The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Baseball Returns, Crane and Baker React & Trevor Bauer vs Curt Schilling

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Baseball Returns, Crane and Baker React & Trevor Bauer vs Curt Schilling

So much larger than life. Yeah. You said! Lunch timers is the Matt Thomas show. 12 o'clock at H-Town. What's happening in lunchtimes? We were going to play center field, but the other show took it from us early. Don't think we're going to, we'll use it again later today, for sure.

We can play it at two or something. Yeah. Separate a little bit. We ever done a Fantasy 5 of definitive sport songs that represent a sport? This isn't bad. This is very MTV baseball video highlights. Oh, you're going to go. Curtis Blow basketball?

What else? I don't know. But I mean, it's like center field and everybody else is a distant second. We'll take this. We really do have a return to baseball. The boys of what? Later summer? No, it's at the heart of summer.

It's midsummer. No, summer just started last week. So it's like they are the boys of summer. Now, they'll be midsummer before they get going. But spring training is in play. Good afternoon, everybody. It is the Matt Thomas Show, Sports Talk 790. That's Brendan Riley.

Our producer, you can find him on Twitter at Brendan Riley underscore. Ross will be with us in a second. I'm Matt. And you can join us today at 713-212-5-790. 713-212-5-790. If you want to reach out through Twitter, you can do that, as we mentioned. Brendan's at Sports Survey, and my account is at SportsMT. We will visit today with our buddy Mike Stanton from AT&T Sports at 105 this afternoon.

For those of you that are old school, that's not how we do. That's how Turner would do it. Every one of their shows would start at five past the hour. Do you remember that at all? Or is that too young for you? I do remember that, yes. It's the weirdest thing ever. Interesting, but weird.

every show is at 05 past the hour like I can say coming up next on Superstation TBS it's I Dream a Genie at 135 then at 205 it's a Brady bunch It's Dukes of Hazard after that Yeah I always say you know

That's how I guess Turner got a other thing going But yeah my Mike said look I got something at 1 o'clock But I could do 105 I'm like okay well good So we'll go Turner time 105 for Mike Stanton here on the radio program In between then and after Certainly you're welcome at 713-212-5

790 713212 570 now yesterday late in the afternoon the owners agreed the players agreed the players association put out a tweet yada yada yada yada and everybody has agreed to the protocol everybody has agreed to the rules everybody has agreed to the scheduling now obviously there's a huge distance in what they thought the schedule would be how much money they would make yada yada yada out and that will be for a different time because I'm guessing this will not be the next last time that we'll have any labor issues between the players and the owners.

But for now, we're going to talk baseball for the next three months. When I'm talking about a season that's been cut or not played or whose fault is it owners versus players, we're getting 60 games. I'm looking forward to not saying pro rata at any point in the next

three months, man. I don't think we can, we don't have to say pro rite anymore because at this point, do we really care about make? No, we don't. No. I will say this, much to my, I don't know if I'm should be surprised or not, because there's been a lot of people that have said, the hell with you, baseball, you're done. And I've said, look, I've been consistent about this. Baseball has sucked during this. The negotiations couldn't have gone any worse. They really didn't negotiate. They just kept going back and forth with what they could go with and then never said, well,

can that make sense? Baseball just said, here's what we're going to do, and we're going to move a little bit, but at the end of the day, we're going to give you 60 games. You're not getting your 72. you're not getting your 80, you're not getting your extra round of playoffs, you're going to get what you're going to get, and you're going to accept it, or you don't play at all. So as acrimonious as it has been during the whole negotiation period, or lack thereof, America, and again, this is watching SportsCenter, this is listening to our shows, this is obviously looking at what social media is,

people are ridiculously excited for the return of baseball, way more than I thought they were going to be when the official announcement came down last night. A bunch of gifts of, oh, hell yeah, let's celebrate, you know, the baseball and back in all caps was trending. Yeah, I mean, it just shows you that we're not that finicky of a crowd, that as bad as it got with all these billionaires fighting with these mega millionaires and as contentious as it was, and the game and the days that were slipping by the counter where they should have been in spring training and as mad as we got at both sides for being bad negotiators, not thinking about us at all, we're back. Now, we may not be in the

stadium, but we're back. And it took basically the players association and the owner saying, okay, let's just play 60 games. Running out of time, basically, is what they did. Yeah, they fought the clock. We talked about the soft deadline was June 1st, remember? Three and a half Very soft. I mean, like, Marshamentally solved deadlines. Yeah. We got something done and we're happy.

It's, I mean, when you think about all the deals that were talked about, 114 games, 82 games, 76 games, so basically the only proposal that was beaten was the bare minimum

48 game season. So, could have been better, but we understand, I understand how the owners just kind of stalled this out for as long as they possibly could. Then the players had to do

what they had to do, and so now we have a season. For those of you that do not know, a couple of things about the season. You'll play everybody in your own division 10 times. That's a total of 40 games. Then you will play 20 times against the division in the other league, meaning National League West, which means the Astros and Dodgers are going to play each other. Wonderful.

And that would mean, I'm guessing, every single games on national television. Because even the non-Huston Astro fan, the non-Los Angeles Dodger fan, is going to want to see just the general reaction of having these two teams meet. It'll be the second time in the regular season, because remember in 2018, they did play in the regular season in Los Angeles, where the Astros, I think, swept the series. No, two out of three, I think, is what it was. And so they will meet for the third time, the second time, since the 2017 World Series. And obviously, a much more highly charged to visit since all the things coming out with the

stealing a signs and whatnot. So that's going on. So I would like to be able to tell you that there will not be an issue with late-night games. That's just frankly a lie. There's going to be a lot of nine o'clock starts. Well, get used to that ALS life. Al-West life anyways, I guess.

Yeah, but I mean, you get it on top of that. You get, you're adding now San Diego. You're now adding San Francisco. You're not adding Los Angeles. Arizona, I always get confused about time of year. Right now it's two hour difference. I don't know what it's going to be one, but I don't think it's going to change till later in the year. Colorado is going to be an hour behind. So if you have a trouble, if you have trouble sleeping like I do at night, these will be

great for you because you'll have something to watch. If you like to go to bed at say 10, 15 and 1030 like a normal human being, you're going to have a lot of time missing some games. I'm a night out. I'll be good. All right. As far as what the owner had to say in the next segment, we're going to play a lot of the sound from the, they had a zoo meeting today at 10 o'clock. Jim Crane was on there for a short time. James Click, the new Astro's General Manager, was on there, and the new Astro Manager, Dusty Baker. So we've got a lot of different little sound pieces.

I think they're all relevant. You know, a lot of times we play sound bites like, oh, this is yawning. But we haven't heard a lot from all these guys in the last few months because of there hasn't been any news. So we'll hear what Jim has to say about the sport, the business of it, being an owner. We'll get the managerial side of things. And the fact that you're going to have as many as 60 Houston Astros available to you during this time. So if anybody gets sick,

anybody tests, you know, gets a little soreness, anybody has the COVID, you're going to be able to replace them fairly quickly. And that's kind of the thing we thought of our right out of the get-go, is that if you bring these baseball teams back and you're not playing a minor league season, you've got to have a big pile of candidates to go to. And that's what they're going to do. So that's, how are these players going to keep fresh, though?

They're going to have taxi squads where they're going to practice at another stadium. And at this point, it sounds like it's something to be con. It sounds like it's going to be Constellation Field. Well, they should be long tossing and... Yeah, working out. Live BP? Yeah. For like three months?

Yeah. Okay. It's like having extended spring training. The most extended of spring trainings. Well, they're just going to be on a big old standby list is what they're going to do. So we're going to get to a lot of the sound on that. Other things on the show to get to, I will be brutally honest with you on this. And I don't know how much you guys have paid attention to this.

Obviously, the National Storyville a couple days ago was the NASCAR incident. involving the noose and how yesterday NASCAR announced that it wasn't a noose and that it was just a how would you describe it um a rope or something that was being pulled for a garage so basically they said it wasn't a noose was the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose yes is what they're i don't know what that means well they're saying is that it was not intentionally done and then there was no and then you've got a situation where some people don't believe that some people were trying to cover it up. Some people are saying, yeah, that's what it was. Did NASCAR handle this properly? Did they put this out for the right reason or should they have

waited and said, let's get everything together here before we start assuming that things are in play. And like I said, I haven't really followed it too closely except for the initial shock and dismay that we're still doing this in 2020. But it's just a really, really confusing situation for me on that. So we'll get in a little bit of that. Back to baseball, there are new win totals. for the 60-game season. We'll tell you what Vegas thinks is going to happen on that. There's an NBA player who is legitimately not going to go to the bubble in Orlando because of COVID issues.

We'll tell you about his situation. And we have a golfer on the PGA tour who doesn't have the corona, but still won't compete this weekend in golf. We'll tell you about that as well. 713-212-5-790 is how you reach our show today. 713-212-5-790 on Twitter at Brendan Riley underscore for those of you are the producer of the show at SportsRVM SportsMT. We are here and Tay until 3 o'clock today with Mike Stanton and Fox Sports or not Fox at AT&T at 105.

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Oh, we're having some fun. You're home with the Stroes. I just saw a crawl on ESPN. The Cowdies president, Arizona Cowdy, says, New Arena is top priority. They're in a year-to-year lease with the folks in Glendale, Arizona. I would expect NHL to Houston calls coming, I don't know, maybe one in the next three hours.

You'll learn Brendan. that's always a good standby topic, my friend of the old Matt Thomas show, is talking about whether or not NHL could survive in Houston, Texas. People want NHL here? Want and support are two different things. You should explain to them how expensive it is to go to our Red Wings game. I'm going to be honest with you. People don't really care about the Red Wings when they suck either.

As much as you think of Detroit as a hockey place, people care when they're good, but no one's cared now for five or six years. I would just tell you that I would go to wild games when I lived in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and it was a great experience, but it's very much a much more of a hardcore, smaller crowd than I thought it would be. I thought, as I said this before in the year, when I took the job in Minneapolis in 2008, I thought, oh, my God, I don't know crap about hockey. How am I going to do this? And they're like, don't worry about it. Just have a couple players on here and there, plead your ignorance, learn the sport, people embrace. And that's what they were doing.

I thought but isn't Detroit supposed to be hockey town? There's a lot of hockey towns. A lot of it's funny

I think 15 different NHL cities called themselves Hockey Town USA. I think there's a Canadian Hockey Town USA within Canada.

Well isn't every town in Canada a hockey town? Yeah. I will say this. I was at a bar one night before a Toronto

Maple Leafs game in Toronto. That's intense. First of all, those sweaters they wear you know the ones the jerseys and they call them sweaters.

they're really heavy which if your fat helps out especially if the ladies, no disrespect but they're very expensive you know you get a jersey a replica for maybe like 75, 80 bucks I'm thinking those jerseys like 300 bucks those sweaters

really? Yes what? Because they love their maple leaves that's ridiculous I'm not lying to you as we were asking some people like because they had different forms of these maple leaf jerseys like the guy says I got two or three of mine why they cost you? Oh

It cost me $1,000 for the trick for three of them. I'm like, damn. I mean, I appreciate you loving your team, but good gracious. They're like authentic game warner. Oh, yeah, it was the heaviest material. I mean, those guys could go on that rink if they were in any athletic ability. That's right. All right.

So, yeah, once that gets going, I guarantee you NHL to Houston.com is going to be going crazy that the Arizona Cotty's aren't a year-to-year basis. But we got that for down the road. We've got baseball to get to today. And again, if you'd like to join us, just give us your general. sentiment of your excitement level. I guess we can say one to ten. Mine, I mean,

mine's obviously ten for the conversation of this radio show. But it's still a gimmicky season, Ross. I don't care if the Astros win it. The Astros will win a gimmicky World Series. The Rangers may want to get, well, I shouldn't say that. Let's not kid ourselves. The Dodgers might win a gimmicky World Series. The Yankees might win a gimmicky World Series.

It's 60 games. It's a, as somebody said, matter of fact, it was the guy Jesse Rogers said yesterday on Sean show. It's like a traveling baseball all-star squad. Like a barnstorming squad? Yeah, you run around to four or five different towns. It's like the Harlem Globetrotters.

Because 60 ain't even close to 162. It's just not. Or the N1 mixtape tour. Now, everything's going to mean more. You have to put your foot on the pedal right away. You can't just kind of cruise your way into the season, which will make it better. I think better overall competitive baseball.

I think it's going to take a lot of work by managers to determine how guys are doing arm-wise and whether or not they should go an extra pitch or make a change in the lineup faster. You know how guys get into like two for 19 slumps and they'll work out of a slump? I think it'll be a little, there'll be less of that, obviously. Yes. Well, it's funny because Carlos Correa was on yesterday with the A team and he was asked about whether or not there would be an asterisk on this season and how much it would feel like if there was a season. And he seemed to think that it would be a season that counts

no matter what. That was that was Carlos's opinion. And while I appreciate what Carlos had to say, I don't believe him. Here is what he said yesterday on the A-Team with Adam Clanton and Adam Wexler. No chance. Everybody has the chance to win the championship this year. Like I said, it's 60 games. In 162, everybody has a chance, all 30 teams. So whoever comes out on top, that's the championship. So there shouldn't be an after next to the championship just because he was 60 games.

Anyways, I feel like baseball season should be shorter. I feel like 160 to its way too long. But, yeah, whoever wins the championship this year is fair, man. It's fair that all 30 teams got to compete, and whoever comes out on top is the 2020 champion. There's no argument about it being fair. Everybody has an equal chance at it. That's not the argument.

Because we're not saying because there's only 60 games, only 20 teams have a chance at it. All 30 do you have a chance. but when we look at the history of this season 60 games will be a gimmick it just is it doesn't mean I'm not going to enjoy it but we have taken

extraordinary measures to not put asterisks on the Spurs championship and who won they won the 991 who won the one that was short in like 11th the 2012 I think it was the heat okay the heat over the thunder and nobody's ever called that

in a week championship these will this will get marked by it partly corona, but largely because of labor unrest. Well, I think it's like a number of different conversations. Right now, I'm with you. I feel like it's an asterisk. Are we going to feel like that if the Astros win? Are we going to feel like that if the Astros win?

It's not our decision, unfortunately. And they will, okay. Well, let's say they put, okay, if it's the Yankees, whoever, we're probably going to feel like that after, but 10 years from now when that banner is up in the, in the rafters or however they put their banners up or whatever? Are they going to point to that and say that one doesn't count? Is it going to have an asterisk up on it?

It isn't a case of counting. Are the players going to have the rings with asterisk on them? No. No. But we as sports fans have opinions. And the opinions are going to be that it was a fluky season. It just was. If it was just COVID-related and nothing more,

meaning that when baseball decided to sit down and reconfigure the season, and I'm not even saying a certain number of games. A lot of the reason why this was put to 60 was not because of COVID. I mean, a large part of it was, but some of it was, another good part of it was, because the two sides couldn't get together. You could have played 90 games this year.

You could have a month ago been in spring training. I feel like that was never going to happen. I feel like this played out exactly the way the owners wanted it. I think, I mean, think about these early proposals, man, 50-50 revenue. That's like me saying, trying to, I don't know, negotiate you. You say you want to sell your car.

And you're like, so how much for my car? All right, I'll give you $500. Like, it's just a non-starter and it just waste time. That's what I feel like the owners were doing. They're throwing out these offers that they knew weren't going to get accepted and it stalled and it stalled and it stalled. Trevor Bauer was tweeting about it maybe a week ago or whatever it was that these owners knew what they were doing.

They knew that they weren't ever going to have 114 games or maybe even knew they weren't going to have 82 games. As long as they kept drag, dragging everything out, they had the clock on their side, and it was just going to get lower and lower and lower. And I think this is exactly what the owners want. So maybe, hmm, can we give the asterisk only to the owners and not the players? Yeah, exactly.

Give it to Jim Crane and not the players. Because I want to make sure, and maybe I'm sounding inconsistent. I'm in. I'm all in. I'm excited. I can't wait for the season to go. I just have a pretty good feel regardless of who the champion is, and hopefully it's the Astros. That there's.

that there's going to be an asterisk next to this season. I would love nothing more from the Rockets and Astros to win their championship. Let's help me get rid of the asterisk. How do you do it? Do you just say, Matt, 30 teams, they're playing. Let's go. I'll tell you how to get rid of it. It's never going to be put on.

It's only in our minds. Okay. So let me out. Let's do this. Maybe it'll be like a Barry Bond situation. Oh, he's not the home ranking for me. Right. But you look at the stat book.

That's right. So, again, it's a subjective conversation. Obviously apples and oranges, but I mean... Yeah, no, I understand. That some people believe that he is the all-time homewring king, and some people don't. And I am not one of those people that do. So let me ask you this, and this being Houston, Texas. Are we going to put an asterisk next to this season?

Or are we going to say that everybody had a fair chance of this? That because of labor negotiations, because of the Rona, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There was no other way to do it than just do the 60 games. How about Roger Maris asterisk? Because of the more games? Yes. And then as years went on, when we were talking about home run chase, it went away. We're talking about chasing Roger Maris.

But there are still a few. That was still the same amount of games. I don't know. I'm trying to think of other examples in sports. Well, it would be the Spurs and the Heat. Yeah, we took that off. I think in 2000, we were like, oh, this is a weak championship. Doesn't count.

Okay. It didn't hurt that they won four more. So I'm going to tell you, because, Here's the crazy thing about people. We're allowed to, I always say these days, we're allowed to change our opinion on things. We're flip floppers. No, it's not a flip flopper. It's just you see things differently.

Like I see things politically and socially way different today than I do 10 years ago. Same. Doesn't make me a flip-flopper. It just makes me a person that understands change for one direction or the other. Right now, to me, playing less than a half of a season with strange. new rules, which, by the way, I'm not necessarily against, but just thrown on us at the very last second feels like an asterisk-filled season. Yeah, we're in the middle of it, right?

Sometimes, in anything in life, when you're in the middle of something, you don't always have the best perspective. Now, if the aster has won it, I'll celebrate like a mutter. And I will congratulate them and root for them. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm ready to do all-night programming again. I've zero problem with that. but it's right now 60

feels like they just try to salvage something and it's just not the same of a 162 with a full spring training and a full six-month schedule and regular playoffs and you know I think we'll probably look at more anything else is how much the rona really played into it more than anything else in fact is that there was no rona we would have a 162

yes there wouldn't be this labor discourse than there is right now we'd have a lot of the country would probably be better place in a lot of ways. Oh my God, you're not kidding. All right, we'll get a quick timeout, and I promise I want to let you guys hear from Jim Crane, James Click, and Dusty Baker. We take this program to 3 o'clock today. 713-212-5-7-90 is how you reach a show. Also coming up in the next half hour,

the latest win-totals. Remember, we always do the when the Astros 1-100. Well, that's not going to happen this year. What are the win-totals for a team, for any team that's supposed to play only 60 games? 7-1-3-212-5-7-90, 713-212-5-790 with a message here for TGS Insurance. Would you like to save lots of money in your home policy?

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Alexa, play Sports Talk 790 on Iheart Radio. Alex Bregman here. Get 790. And Breggman drives it pretty deep to left field. Get your stroves on the radio. That the wall looking up, and that ball is gone. I almost freestyle for a second, Ross, but I'm not fully ready. I'm a little embarrassed.

Why? What are you embarrassed? Because I want to saying something stupid. What? The Matt Thomas show, 12 to 3, Sports Talk, 790. It's like I see, you're used to that. 713, 212, 5, 790. lots of audio from the Zoom call today that the Aster has had with the Houston Media.

We'll start with Jim Crane discussing how difficult the timing has been for his organization. You know, it's difficult on everybody. There's no winner here. You know, the team's revenue, we have no revenue, you know, the players aren't getting paid for not when we're not playing. So it's been difficult on everybody. I think the main concern, you know, has always been, you know, can we play? And, you know, now we've got it worked out. you know, it was difficult on everybody.

I think I'm happy we were able to work something out. It's never perfect for either side. And, you know, I'm happy for the guys that, you know, we can get them in there. We've worked hard with our staff here making sure we're still paying everybody. But at some point, if you don't play baseball, there's no revenue. And that's bad for the owners and it's bad for the players. So, you know, it's very difficult for everybody. Here's Dusty Baker and what he's been doing during this time off.

Taking care of myself isn't the issue, you know, because like, you know, I got a weight room to die for. Me and my son, we work out, you know, every day. We've been hitting in the cage. I'm outside gardening every day, you know, in my vineyard and in my garden. And so I'm staying, I was staying busy mentally and physically and spiritually. And a couple of my family members are concerned. But, you know, our families are families that, you know, that believe. leaves in prayer. And, you know, like I'm doing that the Lord to take care of me and they

wouldn't have put me in, you know, to take me out of here. And so, you know, concerned, you know, I got to be a little bit after intensive on what I do and where I go, but worried, no, I'm not worried a bit. I don't know what Dusty's got left in the managerial tank. But as a human being, I just want to go have dinner with him and just hear him tell stories. Yes. By the fireside or something. And apparently, I bet the son is like, Dad, get your ass up. Let's go.

No, I bet Dusty gets him up. It's the same kid that he picked, that somebody picked him up as he was running at home plate, right? I forget who it was. I think that kid's now like 22 years old or something like that. I don't know. Which, by the way, Dusty, 20-something-year-old kid with 70? Good for you, big fella. Still got a lot of fire in the belly, so to speak.

Well, he did 20 years ago, at least. That's true. It was only takes once. James Click on the day-to-day operations on when the second camp will start, which should start in earnest next week. You know, Dusty and Joe Espada and a few other people have been putting together the protocols for that. I think the short answer is that it's going to be some very long days as we try to maintain the required social distancing. We are probably going to have to cite. players through at different times of the day just to make sure that there is enough space for

everybody to get their work in while also maintaining the safe distance. You know, it's crazy. They're going to have to socially distance at every single juncture inside the stadium, which means there will not be 25-man workouts, which means you're going to not, you know, there's going to be, I mean, at least six feet separation. There will be no hanging out in the dugout in between. They're going to probably do what the Embigay has been doing, and that is putting five or six guys on a court at one time or a field now in this case, and starting at 8 o'clock in the morning and going to probably five, six o'clock at night.

Or normally a major league workout when you're done is two hours for everybody. God, this is so weird. I'm skeptical of how long that would be that would last. I think at first everybody would be following the protocols and doing their best to keep their social distances and all that type of stuff. But I would guess within maybe a few days, maybe a week, it'll be closer to back to normal than not. Who's going to watch them?

Exactly. Does MLB bring somebody a security officer down here to make sure everybody's behaving themselves? Wouldn't. I don't think. What's the penalty? Jose L Tuvae gets closer than six feet to Carlos Correa. What's going to happen? Well, let me ask you this.

It would be in the team's best interest to do as much of the protocol as possible. Yes. just to make sure, because again, we're not naive to think that there's not going to be at some point a spike in positive cases in sports among active players. We're seeing it in the NBA right now. But at the same juncture, if you do everything you can, then you can say, well, I've done everything I can and them's the breaks. But if you find out that five or six players, I mean, think about all these players, this soccer team, this Orlando soccer team, they got the Rona. at a bar at a bar they didn't get it during workouts so what you have to do is you have to take all these guys

separate them and say do not go out for the next six months or whatever thereabouts don't do it eat home as much as you can take out delivery social distance if you have to go out to eat and stuff that kind of thing which you're going to have to do when they're on the road but don't go to bars where there's no social distance and that nobody's wearing face mask.

I mean, if you want to play this year and make money and do it, that's what you've got to do. We're also asking 22 to 30-year-old men to behave themselves consecutively for multiple weeks, which I think is part of the reason why there's concern at the NBA level, especially when they're going to the bubble. That's why I don't think it's going to happen. I think if we had, like, there are no media allowed in these in these rockets workouts, right? No. You're going to tell me that the protocol hadn't been broken once in all these workouts? Well, let me call Darryor Morris, see if you'll have us out with that.

Of course it has. And of course, it will be in Major League Baseball. So anytime anybody takes a picture, it's got to be in a good spot. Hey, buddy, sat up here, social distance. We can send the photo to MLB. Exactly. Put it on our IG account. Astros, hashtag social distancing.

Are they all going to walk around with like six foot walking sticks and spin them around? No, I would say this. I bet you there is going to be. Not, no, I bet you're going to be significant time of staggered workouts. Yeah, stagger. Okay. Because you don't hear One of the things you get to enjoy is you get to hang around the batting cage

And watch your buddy's head while you get your turn That's probably gone The Chronicle got a hold of the hundred and something page Manual for this year You can actually download it if you want to Oh really? Yeah Some late night reading

Problem is I don't like to read off my computer Unless it's like a wire you know Store off the internet If it's like a big manual like What's the name of that company That puts books on a little computer. Amazon, like the Nook or the... Yeah.

This is tablets. Tablet readers is what they're called. I'm not reading a book, though. I like to see... You know, tell me there's not one iPad in the Thomas House? No, we all have them. But I don't read books off of them. I don't want you to print the 104 pages out to read it myself.

But then I would have to do it here because I wouldn't have... I like key readers. It is better to have a book in your hand, but I've used to have a... Okay, so I'll give you an assignment. Why don't we do this tomorrow? you read the entire manual tonight. I actually do it before the nightcap and then get a recap at 6 o'clock.

It's all over 100 pages. Yeah, I can. No, I'm not knocking that out one night. But it's very interesting. It's itemized, but it's got a table of contents. And it's, you know, so you want to skip to a particular section. You can go to that. I'm good.

Okay. We'll have somebody give us to Spark notes. Sparky notes or did you say Steve's Sparkness? Oh, Cliff Notes. Well, okay, so when you don't know, this is probably after your time. You know what Cliff Notes are, right? Absolutely. Spark notes is the same thing but online.

So we used to use back in college and high school. Let me ask you this, because you've been many years removed from college and high school. Yes. Can you? Yeah, they still have spark notes. In 2020, can you find a paper? And just steal it? And just steal it?

No, so now they have programs where they copy and paste it into a website, and if it's been plagiarized, it'll tell them. Because of the website crawls all over the internet and finds... You mean professors in college and high school had this kind of thing? Yeah, you can just type the paper into, or copy and paste the paper into something and then see if it was plagiarized. Thankfully, they didn't have that from my ninth grade biology class. Thankfully, I had money to buy Oreos from my buddy Brian who wrote my paper for me. Yeah, you can still pay somebody.

You can go the old-fashioned way and pay somebody to write the papers. I think free commerce is the much better way to go on this one. I said, Brian, I just didn't read the book. Can you write the paper for me? Yeah. I said, do you want some money? No, can you feed me? I'd be happy to.

What do you want? He wanted pizza and devil stuff Oreos. That's a nice little lunch. I got in the big bag, too. You know the family-sized bag of double stuff? I spare no expense for my papers. I see that. I just do.

1242 on the Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-7-90 if you want to get in. I'm looking for two questions to be answered from you guys out there in Radio Land. 7-13-212-5-7-90. At this point, does this 60 game season feel like it's going to have an asterisk next to it? And just overall excitement factor, I will tell you again that at least social media yesterday was generally speaking big time pumped. And I'll say the same thing I was too.

Because I'm going to tell you something. In a job that sports and games are how I make my living and how I try to do a show for three hours a day, 15 hours a week, I need games. no disrespect to the Rona, no disrespect to the sooner rather than later card or during these unprecedented times, but damn it, I need games and I'm going to get them. So I'm not going to bitch and complain about it. I'm just thinking long term,

how will we look at this 2020 baseball season? 713-212-5-790, 7-13-212-5-790 with a message here for Shaw's jewelry. for great-looking diamond jewelry, you keep it right here in Houston, Texas. No need to go online because you just can't see, feel touch, see the emotions that your bride will have, your speciality in your life when you buy our fine diamond jewelry,

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Left side to Westbrook, on the baseline for the tie. He makes it, and he's fouled. This is Russell Westbrook. One thing is for sure, I did not get my amazing style from Matt Thomas. Oh, Hammer job. You got a buddy of mine, Chris Burke Hulter, who's now an educator, wasn't a PR business for the Houston Cougars and for the Texas Ter. two organizations I used to work with

They were the terror than the Thunder Bears or the Thunder Bears than the Terror? Terror than Thunder Bears and so he sent me the the website turning in.com which quote promotes academic integrity. Chris says I had a kid a few years ago

that turned something into me through this and it was 97% plagiarized. Big Stones. Only 97%? What happened to the other three? Well, he took... He clearly. took an hour to change a few words from grade to outstanding. I would do that, like, if there was a really big word, it would be a word that I would know,

but the teacher would think maybe I didn't know it. I would change. Well, this is what I would do in 8th and 9th grade. Let me tell you something. The double jeopardy around or whatever the statute of limitations. It's over with. You're good. Yeah, I used to change the bigger words, even if there were words that I knew to smaller words

and change the structure of the sentences. these were my tactics in Ethan Eckhart The internet was a Wild West back And when I was lucky enough to where When I was in middle school I mean you could find everything you needed on the internet And there weren't all these tools to suss out the

Plagiarization Plagiarizing Yeah I never I never flat out plagiarized I just had others do the work for me And I feel terrible about it Because again I believe The fact that it was not the best student

In my junior and senior year in high school and a little bit in college is the reason why I still have nightmares about my education going in today. I absolutely believe it. I still have nightmares once every probably safely, and I've been journaling these things. Oh, nice. I love that. That makes me happy. Once every two weeks.

Okay. I have the same dream about how I'm going to pass high school when I haven't turned in four papers. Or if I'm going to fail. The one dream of having lately, I shouldn't call them. dream their nightmares. The one nightmare having lately is I've been skipping a lot of this second period class. You're back in school and all your nightmares? This is interesting. Yeah. And so I'm in this second period class and I've missed the class so much. I don't know what class it is and where it's located. So in these nightmares I've been having, Brendan, you'll learn this about me. I'm a

a little bit of a bizarre cat. I'm walking around Main Creek High School is where I went to high school and I don't know where to go because I've missed second period so much. I've actually recently had a nightmare about high school and it made me wonder if people stop having those ever. I'm telling me no. I've not had a nightmare as long as you and I work together, I will come to you at least once every two weeks and tell you that I'm having terrible nightmares about finishing school. And I, so then I wake up in this cold sweat, well, not literally, but figuratively speaking. And then I go to my office and I see my diploma from college and I'm like, okay, I'm good. Interesting. I passed high school, graduated, graduated from college. The only recurring dream I have is if I'm driving somewhere and the brakes stop working on my car. That happens to me all the time.

Really? Yeah. I like mine better. Mine isn't talking about impending death. Yeah. They either work or they don't slow my car enough in time. But I will say this, and I'm sorry if I get out too much of a dream tangent. No, I love this.

I'm sick and tired of having these dreams. So let me ask you this. I don't want to go back and apologize to the time. teachers for not doing the work. It's that they're probably half of them are dead. So it didn't do any good. Go to their gravesites, Matt. No. Write a paper, write a paper on Henry, David Thoreau and put it on their gravestone. Do you think I should go get my masters? Would that even out things a little bit? In what? Well, I mean, I'm a, I'm a radio television major and a speech communication minor, so I can go one of those routes. I have no interest

in doing that. There's zero interest. I have no, I don't know. First of all, in due meaning good. I'm already in my business. Let's just get you as a guest lecturer. I can teach a class. Yeah. And I would, and you wouldn't build to cheat in my class because everything would be completely subjective. Interesting. Yeah, because I would have you do the activities. It would be, like, I would teach you broadcast sports class, and it would be you doing it as compared to. You'd have a 10 minute show or something. Yeah, you would, I would not want you to just take a lecture and have a quiz over it. Hands on learning. Yes. From Professor Matt Thomas. You can call me doctor. Ph.D. Well, let's not get crazy.

You don't even have Masters. That's true. All right, 713-212-5-790. Jim Crane asked if fans are going to be allowed to get into the ballpark this season. That's the plan. I think, you know, we've still got to go through the player protocol. They're very focused on that and the staff that's going to be associated with the games once we fire up. I think the intent at at some point is to get the fans in the ballpark.

At one time, you know, we were at 50 percent with the state. I think that's probably going to move around by the time we get to opening days. We really won't know to opening day. And, you know, we're just going to stay focused on the protocol for the players and the staff and make sure we can keep everybody as safe as they can at this time. What about signing waivers for those fans? I think that's going to be difficult. We haven't really gotten that far yet.

Baseball hasn't discussed any of that. That could be a possibility. But, you know, as everyone knows, it's really, hard to detect where you get it and how you get it and those sorts of things. So I think everybody's still struggling with that. I think we can probably have that answered again when we get ready to fire up the stadium with the players. And we're hopeful that we can get some fans in here at some point.

I'm going to ask a question, Ross, that I think can change about every 30 seconds or at least three days. Most fans, they want to go to the stadium, watch a game? Most, no. A lot, yes. Enough to fill it up halfway. Yes. Half a minute makes 20,000, give or take. Can

20,000 Houstonians, will 20,000, not can't, will 20,000 Houstonians go to every one of the 30 Astro home games this year? As long as they're allowed to, I would say yes. How crazy is a ticket demand going to be? I think it'd be pretty high.

Because I don't think it would be an awful, awful look for baseball to raise ticket prices, anything out of the ordinary. I think there'll be some curious. You know how you wanted to go or you want to go to the NBA campus because it's kind of a unique experience? I think people want to go to the ballpark because it'll be unique short and season type of experience as well. I wonder what the – I mean, I guess you would give season ticket holders priority. Yeah. Because there's 20,000 season ticket holders. Yeah.

In theory, everybody is going to get a chance. Now, how you separate, I don't know. I think every team has got their own system. But I'm thinking row separation, seat separation, for sure, maybe even close off certain parts of the stadium. Maybe the super upper deck isn't sold. I mean, I'm saying? Just be realistic about if you're going to do 50% capacity,

can you do that maybe not even using the entire ballpark? Because in your mind, do you envision literally row one full, skip two, row three full, skip four, because you can't put everybody right next to each other. I could see row one with seats one, two, three, four, skip five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

Then you go to row two, and you have seats five, six, seven, eight of it. I mean, I'm thinking you want to use every row, right? Because you're not going to want to jam 12 people on a single row. Can people sit next to it? Can you put people? What if your wife and husband? Well, that's your own decision then. How about like... I don't think you're, I don't think your social distance

If it's you, wife, and two kiddos, I don't think you're separating each other's by three to four seats. Right. Maybe you are. I don't envision it to be a case. That's the thing you have to figure. That's what you have to figure out, though. So I'll throw this out.

We got Mike Stanton coming up in 10 minutes. Any apprehension in Houston, Texas? You guys are ready to go? Or do you like, you know, I want to wait and see? We have a friend of ours who is going through some medical things right now, and she has been a diehard fan forever and ever and ever. she's taking this season off. Her medical conditions

way outweigh going to see her beloved baseball team. And it's a right decision. So I'll throw it out there. Are you hesitant? Not hesitant? Absolutely going to go to games. No chance.

No way. Because Rossi, there are fans that listen to this station that are proud of their I've been to 88% of Astro games in the last five years. I've been going to the Astro games since 2000. I've been going the Astros games

since 1994. Does this, does this, year break that streak. If you are one of those people, let us know if you're going, not going. 713, 212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. Mike Stanton joins us in less than 10. It's the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. KBME Houston, YHart Radio station, the Astros, the Houston Astros, the Rockets, and the Rockets, your home for your home teams. This is Sports Talk 790. From the classic Chevy Sugarland Studios. Find New Roads.

is the Matt Thomas Show. The second hour of the Matt Thomas show, Mike Stanton's going to join us in a few minutes. You may join us right now. Are you hesitant at all to purchase and or go to Astro Games once they resume, played at the end of next month? 713-212-5-7-9 if you'd like to join us and give us your opinion. There really are no wrong answers, honestly. 713-212-5-790 a couple things got a text in I can't say who it's from it says Ross I have nightmares that I have missed too many classes and failed out of UT again comma LOL hold on never failed out number one number two I don't have nightmares about school it's not you okay it's your brother your brother texting this shit my brother texted you and not me yeah he likes me more.

Just like your dad likes Charlie more than he likes me. Yeah, that's fine. You're not the favorite any of the group. We were talking about this over Father's Day. Now I'm sad, Matt. Oh, no, you got a lot going for you. No, it's okay. No. I got middle child chip on my shoulder and I will to the day I die. That's fine.

I got you. Also today on the radio show, we have not mentioned this yet, and it's a mistake on my part. We're going with back-to-back sports MT theaters today. It feels like the Twitter streets are giving us sports empty theaters every single day. So the one I was going to do this morning was erased because one of the people that's involved in the Twitter beef

deleted his account. But Brennan Riley, scoring major points on the old radio program, was able to find some of the screen captures of said fight. It involves again, you ready for this? A current major league player, Ross, and a former major league player

for the second consecutive day. Wonderful. Yeah. So we will have it for you the best of the sports MT theater coming up at $150 this afternoon. Today's edition will feature for the second straight day. Trevor, don't call me Tyler Bauer and Kurt Schilling. Wonderful. Trevor Bauer's going to be in a lot of these, I think.

Or should have been. Well, he's been in some. He's going to get in more. And when Trevor is 63 years old, whatever. the newest form of social media will be in, say, 35 years from now, he'll be involved in that as well. Like, I envision 35 years from now, if you want to get in a fight with somebody on Twitter, they'll disappear above your head. Okay. From a chip in your brain or what?

Yeah. Like, there'll be every rooming and every building will be something with a computer screen. Trevor Bauer wants to argue with you on Twitter and you just hit a button. Okay. And you have this face-to-face. Do you accept the invite? Do you accept this argument? It's like a Zoom meeting?

That's what it is. There'll be better, bigger, easier access Zoom meetings. So instead of fighting on Twitter, you'll fight on Zoom. You could still not wear pants though, right? Well, it depends on the regular Zoom meetings. It depends on the camera angle. So we had a Zoom phone call today with the Astros. You did.

And you know, Zoom typically is video and audio. Our computers don't have cameras. Yes. Are we the only computers in America that don't have cameras now in 2020? No. But we're one of the rare ones? Maybe at the Houston Public Library. They don't.

They probably do have cameras, actually. So I'm getting grief from the Astros Pierrotor Department. You're too good for it to show your face? And I told us to Michael Conraday, I said, Michael, they're going to think we're divas that we don't want to show our faces or don't want to ask any questions. Yeah. So I had a chat room. I had to text them. I said, we'd like to.

We just don't have fresh computers. Hmm. So those are the, you know, when you. you're a multi-billion-dollar company, you do, you don't cut corners on some things, and then you hope the technology doesn't really advance it to having video. And our company has not put... Someday. Maybe by 2030. Yeah, you know. So at this point, we cannot have a Zoom meeting at the office because

the computers that we use don't have microphones and or computers or cameras in them. But these are such first world problems. 713-212-5-79. If you want to get in today, 7-1-3-212-5-790. On Twitter, it's at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Brendan Riley. We're going to be getting a Mike Stanton here in just a second. One of the things that we haven't thought about is you think everybody works out here in Houston during the offseason and during this time? Not the case is James Click.

The Aster's new general manager. He discusses getting all the players back to town. Yeah, it's obviously going to be an effort to get everybody back to Houston as quickly as possible. But we've known that this is something that we were going to have to do. do for quite a while now. And we have what we can in place to try to get them back here. In addition, the league is helping all the teams out with trying to get the players back as quickly and safely as possible.

One of the thing, how about trying to play out a 60 game schedule? It creates its own unique challenges. One of the beauties of baseball is that it can take a long time for, you know, the best team to rise to the top. this obviously creates a different situation for us. I think Dusty's addressed it. It's more of a sprint than a marathon. It changes the way that you manage your staff.

It changes the way that you manage individual games in a lot of ways. But this is one of the most important things I think about having Dusty on this team is that he has been through these kind of things before. When you have a short sprint, how do you do that? How do you change the way that you manage? How do you change the way that you train? So there are going to be differences. There are going to be differences in terms of number of off days that we have.

So we'll have to work through all of that as well. But we do have a lot of guys here who are incredibly smart and they are working through exactly the best way to handle it. And we'll go through some of the logistics of what exactly is going on with baseball in the next segment, including the latest win totals. It's be weird. You can go to Vegas now. Yes.

And bet your win totals. There's another interesting prop bet that I saw on. the board as well. Okay, standby for that. I might have to talk about that later. Yes. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. And on Twitter, it's at SportsMT and at SportsRB.

I think we are missing connection here with Mike Stanton. He's texting me and meanwhile Brennan's trying to get a hold of him. We might have a wrong number. No, we don't. We'll try for the second segment of the show. We'll just move forward here. Okay. So let's do the wind toll is where we're at it.

Okay. So, have you seen the number yet? I had not. Okay, let's, I want to see how good you are at this. Okay. This is a little bit of a challenge because 60 games, you can't necessarily go for, well, there's a slow start or a fast start. Then they're going to kind of revert to the norm.

You can't build in losing streaks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So with that being said, how many games do you believe the Houston Astros are going to win, according to Las Vegas off of a 60 game schedule. 37 and a half. 35 and a half. Okay. That seems, is that a good spot?

Well, I was going a little bit under two-thirds, which would be 100 wins would be, so I guess I should have went a little lower. Okay. So do the fractional, my equation on that. If you're a 35-and-a-half-win baseball team off of a 60-game schedule,

So for every 60 games, you win 35. So that puts you at 70 and 50. 95.85. Okay. So that's what they were kind of going to be, right? Probably what they did. Did some math. Okay.

All right. So you'll go to the rest of the division? Here we go. Oakland A's 33 and a half. I thought I was going to guess. Oh, you want to guess? Okay, go Oakland Aes. 33 and a half.

That's a great guess. Los Angeles Angels. 29. 31 and a half. Okay. They got this is a three-team race now. That's a three-team race. When you win a division by four games, that's tight.

Yes. Four games in 60 is kind of not as tight, you know. Okay. It is what it is. But it is what it is. Texas Rangers. 25. 29 and a half.

Really? Seattle Mariners. 25. 25 and a half. Everything's in a half. By the way, every one of these numbers are in a half. That's smart move. You don't have a lot of pushes.

That's true. That's true. All right, rest of the American League, real quick. New York Yankees. What do you think? The Astros were, what, 35? 35 and a half. I'll go 36.

38 and a half. Oh, that's a pro. That's a sizable difference. It is. Tampa Bay Race. 32 and a half. 33 and a half. Minnesota Twins in the center.

Remember we talked about how all the piece of cake teams are going to be playing? 35 and a half. 34 and a half. Okay. And then the, Let's see here. I want to think of it. It's basically just what we thought before.

All the bad teams are high school. You're just reducing your fraction. Los Angeles Dodgers. Ooh, 36. 38 and a half. So if you were to go off with just win totals alone. They got Yankees Dodgers. The Yankees and Dodgers.

Okay. Do you think the baseball gods, aka Fox, are dying for a Yankees Dodgers World Series? Absolutely. I mean, that's the dream scenario, right? It'd be a dream scenario in any situation, especially when you're trying to get fans back. in a condensed season.

New York and L.A. And who do you think is the number two brand in baseball? It's the Red Sox or the Dodgers? Or Cubs? I would, not the Cubs anymore. Yankees number one, Red Sox 2, Dodgers 3. Okay. So two of the top three brands in the sport

into the two big biggest markets in the country. Okay. Who's four? Cubs. Cardinals? Hmm. Cubs just to the stadium Cubs for Cardinals 5

Cardinals have like what like 13 and 11 championships or something like that I'm not about my champion I've been talking about the brand of the sport Cardinals have a huge Midwest fan base huge multi-state That's tough I still think the Cubs

The aura of Riddley field I'm going Cardinals You're wrong We're going to try Mike Stanton again Coming out of the break here 113, it's a Matt Thomas show 713212 570 719 712 570

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Matt Thomas is a great guy. And I always listen to the radio show. On mute. What a shot. And isn't Mike Dantony a sweetheart? He listens to my show every day. On mute. On mute.

It's pretty funny. I know a man who doesn't listen to show on mute. He's one of our favorite in-studio analysts. He's actually going to finally have to work a little bit. Mike Stanton, your vacation is over in about a month. How are you feeling right now? Matt, I'm feeling a lot better than I was just a couple days ago. You know, it's taken way too long.

It's been an ugly, ugly picture. But bottom line, we're actually going to get to watch. watch baseball in 2020. And you'll do it on AT&T with you in the studio, along with Kevin Ashenfelder and crew. It's great to have you on the show again. We really appreciate it. When you were playing, how involved did you get labor negotiations?

You know, during the strike of 94, I was a player. I wasn't really involved with the labor side of it, with the union side of it, other than just being, you know, part of the union. But you go back to 2002 in the negotiations, the first time we did not have a work stoppage in baseball history as far as when the union has been around, I was actually quite involved. I was player rep for the Yankees, and I had been to a couple meetings early in the offseason, the prior off season. So, yeah, I was quite involved with that negotiation. Mike Ross v. Real here, and I have a conspiracy theory. Just tell me how crazy I am,

that the owners, this is kind of, this is exactly what they wanted. Their first few proposals, seems like they should have known that they were not going to be accepted. And this dragged and dragged on, they had the clock on their side. So around 60 games is about what they wanted when the players offered 114 and 82 and 76 and all that. 60 is, it seems like in the end, the owners got their way in many ways. Well, they did. I mean, they did not want to go to 60. They actually, you remember, they went, they started off at 48 and then they were talking about 54.

The one thing you have to give the owners, you know, there's a bunch of, a bunch of very smart people on that side of the negotiations. They were incredibly creative because they came up with, what, three or four different ways of putting together basically the same proposal, which was paying the players about 33% of their overall salary. Yeah, it felt like they were changing, as a friend of ours said, four dimes, then a quarter, a nickel, and two dime. It was just moving 40 cents around the same way.

So let's move on to this a little bit now and get to the, the season itself. And I don't know, I don't expect, Mike, I know you got some free time, but you didn't read the entire 100-page manual, did you? Did not? No, I fell asleep about page two. Yeah, I figured. So of all the new things they're going to ask these players to do, what's going to be the two or three things that maybe come to mind that will be the hardest? I'm talking about some of the frivolous things like fist bumps, chew and see, spitting. What's going to be the biggest adjustment for the players? I think the spitting thing is going to be incredibly difficult.

Not because everyone needs to spit, but it just becomes such a habit in such part of the culture of baseball. And not even baseball, just our culture overall. I mean, there's times that I catch myself, I go, why don't I just spit? I don't need to spit, but it just happened. And so I think that's going to be a tough one, you know, the social distancing side of it. I don't think anybody's going to have a real problem with it for the first couple weeks because everything's going to be new. It'll be at the forefront of everyone's mind. It's going to be when everyone gets comfortable.

And, you know, we can put, Major League Baseball can put, you know, as many protocols, health protocols in places they want. Really, it's going to be up to each individual player if he continues to do what is supposed to be done to keep the sport healthy. because we know, you know, all these guys, you know, if they do contract COVID-19, chances are they're not good. If they get sick, they're not going to be very sick. But they're not the ones that are in at the greatest peril. It's going to be the coaching staff. It's going to be, you know, the family at home. It's going to be, you know, people, their support cast around these players.

And so they're going to have to really make sure that they keep. kind of their nose to the grindstone and make sure that they understand how difficult this can be if all of a sudden we start getting a whole lot of positive test. I also feel like on a positive side that guys go on the road and you're playing every day, six days and seven weeks, that if they say, look, chill at the hotel, don't go sightseeing, don't spend a lot of time at malls, I think that may be the easiest adjustment for these professional players. Would that be fair to say? Oh, I'm on board 100% with you because I think at home, you're going to be around a lot more people.

You know, you're going to be around your family. Your family's going to want to go to the pool or they want to go get something to eat or something. And you're going to want to be around your family. And, you know, the family members are going to be, you know, out and about while you're on the road. So if one of them contract it, now of a sudden you're susceptible to bringing it on to the, you know, bringing it into the clubhouse. So, you know, it's going to be a very strange situation. But I think with all the turmoil that we've gone through to get to this point, I think everybody's going to just be happy to be back on the field and actually playing baseball.

So I'm trying to stay optimistic and think that everybody is going to be prudent about, you know, following the rules, the way they need to be followed to keep everyone safe. All right, Mike. Put yourself back in Major League Baseball as an active. player, you now are basically been given three and a half weeks to get yourself ready for the season. As a longtime ex-major league pitcher, what do you do now to revamp your regiment to get yourself ready after being dormant for so long? And then before that, being a part of spring training, getting ready for a season that never took place. You know, Matt, I actually got to go through this.

The 1995 spring training, we only had three weeks. That was the strike short in the year, 94, then it leaked into the 95 season, and we had the same thing. It was a vastly different situation because that was something that was self-imposed as far as the industry was concerned. But I don't really foresee it being any big issue here. You know, most of the guys have been doing whatever they can to throw, to hit. You know, I've worked with several players that have continued to work through. through the lockdown when they could, but even once, you know, down here in Texas, once we came out of the lockdown, now all of a sudden, you know, they're getting back in shape and they, you know, it's a different generation. You know, these guys work out because they like it, not because they have to. So I don't really foresee it being any kind of big issue. I know a lot of people are talking about starting pitching, that that's going to be an issue. Well, starting pitchers only go five innings now anyways. You know, at three weeks, especially with the throwing that they've been doing going into camp,

throwing 90 pitches shouldn't be a big deal. You know, really the reliance on the bullpen is the way most teams are run now. And so I really don't think three weeks is going to be all that difficult to get the pitchers ready. Now, I think it's a little bit different for the hitters just simply because they're not going to get the repetition and get to see the live pitching. I know if I were one of the big league coaches, I would want my hitters and pitchers both to be seeing each other from day one of camp

if we can pull that off. You know, throwing live BP, let the hitters see as many pitches as they possibly. Whether they're hitting or not, that's not the point. It's tracking the pitches, seeing the ball, seeing the breaking ball. You're getting those repetitions because you're just simply not going to get the games that you get in a regular spring training.

What about managers, Mike? a guy goes through a two-for-19 slump, oh, he'll break out of it, I'll put him back out there, or a pitcher has two bad starts and a 60-game condensed schedule. Do you think managerial styles will change a little bit this season? I think they have to. You know, listen, we are going to start the season with 30 teams tied for first place. And, you know, August, we usually call August the dog days, but now, I mean, everyone's called, and it is.

It's going to be a sprint. And I think that, you know, I was actually a little bit surprised that they put in the August 31st trade deadline because, I mean, that's just a few weeks after the season starts. But, you know, what else could you do? I think that managers are going to have to have a much shorter leash. You're not going to be able to let a guy, especially a young guy, kind of work his way through. You need to hit the ground running because if you get off, you know, you get off your first two weeks, you get off to a start that, you know, four and ten, you might be done. Yeah.

Last question for you. We've got some notable free agents. Probably the number one around baseball would be mooky bets, but we've got a pretty big one in Houston, Texas, by the name of George Springer. How do this year's upcoming free agents tackle the 60-game campaign in terms of if they slump, if they're hurt, do they take time off? Can you really improve your overall contract value

by what you do in the next two months here? I don't know if you can improve it. I do think you can hurt it. You know, I think if George, you know, just just kills the ball for two straight months, you know, it's not probably going to be all that different than what he's done in the past. You know, he's going to, you know, he puts up big numbers. But if he really struggles, you know, that's going to give the other side a chance to, you know, reduce the offers once free agency comes. And the thing is, that's going to happen anyway.

I mean, I do not envy these guys going through free agency. Really not even just this next year. And maybe for the next two or three years, it's just going to be tough because the owners, Major League Baseball is losing so much money. They're businessmen. They're going to try and recoup that money. And where are they going to do it? They're going to do it on player salaries.

60 games and 70 days thereabouts. Mike. I hope you're ready to broadcast a bunch of action on AT&T. Thank you very much for the time. Enjoy any vacation time you may have left, and we'll look forward to seeing you on television. I can very easily say now, sooner rather than later. Anytime, gentlemen, it was fun. Thank you very much. Mike Stanton with us from AT&T SportsNet. It's a fantastic job on the pre and postgame shows. Some nuances to Major League Baseball that Ross and I will talk about next. Our time is 130. It is the Matt Thomas show here on Sports Talk 790, and we again. We appreciate Mike,

joining us for a couple minutes here on the show. Right now, a message for Big City Wings. In fact, the Thomas family, not named me, they're at the Rayford location right now having lunch. Well, they always love wings. They love the crawfish till for five pounds for $25. But today is $8 burger Wednesdays. Every one of their burgers is $8.

Plus, they have tremendous specials on their whiskey. On a whiskey Wednesday as well. $8 for the burgers. Comes to the side. $8.00 burger Wednesdays. every one of their burgers is eight bucks. Plus, they have tremendous specials on their whiskey on a whiskey Wednesday as well.

$8 for the burgers. Comes to the side. So you get a nice cheap eats, good food, good atmosphere, and a great place for lunch right now where the family is and where your family could be tonight, tomorrow, whatever the case may be. But today is a special Wednesday at Big City Wings, obviously known for their tasty, bone-in and boneless wings,

but Burger Wednesdays are a big favorite, and today they're $8 at any of the eight big city wing locations. Whether you're in the spring area or my family, is now. We're from Bear Creek, Markey, Tasca Ciceta, Kingwood, all points in

between, I promise you, there is a big city wings near you. $8.00, Burger Wednesdays from big city wings and big citywings.com. Hey, this is Whitney Merseys. The Texan dip here.

Listen to real Texans talk on your smart speaker. Just say, hey, Google. Play Sports Talk 790 on IHeart Radio. This is Alex Bregman, of your Houston Astros. From Clutch City,

Rockets, Basketball, To Crush City The Houston Astros. Sports Talk 790 is home for your home teams. Thanks again to Mike Stant for joining us. Thank you for listening. Power-packed edition of the Matt Thomas show.

Jam-packed. And jams a relative term. Baseball's back. It is. For real this time. Line one, you happy about baseball? Oh, damn. Must be the technical issue again.

Line two, you're on America's pastime is back on 790. 713-212-5-790 is how you reach our show today 7-1-3-2-5-790 here are the nuances of the 2020 season national league will use a DH it should be permanent it's only on the hook for this year but it should be permanent I'm not a fan of the DH I still like pitchers hitting I'm in the minority I'll take the all on that I'm very comfortable doing so very much used to be with you and then after a few years and then the Astros go and play in the National League parks it's just Like, it's an automatic out for the most part. It's not about the automatic out for me or seeing a pitcher get a base.

It's about the managerial change. Do you keep a guy in versus letting him hit one more time knowing he's going to be an out? That, to me, is the most fascinating. A lot of the managerial decisions, though, are automatic. And we've had A.J. Hinch on this and talk about this as well. If, let's say the eight hitter walks, what's going to happen next? Sacrifice Bunt. You don't even have to think about it.

It's just going to happen. You were thinking, oh, well, now. Oh, you sacrifice bunting. It's extra strategy. But if you're in a 3-1 game and your pitcher's going. I feel like it, though. But I like it. But I like it.

But I will take the loss on this one. If I've ever taught you anything, you don't have you right about everything. Would I rather see Justin Verlanders plate or Yordaun Alvarez? 7-1-3-212-5-790. In extra innings, teams will begin with a runner at second base. starting on the 10th. In the 10th.

I like that. I would like 11th in the future, but for the short season, for now. I agree. Brennan, are you with us on that? 11th inning seems more appropriate. I think that's a fair compromise. Let me get one inning of regular baseball first.

Because everybody's okay with 10. No one's ever gone, this game with 10 innings. Exactly. 11 teams goes, oh my God, here we go. And I believe 40% of the extra ending games are done by the 10th. I will tell you this. I don't mean to out you, but I'm going to do anyone.

Every time I do a post-game show. And it's one, you don't know this, Brandon, but I do, I used to do a lot of Astros pre-impulse. I don't do nearly as many because of the rocket stuff now. But I do still probably do 25, 35, 35 somewhere in that range. Every time there's a one-one game in the eighth inning, there's a guaranteed text coming my way. and it's from the king antagonizer sports rb he always says three words actually four words with one of them is apostrophe i'm smelling extras and brenden every time he does that not only is he right but they're not regular extras they're 14 inning extras 15 if you will

and matt's response is generally either going to be go to hell or you're the worst or I just flat out swear at you, especially if I'm working on Friday night. So extra innings teams will begin with a runner in second base. I'm assuming that's the last out of the inning, right? Wouldn't you assume that? That's what we used to do when you were play a little league? Yes, I think so.

Probably. What if you have a slow runner? Like you're on Alvarez. Can you replace them in the lineup? Yeah, you have a mild straw or somebody. You need to pinch run them, for sure. Can you do that? Yeah, but you lose them for the game.

Yeah. But, I mean, if it's the 10th or 11th, you're going to hope that you're not, his spot won't even come up. Trade deadline is August 31st, less than a month before the regular season is scheduled to end. I can't imagine it being a overly vivacious trade deadline season, right? I mean, how are you going to trade somebody?

Are they going to quarantine after they, are they going to travel? And, I mean, can they be with the team for two weeks? That would then put them in, my guess is the quarantine, and it's probably in that manual, which you're supposed to be reading tonight. I'm very busy.

My guess is a three-day period. Just throwing that out there. Rostorsers will start at 30 men for the first two weeks, then go to 28 for the next two weeks, and then 26th the remainder of the season. Okay. Interesting. Semantics. Teams will have a taxi squad that allows them to have as many as 60 players available to them to play in major league games. So instead of having a 40 man, you have a 60 man.

And you take this taxi squad and you put them somewhere else so they're working out. What is a scenario where you need the 60th man? You just, you just, your team is crushed by Corona. I mean, don't you think if a team has like 15 infections or something, that will just stop the, you think, I guess they wouldn't, I don't know. Well, it could be a combination of Rona. It could be a combination of soreness. It could be a combination of pulled hammy. There will be a COVID-19 injured list with no minimum or maximum length of time spent on it. standard injured list will be 10 days and the typical 60 day stint

will be now 45 days. So you can, you know we were talking about how guys will be put on injured list? Yes. You get your own COVID injured list. Meaning the guys just got the cold or sniffles or chest pain

and he's really tired and can't smell or you got to pull hamstring. So there's a separate COVID list. I mean, they stopped doing the 10 day because they felt like it was getting manipulated. Correct. But they're doing the 10 days. day here because of the content schedule.

No, I'm saying, can you say, oh, well, this guy's got the sniffles? I guess how would you use that to your advantage? No, because Corona doesn't have, there's no minimum or maximum time. So if a guy goes on there, well, I guess if you're saying is how do you lie? How do you lie about the, no, you'd have to probably get tested positive for it. Okay. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering if there's. Yeah.

Let me tell you something, Ross. These leagues have so much money. the amount of test will not be an issue. I did say that yesterday if we had Dennis Dodd on from CBS. College football, college athletics don't have the budget that these do. Those will be the issue.

MLB, MBA, NFL, they'll have so many tests available to them that they won't even think twice about testing somebody. And that's the one benefit today than we were, say, four months ago. Remember when this thing first started? We didn't know where these tests were coming from. Remember there was a problem in a country

of trying to get enough tests for everybody? Yes. Are we good now? could you play sports with professional sports so he's getting preferential treatment? I don't think that's an issue anymore. I think if you want to go get a test, you can go get it. Now, you may have to wait in line, like some people are doing these days,

but if you need a test, if you and I left this show today, we can go find a test between now and the end of the day. It may be a little bit of a hassle, but we can find one. Okay. Where I don't think they could say that four months ago. So that's where I think, if somebody says, I think I've got it, They're going to make sure that you go get it tested before you get to be put on the special COVID list. I mean, like the NBA bought a bunch of tests from somebody, right?

I'm sure. I'm not going to be the same thing. Yeah. And you know the NFL is too. Yes. NFL is going to be a COVID testing machine. Yeah. I mean, we've already had Texans and Cowboys test positive.

Yeah. But, I mean, we're talking about testing 100 people at a time daily? Three days a week? Hmm. I don't know. Worth repeating. three COVID tests in a week, up your nasal cavity. Well, maybe they're the non-invasive ones.

They're swabbing ones, right? I'm talking about, this is the Adam Clanton bet. Okay. Spoonful of mayonnaise, or three nasal cavity COVID tests in one week? Spoonful of mayonnaise. Easy. Easy. I'm not going to feel great about it.

I need a chaser. He's a big, a tall glass of ice cold water. Wash that down. Brendan, big Vlasic pickle. Or three COVID-Naseless. He has a nasal test in one week. He hates pickles. I do hate pickles, but it's, the pickles, I don't hit them that much.

It'd be fine. I will drink a 32 ounce glass of Dr. Pepper comfortably. What's the hate about pickles? It's a nice, salty tree. I loves pickles. The man back there doesn't like this pickles. What about pickled jalapinos? Do you eat those?

No. Do you like the sweet and sour pickles? I've never had a pickle I like. If you would like to suggest I try a specific kind of pickle, go for it. Yeah, the one from the convenience store that is in that bag of brine. Like, do you ever go over? like the Anton's are going to pickle from there? Or some Chow Chow.

Yeah. I'm not a big fan of the Chowchow. I like the Chow Chow Chow. What's in Chowchow? I don't. It's cabbage. Are you sure? I think so.

I don't, I think there's, there's great mysteries. One, the eight secret ingredients in the Kentucky Fried Chicken original recipe and exactly what is Chow Chow from Antoine's. Well, the original recipe, you can find actually the 11 herbs and spices. Can you really? I thought it was eight. They keep adding more? I don't know.

All right. Sports M. theater next involving again two baseball players, one from the past, one in the present. 143 on the Matt Thomas show. 713212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90.

Daniel House. Hey, it's Daniel House. Matt Thomas continues now. On Sports Talk 790. Good afternoon. 148. Sports Talk 790 proudly presents another edition

of sports mt theater playing the role of Kurt Schilling is me applause applause applause applause applause thank you thank you thank you

actually that's not true playing the role of Kurt Schilling is sports RV applause applause applause applause yeah the MC screwed up playing the role of Aubrey Huff for the second consecutive day me

Wait what? Wait a minute. How's Aubrey Huff in here? I'm Aubrey Huff and Kurt. You're Trevor. You're playing two characters? We can handle it. We had you do seven like the other day.

All right. So let's get this straight. Don't play the applause. Playing a role of Kurt Schilling and Aubrey Huff is sports RV. Yes. I'm playing the role of Trevor Bauer. And Brendan, you're playing the role of random third party.

Random third party. It's not enough lines. get your sad card unfortunately. All right, please explain the preface of what we're going about to read, and then we'll read a sports empty theater. Well, if you missed it yesterday, you had Trevor Bauer and Aubrey Huff going back and forth at each other, and basically the way today's started is Kurt Schilling wanted to get in on the fun of,

I guess, who was the better player between Aubrey Huff and Trevor Bauer. And now, SpaltzMT theater. Trevor, what are you doing, man? walk away 17.4 war for a pitcher a good pitcher it's like two seasons right just focus on getting guys out

winning a world series Aubrey Huff it's all about the stats man you can't measure heart grit determination and instincts on a stat sheet didn't Trevor Bauer pitch in game three in the ALCS with a mangled finger

because that causing the ball to be covered in blood making it slippery that's heart grit and determination people go on the DL for less and you calling him out for not having heart, grit, and determination? No, he pitched

with a mangled finger from effing around with a drone, thereby costing his team a game in the World Series that they eventually lost 4 to 3. But hey, he's got a great war. I mean, bra, if you're going to consistently attack today's players with being less than you

at least get timeline rights FFS. My finger was fine in the WS, but don't let facts get in the way your bitterness towards today's game, I guess. Also, brie, we won that game in the ALCS that I had to come out due to my finger, so you're just wrong about everything here, including my war. It's not great, brie. It's good, brie. Wouldn't expect a butt-curt old man to understand that, though.

Missing the tweet. So if I'm understanding you correctly, bra, less innings is bad, right? Bras. Toggle's not working, bra. Oh, and I got to keep reading. And less wins is right, brah. Played yourself like a video game, Mr. Buckert.

Get back to me when your career is actually better than mine. Squirt. I came out of the bullpen until 92, you dumbass. But you're clearly too stupid to get it. No worries, man. Keep grinding for that 200-inning season. Maybe one season you'll show up in October when it really matters. Bro.

So you weren't good enough to be a starter? Nope. Just like you're a number four and a good team. I signed for 25K and went from there. You're a first rounder dealt three times because you have a basketball, a baseball like you, of eight. There's a reason a guy like Gara Cole thinks you're an idiot. L-O-L-L-L-L-L-L.

The irony and calling someone an idiot while you're. You are instead of you are. Hmm. And that's another edition of SportsMT, theater. I just can't get enough of grown-ass men fighting on Twitter. There was another Twitter fight this morning that got erased. Oh, what was that one? Radio people.

Okay. It is what it is. What are you going to do? How do you feel about Trevor Bauer getting in calling him but Kurt, and also getting in a video game, snipe. You know, as Kurt Schilling lost his fortune backing a video game that failed miserably. Oh, by the way, we should tell you that, and I want to give Brandon credit here,

Brendan had to go piecemeal that because the Twitter account of Garrig 38 is suddenly gone. Hmm. Have you ever suspended your account before? No. Neither have I. Do I feel like I want to sometimes? Sure. Yeah, I mean, if there is a way to, like, mute yourself or maybe,

Maybe shut your account up. We just don't look at it. But people I don't think are, are, have the, what do you call it? The control to do that. Self-control. I don't have to. I don't. Like, what's the longest you've gone without looking at Twitter?

I'll be brutally honest. It's probably been, maybe I've gone a day. I mean, I've been an active Twitter person since 2009. Yeah, I mean, not counting times when I'm out of the country or. Yeah, I'm talking about in the U.S., regular Joe life. Have you ever forgotten to at least look at it for a day? It's probably the first thing I do when I wake up, sadly enough. Well, I do it for news reasons.

No, that's what I do it. Yeah, honestly, if I didn't have this job, if I were just a pencil pusher or something like that, I might have gotten off Twitter. Hello to all your pencil pushers out there. We love you. You know what I mean. If I had a regular 9 to 5, which I don't, thankfully,

because I could never handle it. And number two, I wouldn't need sports news constantly, so I probably wouldn't have gotten addicted or at least would have released myself from that edition. Yeah. For me, it's about who's going to camps, who's getting signed, who's getting traded. And right now it's about news about COVID and news about negotiations and NBA. Because I'm very fascinated about the bubble, fascinated about the return of baseball.

But yeah, I probably have gone 24 hours. That's about as long as I've ever gone. I don't know. I don't think that I've gone more than seven or eight. Okay. That's when I'm asleep. That's why this show is good because we're honest and true. We could lie to you.

Yeah. And the average person does lie three times today. And have I lied to you so far on this show today? No. Well, probably. Yeah, I wouldn't tell you if I did. 155 on the Matt Thomas show, final hour of the show. We do have an NBA player that's going to not go because of COVID.

It'd be the first one of the three to go. Yes. And we'll discuss that. I do want to play some more sound bites that you from the video Zoom today from Dusty Baker and from James Click and from owner Jim Crane. I'd like to get you guys in the conversation, too, about the return of baseball. are you apprehensive at all about going back to minute-made park to see a game? It's either yes or no.

It's not a confusing question, right? We're not asking you to break down the nuances of a triangle offense in the NBA. Are you resentive? There's probably reasoning behind their opinion. Yeah, just tell us, are you apprehensive? Will you go? Will you not go? And tell me the reasons why yes or no.

713-212-5-790 is how you reach our program. 7-1-3-212-5-790 on Twitter at Brent. then Riley, who did a fantastic job with our sports empty theater at SportsRV, and I'm at SportsMT. What is today's edition of Believe or Not coming up in less than an hour from now? I was going to ask you that during the break. We will come up with the answer to said question and start at the final hour of the Matt Thomas show next on Sports Talk 790. It is 2 o'clock, final hour, Matt Thomas show. And after exhaustive conversation during the break, today's edition of Believe It or not.

and 222 will be what? Avery Bradley? Novak Djokovic? We could do people that have tested positive. We could do people that have tested positive for Corona. In a couple of years, we can do COVID or not. Can't wait for that one. That's not even two years, one year from now.

Although we're going to get everybody in first. Or it could be more cases coming at that point. Quick check of the headlines. Major League Baseball is going to officially resume. We'll let you hear what some of the important people had to say coming up in a minute. When totals are out for Major League Baseball this year, the top five in baseball. Atlanta Braves, 33 and a half. Minnesota twins, 34 and a half. Houston Astros, 35 and a half. New York Yankees, 38 and a half. Los Angeles Dodgers, 38 and a half.

Those are your top five when it comes to win totals for Las Vegas. Speaking of the Rona, Brooks Kepka, doesn't have the Rona, Ross, but his catty does. He's out of the Travelers Championship. The Rona isn't everybody, right? Yes. I mean, running through the list of people who just said again? Malcolm Brogden. I mean, Waver Bradley's ducking out because of he's concerned about his son. And by way, he's the first player that's leaving the NBA not going to the bubble because of Rona.

Trevor Rees is because of the custody battle for his son. And who is the other player? Davise Bertons. Davise Bertons is because he doesn't want, he wants to make sure he doesn't get hurt and he can make a big free agent contract. And Novak Djokovic and Nicola Yoakich. A lot of niche. Apparently they were hanging out together. Apparently,

Yukovic was playing soccer and hanging out with a bunch of people and not social distancing. Do you notice one thing about all these athletes? What's that? They're not going in their practice courts and getting the Rona. They're going on and partying is what they're doing. Have you seen the beaches? Have you seen the bars?

Have you seen? Between beaches, bars, and protests. The numbers are spiking. tests as well, for sure. Yeah. And that Orlando women's soccer team that apparently all went to the bar together. Yes. Which I said it would be cool to run into them.

And then you questioned me. I don't want you getting rejected a lot. It happens on a normal basis. I just don't want you to get an all-on-one setting. Man, it's okay. All you need is one yes. The sports RV story. There's a great joke I could talk about getting the one yes, and it just wouldn't be fair for air.

And I'd get a lot of women's sexist comments. No, that's fine. Let's move along. All right. 713, 212.5-7-90. You saw you reach our show. 7-13-21-2-5-7-90. Ross, we always open line on the show pretty much.

We are open line. Like this. That's an open line. For you. Okay. And for you in Pearland. Katie. At 7-13.

The Heights. 21-2. Kingwood. Pasadena. All you guys are there. I mean, for, and look, we're going to get a lot of our audience back. I'm very confident of this. especially with the start of the season.

But really, there could be, do you think there's a, I think you and I are kind of suffering through it? There is when is sports coming back fatigue. I just think there is. I mean, we're done with it now, right? Well, we're now on a, we're on the clock. Spring training starts. Problem is, how much, how are teams going to give us a look at, I mean, watching batting practice during spring training is boring. Watching guys throw bullpens are boring.

So that's good for about five or ten seconds, but it doesn't give you a great, rundown of what the season's going to be all about. I would like, I hope that AT&T and these other networks, if the Astros do play the Rangers and have some scrimmages, put those on. We need something to chew on, so to speak. Oh, yeah. I mean, what else?

What's on AT&T SportsNet Southwest? We know it's not the Mount Matt Thomas show. Okay, it should be. AT&T, if you're listening, we had Mike Stanton. It'd be a good way to cross from a mic. Yeah, no question. It's the World Poker Tour. Okay, he's got, we got one guy with King Queen,

and then we have, Get rid of that screen there. I can't see what the other guy's got. Oh, he's got a pair. Three of the four queens are gone. How about that? By my math, there's one left in the deck, Matthew. That's why you're the official poker analyst of the Matt Thomas show.

Thank you for that. All right. You got a 6-7-2. Two diamonds. Matt, should we get you on play-by-play or the poker game, Matt? We got a possible flush going there with one side. Yeah, we do. Look at this.

King High flush? Ooh, pair of sevens. Got two pair by one dude. He's going, oh, he's already all in. They've already gone all in this. all right float that last card and it is hurry up an ace the queens hold up the queens hold out matt your thoughts um the guy needed to get he was in a little bit of a chip battle and he needed to get back in the game a little bit so he thought it's decided to be a little risking goal and he won

okay and he's up to three hundred thirty six thousand dollars in chips what's the deepest you ever gone on a poker tournament like legitimate organized cool ass go poker Big tournament? I made the final table of the Belagio tournament. And how many people weren't in it to start with? I want to say

like 35, 40. Okay, and the payout on that was? May you say? I made 600 bucks. I got sixth. Okay. So the problem is

if you were playing poker with me and you've done this plenty of times, I get fatigued. I like playing poker with you. Because the longer we go, the faster I want to get

out of there, which means I'm going to be betting crazy towards the end. I like that. Bluffing like a muda. Yeah. All in like a muda. I played in a World Series of it,

but I was out in like three hours. Yeah, I think I invested in you on that one. No, not that one. I don't think. I think you got me in the, you know, Caesar's one. Okay. 713, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 5. No, you think you're right. Thank you. 7.1, 3,1, 2, 5, 790. Michael, listen, Katie.

Michael, how fired up for you about the return of Major League Baseball? I am thrilled. I actually have been checking every single day for the last month, just to see what news is out. It's not been good, but

it is what it is. We're getting it back, though. Any hesitation about going to games again? I personally would. I know that it's, I'm 28 years old, so that might be a millennial thing to say. That's okay. But I just wanted to know, obviously, y'all haven't read that 100-page report, right? Do you want me to? I'll do it if you absolutely insist. No. No, I don't want to figure through that. Okay.

So is it going to be like a buck? if the pitcher licks his fingers or spits or something, you know, like, I just don't understand how they're going to enforce that because they're going to, if they find people for it, then they're going to make it killing, and there's going to be an up-forward. Do you know what the penalties are going to be for that kind of thing, spitting seeds? No, I don't know that, and you know what? I probably need to do a little research on that, especially getting closer to the year. I do believe, if I read properly that, Michael, they're going to be able to have some sort of

towelette in the back of their pants that they can rub their fingers with on that? That they spit on before they put it in their pocket? I don't know if they spit on it, but it would be... And I hate to use this word because I'm a grown-ass man, but perhaps it'll be a moist towelette, if you will. Oh, Jesus Christ. I know.

But yeah, I was just kind of wondering, you know, if they do find people for it, there's going to be a whole other, you know, it's going to be a whole other negotiation. Yeah, Michael, because you can't, You can't penalize them by saying, all right, free walk or free base hit or the guy's not out. They would have to be a finable offense. Like you would be fine for having, I guess, pine tire in your hat or something like that. I don't know.

That's a great question. Yeah. No, I appreciate you. I'll hang up on this. Thank you. What do you think? Let's be the commissioners. Are we going to warn them once and then fine them a couple thousand dollars every time?

Is that the right way to do it? Almost like how about you treat it like technical, fouls in the NBA. You hit a certain number of infractions. It's a fine. You hit more infractions. It's a bigger fine and on and on. Well, that's how they do it with steroids. You know, your first time you get caught, it's a certain suspension, 50 games, and it goes a hundred minutes. Yeah, how about an escalator? But with fines, starting off with a small one. I think you should be warned first. Yeah, okay. You're not fine for the first one. You're fine for your third one or your fifth one. Let me ask you this. Can Jose Al-T, you don't know this,

Brandon, but Jose Al-Tubei chooses fingernails all throughout the game. I mean, choose. Choose He can't do that anymore. Are you going to be, are you going to be suspended? Will you be penalized if you go for a fist bump, a high five? That to me probably can be pretty fixed easily forgotten about. Can you do elbow bumps? No, you can't touch. No.

Air five? No. Dang it. I guess you could air five. Yeah. Raise the roof. Are you bringing it back raising the roof? Oh, my God.

Remember when that was a thing? Yeah, 15 years ago. Yeah, I could see you raising the roof at a rock. It's game in 1999. Matter of fact, I am an anti-high-five. Matt, I could see you raising the roof and doing the cabbage patch at some point on Richmond in the 90s. I can still do the cabbage patch better than anybody else in Houston, Texas right now. I knew it.

But no raising the roof. That was Cynthia Cooper by herself. It's a lot of people. So you hit a home run. Boom. Move around the bases. Do you not touch first base coach? What if it's a walk-off?

Everybody mobs at home. Everybody mobs at home plate. Nope. Nope. Remember a Carl's Correa? I know a lot of things. None of that's happening this year. Rossi, do you remember back in March when this first thing happened?

We are talking about when things are going to resume normality. Did that word normality? Normalcy. Normalcy, I like better. I told you 2022. Yeah. Well, it might not even be there. Full crowds.

High fives, spitting, chewing, grabbing your testicles, all the, the normal things that male professional athletes do. What's wrong? Where I'm right. 2022. Concerts, 2022.

There are going to be another ugly labor negotiation in the beginning in this spring? Absolutely. I was hoping you'd say that. Do you think things ended well here now? No. I think there's a little bit of bad blood. Does Tony Clark show up?

Or is he replaced? I think, uh, do you think the players, I don't think they have a problem with the way. No, in fact, they've done everything they could. He seems like a tough hard ass to me. I like that. He is imposing. He seems very bright.

Why wasn't he better than a better major league player than he was? He's a beast. Some people are better leaders and some people are better players. Brendan, what's your favorite Tony Clark as a Detroit Tiger moment? You know, I actually do remember him being a tiger, but those tigers were bad. And it's his fault. It's all his fault. I mean, Tony Clark, I mean, looks like a guy could 48 home runs a season.

He probably hit six. So we're leaving the baseball negotiations up to a guy who was a failed Detroit Tiger. Well, his nickname was Tony the Tiger apparently. Well, duh. It's like everybody with the first name of Ray is automatically sugar. That's true. And maybe with the first name, George is always sweet. Or Lou, sweet Lou.

Sweet Lou. He hit 30 home runs. When? Three different seasons for the Tigers. What years? 97, 98, 99. What was going on during that time? What do you mean?

A baseball? Continue. You could probably line up the time he left the Tigers with the time they started actually being a good baseball team pretty closely. He left the Tigers in 01. To go where? Boston. How do you do there? Terribly.

How do you have many home runs did he hit? Well, he only played 90 games. He hits three or three. Okay, so 30 home runs, 30 home runs, 30 home runs in 97, 98, 99. He goes to the Red Sox and hits three. Oh, then he bounced back and he hit 30 for the diamond backs in 2005. It's just an up and down career. Career OPS over 800, 824.

Oh, that's really good. That's not, that's very good. 15 year career, one-time All-Star? There's nothing to sneeze at. What kind of money do he make over his career? Let me get to scrolling. Spot track, right? Yeah, a 22.8 million.

Damn, he did really good. Yeah, don't make fun of Tony, Tony the Tiger Clark, Matt. All right. We'll hear from the head honchos of the asteros next. 2.13 on the Matt Thomas show. Believe it or not, 30 minutes away, 40 minutes away, sports talk 790. This is awesome rivers. It's good.

It's back. Hey, it's the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. Real quick rundown of what happened today on the 10 o'clock Zoom call. And again, we love our people here in the technology department of IHard. They do a great job locally. Wonderful. We don't have the freshest equipment, but that's how they hear no way. not their fault.

No, it's not. Matter of fact, we can't even use these computers in here don't even have cameras on them. Correct. Are we the only company in America doesn't have computers with cameras on them now? No. Can you zoom off your Dell? Yeah. But that's yours.

Yes. And also have a webcam. Yeah. That's why your Twitch channel is exploding. Oh, it's just huge. Twitch. Dot TV slash Sports RV. How much money man off that?

this year. Do you mind saying? Is that your business? I can ask. Not a lot. You're the nosiest person I've ever known. There's others. Nope, it's you. I'm the nosiest period.

You know what it is? I'm just, I'm inquisitive. Okay, you semantics. It's like people are always starting up their YouTube channels. Do you make money off YouTube channels? I think, yeah, off ads. I think forever you, I mean, you're not making a lot of money. I think for a million views, you get a couple thousand bucks.

So these big YouTubers, they're millionaires. So what if you have like... There's a kid who made... He plays with toys on YouTube and his family made like $30 million last year. What? Yeah. And these Aaron Paul and Jake Paul who go out and do pranks and all this other stuff.

What if you had 2,000 views? Your guy is the ones your sons went to go see. Dude perfect. Yeah, those guys are nuts. Those guys make millions. And they took money from me. Well, there you go. So what if you had like 2,000 views?

Do you make any money? Probably a couple bucks. I don't know. Twitch is different than YouTube. You make subscriptions and bits and donations. But you can't have a career off of YouTube unless you're just mega star. I would consider what you say like about podcasts. The top like 0.5% are making money.

That's why the 15 minute podcast, it was so successful. I said, you know, I want others to thrive. Yeah, we appreciate that. All right. Jim Crane is the owner of the Astros. And he says, hey, we don't have fans in our stadium. We're going to suffer. We have drawn very well the last few years and it's NARC to 50 and, you know, there's really only five numbers, guys.

It's the sponsorships. It's your local TV money. It's your gate and your seats, merchandising and concessions. And then we have the central fund money that we all split up, which is mostly national TV money. So our only revenue is some of the central fund money. when they start playing games, you only get paid for games you play, and then our regional sport network and money for the games we play. So revenues are going to be way down, you know, way, way down.

You can probably just take the number of the revenues of previous years, and that's the revenue number, and then the cost is still there. All right. Meanwhile, to get people and revenue going again, the question is, will there be fans at Minutemade Park this season? That's the plan. I think, you know, we've still got to go through the, player protocol. They're very focused on that and the staff that's going to be associated with the games once we fire up. I think the intent at some point is to get the fans in the ballpark. At one time, you know, we were, we were at 50% with the state. I think that's probably going to move around by the time we get to opening days. We really won't know to opening day. And, you know, we're just going to stay focused on the protocol for the players and the staff and make sure we can keep everybody as safe as they can at this time. Last question, which was asked him, one of the last questions, was we've not discussed.

I'm going to, it's a minute 14. I'm not going to ask you to play what you're talking about, Jim Crane. But what are you, just in a roundabout way, without going to verbiage, the question is on the Red Sox investigation and the Yankees letter. As you get an email. What do you think he's going to generally say? It's a minute 14. I think he's going to, he's not going to answer the question directly. I believe you are accurate.

Well, listen, we, I can speak for the Astros. I'm not doing the investigations, and I'm not in the courthouse, and I don't want to be. But listen, we broke the rules. We got, you know, punished. You know, we accepted the punishment, and, you know, we did what we did. We let two of our key guys go. We think we've handled it appropriately. I'm not happy about the whole situation, but, you know, we got to accept what we

did. We own it. And, you know, I'll talk to the players about it one more time. And then, you know, hopefully we can move on from that and, you know, make sure it doesn't happen again. I can't, I can't manage, you know, how the other teams are investigated and treated. That's handled at the office, central office. And, you know, it's the commissioner's job to do that. So, you know, what happens, what happens, you know, we'll see. I think, I think the story will continue for a long time. And it will always be discussed. And it's unfortunate we were right in the middle of that and I'm not happy about it and I apologize numerous times. It shouldn't happen. We shouldn't have done it. You know, we're sorry we did it.

We've apologized to the fans. We just want to go play baseball now and make sure that doesn't happen again. He's basically saying, I just don't want to talk about it anymore. Let me ask you about, do you think there's different levels of being mad? Like if, like when you get bad grades in your report card. Your dad is disappointed and mad, right? Yes. If you wind up getting a speeding ticket, your dad or your friends are mad at you for doing that. But if you wind up getting in a car accident, it's your fault because you were staring at your phone instead of focusing, that's a real, that's a real, real kind of mad, right? When Jim Crane found out about the whole sign stealing thing and the fact that he was going to have to fire his manager and general

manager with us, do you think he was dad disappointed or irate? I can't believe this and then just swore up and down forever. Do you think Jim Crane threw a lamp in his office? Or was he like,

oh my God, what are we going to do? This is awful. What do you, what levels of mad do you think that Jim Crane got to? I don't know how mad he would. I mean, probably more, I would say more disappointed in disbelief. Like, are you kidding me? This is if he didn't know anything, which I don't believe that he did.

Like the ultimate mad would be you, your kids commit crimes, your wife cheats on you, somebody stole money from you, that kind of mad, you know, just steam coming out of your ears. I don't think that would happen with him, no. You don't think when he's like... He didn't strike me as that kind of guy. That's what I'm saying. Because we only see him in front of the camera. We don't see him behind the camera.

That's true. He's been on the show a couple times. but he's been very level-headed every time he's been on. I think that's how he is. I think that's one of the trait you need to have to be a good businessman as well. Like I think probably, and I'm not saying to stop talking to school, I've been telling Fratita can get pretty mad. Oh, that's true.

I think he's a good businessman, too. I think Mark Cuban can get really mad if he wants to. I agree with that. I don't know if Cal McNair has any emotions at all. I agree with that. Diffin strokes for different folks. Let's go over some interesting owners. Who are the most, Jerry Jones.

I bet Jerry Jones can. can get a burr up his ass with the best of them. True. I don't think the Rooney family necessarily, I don't think whatever Rooney's still alive, I lose track of who's alive and who's not, is one of those guys who don't come across as yellers and screamers. Now again, again, different stores for different folks.

Everybody leads the way they want to. But could you imagine getting that phone call or having someone saying, Jim, I got news for you. You know that 2017 World Series you won? Your players helped win that championship because they used video cameras and a trash can system and signed ceiling. And you're going to say, wait, what? They did what again?

Could you imagine that, oh, by the way, this is going to get ugly. And we got a player within your own organization outing you. And majorly baseball is coming after you. And there's thought of us having the trophy taken away from us. Could you be that calm and cool during that time? Could you just drink heavily for a couple days? I don't know what you would have to do. They've got to be devastating.

But every time, to his credit, every time we have seen him, his demeanor really hasn't changed. Now, grand, father time helps a little bit of that. But even as this was happening, even that press conference he had... It didn't look great. Den was clearly not happy. But he said what he had to say. He showed very little moments.

I don't think answered a lot of questions, right? No. And also, he said, I mean, people were upset that he said he didn't think it helped much, which is up for debate. Yeah. Oh, it helped. That's what Carlos Correa said. Everybody said it.

And that's so many terms. I mean, nobody point blank said, yes. But how much did it help and how much did it happen to play on? To each individual player. But I just, I was just listening to him going, you know, I just don't know if he'd be one of those guys. I mean, you're afraid of him because he's obviously a powerful, you know, businessman slash baseball owner and influential Houstonian. But he just sounded like there's nothing more I can say.

I'm sorry. I fired people. He's probably thinking, I did the right thing by showing how mad I was, by firing my top baseball executive and one of the most respected managers in the game. There's nothing more I can do. So if you're coming out to get more from me, you've taken everything from me. I've had to rebuild my entire front office. I've had to get a new field manager,

and I'm going to be made fun of and embarrassed anywhere I go, at least outside of Houston for the foreseeable future. What more do you want? He said, I'm sorry. We apologize. I did everything I could. Let's play baseball. Unfortunately, Ross, 29 under cities,

don't give a damn what Jim Crane or the Astro fan base has to say about let's just play baseball. That's okay. No, it's not okay. We're going to defend them here. We are going to defend him. We got you Houston. We got you taken care of. Just the other cities may be not nearly as nice.

All right. Believe it or not, 24 minutes away. Your phone calls are welcome right now. 713212-790. 7-1-3-21-5-7-90 on Twitter at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Brendan Riley underscore, with a message here now for hoops, basketball, goals, and sporting equipment. 281-351-9822 is their number. That's Keith Tate's number over at Hoops.

281, 351, 9822. They do a great job with assembling basketball goals for a lifetime of outdoor play. Your kids need to get away from their computers. Get outside. Today may not be the best day for it, but generally speaking, to shoot the basketball, to learn the game, do it in your own driveway, in your cul-de-sac, whatever your HOA will allow, and you might as well do it with the best basketball goal on the planet, and that is one from hoops.

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What a play. Through post season. Straight shots, pop a bottle. October happens here. Playing in October. Listen to the home of the. Astros, Sports Talk 790. 234 on Sports Talk

790. We take the program to 3 o'clock. What's, believe it or not today, Yokevich? And his parting ways with soccer and volleyball girls? Well, booze. We don't know about that. Blow. He's married, I think.

Or is he? Ooh. This is where you wish you could phone a Charlie on this one, because he could be, he'd help you out big time on this, right? Right on top of that. Believe it. Won his first grand slam, the Weldon, 2011.

I was there. Didn't vacation there, but just went for the event. Came right back, same day. All right. 713, 2125-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. I haven't gotten into tennis in 30 years. I'll still watch the finals.

I usually, semifinals, I try to pick it up and start watching for the majors. I think it's fan. All of them? You watch Australian Open? Yeah, well, that's a little difficult. I'll try to record the Australian up, and that's on, I mean, the Wimbledon, who got in the epic Wimbledon match? Was it Joachovic and Federer last year? You just makes a match, you know, at some point throw Jim Kerr's name of there.

I like high-level tennis. I used to, I played tennis in high school, so. What happened to your life? What do you mean? You were a great student, got a scholarship to University of Texas, played tennis, and now you're with me. What happened? Don't think I don't lie awake at night.

Think about that, man. Everything for a reason. You were destined to be on this show, 12 to 3, Sports Talk 790. I'll be on the Matt Thomas show to the day I die. I really haven't religious. I've watched. I liked Pete Sampras. I liked Andre Agassi.

I really liked him when he was with Brooke Shields, but he went up marrying Steffie Graff, right? Who's that? Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi? Oh, yeah, yeah. He married Stephanie Graff. Pete Sampras married that hot chick from Bill Nguyen. Yeah, the Bond hair girl, yeah. Bridget Nielsen, Bridget Wilson, Bridget Wilson.

Bridget Nielsen was Rocky. Or Mark Gasson was a girl. But before that, it would be Connorson McElroe. On the women's side, it would be Chris Everett Lloyd against either, usually Martina. Bridget Wilson was a former Miss Teen USA. Or was she? Richard Wilson, believe it or not, coming up. Why isn't tennis played more often?

They don't need social distancing. I mean, I guess somebody's handling the tennis balls. What? So as long as they're properly handling the balls, everything will be fine. Yes. Wash them. Sanantize them. Scrub them.

You don't let the balls just dangle around. Right. Yeah. Makes sense. If the balls are in play, then everything's fine. Once you get a dirty ball, you get it out of there. Yes. You got old dirty balls. You can't play with those.

No. No. Clean balls. Clean balls help with the play. What are we talking about here on the show now? Well, Novak Djokovic is going to be, believe it or not. Okay. Help me out here.

Brandon, what is what else going on? in sports. I feel like we've exhausted baseball because we've got 30 more days of, hey, baseball is right around the corner. And 30 more days of, hey, basketball is right around the corner. Did I depress you with college football yesterday? A little bit. Did I? I am very, the disjointed nature of the sport really worries me. And whose fault is that? It's nobody. No, it's, no, it's college football's fault. There isn't a single human being, like if you were to name the Graham Puba, who do you think if Oliver Luck called you tomorrow and said, hey, we have this raw deal with the XFL, I'd like to be your grand commissioner of college football.

Would you hire? I think legally, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. We need big angry in here. Sure. Isn't it more difficult to sell that it's amateurism and it's not for profit and it's a nonprofit organization if you have somebody who's a commissioner of the whole thing? But how do you commission?

where the haves, Alabama, USC, Ohio State, are so far from the have-nots. Troy, Texas State, U-TEP, New Mexico State. Because the NFL, all teams in theory are equal. In baseball, you try to have them equal, although the New Yorks and Kansas cities are two different animals. In the NBA, Milwaukee is on par with any of the great teams. although a lot of us do the draft. I just don't know if you could, if there is some one or some governing body

that could actually run a sport when the dollars and cents of what a power school like Florida makes is compared to what Washington State makes. You know what I'm saying? And how within that group of 100-something FBS schools, you have a group of, you have a power five, and then you have the group of six who just feel like bastard stepchildren.

I don't know. That's why there isn't one. That's why there isn't one. It's just too difficult. Mark Emmer should be doing it. Mark. There's 100. I mean, you have 120-something entities. That's the thing. Baseball, it's 30 owners and you're all, I mean, sure, there's the Oakland A's and there's New York Yankees. But you have 11 conferences now. You're under the same TV deals. You're under the same umbrella. You trade players within each other. It's a lot easier. And it's just, it's just jointed. It's just the nature of the sport. It's just it is what it is. There's no strong leadership. Kirk Herbsters got a good feel for college football. But the job may be too big for him. You need a lawyer, right? You need a guy with an economic background, a legal background, a guy that's run a Fortune 500 company.

There isn't a human being alive that I think would want that job. Because again, at the end of the day, the Power 5 schools are going to tell you how to run your business as compared to looking out for the best interest of the entire sport. Eric's in Arizona at 240 on 790. Eric? Hey, man. Probably on delay here. I'm listening on I-Heart, but I just had a comment on how easy it is,

easier or not easy to know what pitch is coming and be able to hit that. I mean, you could probably ask the Yankees from 2017. I feel that they probably knew a curveball was coming from Lance McCullors after, I don't know, maybe the first nine, and yet they weren't able to put that in the way. That was my only comment. Thanks, Eric. Every individual said it differently.

There are some people that want to know what's coming because they think they can make the adjustment in that short of period of time. There are other players that have fully admitted, Ross, that they don't want to know what's coming because if they do know, then there's extra pressure to make contact with it. So it's to each his own. I don't, there's no guarantee that if you know what the pitch is coming, you're going to be hit it effectively. Correct. Just like even though the number is. bear out steroid use helped just because you were in the weight room,

pumping iron and doing everything that you did with illegal narcotics was going to automatically make you a bigger homeowner hitter. There are a lot of examples that prove that it can help, but it was no guarantee. You still had to have the proper bat and eye coordination. There's just the unknown element of it. I mean, Josh Reddick didn't want it. Jose Altuvae didn't want

it because of their approaches to the plate. How much did it help others? One of the reasons they stopped is because other teams were catching on to it and you look at the report and they say players were arguing over whether this was distracting or whether it was helping. So, I mean, the Danny Farquard,

that game, that White Sox game, didn't the Astros get like three hits and lose one to nothing or something like that? So, I mean, we don't know how much it helped. And their road numbers were better than their home numbers. I would say this, though. I've never been in a position to obviously try to hit a major league pitch. But if you're in the major leagues and you are struggling,

you're a 225 hitter. You would have to think if you knew a curveball was coming, it's going to help you out. If you're a professional hitter and you get in everything and you're a 340 batting average without knowing it, then it's probably not going to make

that big of a difference for you. But for a guy that's trying to hold on to a major league career and stay with a team, if he knows a slaughter is coming, he's going to wait for that break just a split second more. It's going to give him a split second

better opportunity to make content and get that base hit. Yeah, I think the argument or the disconnect is, if you know for sure it's going to come, what's coming, it's helping, but there wasn't 100% accuracy on the trash can bank. There wasn't.

And I think it's, to me, ultimately, it does put extra pressure on you too, because then if you don't make contact, you don't get a hit, then everyone's going to look around and go, we gave you the pitch. Why aren't you hitting out of the ballpark? Or why aren't you making solid contact? There may be an extra pressure that some of those guys wouldn't have wanted. Let's get ready to play, believe it or not today. And we'll do that coming up after I tell you about, oops,

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