny. So, but he finally got a hold of me,

because I was dragging. dragging my butt all morning and not moving too well the next day. So that was pretty funny. You know, I've had some great times with some of these guys. Hard to remember a funny moment on the racetrackers. There's not very many funny moments on a racetrack. I got one for a racetrack. It's during the red flag him and Brackzlowski run into the Port of John.

That's funny. I will say another Clint Boyer pops into my head. So sometimes, so I'm weird. If you don't know that, I'm really kind of weird. And so things just pop into my head and I just have to do, I have to act on it. We were racing at Martinsville and it was the race I won. I'm pretty sure it was the race I won. We had a red flag and me and Clint are up front.

I think Clint might have been leading. Maybe I was leading. But we're up front and under the red flag, we parked side by side to each other. and I could hear pretty good. I thought he could hear me, you know, judging by the ambient noise, I'm like, he could probably hear me. And so there's really no punchline here,

but I just was acting, I was screaming over at him and like yelling obscenities at him and acting like a deranged ludic. Like, hey man, when this race gets back going, I'm just going to destroy this place. I am destroying you and everyone else. Be ready. And you're having to scream it.

Oh, well, I mean, I thought it would be more. I thought it, I screamed it. I didn't have to scream it. I know. I chose to scream it to be more psychotic. There you go. That's funny. Yeah, that was pretty funny.

I thought. I don't know, man. I was on, I had a, I must have drank an energy drink or something. I don't know, but I was pretty wired. That is good. Yeah. All right. The Spotter Stan wants to know.

You've interviewed a lot of people for the download, but if you could interview a pioneer of the sport, who would it be and why? Absolutely, Kale Yarborough. I was a big fan of his. I didn't get to see him race a lot, but I did in the early 80s right when he was sort of, you know, he was still pretty good driving the Hardy's car,

went in some races. And when I got to diving in, the history of the sport and realizing, you know, him and dad battling for that first championship in 1980. Kale went in three in a row in the 70s. His little tiff with Darry Walter up there in the late 70s. There was some really, oh, I mean, you know, 79, the crash at Daytona, and he goes down, he's fighting with the Allison brothers.

I just was always kind of fascinated with Kale. He was this little stick of dynamite and really nice. nice guy, but, you know, backed into a corner, he would come out swinging and he was kind of tough. But I would love to just sit down and talk to him and get to know him more. We're going to go to the chat. No Vega is wondering if you know why drivers are the only ones who receive the champ insignias on their fire suits. Crew chiefs play a big role in driver's success and they don't get a championship patch on their

fire suits. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know. What to tell you, man. I mean, I don't know why you can't get your own damn patch and put it on there yourself, right? That's what we would do. Put it on there.

Yeah. I mean, who's a- You can buy a Daytona 500 ring. I'm sure you can buy a championship patch. Yeah. Get your uniform and get you a patch and put the damn patch on it. All right. And final one, Clint Allen is wondering if you're going to be doing any deer hunting this year. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. We have, I have one lined up. Let me see here. Yeah, I'm going to end of this month, as a matter of fact. I'm looking forward to it. I don't get to deer hunt as much as I want, and Trix goes quite a bit more than me. He was just hunting this week on our property,

me and Trix on some property together. We're going to go together at the end of the month again, and I might be able to get in there in January and February, but that's really not the best time to be going right now is when you need to go, so busy and with kids and school and everything else it's just been tough you know but i don't get to go as much as i want i wish i could go probably two or three trips but i only been getting one in each year for the last several years all right and that's it for today all right y'all hey uh we could

just say that man if anybody's wondering hannah just wasn't able to be here today so we you know if if if they're wondering if you know where she's at it's just a week off and then uh to tend to whatever her primary jobs are and then just going to as suigo Is that what it is? Yeah, for some dirt car thing, yeah. They put dirt on Oswego Speedway, right? I think so, yeah. And so, hey, Oswego, if you're listening,

we want to scan you for ir racing. Anyways, I hope everybody's having a great week. Talladega man was a bit draining, physically and mentally. That was a lot to take in, not just the race, but all of the things going on in a sport, plus the playoffs and the championship is kind of winding down. Five races to go.

The Roebles this weekend, I won't be working much until Sunday. I have a birthday party for my littlest, which NBC is kind enough to let me be a part of, so I'll be missing everything going on the track on Saturday. But that's when you got a great employer to be able to allow you to take care of your family and be with them during the important times. But I'm looking forward to this race.

at the roble it should be pretty interesting and hopefully junior motorsports has a good day on Saturday and and uh yeah good luck to Connor daily our uh speed street host he's going to be making his cup debut and the uh money team number 50 believe it's number 50 uh but Tony junior is going to be that crew chief we just want him to stay on the track and try to complete as many laps as he possibly can because I can only imagine the challenge of jumping in this car for the first time with barely any practice. Well, I think if anybody can do it, it's definitely a guy like Connor,

the independent rear suspension, transaxle, the car, the road course. The IndyCar-Empsa-type guys will be well-suited for this car coming out of the gate as a rookie, never experiencing it before. So I think that, you know, at least he's got to feel kind of good about that.

It won't be completely far into him. I'll tell you, this past Speed Street episode, where they had Chase Briscoe on the show and it was just Connor and Chase talking and basically if you will ever just want to be a fly on the wall and listen to two drivers talk about an upcoming race and how to race it.

That is a fantastic episode to listen to because Connor is literally asking questions on how to drive a race car and what to expect and Chase Brisco really give some fantastic answers. He's like you're going to get knocked around dude. You just get ready. They're not going to respect you.

And he just gives him so many pointers about the mirror, what do you call it, the digital mirror or whatever that is. So that Speed Street episode with Chase Brisco, go listen to it if you haven't already. All right, everybody. Appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for all the great questions. Appreciate Exfinity for everything they do for us and do for the series and the sport. And you guys take it easy, man.

Hopefully you have a good week and see you at the racetrack. All right, episode 402 is in the books. October 4th, 2022. Ned Yost, what a great guest. It made some great stories. Listen, never can get enough of those Earnhardt stories, but what a superhuman being this guy is? Like, I mean, like total stud,

really just enjoyed being around him. And let me also say, because I know you will not say this, but thank you for all the stuff you poured into the dirty air, because I think that you had a lot of important points that certainly taught us a lot, but also I think the support needs to hear, so I appreciate that as well. Well, it's uncomfortable for me to talk about it

because I'm not, I don't come with a lot of answers, but I just know that through my experiences, it's, I do have some, I do feel like that we, we could get better. And I know that NASCAR wants to get better. I know they do. And I'm eager for, for that improvement, especially for, for the drivers and the sports future, man.

So anyways, I mean, I'm not even done driving these race cars yet. That's right. So, I mean, so it's something very close to my close to me and close to my heart but anyways great show thanks ned for coming out here and sharing with us all of your experiences and I hope everybody has a great week it's a roble this weekend that's right yeah I can't wait to to get up in that booth and get with my booth mates and we've just got a few races left I mean we're grinding right through this playoffs

system and it's a load man we are under a lot of pressure and everybody is working hard but it'll be it'll be here and gone before you know it and we'll be in the off season not knowing what to do with ourselves so but might as well enjoy while it's happening right mike that's right buddy have a good week man and thanks to everybody for listening all right we'll see you check out dirty mode media on twitter facebook tick to and instagram