The Josh Innes Show - Could Alex Bregman Go To The Dark Side?

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

First off, the NFL is considering some rules changes that I think would be awesome. The NFL is always willing to try new things. MLB fans have no interest in moving forward...so baseball continues to be a bore. Second, Alex Bregman could end up in New York. I find this hysterical considering the fraud Yankees fans have called Bergman and the rest of the Astros cheaters for nearly a decade. That said, if Bregman signs with the Yankees, Astros fans better boo this dude mercilessly every time he steps to the plate in Houston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. All right, friends, couple of things today. Glad you're there. It's about 4.15 here on Wednesday. And as I tend to do when things come to my mind and I want to talk about them, then here we are. We talk about them on the pod. I know that earlier we did a few non-sports things,

talked about the movies, the cinema, my dog, everything else. Well, I saw a couple of things today that tickle me. One being, and I'll start with this one because I love this. And you know I've spent the last week or so talking about the golden at-bat rule in baseball, which I think would be awesome. I think it would be killer to be able to have the best hitters in baseball be guaranteed to have an at-bat in the biggest situations out there. I think that's fantastic.

Why would we not want to see elite-level players in big moments? It could actually be good for baseball. But as we've learned, baseball fans are stodgy and set in their ways, and they do not like to see things change at all. In their world, baseball is just fine. So screw you if you don't like it. They don't care that fewer people are watching it. They don't care that the sports become increasingly dull.

They just, they like it. They say, get off my baseball lawn. So they don't want to see things like the golden become increasingly dull. They just, they like it. They say, get off my baseball lawn. So they don't want to see things like the golden at bat rule. Well, one thing that the NFL has done that has helped it become the most interesting sport, the most progressive sport in terms of change, and also just the number one sport in America, other than the fact that football is just better than every other sport, they find ways to adapt. Now, some things they do, I think, are stupid. For example, I was reading a story today about adding another game in Germany. I forgot where they wanted to play. Some game in Berlin, maybe. I forgot where the hell. I don't care about football games being played in other countries because

football's an American sport and I don't give a shit if Ireland likes it. I don't care if Germany likes it. I don't care if England likes it. I don't give a shit because your primary fan base is right here. The most people that are going to watch your sport are here. It is an American sport. The teams are all based in America, except for the Jaguars, sort of. So don't screw your American fans by taking games away from their stadiums and taking them over to Germany or to England or to Mexico or to Brazil. I don't want to see any of that. Like if I'm a fan of the, like I'm a fan of the Saints, the Saints have lost games. The Eagle, like what's amazing to me is when you take teams that are traditional big time NFL powers and send them overseas or to a

different country and make them lose a home game. Like the Eagles lost a home game playing a game in a different country. I find that to be stupid. Like you've got diehard rabid fans in these cities that care about your sport. They're the ones that put money in your pocket, not somebody in Ireland. Somebody in Germany doesn't give a fuck about your sport, yet you're going to take away home games from people who are the ones putting money in your pocket, buying your jerseys, buying your tickets, talking about you on Twitter, fighting with other fans about teams. So I don't like that. I think that's a dumb thing. I understand wanting to globalize the game, but this isn't the NBA. This isn't basketball where everybody plays it all over the world. And you can afford to give up one basketball game a year or play an exhibition game somewhere,

and no one's going to really care. You know what I'm saying? Like there's 41 home games for a basketball team. If one of them doesn't happen and it happens in Mexico or Brazil, who the hell cares? But if somebody is playing a football game somewhere else, if a team, if the Saints, the Chiefs, the Jaguars, if they play somewhere else and lose a home game, there's only eight of these things for people to consume on a yearly basis. Don't take your product away from the people who are the number one consumers of your product. Don't spit in the face of the people that have made you billionaires. Don't do that. So that's an innovation, if you want to call it that,

that I would say, all right, this isn't a good thing. Don't do that. Now, for the most part, though, when the NFL tries something new, it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it does. They tried to allow you to challenge pass interferences. That was dumb. But they tried it. They realized it was stupid. They got rid of it.

They used this version of a challenge, even though it's not a challenge. It's like a booth review on certain plays. It's an expedited review. And I don't know how they pick and choose when they use this expedited review, but the fact that they don't use it for every single play that's questionable and they force coaches to throw challenge flags is stupid and a waste of time. That's something that the NFL needs to look at. Like you'll be watching a game and there'll be a question about whether or not a guy caught a ball. We see one replay of it and it's obvious he didn't, even though it was called a catch. And then they say, after expedited review, it has been seen that it was an incomplete

pass. Well, why did that play not have to be challenged? How did you pick and choose? How did you decide what play needed to be challenged versus what play can just be expedited reviews? I'd like to know how you determine that. That's something they need to look at. But for the most part, when the NFL has made adjustments to the game, it has made the game better. It has made the product better and people enjoy it. They keep consuming it.

Yes, we bitch about bad calls on hits to the head and guys getting targeting and yes, those suck. But when the NFL makes rules to adjust to the game itself, for the most part, they're good. Like, I was against the idea of moving the extra point back. I was like, why would you do that? That's dumb. Why waste our time doing that? And then it turns out it's great because there are games that are won and lost having to make this kick, which has now made the extra point more exciting.

Baseball has no concept of how to make any plays exciting. The NFL found a way to make the point after touchdown exciting. So they've done a good job with that. They tried this new kickoff, which I don't mind, actually. I see people bitching about it and Al Michaels on TV. Oh, I can't believe there's another exciting dynamic kickoff, I'm for it because by and large those kicks weren't being returned anyway. All they need to do is tweak it and say hey if you kick a touch back here, if it goes through the end zone, they get the ball at the 40.

Really make it hurt them. As of right now it doesn't really hurt them to boot it through the end zone. Make them pay for kicking it through the end zone. We want more returns and I'm sure they'll tweak that. Another thing now is you have to declare the onside kick before you deliver the onside kick. And I read today that Troy Vincent at the NFL, they're exploring a rule change to onside kicks. And I find this to be fascinating. And this would make the game far more interesting and it would completely alter strategies around the game. So this is great. There's an openness to seriously considering alternatives to the onside kick, including a single offensive play that would allow a team to retain possession. Vincent said proposals for

potential alternatives have gained support in recent years. Vinson also told reporters that face mask penalties are among the plays that could be under consideration to be included in the expansion of replay assist. That's what I'm talking about. The replay assist, like when you get these replay assist and you get them for incomplete passes and it's done in 10 seconds. Like we sat there, we've watched Joe Burrow multiple times this year get his head ripped off and the refs didn't see it. We all saw it and nobody calls it because you can't. That would be beautiful. Let's see,

the explanation would be the significant departure from the league's previous philosophy stating the competition committee has long opposed one making subjective fouls subject to replay review and two allowing penalties to be called by officials who aren't on the field this would be both it's ultimately up to owners whether they'll support the committee's recommendations to me like what I don't want to see is oh we're going to go back and call a holding where there wasn't a holding. That's where you get like a fine line. But for something as obvious as a face mask, where a guy has to grab a face mask, twist the face mask, I'm all about an expedited review that gets that done in 10 to 20 seconds. What's wrong with that? Get it right. Joe, like when you watch him,

I was watching the in-season hard knocks, which is great. It's much better than the actual hard knocks, the pre-season hard knocks, which is boring. This is great. And you're seeing dudes in games that matter. And you've got the coach from the Bengals, Zach Taylor, just sitting there like yelling at the officials like, look, he's looking out of his ear hole right now. How did you miss this? What would be wrong if someone in a booth could see that and go, okay, yeah, we missed that one. That's a face mask, throw the flag. That I'd be fine with. And

I don't want to see it get to the point where it's all on pass interference or defensive holding or offensive holding or false starts and shit. That's the kind of shit I think could hurt you. Right? But if it comes down to things that are blatant like that, like a personal foul, that would be a 15-yard personal foul that is a first down and could determine the outcome of a game, and it's a safety issue, I'd be all for that. I'm also all about the idea of the one offensive play to allow you to replace the onside kick. The onside kick converts a handful of times a year, if that. You don't feel like your team has a chance, even if you score late in the game. But let's think about a scenario. Let's say you're a team like the Bengals. The Bengals have arguably

the most explosive wide receiver in the game in Jamar Chase and a quarterback who's one of the best in the game in Joe Burrow. Let's say you had to pick up 20 yards. That's the play. They have to defend you from picking up 20 yards. You'd like your chances of Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase. You'd like your chances with Sam Darnold and Jets, wouldn't you? If you have a dynamic wide receiver, a guy that can make plays and get separation, an A.J. Brown, wouldn't you like your chances on that? And it would make the game more exciting. Once again, it's a play that's sort of kind of exciting, but no one believes you're actually going to convert it. It turns it into must-see television. And it also changes the way the opposition will play the game as well.

It'll change the way they operate offensively late in games, defensively late in games. Teams with the lead now, like let's say you're up by 10. You're playing the Bengals. You're up 10 late. It could alter the way you handle the ball offensively because you know if Joe Burrow gets a quick touchdown and can cut it to seven or cut it to three or if he can go get a quick field goal and cut it to seven you know that he'll have a chance to pick up 20 yards it's not just up to an onside

kick it's up to Joe Burrow completing a 20-yard pass to Jamar Chase that could alter the decisions the opposition makes as well like like that's the kind of shit. That's the innovation that we need in the game. My other big innovation that I've talked about a ton, something that I'd love to see is the league deciding that once a game, a field goal can be kicked off a tee. I don't know the logistics of it, but can you imagine there's four seconds to go in a game, teams down by two, they've got the ball at their own 10, so they have very little chance to do anything, or they're at their own 20 more so. They have very little chance to do anything here. Imagine they were able to pull out a tee, move it seven yards back of the line of scrimmage and try like a 90 yard field goal off a tee that would be fun but if you miss it of course they get the ball at that spot there's no redo

it's not like oh i went for it on third down once you've decided that that's the play you're going to run you could lose it but the game's on the line anyway that situation i think that's beautiful that'd be fun i'm all about new innovations that make the game more exciting. Football's done a relatively good job of at least trying that. Baseball, they've tried the pitch clock. Who gives a fuck about the pitch clock? What baseball doesn't realize is that it's not about the length of the game. It's about the action during the game and it's impossible to create action in a game where there is no action. That's their problem. All right, let me talk about a few other things after I play a couple commercials here. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check

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if you will, in Major League Baseball and free agency is potentially Alex Bregman. And you've seen the Astros associated with him, the Red Sox associated with him, the Yankees associated. Like these are the names that are being thrown out. A lot of people saying the Yankees are really serious about Alex Bregman. I don't know that you'd find a bigger group of hypocritical cunts than the people of New York who spent the last seven years telling you that the Astros and everybody associated with the Astros are cheaters and they're terrible and the fans are awful and the World Series are tainted and fuck Altuve, he was wearing a monitor and fuck Bregman and fuck them all, right? Can you imagine if one of the stalwarts, I'm not talking about kind of an offshoot person on that team. I'm talking one of the core members of the Astros, the 2017, 2018, 2019 Astros.

Can you imagine Alex Bregman signing there? Now, again, this just shows you how ridiculously inauthentic and phony sports fans can be because guy plays for another team. He's a cheater. He's a piece of shit. He's garbage. You sign him and it's like, well, he's our cheater now, so ha ha ha! But all the shit those dopes up in New York talked about,

all the shit they talked about Houston, all the tainted World Series and the wearing the buzzers and Correa's a cheater and Altuve's a cheater and Bregman's a cheater and the World Series shouldn't count and it's got an asterisk i don't know that there would be a bigger group of frauds than the new york people at that point right like like it would have to be and if alex bregman goes to play for the yankees and if astros fans don't boo him every time he's in the stadium. You're pussies. Because when you got a guy that talks all that shit and Bregman was the big cocky guy,

I guess we'll never know. If Bregman rolls the hell out and goes to the Yankees, hey, more power to him, get your money, bro. But for the dudes that I've seen Astros fans boo over the course of history, namely Albert Pujols, who obviously never did anything good for the Astros, but Albert Pujols had one significant hit against the Astros in a series that the Astros eventually won anyway. And every

time Albert Pujols came to the plate, Pujols was getting shredded by people, booed nonstop. If Alex Bregman, arguably one of the two or three faces of the greatest era of Astros baseball, signs with the Yankees and comes back into your stadium and you're not booing him non-fucking-stop, you're pussies. You are completely gutless at that point. And look, you might say, but Josh, he's done so much for us. And in 10 years when he ain't playing baseball anymore, when he's decided to retire and they celebrate the 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, when they celebrate the golden era of Astros baseball, you suck farts out of that guy's asshole. You kiss

every inch of his scrotum because he was a huge part of it. Most notably, game five, where my ass was passed out in the iHeartMedia suite, and I woke up and heard all this applause. Didn't even see it happen. I was that fucking blackout drunk. to give you an example I'm a St. Louis Cardinals fan right Albert Pujols one of my favorite players of all time by the time Albert Pujols finally came back to St. Louis with the Angels it was like 10 years or some giant number not that much but like seven or eight years after he had left the Cardinals, and Pujols clearly wasn't the same guy, and the Astros, or the Cardinals rather,

had clearly more success than Pujols did, so it was easy to give him the standing O. If Pujols was coming back every year after signing a $300 million deal with the Cubs, and every year he was in Bush Stadium, if you gave that guy standing ovations, you're a fraud. If Albert, or in this case, if Alex Bregman,

who was one of the great Astros of all time, face of that era, he, Correa, Altuve, Springer, that huge core group of guys, if that dude who sat there and dealt with all this bullshit of the Dodgers and the Yankees and all these people calling them a cheater and a liar and a piece of garbage if that guy goes out and signs with the Yankees and comes back into whatever the fuck the new name of the ballpark is if that happens and

you don't boo that guy you're a schmuck because that guy's going to the enemy. You think the Rangers are the enemy? The Rangers have been a non-threat for the last decade. I mean, I know they won a World Series, but for the most part, the Rangers have been out of sight, out of mind, safe for one miraculous season. They had 11, they had 12, they had that little run 10 and 11 in the early 2010s, fell off a cliff, won one random World Series, and they fell off a cliff again. People talk about the Rangers like they're the Astros rival. The only reason they seem like a rival is because MLB set it up that way, where there'd be two teams in the American League West and Texas to have the Texas-Dallas-Houston rivalry. Big picture, they ain't a threat.

There's really been no threat in that division for the last decade for the most part. The threats are Dodgers. The threats are Yankees. The threats are Red Sox. Those are the teams that on a year-in, year-out basis are trying to keep you from winning World Series on a year-in, year-out basis. Not the occasional, oh wow, the Nationals popped up and beat you. I'm talking Yankees. I'm talking Red Sox. I'm talking Red Sox.

I'm talking Dodgers. So if your boy goes to any of those teams that spent all these years calling you cheaters and renouncing your World Series championships, if that guy comes back into your ballpark and you schmuck stand up on your feet and give him a standing ovation and allow him to tip his cap and say,

oh, I'm so glad to be back, you suck. And you might say, well, Josh, we're not applauding him as more so sending an FU to the owner who didn't pay him. I don't buy that. Alex Bregman is one of the greats in this franchise's history. And if he comes back wearing pinstripes and you applaud him, you're a schmuck. 10 years give him all the applause you want build him a statue that's how this works but when a dude leaves it's one thing if a dude leaves at the end of his career like no one was gonna fault uh hakeem elijah juan for going to play for toronto or whoever the hell hakeem played for no one was gonna do that no one was going to look at a dude at the end of his career, like no one was going to

rip Scottie Pippen for playing for the Rockets or the Trailblazers. Like, look, it happens at the end of people's careers. They chase rings. No one's going to look at Karl Malone and say, oh my God, you play for the Lakers now. Last year of his career, he's trying to get a ring, couldn't get it in Utah, fuck off. But when you're still any presumably an elite level player and you're getting huge deals to go somewhere else if one of those deals is to one of these franchises and I get that every team called you a cheater but it's one thing if the

pirates call you a cheater it's another thing if the Reds call you a cheater or the Phillies of that era call you a cheater or the Card. It's another thing when your direct competitor in the American League for all those years, a team you met in the LCS multiple times, it's different when that team shits on you for that long and calls you all the shit they called you and renounces your championships, and then your guy goes there to join them, the dark side, and is doing it because they're probably giving him more money. Oh, fuck you, bud. So I would hope maybe it won't come down to that. Maybe he'll still stay in Houston. I don't know. Maybe he'll go to the Red Sox and it still stands for the Red Sox as

well. Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees. He signs with any of those teams, and you cheer for him, you're a schmuck. Phillies I could almost live with because they were out of sight, out of mind for most of that run, so they're just kind of there. I saw that name mentioned as well. But don't be schmucks. Be better than that. Boo the shit out of the guy. Thank you.