The Josh Innes Show - Athletes Getting Death Threats

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Lance Mccullers Jr, he of the Houston Astros, received death threats after a poor start Saturday. Now, I'm hot saying he didn't. But, I do think we need to find out how credible these threats actually were. Idiots on social media say dumb shit all the time. Hell, I used to receive threats in the mail at WIP. That was certainly something. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With I'm perplexed as to why dogs, all dogs, hate delivery people. I understand that this just sounds like a weird way to go into an old school stand-up routine. But my dog can see most people walking down the street, like if we're on a walk, it doesn't matter. Like he'll say he'll stop, he'll get pets, whatever. Like some guy gave him a little treat today, gave him like a milk bone today. It was nice. But if he sees a delivery truck stop in front of

a house and sees like today was a UPS guy, and he gets out of the truck with the shorts on and everything goes up to the door. And my dog loses his mind watching this delivery guy go to the door of this house and all dogs do this and I don't know what the psychology is behind it. I don't know if they like see these guys. I mean every dog sits it by the window and they see a delivery guy. The guy comes to their house. They bark. So maybe that's just what they associate

this guy with like that has to be it right like they associate delivery dudes and mailmen persons with being like the enemy of their home like that they are they're protecting their house from these guys so when they see them out in the wild they hate them just as much then and maybe they associate and i don't know if dogs see colors or what or but they associate that the brown outfit and high socks and all that shit with the enemy, with evil. I don't know if that's really how it goes, but in my mind that's what I've convinced myself of. Like I've just convinced myself that that's why they hate them. It's crazy though. Any other person my dog will see walking down the road and have no problem with. But if he sees one delivery driver loses his mind and I know that other dogs are like this. It happened today. He's totally normal. Then like you feel bad because these delivery guys think your dog is a psycho that wants to eat you. He might. I don't know.

I think he kind of does want to eat you. I don't think he likes you. But what did you do? Like why is this happening? But he probably does want to eat you. So if I were you I'd skedaddle. Anyway let's play a couple commercials and we will get into some other stuff. So back when we were in Houston, when we were doing the morning show, we did afternoons, then we did the mornings, and we would have Lance McCullers on pretty frequently. I like Lance. I think he's extremely cocky and talks a big game for a guy that never fucking plays, you know, like I like him and maybe if he would have stayed healthy Lance would have been one of

the greatest pitchers of all time, but Lance can't stay healthy. Therefore Lance for the most part has been pretty useless to the Astros. It's a fascinating Carrie Wood type career sort of in a way or Mark Pryor career sort of that a guy just can't stay healthy and should have could have would have been, you know, the biggest thing thing ever one of the great pitchers hasn't been able to because of injuries and that sucks right but I don't dislike the guy I always found him kind of arrogant and kind of needlessly arrogant because he didn't really do anything

but always love to talk shit love to talk shit about like the Dallas stuff where the fuck is Arlington like cool whatever that's the kind of shit that doesn't really rev my engine I get that it gets fanboy types going just never did anything for me but like he always played the the angle of like putting on for the city and repping the age and great stuff with dog charities and stuff he's I don't think he's a bad dude like I think he's fine. He's just been pretty useless to the Astros for an extended period of time because the guy can never stay healthy. So makes the comeback. Last week pitch is okay. It was fine. Solid for a guy that hadn't pitched

in like two and a half years. Then this week, it's funny, we're sitting in the house and Jillie goes, shit, the Astros are down like nine nothing in the first inning. I'm like, is Lance pitching? She goes, Yep, sure is. I'm like, that tracks. It was about time, you know, to have Lance have a blow up. And Lance gave up seven runs in a third of an inning and got taken out of the game. The Astros went on to lose the game, although they made it a competitive game, but they went on to lose the game.

And then after the game, we hear that Lance McCullers received death threats and the death threats were aimed at his family. Now, I am not going to be forgiving of people who threaten people on the internet or any other way. There are lunatics, you have to be concerned about the lunatics. So it's possible that somebody on the internet threatened, like, legitimately, credibly threatened Lance McCullers Jr. It is possible, okay? It is also possible that some dipshit says something stupid on the internet and Lance runs with this because Lance gave up seven fucking runs and then the story isn't Lance gave up seven fucking runs and the Astros lost and got their asses kicked. It's people are crazy and fans are outrageous and we've got to be better than this and all that shit.

Now let's look at it this way. Again, I'm not defending people who insult people, threaten people, threaten their kids on the internet. I'm not doing that. My question just is how many of these people are truly credible threats, right? It's Twitter, it's the internet, people say dumb shit, but are they truly a threat? That I question because when I was on the radio in Philadelphia, I never really viewed the internet threats as like a legitimate thing, right? If somebody tweeted you that they were going to find you and kick your ass, like if they were going to find me, they were going to fucking find me. The ones that weirded me out the most are when people would send letters and in Philadelphia, people would send threatening letters and those were fucking

weird because someone took the time. If you've ever seen the movie Talk Radio with Eric Bogosian and Alec Baldwin, there's a scene where Alec who's like the program director is talking to Barry Champlain. And that's played by Eric Bogosian. It's based on a person who actually was murder. What the hell was that guy's name that it was based on? But it was based on the the Alan Berg, I believe was his name. And he was a talk show host in Denver and just got murdered by like the Zionists or some shit, the order and somebody murdered him out by his car.

But anyway, so it is possible that people do get murdered for these things. People are fucking lunatics, we know this. But I would get letters like legit handwritten fucking letters about how people wanted to kick my ass and they hated me. And there's a line in that movie where and I'm paraphrasing I don't remember it word for word but he's like, these people want you dead Barry like that. Think about the time it takes to write that letter. Put it in an envelope, put it in a stamp, take it to the post office, mail it, send it like that. These people are fucking crazy. If

someone takes the time to send you a threatening letter, I believe that needs to be treated as a viable, credible death threat. Somebody on the internet saying, I'm gonna fucking kill Lance McCullers or his kids or whatever, and that's terrible, and that's a horrible thing to say, but how credible is it? So then what happens is that the media people grab onto this and the fans grab onto this. And what the fans end up doing is turning it into this giant indictment of fans everywhere. We take sports too seriously and it's just a game, you sons of bitches. Now it's gone too far and Astros fans are terrible.

That's what happens. And the other team's fans go off on Astros people and they say that it's Astros people that are horrible. I can assure you Astros people are not passionate enough to want to kill somebody. Houston sports fans not passionate enough to want to kill people over sports. I can assure you. I think you're safe in that regard. Although I guess I could take that back because we've seen the videos of the fist fights between the Cowboys fans and the Texans fans in the parking lot that led to those restrictions

on tailgating over a decade ago. So who knows? But point being in all of this is we don't know if this was truly credible. We don't know if it was an Astros fan. We don't fucking know. You know what it could have been? To me this would be the more logical answer to who is delivering threats, quote unquote threats,

don't even know if they're real threats to Lance McCullers Jr. Here's who I think that could be. Now I know that Lance mentioned in his comments that's like I know that Astros fans are passionate but this is and it was played so perfectly. It was played like again, I'm not telling you he didn't get a threat and I'm not telling you that he wasn't concerned about it. What I'm telling you is the guy gave up seven runs in a third of an inning and no one's talking about that. They're talking about this threat that none of us know. We haven't got an

update if it's credible, not credible or whatever. If it's just some dipshit on the internet saying dumb shit or what. Where is this person from? Like I don't know but Lance said something about Astros fans being passionate but this is just too much and all these things can be true and Lance has given a lot to Houston. He has. He's a nice guy. I've never had a problem with the guy. My question is because it just becomes a big story right this becomes a big

indictment and a big referendum on sports fandom. Was this really a sports fan like I don't believe I do not believe that there is an Astros fan out there that is such a fucking lunatic that one blow up inning for one pitcher is going to lead them to sending death threats to somebody. It's not. I wouldn't think that would happen in Philadelphia where people are lunatics about sports. Like even in Philadelphia, if Lance McCullers pitched for the Phillies and gave up seven runs in the first inning, I do not believe there would be viable, credible death threats. Like I don't believe that sports fans operate that way. They're

assholes. They say terrible things. They love you one minute. They hate you the next. All of these things can be true. But I don't believe that one blow-up inning and one trivial, menial, mid-May baseball game is going to lead somebody to sending a death threat to Lance McCullers and his children. I don't buy that. So what do I buy? To me, if someone is going to send a death threat to somebody over one-third of an inning, seven runs, it would be someone who either bet on the Astros to win or bet on Lance McCullers to

record a certain number of outs or to get a certain number of strikeouts. That would be a gambler. Now, if you want to throw out a referendum on people and say, what the **** are we doing? Go look at the **** people say on Twitter about the players they bet on. You rarely see **** where people are like people are passionate about sports but they're not going to say kill this person. But if someone loses a grand on the Astros all the sudden, they're saying the most fucked up vile shit ever. Like the number of

times you'll see a player get hurt in a sporting event and then go to Twitter and you type in that player's name and it's just a bunch of tweets from people that are pissed off and they want their bets refunded because this guy broke his leg in the first two minutes may never play basketball again. His leg is bent at a 90 degree angle, he's fucked, but it's like, you know what? Fuck you, where's my bet? I want to get a refund. So that, if you want to put out a referendum on things and talk about how shitty certain things can be, that I would look at and I'd go, you're right. There are dipshit crazy maniacal sports fans out there. Make no mistake about it. I am just skeptical of the

idea that somebody was so worked up that Lance McCullers in his second start back from two and a half years out gave up seven runs in a third of an inning that they would send viable credible legitimate death threats over that and that they were just an angry Astros fan. I don't believe that. I find that hard to believe. Now again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm naive to the situation, but I'm really not because I've lived it. I've gotten threats from people. Like people knew where I lived in Philadelphia and a lot of people fucking hated me in Philadelphia. I ordered food one time from

a place called CJ and X. CJ and X, I think it was called CJ and X is what it was called. They had a really, I think they were the place that I would go that would throw like a Caesar salad on top of like a pizza like fucking right. I'm eating good. And one day I got a delivery and I answer the door and get the delivery and the guy goes, I'm Team Mikey Miss. And I'm like, cool. In theory, that could be construed as a threat. This person who clearly doesn't like me knows where I live. But I'm like, whatever, I don't give a fuck. I've had people tell me to go fuck myself

while I'm out walking my dog in Philadelphia. They'll roll down the window of their car to tell me to go fuck myself. I had a person, if you'll remember this, at one point Ike said, stab me with a spoon. I think he meant to say gag me with a spoon, but he said stab me with a spoon and it was funny and we made fun of it and we made a bit out of it. One day I come home and there's a fucking spoon on my fence. Like so someone, that probably not a threat, but someone knew where I lived, right? People can be be threatening that is not wrong I here in st. Louis you want

to talk about a threat in st. Louis and who knows maybe this was the moment they just decided this probably isn't gonna work but I'm at a remote I'm at a bar in Belleville Illinois for flag day I think is what it was so whenever flag day was and we were selling the new K-Shee 95 flags, we got all the dipshits out to buy all the K-Shee gear because here's a little secret for you guys. You guys literally keep the lights on. If they ever lost all these old dipshits that gobble up all this merchandise,

then they wouldn't exist. So we're out there and these people are buying flags and this dude like I'm sitting up at a table doing the show and this guy first I thought he was joking. He was like talking shit. I'm like, okay, whatever these like fuck you. You're a motherfucker and a fucking beat the shit out of you and all this shit like the dude was ready to fucking go at that point. I was already like tired of this shit. I'm just sick of it of the whole thing about these

angry fucking old people. So I start talking shit back. I'm like, fuck you, you old motherfucker. And I think maybe like that might have been the moment they're like, listen, this is probably broken beyond repair when we've got old fucking dipshits that are coming in here wanting to fight this guy because he doesn't respect Pat Benatar. So that's probably what set this thing, you know, in a negative path, or it's probably already in a negative path, but that certainly didn't help. But my point being is I've had legitimate threats, I've had people that come up and want to

fight me, I've had multiple places I've been that people have wanted to fight me. So when you talk about legitimate threats, I question how legit. Now, I feel like even if that threat was legitimate, even if it was wasn't, is that something that you're in the middle of doing a postgame and that you bring that up after you give up seven runs? I don't know. Like, you can rip me for this and you can say, oh, that's a that's horrible. You're thinking it though, right? I'm not the only person thinking this. Is it possible

that someone's legitimately threatening Lance McCullers family after giving up seven fucking runs in the first inning? Maybe. But he himself even said, I get threats all the time, but then they started talking about my family. So those threats against you, you didn't view as credible. But now because someone says, I'll kill Lance McCullers kid, now it's a credible threat. So those other ones you just scoff off and never mentioned those. But now they want to like, I don't know, the whole thing just feels weird to me. Like hey, just gave up seven runs.

I'm getting threats from people. No shit. A lot of people say dumb shit on the Internet. That's what the Internet's there for. Not defending it, not condoning it. There are fucking crazy people and they're just assholes that say horrible things. But. I don't know, it just it feels weird to me, the whole thing.

And now the whole story is like referendum on on fans, I don't know. It just it feels weird to me. The whole thing. And now the whole story is like referendum on on fans referendum on this referendum on this like I don't know. I don't know. How about the guy fucking sucked in that game there? You have seven runs in a third of an inning. I don't know. Anyway, more to come.