The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - MLB Incompetence, What Do We Call Shortened Season & Will You Support It?

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

So much larger than life. Yeah. Lunch timers is the Matt Thomas show. 12 o'clock at H-town. What's happening in luncht timers? Good afternoon to you and welcome to a Tuesday edition of the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790 alongside our producer, Brendan Riley. Co-host extraordinaire, Sports RV, Ross, Villal. I'm cranky A.F. Matt Thomas.

What are you cranky about, Maddie? Have you checked sports headlines in the last 12 to 18 hours? Probably the last 90 days. Oh, yeah. March 26th or whatever it was, we'll take a peek at. We will work the pro-rated schedule and look forward to negotiating with Major League Baseball and its owners about putting together a season when the season is ready to go. Instead, now, last night, ESPN Sports RV. Rob Manfred goes on the big board and says,

we may not have a season at all. Rhetoric? Or do you think he's telling the truth? That to me, after seeing it last night, was a firm push by me to say, we're going to get this together, we're going to talk this out, figure out to make sure you're not going to sue us

for unfair labor practices. We need writing. We need to make sure that you're actually going to behave yourselves, and we'll play baseball. Major League Baseball Players Association saying, We're outraged by this thought of a threat of a non-season. We've been ready to play. We were ready to play weeks ago.

We're ready to play months ago. This whole thing has been a CF. And Rob Manford, you ready for this at 1202 in the afternoon? Is the worst commissioner in sports. Ooh. You know who's held that forever? Gary Batman. No, we don't even count that.

Okay. I mean, we sort of do, but not around here. We don't. Don't people hate Gary Batman? I think they do. Screw up a lot. Yeah. But again, it's the four sports.

Okay. He doesn't count. Well, at least here he doesn't count. Okay. He might count in St. Louis. Chicago, Detroit, Toronto. Toronto. Calgary, if you will.

Okay. But the worst commissioner, Roger Goodell, runs the most profitable sport, one of the most profitable industries, and he no longer has to take the number three spot. Rob Manford, in his leadership or lack thereof, is completely screwing this up. Well, I know the owners are 100%

committed to getting baseball back on the field. Unfortunately, I can't tell you that I'm 100% certain that's going to happen. I had been hopeful that once we got to common ground on the idea that we were going to pay the players full prorated salary, that we would get some cooperation in terms of proceeding under the agreement that we negotiated with the MLBPA on March 26th. Unfortunately, over the weekend, while Tony Clark was declaring his desire to get back to work, The union's top lawyer was out telling reporters, players, and eventually getting back to owners that as soon as we issued a schedule, as they requested, they intended to file a grievance claiming they were entitled to an additional billion dollars. Obviously, that sort of bad faith tactic makes it extremely difficult to move forward in these circumstances.

Has Brendan meant Florida Evans yet? I don't know that he has. Brendan, do you mean I do Who Florida Evans is? I have no clue All right, let me give you three options I'll give you four A

A congresswoman here in Southeast Texas Who is known for saying outlandish things And being in the media spotlight That's A B, a famous cook Who serves amazing cage of cuisine Here in Southeast Texas C, a former mayor

of Houston, who is political talk radio, or D was a television character on a sitcom in the 70s called Good Times. I'm going to go with D. Yeah, I didn't sell A through C very well that. That's fine, man. Those, Brendan, are the most famous words

she's ever said in her entire career as the mom on Good Times. We play her in those quotes when the time is right. And the time is right. The time was right. Play it again, Ross. Just keep... You want the whole...

thing? How about I just play this again? No, I'm talking about playing Flo. Oh, I was going to say, I don't want to hear Rob Manfred again. No, we got... We can't play that enough, can we? Well, how about this, Matt? Unfortunately, I can't tell you that I'm 100% certain that's going to happen. What, four or five

days after this? I can tell you unequivocally, we are going to play Major League Baseball this year. First all, unequivocally is a huge word. Yes. I mean, how many points in on a describal board is that word? I don't even Spell it? Yeah.

Well, I can, yeah. Okay. I guess I thought it. I think. I took some time. Right. But it's definitely like a round three word, right?

Unequivocally. It's even hard to even pronounce it. But we did. I spelled it right in the system. Yeah. He's... What do I get? Nothing.

Now, granted, we got to say these commissioners of all these sports work for owners. Yes. So they're just, I mean, I guess... Mouthpieces, to some extent, yes. But I think if you're a commissioner, you've got to be more than that. Yes. You're a response. for the goodness of your sport, the integrity of the sport, for making sure the sport

continues to thrive, no matter what it is, football, basketball, baseball. Make sure your sport flourishes, Matt. Whatever. It's not flourishing. Here's what Rob Manfred's counselors, if you look at the year-in-review. Yes. He completely annihilates the Astros in a science ceiling scandal. He completely doesn't do the due diligence in the Boston Red Sox.

I don't care what he says. I think they did due diligence. They just treated them with kids. kid gloves. Kid gloves and used a video guy as the fall guy. J.T. Watkins. Then, for a multiple time offender, after saying in 2017, if you do this again, they're going to be hell to pay, and there was not held to pay.

No, there was a slap on the wrist. And it was the same guy. The same guy. On a protected franchise. With the manager of that team that was involved in the previous science. ceiling scandal. Okay, so we got that going for us. Then we have the pandemic.

Then we have this negotiated, let's, you know, prorate the salaries. And we'll go back to the negotiating table. And it's been months and months and months of months while we watched the calendar, Ross, slip, sliding away for our full season. It went from 80 to 114. There was never a time that the players and the owners

were ever on the same page. And we're kind of out, I guess, because everybody has their own media leaks, that the two sides haven't even really formally negotiated anything since June the 8th. When you are fighting the calendar sports RV, doesn't the commissioner have to say, listen, bosses, I love y'all, appreciate the large salary I make, but we can't negotiate once every seven days. And we can't fight in the world of media, which is exactly what we asked them not to do three weeks ago. And they did it anyway. And this is where we are. This is our worst fear.

If you tape, I mean, check the tape of our shows, like you said, three weeks ago, we felt like, okay, there was a good faith agreement in March. They'll get something done. They're smart. They know that fans want baseball. They have to know that not having a season would be ruinous to their reputation and lose them fans. They know that they have to know that other things are going on, so they need eyeballs on their sport. And they also have to know that this would look even worse if they negotiate.

the public. They don't seem to know any of that. They didn't listen to us? No. Why didn't they listen to us, Matt? Should we be commissioners of baseball? I think we do a fairly good job of it. I'll take the $22 million or $40 million or whatever he's making.

So with all that being said, and last night we had a great Monday night meeting, and we hope that you guys will check in with us once a week. It's either at 7 o'clock or 8 o'clock depending on schedules. Facebook.com slash sports talk 7-0? Yeah, we had a really fun time yesterday, which we need to get to one of the questions about best buffets and which one you go with. I thought it was interesting that one of our cohorts had an answer to. I can't, yeah, we'll get to that.

We'll get to that. So I thought after the show, I would put a Twitter poll question up, and there's still two hours left to vote on this. So if you want to go to my Twitter account at SportsMT and to put your phone in, we'd certainly take it. My question was, even with the bickering and lack of true negotiation, will you watch and support a 48 to 52 game MLB season? 64.8% said yes.

I'm startled by that number. I thought it would have been way lower. Because what does social media like to do when something radical happens? I'm never going to do something again. Yes. I'm never going to go to that restaurant again. I'm never going to watch that show again. I'm not going to follow this.

And I thought we'd get the same sort of conversation. Yes. It just shows you how crazy starved we are for sports. I don't know, Matt. 35% of people is a lot of people to say no. But see, I take the plus minus on that as if you're, know, like for instance, when the Astros moved the American League West, how many calls we get on the show? Hundreds. I'm done with baseball. How dare they move our cherished National League

team out of there? I don't care if they play the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Angels and all that. It's, I'm done with baseball. And they came back. Well, they came back because Astros started winning 100 games every season. But that was my point is that it didn't really matter who you played as long as you won. I would have thought it would have been more in the 55-45 category. But I think, frankly, 65. percent of the vote. We still have two hours left again. If you want to vote, go to my Twitter at SportsMT and put your vote in. That's still for as nasty as this has been. There has never been any day we've never come in here on this show in the last month and said, oh, it sounds like

they're getting closer. Rock, have we ever said that? Nope. No. Never. Well, tell me when. We thought baseball was getting closer. I said that when baseball finally went to a pro-rate, they were talking about proration rather than sliding scales of revenue sharing. I was like at least they're talking the same language a little bit. But that lasted maybe 48 hours, if that. So Jeff Passing in a few things to say this morning. And I watched the Korean Baseball League game today, and he was the first thing on. So I'll give you what he had to say. He's really in tune on that.

We'll play with more Manfred. Jake Caput from the Athletic is going to join us at 1 o'clock this afternoon. So we'll get some more baseball from him. And we look forward to hearing from you. If you're in that 65% category of, yeah, even it's a 48 to 52 game schedule, I'm watching. Tell me why. and if you're in that 35% that says, no, I'm done. I want to hear explanation as well.

I'd like to hear both sides. If you'd like to join us and give us your opinion on where you side on this, 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Also on the show today, I think we've learned a lesson on why college and young people, and for that matter, anybody needs to stop running to social media as soon as they're pissed off.

Because sometimes a phone call, an email, a Zoom call, a text can solve a lot of things. I'll give an example of that. We'll also hear a little bit from Charles Barkley about whether or not he thinks the NBA season should move forward. And believe it or not today, Ross, I don't think we've ever done any believe or not

on all things, Rob Manfred. I feel like we kind of need to. Are we going to? I think we're going to. How old do you know the commission? I don't, okay. I know you'd be pissed about it. I need to be consulted on these in the future.

Okay, well, I will say Rob Manford, you go with option B. 713-212-0-790 with a message right now for Oops Steam cleaning. If you'd like to get your carpets professionally done the right way at a very fair price, pick up the phone and call 281-8-2-2-0-561. 281-8-2-0-6-1. You can also check them out online at Oopsteam.com. They'll take care of your carpets, your area rugs, your Oriental rugs,

which are very delicate to clean. If you have a lot of tile and grout in your home, they'll do a great job of cleaning with that, too. I ask you to do is call, get a price evaluation, and you will be satisfied with a group of people that are taking care of Houstonians and everybody throughout the greater Houston area. 281-821-8-8-2-2-2-6-1. 281-8-2-0-561. You can also check them out online, oobsteme.com.

Time is 1218. It is the Matt Thomas Show. Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-790. Again, the poll question today is, would you support despite all, everything. going on, a 48 to 52 game schedule. I have said that I'm going to largely check out, but again, it's easy for me to say this because I'm in the middle of June here and we don't have it.

If I get real sports again, my guess is I might probably will change my tune. And well, you're allowed to change your tune. That's the one thing about sports opinions that I find interesting about our business. And for that matter, people just talking in a bar or a restaurant. We as a group as a society are allowed to change our opinion on things. It's always this, you know, if you change your tune, it's all supposed to be, oh, I caught you. I thought you said this. Opinions are a lot to be changed.

Right now, to me, 48 to 52 game schedule sounds 100% gimmicky. It sounds 100% non-legit. And it also sounds like to me that it's a season that I'll be questioning really the heart, desire, and the soul of these baseball players. Conversely, we had Joe George. our buddy was on our Zoom last night, on Monday night meeting, he's like, it's going to be as intense

as it ever been before. I've never seen the first game of any baseball season ever be intense. It's going to have to be if they're going to play 48 to 52 games this year. It'll be definitely interesting to watch.

I think the quality of the baseball would be good because you threw that to us last night and you've thrown it to me a number of times. I think they're going to put their hearts in it, I think because they don't really have any other choice. Certainly guys who are on contracts or certainly guys who are looking to be free agents

or just guys who are out there and loving to compete. Basically, everybody on the entire Astros' roster love baseball and they love to compete. That's why the team is good. I think we're going to watch. I think you're going to watch, Matt, and you're going to be watching the games, and you're going to get into them.

And I think I am as well. My question isn't us, because we literally do sports for a living. We kind of like sports. The question is, and we had a tweet from somebody during the break, what are the real consequences of baseball? People ultimately come back. The dollars will continue to go up. I think we are in this bubble of diehard fandom where we're always going to come back.

It doesn't matter if there's no baseball for three years. They come back. We're coming back. But it's about the casual fans. It's about the fans who don't live and breathe baseball. It's about the fans who kind of flip it on every now. And then those are the people who you need to continue to grab a hold of and keep their attention for eyeballs on your television sets. And really, those are the people you need, not necessarily for the game of the week or the Thursday night.

game against the Mariners. You need them for postseason time. That's the TV networks. That's why Turner paid a billion dollars. Billion dollars. So the question is going to be, will those casual fans who have checked on a baseball all of a sudden kick in in mid-delayed October and say, okay, I'll see what y'all are doing. Wow. I guess college football and NFL is always going around during the World Series. So that's not necessarily really an excuse. But maybe a little bit of it during the playoffs is going to be NBA as well. So the attentions are going to be split. The pie is going to be

split more than normal. I wonder whose offices with the door closed and no speaker phones and nobody hearing anything are saying, we've got to play.

Because there are people that are sending out text, emails, I have a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend that believe there are a handful of MLB owners

that think it'd be in the best interest of their sport just to take the season off. That even playing 48 to 52 games just, you know, from the animosity of the players to paying these guys to the millions and millions of dollars are going to lose by not having fans in the stands, that, you know what? Let's just go ahead and take the full loss this year, come back bigger and better than that forever in 2021. I don't feel players are thinking, Matt. I think the player, if there are players that want to skip out this year, Ross, it's probably because of COVID, perhaps more than anything else.

But I believe there might be some owners. And that's what I want to know, which of the two rooms, the room with the players or the room with the owners. or the room with the owners are the one saying, we've got to figure this out, we've got about seven to ten days, or we're going to lose this baseball season. I couldn't tell you which side wants to play more, but I will tell you this.

Both of them aren't that enthused about playing under these conditions. Or we would have baseball. I think the owners, like you said, the owners are worried about losing money. The owner, every game they play, they're going to take, they're going to just take that much more of a loss. And the players,

they've got to get up and gear up for a 48 game season. you have to put your health at risk and all these other things. And they don't want to know that they want to do that either. So at least not if you don't, as Blake's now would say, cut the check. So it's, I think the interest level is low on both sides for a lot of reasons. And because, and there's distrust and you add in distrust and you add in the, the ugly nastiness of the negotiating through the public. I mean, you had Tony Clark yesterday saying he's disgusted with Rob Manfred. He said in a print and statement.

In a public statement. You don't use it or discuss that often. Tony Clark, who's an imposing man, you and I saw him down in West Palm Beach. He's an angry man. I mean, I think he seems like a no-b-smart kind of guy. So you'd see why the MLBPA went with him. But yeah, he said yesterday, players are disgusted. Here comes unequivocally again, that Rob Manfred unequivocally told players and fans

that they're 100% be a baseball season, and he's decided to go back on his word. and now is threatening to clancel the entire season. So I listened to Jeff Passing this morning. And by the way, I feel like tweeting at him. What are you going to say to him? I will give him $100 to his favorite charity. If he wears a t-shirt on a sports center appearance in the next seven to ten days. You've got it on record.

I don't know if he owns T-shirts. Well, that's a problem. He was wearing a suit every day at spring training, and it was like 90 degrees. Yeah. You hear me? And I will tweet at him. You wear a T-shirt to an upcoming, because he's on... It's going to take more than 100, Matt.

Well, I mean, that's all of God. I mean, I got a family. Jeff Passing money is probably pretty good. But what if other people matched it? Hashtag Jeff Passen wear a T-shirt. If he would, now, if it's a good morning lunchtimeers t-shirt, then I'm in. That doesn't matter. I'll pledge 50.

First of all, they only could shoot him from, like, the boobs up. That's true. So it doesn't really matter what he's wearing. But my point is this. He's just He's way too preppy for that damn early in the morning Preppy is absolutely the way he is.

You're right. So here it is, ladies and gentlemen, 1225. If he wears a T-shirt between now and next Tuesday on a sports center appearance, I will donate $100 to his favorite charity. You're going to have to up that, I think.

He's not going to do it. Because that's his image. This image is, my hair is perfect. I'm working the phones, and I'm wearing this ridiculously big suit for the month of June and July. Sometimes it does seem like the suit is ill-fitting. Yeah, I mean, he's got to make a good money.

He's got to go get it tailored. Yeah. So Passing today was asked what he thought about what has gone on in the last 12 hours. He's actually says he's more encouraged. He says that everybody laid out the, I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. Erring the grievances? Right. and that he thinks so good there'll be a season and there'll be a season of a brown 70 games

really which kind of and I didn't I didn't necessarily have a chance to hear his reasoning because I had to run to an appointment this morning but yeah he felt very encouraged by that I don't know why I don't know if somebody's whispering it you wouldn't think you've reported that you're going on Sports Center every day and throwing that out there just to do it I mean name calling via public statement doesn't seem like a a step in the right direction. But maybe again, maybe it was all, you know, it was all bluster. You know how you have a big fight with your spouse or your girlfriend?

And you're like, I'm done with you. Yeah. When do you go see other people? Oh, yeah. And then a day later you come back and say, well, you know what? We both said some things we'd rather forget. You pull the George Costanza Bluff to get the upper hand. I think we had ourselves a George Costanza bluff yesterday.

Okay. Let's go to Ben and Unble at 1226 on the Matt Thomas show. Ben, good afternoon. Hey, how's it going? Good. So I will unequivocally watch whatever baseball season happens this year. And I just don't, I mean, I've heard you guys say that you feel like it's gimmicky, and I've heard other people say it as well.

And I just, I mean, I don't really understand what's gimmicky about it if it's the same season that everybody else is playing. I mean, it might not necessarily be, you know, on par with every other World Series that's happened. But it's, I mean, everybody's on the same playing field. Everybody's playing the same amount of games. Everybody has the same advantages and disadvantages. Now, if you were to say that, like, you know, the Astros and Rangers can play in front of their home fans and nobody else can't. Then something like that, I could see where there might be an issue with it.

But I just, I mean. Let me give you what I think is gimmicky about it. And then you can say, okay, I agree or disagree. First and foremost, you're only going to play, if you go to the 48 to 52 game, you're going to play less than the third of a regular season. So in the NFL, instead of playing 16 games a year, you'd play three. I mean, that's basically the fraction equation, the comp on that. Secondly, the amount of teams you're playing are only going to be a handful as

compared to playing everybody and playing a balanced schedule and playing an imbalance against your own opponents. Lastly, you're going to be playing in a very short period of time with a lot of double-hedders that might be seven things long in order to get two games in on a particular day. And lastly, you're also going to be. adding a DH rule for both leagues. It's never been put in place. And then very, very lastly, you're going to expand the playoffs, which has never been done before. So I think I've got some evidence on why it's gimmicky. Doesn't mean you can't watch it. Doesn't mean you can't appreciate

it. But a 48 game schedule is nothing in my mind close to 162. If the pandemic comes into play and they just resume baseball because the pandemic was costing them games, you play 80, then it makes sense because you have to take some time off. But this, was forced based on what the owners wanted to do, their own decision of how they wanted to create a schedule. In my mind, that makes a gimmicky. I see, so the DH rule in the expanded playoffs, I get that as being gimmicky because those are legitimate rule changes. As far as the short season, it's definitely different. And I definitely understand that it's different. I guess I just don't, I don't know. I guess gimmicky has such a

negative connotation to me, and I don't, I mean, I think it could be, I think it could be a fun season, and it could give, like, really, it could give some teams in those minor markets a better chance of making the playoffs and kind of re-sparking the interest in baseball. All right, I'll agree with you 50%. First of all, I don't care if Kansas City and Milwaukee care about baseball. Why would I care about that? But if you want to say it's more exciting, yeah, it potentially could be. And by the way, I want you to know that I will hold my reservation.

about whether or not I think it's exciting because I'll watch it. I'll still want to see it. So I might come to your side on that. Because every game in a 48 game schedule is going to mean so much more than a regular season, mundane, regular season of years past. So I'll buy on that. But

in terms of minor markets being interested, to tell you the truth, and I hate to say this to you, Ben, it's about New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, big markets. I mean, whether the Miami Marlins have a bigger fan base, because of the 48 game schedule.

For me, it doesn't make that big of a deal. Yeah, I understand that. And then just one last point, I'll make it quick. Sure. I don't think that there are very many casual baseball fans anyway. So let's touch on the other end of the conversation that you guys had about it. And I think what about, I don't think that there are very many casual baseball fans anyway. So let's touch on the other, you know, on the other end of the conversation that you guys had.

had about it. And I think once the playoffs roll around, if you were interested in baseball anyways, if you were in one of those major markets, like you said in your team, it's pretty regularly in the playoffs, you're going to watch and you're going to be just as, you know, everyone, not you specifically, but everyone will be watching and be just as glued to the TV, you know, as they would normally. And I would say a majority of people probably watch 40 to 50 baseball games a year anyway. So I would imagine that the number is probably going to be the same. Well, it's because we're looking for sports.

Thank you very much for the phone call. I appreciate it, Ben. Good stuff. I mean, that's what I was looking for. That's a 65% are right there, Ross, that says, you know what? Let's go. 48 games. Every game's going to mean more.

I'm okay with it. Yeah, and I think it'll be different feelings. I think we'll be hesitant when we start and then we'll be into the season when it happens. And then maybe in the aftermath, we'll kind of be like, What did we just watch? What had happened here? Do we take this seriously? Let's sort this all out.

So let's always have open sides on this. Let's not give up on the season and then let's not go. This is the greatest things in Sliceburgers' this 48 games. 1231 on the Matt Thomas show. Your opinions are welcome right now. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. This is 790 Baseball Direct.

Direct from the ballpark. To your radio. Driven by Texas Direct Auto. powered by Vroom. All right, Jake Kaplan from the Athletic is going to join us in about 25 minutes. Two little tidbits for you. Ross, don't look at your social media. One is this guy, Andy Martino, who's a Yankee honk for like SNY and the TV chat.

Andy Martino. Says a hearing that the six owners that don't want their season. Two things I hate. Bad impressions and stereotypes. Cairns. Ken Rosenpaw, according to Annie Martinez, reports, there's eight or more. Remember I told you about that in the last segment? Okay, six or more owners at what?

Don't want a season. I could see that. Take the L. Let's get out of here. I mean, just the way that Rob Manfred is negotiating, that absolutely seems like there's a large contingent of people who say, you know what, let's just not have a season. It's probably small market teams. It's probably teams that are struggling to make their rental payments,

don't want to name any names. Oakland A's. I'm sure. There's a contingent of the smaller market and smaller revenue teams who say, you know what? We're just going to be losing too much. Let's pack it up and go next year. That's why I'm not room for those smaller market teams that are playing again. And you know who they don't want to. You know who's all to blame for all this, Matt? The press?

Jeff Luno. Oh, that's true. What in doubt? According to Buster-Oling. You think every story of Buster O'N is going to write is going to eventually blame Jeff Lino for something? Yes. All right. Now the second part. Don't look at your social media. Okay.

Someone just tweeted two minutes ago for the first time since November the 13th, 2019. is it a player? No, but keep going. We'll take some more calls here just a second, but I want you to work this a little bit. It's definitely Houston. Jeff Luno. No.

AJ Hinch. Damn, you're right. Yes. He retweeted the MLB Players Association about Black Lives Matter. Ooh, okay. He quote tweeted it and said, powerful and inspirational message,

I stand with you. Oh, no. I'm going to go to the mentions and I'm going to mute just about every Dodger fan that I see in there. there are 30 comments let's go go look at them just run them through

all right the others I miss you from ATX Hobo girl that's very nice I can't wait to see you back in Houston hey there stranger miss you hey these are all nice right now Hope all is well dad come back that's my coach you didn't deserve to be the scapegoat well this is good people hadn't got a hold of it

eventually I'm sure we only tweeted this what two minutes ago yeah people will get a hold of it So we'll be checking every hour on the Hitch H mentions. I'd love to get him on the show. And it wouldn't necessarily be a whole lot about what happened in the past because he's kind of exhausted all that. I'm just curious, here's what I really want to ask him.

I really, Ross, want to ask him about what he thinks about how the Yankees and the Red Sox have been treated during all this. That's what I want to know. Yeah, if he could just go and have a beer with him. And then record it. He's probably going to be. Because here's a... He's probably got a thing or two to say about Rob Nefford. Can I peel the curtain back on the show?

Of course. Okay. Peel it, Maddie. I am very much privy to a tremendous amount of conversations that unfortunately are very much off the record. Because again, these people... All right, Mr. Big Shot. No, I'm saying... If I was a big shot, I could be able to say them on the record, but I can't.

I would want to... I really would want to get AJ on the record on that. Because I can say, of the record, my guess, is he's probably not real thrilled at how the Yankees and the Red Sox have escaped the wrath of the baseball office. He'd probably have some curse words to say. But I would want to know what he want to say on the record. And it might be very, because here's the thing. He's out for a year.

He wants to manage again in baseball. He wants to be in baseball. Maybe it won't be as a manager, but he wants to get back in. So I think he delicately decided when he was going to go back to Twitter and say something. And this was it. We'll check those mentions about every hour. and hopefully most of them will be nice. 90% of them are nice right now.

Oh, again, can you find one that's not nice? You search while to talk to this phone. Well, one of them was... Garicol? No, it wasn't like, it wasn't a Detroit thing. It was, I mean, not Detroit. It wasn't a Yankees thing, or Dodgers fan or anything. It was related to the racial message that he put out.

Oh, okay. Well, you can't change people's opinions one way or the other on that one. Let's go to Kenny in spring at 1240 on 790. Hi, Kenny. Hey, how are you guys? How are you doing? Good. Sports RV at SportsMT.

Fran, we're doing great. Thanks, Kenny. What's up? Just real quick. I want to say that I think 48, personally, 48 games is, you know, if you really watch a regular baseball season, 48 games is gone in like a flash. They're already, you know, you look up, it's already there's 60 games into it. So I think there's egg on the face of the owners.

as far as, hey, 72 games at the very minimum, give the guys the full pro-rated salary. I don't know what the money difference is on that, but it's not that much. They're all billionaires, pretty much, and they're the ones that are looking stupid to this whole thing. The players are offering better options, the MLBPA, are offering better options, and they're trying to ramp the games up. And I understand why they wouldn't want to take 85, 75%, I mean, what's the big deal? And if there is a problem with the, if there's a money issue, then the owners and Bob Manford, they should play, you know, they should put the books out there of why they're so set on not giving them the 100% salary pro rating. every other sports doing it.

So that's my, you know, that's my main point. And to the last caller's point, I'm the same way. I've been watching the Astros since the 70s. And, you know, I'll always be a fan. I love baseball. I played baseball. And most of the, most fans of baseball that really know the game, they're going to come back as soon as, you know, they start playing again.

And, you know, you're not going to take away that great. group. And it could be 65. It could be 70. But anyway, love you guys show. I just wanted to make that point that 48 games is kind of ridiculous. That's like a long college season. I mean, college players play a season with their playoffs in the college world series. And I guarantee it's around that much. They've got to play more than 48 games. I don't think they're going to. Thank you for the phone call. Nice of your words and I appreciate the encouragement. No, I don't, I don't think baseball, the owners want anything more than 52 games. They have figured out in their mind that's enough of a season and enough of the

financial loss they're willing to take. Ross, they have not stepped away from that. They've never brought up 80. Have they? Or maybe they did. I always lose track of who's done who. They last, it was 76, right? It was 76 with a prorated salary. They said also said 80, they said 82 with the big sliding scale. Yeah. Where 35 million dollar player was going to make 7.84. So whatever that number is, 48 full pro ration games, whatever that's, that's $1.3 billion. Just throw the number. Yeah, something like that.

That's their budget. That's what they've decided what we're going to spend on player salaries in 2020. And as Adam Wexler said on our Zoom meeting last night, every time they negotiate, it's, all right, so we're going to give you four dimes.

And then the next go around us, we're going to give you three dimes and two nickels. And then we're going to give you two dimes, two nickels, ten penny. I mean, there's a budget that is a number that has not been moved on the Major League Baseball side, and that's what they're sticking to. And by the way, the opening the books card is just, that ain't happening. Nobody opens books anymore, especially when you're not to worry about a salary cap. When you're talking about league proceeds, the NBA and the NFL have to do it.

Major League Baseball does not. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. If you want to reach out through Twitter, you can do that. at SportsMT, at SportsMT, at SportsCurvy. Our producer is at Brendan Riley underscore. A message here for bronze roofing. Here today, here tomorrow, there to give you quality work at a fair price.

You know, roofs can last up to 15 years if they're properly maintained. So please make sure that you're getting a thorough inspection every few years to make sure that your roof is doing its job. And that's why you call 281-480-9900. 281-4-80-9900. Within 24 hours, you'll have a professional up on your roof giving a thorough. inspection, the cost of that inspection is free. If you do need some repairs, they will give you a fair and honest estimate right on the spot. 281-480-9900. That's 281-480-990-9-0. Online, bronzeroofing.com. B-R-A-UnsRuFing. Back to the Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790.

For the corner, and let's go! Home of your Astros. Well, there is a little infighting on the old AJ Hitch Twitter account. Something called, Hey There, Joanna. That's J-O-H-A-N-A. Her Twitter, she's got 2,214 followers. Oh, wow, good for her. She follows 1814.

She was born February the 13th. She was joined Twitter in April 2011, and she says she likes pizza. Who doesn't? she decided to say to AJ, you stand with cheating, bitch. A reply from something called Eric 135508.03, a classic Twitter handle. Mm-hmm.

Says at, hey there, Joanna, and an AJ Hinch, so he's going to see this as well. And you're a fat, ugly bitch. So what? America. I've got nothing to say. there's also somebody saying cheater, cheater,

pumpkin eater, well done, AJ, happy to see you beating the drum for change. But most people are saying, come back, we miss you. It's a lot of Astros fans. And by the way, I got to teach you a little baseball 101. There is nothing that disappoints,

not say man makes them mad, but disappoints a manager of a baseball team of the major league level than to be called coach. Yeah, a lot of them, a lot of these things say that's my coach. If you're going to say that's your guy, that's your manager, that's your leader. But it's just a petty thing that, but I've been around a lot of major league managers in my life.

And they just don't like being coach. And it is strange because in college. It's stupid. It's stupid. In college, a head coach of a baseball team is a college. I mean, Todd Whitting is the head coach of the baseball of the Houston Cougar baseball team. Right. But in the world of major league baseball, it's managers.

Whatever. It's semantics. It really is. It is. Speaking of semantics, we were talking in the last segment about gimmicky and stuff like that. I think we should stop calling in a gimmicky season. We should call it the great value season. It's baseball.

And it's like 48 to 50 game seasons or maybe the Hill Country Fair season, perhaps a parade. Hmm. So what do you want to call it? Because that's what you, I think that's what you want to say is you don't want to say, I'm not going to watch. You don't want to say it's not. You just want to say it's not going to feel the same, but it can be kind of the same. So that's why I say we should go great value season. Dollar store season.

Okay, yeah. Like dollar general kind of thing? Yeah, the dollar general season or maybe like a country fair. Can I give you the definitive one? Okay. And I've said this before on short shows I've had in the past. Snacks? Snacks size.

Snack sized? I like that. Think about it. I think it works. For instance, after the show today, I might go go get a hamburger. I don't know if I'm going to get a full waterburger. You're going to go to Waterburger? I'm going to get a Waterburger Jr.

Oh, so you want to say season, June, 2020 season, junior? So it's a, it's a junior season. Hmm. We should put a poll out there and see what people say. Okay. We'll go with snack-sized, season junior, great value season. What else? Generic wouldn't be it because it would just be a bunch of nondescript players.

Now, generic season would be a season where you used scab players, because you wouldn't know who the stars are. I'm going to, can I, I, I'm going to stay with snack size. Because that's exactly what it is. You get a little taste of it. If you want more, you'll get some more next year. But for now, you're only going to be able to get the cup, like the snack size, you like the snack size, you know, like the snack size pringles?

Like a snack size, like what is your favorite snack size treat? I like the snack size pringles. And I also like the snack size Oreos, where you don't get the full package of six. You get like one or two that you would get during a Halloween that would be dropped in your bag. What about fun size? Oh, a fun-size season. We got some options. We got a many of four.

Twitter can handle four. That's what you call short girls, right? 2001, 1002, 1003, 1004, 1005. Okay, 713-212-5-790. Brandon, if you don't know, we have awkward moments in the show as compared to the silence. We'd like to count to 1,0005. And it's usually me that it said something.

Oh, I'm just as guilty. I'm just telling you. We can't have awkward signs. We have to do a little rolling count. All right. 713-212-5-790 is how you reach our show today. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90 on Twitter at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Brendan Riley underscore.

Do I have time to get to this OS Oklahoma State story? Are we short here? Yeah, we should save it. Let's play Charles Barkley here. You want Charles? What does Charles have said? What is Chuck was saying now? This is about whether or not the boys should make their way back down to Orlando to finish off this NBA season.

Here was his thoughts on that. I think it would be stupid. It's not played for two reasons. Number one, if they don't play, they're going to be out of sight, out of mind for the rest of the year. There won't be no cameras following. And, you know, LeBron is probably the most famous athlete in the United States. He won't be visible anywhere. And so us out of sight, out of mind.

And also, these guys got to realize this money going to come back and they're going to lose billions of dollars that the players can use to go into their own communities and do some great stuff. So it's not good on any front. I have no idea what Kyrie is or white are talking about, but it would be a catastrophic mistake not to play. That's the one thing, Ross, that was brought to me. I hadn't have an answer for it. Two things. If there wasn't a pandemic, would they, in the situation with George Floyd and all that, would they have stopped? the season?

I mean, you'd be in the NBA finals at that point. That's true. So I guess it's not, it's not, it's not, but let's keep that's, I'm sorry, I shouldn't even, let's you use your thought experiments. Let's say it happened in February. Right.

No. There would be statements. There would be guys wearing, I mean, you had the ultimate, they were, I can't breathe shirts. And what do they get to do? They get to show those things when they play. Moments of silence and all those things.

Yeah. That's my point was when you and I first talked about this on Friday. Way more good can be done when you're out in front of the public. Because that was brought to me, and I didn't have an answer. Except my first blush was they were going to play. Because unfortunately, there had been a lot of social injustices while sports have gone on, unfortunately. And it's got to keep happening. Yeah.

So the other point, this is what Charles said. This, if they don't go, this will crush their finances. And then, I mean, massive, massive salary cap differences. And guess who's coming up for free agency down the road? Anthony Davis, the future superstar. Janice than the Gumpo, future, I mean, current superstar. There are a lot of guys in the next two to three years

that are going to need to get paid. And if that salary cap is majorly adjusted because of that, they're going to go run to Kyrie Irving and say, wait a minute, why aren't you with us on this? Oh, I already got paid. Yeah, I don't think the season is in danger of stopping. And Matt Barnes had some thoughts on Kyrie Irving that we can get to later on the show as well.

Can we play the sound bite? Have you properly edited it? I have, yes. But, I mean, we need to get to a break. All right. of the hour. Karen and Magnolia believes it's going to be a fun-size season.

Let me get her real quick before we get to the top of the hour and Jake Kaplan. Karen, you like fun size? I like fun size. I need to know

how Ms. Carroll's doing because I haven't got to hear all season. You know what? She doesn't normally call during non-baseball season and obviously we're not playing baseball, but we can put an APB out for her.

I'm just one and I hope that she's doing well because I listen to every game on the radio and I always listen to her afterwards. Well, I will We'll do our new diligence on this. Give us a few days. Maybe we can find her. Sounds good.

I hope it's a fun-sized season. I hope we have a season. All right. Yeah. All right. So what are our four options here? Fun size. Snack size.

Great value. Great value. Season junior. Who just put out that tweet? Was that you, Brendan? You forgot. Great value. You guys moved on, so I went with the only three that I knew.

I'm upset. Working out the Kings. I can just post a new one. Yeah. Yeah. It's got deleted. I put one up as. I already put one up before you anyways.

Yeah, so delete one of them. It doesn't matter. Put it up on 790. It's fine. All right. 713, 212.790. 713. 212 5790.

We start the second hour with a visit with Jake Kaplan after these words on Sports Sports Talk 790. Is the Matt Thomas show. One o'clock sports talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show. A man we miss hearing from because he's affable, informational. provocative, intriguing. And then we have Jake Cap of the Athletic.

Jake, what's going on, Bigfellow? I've missed you guys. How are you? I know, how's the podcast going? What's it called? The Crawford Talks is? The Crawford Talk. Oh, it's great.

We, you know, despite not having any actual baseball, we've still managed to do two episodes a week for the entire summer, entire year since March. So it's going well. Thank you. Well, don't become after my job now. I mean, you know, I know this podcast are growing, but we just, we need terrestrial radio to be successful, too. I'm going to come after your rocket's job so I can go watch the Sixers play.

Oh, look at you rooting on the Eastern Conference wannabes. I'm sorry, contenders. I tease, I tease. All right, Jake, let's go through a variety of things. First, a little bit of a local note. You put out on Twitter earlier today that the Astros and Jim Crane are going to pay employees in full, those that are making $100,000 or less until, is it October 31st? Is that what I saw? Yeah, so in baseball, most of the contracts run through October 31st, because that's kind of when they expect the World Series to be ending.

So, yeah, the news that Jim Crane delivered to the Astros employees today was that they won't have furloughs or layoffs through the year, but there are employees who make 100,000 or more will see pickups. Well, that's one of the things that, you know, let's be brutally honest here, we don't think a whole lot about with these work stoppages, is that the secondary group, the office staff, the ticket holders, anybody that's in marketing. I mean, those, you had that number up times 30 teams. That's a fairly large amount.

What have you known, what do we do know about the rest of baseball? A lot of teams doing the same thing, or the Astros kind of on island by themselves? Some teams have done similar things. It's kind of all over the place. I don't have the list in front of me of which teams have done what. Some teams are, you know, like until today, the Astros had kind of just put off a decision, kept paying everyone, but kind of waited to see what was going to happen with MLB before making today's announcement to their staff.

But other teams have done things earlier. Some teams are still in limbo. So it's kind of all over the place. Yeah, I mean, there are the people we don't often think about, right? And, you know, I particularly think about, like, all the people who work in these ticket offices right now. Right. And the anxiety they must be feeling because, you know, let's face it, the odds are there won't be any tickets to sell this year. So, yeah, it was definitely a tough time for, you know, we think about the players and the owners, but there's a lot of other people involved.

Before we get big picture, kind of the running joke around baseball is the Oakland A is not paying their rent at Oakland, Coliseum and there's this thought that there are a bankrupt franchise and can't pay bills and have never been a big spender for agency. Have you talked with your counterparts about some of the smaller teams and how they're handling this situation? And what exactly is going on in Oakland from what you know? Yeah, I mean, I've talked to some of them. You know, some of the teams that you would expect, like the teams like the A's and the Marlins and the Rays, it's like the teams with the lowest revenues and the lowest payrolls every year are the teams that you think about the most in those circumstances

in terms of how much trouble they're in. But ultimately, I still think these franchises are plenty valuable. And, you know, it's interesting that the owners, you know, don't seem like they're in any rush to play despite all the money they're losing from not having their TV deals. obviously they can't do anything about not having the fans in the stands right now, but, you know, if you play the season right now, you would have the TV deal money. So, yeah, I don't know exactly what's going on in Oakland.

I know they had the minor league saying where they said they weren't going to pay their minor leaguers, then they reversed course a couple weeks later after all the backlash. But, you know, it's tough with all these teams. We don't know, we don't see the books, right? So we don't know what they make and how much they break in in a given year. and it's hard to really know what's going on unless we have that information. You don't know, Jake, how you feel if you're pro player, pro-owner, and frankly, I think a lot of us are just ambivalent and don't care either one.

You know, they're both equally to blame. But the hardest argument that I would have for someone that would say pro-owner is, hey, owners, it's not your inherent right to make money. Every year you own a baseball team. I know you have. I know that baseball is doing very well. about the sign a brand new billion-dollar television deal with Turner. But just because you have your mitts on a franchise,

doesn't mean you are going to be highly profitable. Sometimes business suffers, and this would be one of those years. What do you think owners would say if a player went right up to them and said what I just told you? That's a good question. They might just say nothing. I agree with you. I'm probably more pro-player, especially. I'm definitely on the player side in this case.

Yeah, I think there's risk in owning a business, right? And when you get all the profits when it's going well, and that doesn't automatically mean the players get paid more, it means you're making more money. And now things aren't going well, and you're asking the players to make less money on top of the prorated salaries they agreed to. So, yeah, I agree with you.

I mean, I think there's risk when you own a business. And like you said, you kind of have to wear the losses when they happen. And that's what a lot of people around the country and the world are doing right now. So I don't know why owners, it seems like a really short-sighted strategy, right? Like they're trying to mitigate their losses for one year, but at the same time, alienate fans for the future and, you know, push away people from the game.

Well, all right. So now let's go on the, let's go to the player's side. You guys are the faces of the sport. And they are, and they being your bosses, are willing to pay you for a short. season. Instead of threatening, you know, bad faith negotiation lawsuits and all this rhetoric that Tony Clark's out there, let's go play these games, let's get a part of your salary. And by the way, you're going to still be highly, highly compensated. Why aren't you taking it for the good of the game and saying this is just a one-year deal? We're not going to be thinking about this long term.

And players, we need you. Our country needs you to be out there playing baseball for us. Well, I think it's important to note that a vast majority of the players we're talking about are not those faces of the franchise high-paid guys. Most players make the minimum or slightly above the minimum. So, you know, it's not as simple as like you guys make all this money and get all this marketing, you know, all this endorsement, all this endorsement, profit, whatever. the players are taking a stand for future players, as players in the past did, especially with a collective bargaining agreement coming in the winter of 2021. I think they feel that if they can see now, they're never getting that back. So it's almost been as if the CBA is up now in a way because neither side wants to give in with that in the looming foreground there.

And I wonder how different this would be if this was, you know, year one of a new CBA that had already been signed. I think it would be different. But I really think that's, you know, that's, they don't trust, the sides don't trust each other. And that's been the case for a lot of years. Does Commissioner Manfred survive the job if we don't have a season? It's a great question. I mean, ultimately he works for the owners, right? And if the owners are pushing this process from his side, it's on them, right?

So how could they turn around? If he's doing what they want, how could they turn around and fire him for that is where I'm at on that? I think he's the figurehead. He's the guy who gets in front of the camera, but the owners are really the ones behind this. He works for them. So that's kind of where, you know, I think it's definitely fair to blame him and his messaging. the last six days has been terrible by coming out and saying there's 100% going to be baseball and then flip-flopping five days later.

But ultimately, you know, I think the blame goes on the owners. All right. So we've had the words through statements the last couple days. We had Commissioner Manfred on TV last night. Tony Clark in the Players Association putting out that very terse statement following that. I was turning out. Again, Jeff Passages one of hundreds of you to cover the sport, but he felt like that was probably a sign in the right direction.

ironically enough about trying to get a season going. After you've watched the developments, and look, you've got a lot of great colleagues at the athletic that have done a great job covering this whole thing. Where do you stand today? And ultimately for our fans are listening to us, what's the deadline for a season, whether we're going to have one or not? And what is your timeline in your mind as a baseball reporter for the next couple of weeks? Yeah, I think a couple of weeks is probably it. I still would tend to think, you know, at least 50, 50, maybe slightly more than 50.

50-50 that there's a season, you know, it's just, it's hard to predict. I mean, I could have never predicted yesterday's news. So, you know, an answer doesn't really mean much for me right now. But I still think ultimately the owners, you know, if they're willing to do that whole, like, 48-game, pro-rated, full-prorated salary thing, now I don't see why they wouldn't do that in a couple weeks, unless there's just so much animosity between the two sides that they can't even come together and talk. You know, and the whole looming litigation part of it's fascinating, too,

because that March 26th agreement said that the commissioner would, you know, try to play as many games as possible. And MLB, you know, if MLB stalls a few weeks and then implements a 48-game season, they could easily argue that they did not hold up their end of the bargain. So with that in the foreground, I think a negotiation and an action, actual agreement is probably necessary. All right. Last question, Jake, Jake,

cap on from the athletic. If we do play that 48 to 52 games schedule, what kind of baseball we're going to see? That's a good question. I'm curious how your listeners feel about it. You know, it's hard to view it too credibly, right? I mean,

it's going to be a short spring training. It's such a small sample of the season. No fans in the stand, so there's no energy in the ballpark. Like, I don't, it's going to be really weird. does happen and, you know, I'm not sure how people will look back on it. I think it has to have some sort of asterisk, some sort at least, you know, in your mind, if not physically.

Yeah. The audience, I've done a poll question, 65% of my audience, and against just a very small sample size of people that follow me, we'll be willing to watch it. I'm just curious the demeanor of the players. Will they treat it like every other season? And I'm not saying the guys that Justin Verlander would throw an Ephus pitch, but I'm saying, will, George Springer who lays his body out every single time you possibly can, and I'm not trying to use him as an example, but players like him, will there be the same sort of 150% all give no doubt about it effort, or will these guys get on the diamond, play the game, but won't have the energy and the fire and the brimstone to really make it a competitive season

knowing that they're not out there because they want to be out there. They're going out there because the mandate says so. I think it could be somewhere in the middle. There's no a doubt that the players, you know, generate energy from the fans and adrenaline from the fans when they're playing. And without that, I think it definitely changes the game. But at the same time, I think once players are on the field, they want to try their best to perform well and win, especially with, you know, future incentives to play well because you have your next contract always and the next arbitration case and whatnot. So there's always that. But yeah, I think it'll be probably somewhere in the middle of those two things,

but it's good that people want to see it. I think people definitely do want baseball back, but I'm just curious how credible fans will view it through the lens of like a real world series champion and a real division title and all that kind of stuff. We're doing a poll right now. Right now, the leader in the clubhouse is a snack-sized season is what it's going to be, 2020 Major League Baseball.

So take it for what it's worth. Remind folks where they can find your podcast. Yeah, go on Apple. or Spotify search either my name, Jake Kaplan, or the Crawford Talks. I also tweet out links for my Twitter account every now and then. So, yeah, I hope everyone's enjoyed it so far. And thanks for letting me plug it. All right, Jake, we're going to probably bug you again if something happens in the next week or so,

so it'll be on standby, okay? Sounds good. We'll be. All right, buddy. Thanks. Jake Kaplan, Jake M. Kaplan on Twitter, great friend of the show with the Athletic and the Crawford Talks podcast on all things Astros baseball. 114 is our time. If you'd like to chime in anything that Jake had to say, we're here for you.

It's 713-212-5-7-90. Ross, we will update the poll question on what we're calling this season if we have a season. Yes, we're getting a lot of right-in vote. Some of them pretty good. Some of them terrible. We'll read some of those. We'll also check in on AJ Hinch's mentions. Oh, boy.

And why maybe going to social media isn't the greatest thing. or it should be the first thing you should think of. A case in point, what's happening in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Right now a message for TGS insurance. Would you like to save money? Okay, well, the answer is yes. How about on your home policy? TGS insurance is like, I'm here for you.

I'm here for your audience. Text the word money, M One E Y to 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23. Folks at TGS insurance are going to ask for your address. You type it back. seconds later, you're going to have the quote. A lot of folks are saving $1,000 or more. Average customer savings, $870. All it takes is you getting to the phone as you listen to the show, and for that week. Back to Matt Thomas.

Drives the state to left center field. This is Sports Talk 790. Home of Astros baseball. 119 on a Tuesday edition, the Matt Thomas show with Ross and with Brendan. I'm Matt. Believe it or not today, 252. We need to give Brendan a little props, because we're, you know, know, we like to rip our producers. You got a beat for your first edition of Believe in a night yesterday.

Very well for his first time. Excellent. I'm almost nervous that I set the bar too high. That's true. Yeah, you should have made major screw ups and improved every single day. I suggested Rob Manfred, believe it or not. Are we going with that? Sure.

All right. And we're playing for Hooters gift cards. For you people, there's going to be a lot of knots because there's not that many interesting things about Rob Manford. He went to law school. Believe it. Cool. He's soft selling you on this, friends. Some of his best work is done when he's in a cranky mood.

All right. We have just tried to figure out a way to name the 2020 baseball season. My suggestion was snack size. How are we doing? Snack size is the clubhouse leader in a big way. So I put four options. I put great value, which is 21%. Snack size is at 50%.

17% for MLB season junior and then other comment below. So, of course, people have been saying fun-sized, which I felt like fun size and snack size were interchangeable, so I put snack size. Let's see. A waste of time. People have said, MLB presented by Spirit Airlines. Oh, my goodness. The micro season, the COVID special, the lost season, and the Just the Tip season also has been suggested.

Is that the name of your show at 6 o'clock? No, that's the night cap on Sports Talk 790. We never called it Just the Tip. It was never called that. That was a joke by the afternoon show of previous. What was, which one was that? I can't keep track of all. We had a bunch of shows.

It wasn't the big show. It wasn't, what was it? The bottom line. I really couldn't remember what it was called. And we all have these quirky names. Brendan, when you spend enough time in the business, you'll forget all the names of all the shows you've ever worked because there's just been a dozen of them.

All right. So 226 votes, by the way. Okay. I like this one. Tuve season? That's true. All right. Another poll question,

which is going to be wrapped up in 52 minutes. Got 1,000-39 votes in on this. And Michael, this is my on my Twitter account, at SportsMT. Yours is on at Sports Harvey.

That's correct. Mine is, even with the bickering and lack of true negotiation, would you watch and support a 48 to 52- game MLB season? And in a stayed firm,

65% would say yes, 35% would say no. And I take that, 35 Ross and I probably chop five of it off because people tend to change their minds. So my feeling is, without great scientific evidence, it's 70.30 people will come back and watch baseball. And maybe if the aster's really good, it'll be 90 to 10, maybe 95 to 5. And you phrased yours to try to get a negative response, I think, personally. Well, how would I rephrase to get a different response?

You chop off the entire beginning. Just say how serious. Hold on. Let me see. Will you watch in support a fitness? You really think the first part of the sentence makes that big of a difference? I don't think so. Oh, yeah. Now it's not a big difference. I was just nitpicking because that's what I do.

So we are also supposed to speaking of Twitter, Matt, in your poll. We have the A.J. Hinch mentions. A.J. Hinch tweeted for the first time since November. November. We're talking, what, seven months? Eight months. Almost everything is very positive. I miss my best friend.

Please come back, come home. legend let's see you'll be back in that locker room next year boss well somebody told them a GTFOH that's not very nice

you mean people on Twitter are not nice occasionally sometimes and then we already talked about Johanna who is not very Johanna's a woman on Facebook what did she say again not Twitter I mean Facebook Twitter I'll let you say it Matt

I don't have it in front of me oh fine just do it We got an old mature audience. They know we can see. You stand with cheating. Bitch. And then the guy responds right after her. Well, she called, he called her fat and ugly.

And then what, did she respond back? Uh, nothing I've seen no. Okay. So everybody is generally speaking, behaving themselves? Oh, and somebody else said, you should start standing and going on a diet instead of sitting and eating all that pizza, fatty. Yikes. Yeah, I feel like on Twitter, you're probably. shouldn't talk about the number one. Like, when you describe who you are, Ross, yeah. Oh, she did

respond. But go ahead. I like pizza. Yeah. I mean, who doesn't? Who doesn't? And would that be if you were to, if you were to put your avatar out there and who you are, I'm a mother, I'm a friend, I'm a diehard, this. I put what I do for my living. And that's it. She put I love pizza. That's fine. No, it's not fine. I think you kind of ask for it. Especially when you tell somebody to, you know what, bitch. She's responded, oh, M.G, you hurt my feelings with like crying emoji face emojis. Okay. She's joking.

And then the other guy, Eric, re-responded, just stating the obvious. Because you're not supposed to make fun of a woman in front of her face. But on Twitter, it's all fair. It's all fair game. I guess. I've never called anybody a fat ugly bitch on Twitter. No, so I'm saying. You can't do it in person.

You know why? because my name, well, first of all, I wouldn't do it in the first place. Also, I think what we need, I think we need a Twitter where it is your name and a picture of yourself and your avatar. If you're, if you're this little troll Twitter account, you're on these burners and your name is Donnie 15, 16, 50, 45999, exclamation point. Right. You need to have your regular name on there. You need to have your name and your likeness. And your phone number.

Well, let's not get crazy. In case we need to call you. Well, probably a lot of hot chicks. The problem is face avatars don't. I mean, you can change. I mean, there are a lot of girls that put stuff on their accounts that don't look like what they really are. I don't care they don't look like. I'm talking about these anonymous trolls who have no repercussions and they hide behind anonymity and anonymity.

And they go and talk trash to a Matt Thomas. And they have their little fake names like this and that burner account or a fake whatever. Mm-hmm. I get you. All right. So we'll check on AJ. We'll check on our name of the MLB season. And we will, should we hashtag it the rest of the way?

Whatever we determined today? How long is your poll question up for? I think it'd have a 24 hours. Okay. So tomorrow we'll officially name the 2020 season, provided we have a 2020 season. If it happens, then, yeah, otherwise it's no season. All right. So I want to come back.

I'm talking about Mike Gundy's situation on Columbus State. It involves a show. a shirt. It involves a player's opinion about what that shirt has. We'll run through it. And we're going to talk about how Coach Gundy and a player have made amends to this and probably how they could have done so without the player going to social media. And that's probably the one thing that I've taught my kids a lot of things, Ross. Sometimes not always the right thing, but I try to teach them the best examples I can.

And I've always told them, if you have a problem with someone, Go directly to that person. Don't run to social media right away. And I think Ross, we're all guilty of it. When we have a problem, like if your flight's delayed, Ross, anybody that you look on Twitter and you see people and you're out of your flight's an hour delayed, what do you do? Do you run to the gate agent and say, hey, when's our flight going to arrive? Or do you run to United and say, hey, United, you suck again because our flight's late? Well, it happens pretty good if you're like, say, Matt Thomas with 25,000 followers.

And I am guilt and I'm raising my hand and saying I'm guilty. I don't have an issue with that, actually. You're kind of, like, a lot of times you, you talk to the gate agent and they can't help you. Then you go, you go and make it public and you trash them in the public forum where you have, you have some influence when you have thousands of followers. They're going to listen to you better. Is that, are using that as an example as towards a company or towards an individual? Towards you.

Okay. Individually, I think I'm more with you, depending. Okay. Well, let's run through the example. What's going on Oklahoma State next? And we'll see if, if we can come to agreement on that. 127. It is the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790 with a message once again for oops steam cleaning a 281 8220561. I've been proud to speak for oops for over 10 years. I'm happy to speak for them

because they do it the right way. They clean your carpets. They will take care of your upholstery. They'll take care of your rugs and your couches. They'll take care of your air ducts. They will also do commercial cleaning if you own a small business. Please, please, please do not go to the grocery store and try to steam clean your own house. You're going to put the wrong chemicals in. You're going to hurt your back. You're going to scream at your kids and your wife. Let oops do it at a very fair price.

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Flagship station. Of your rocket. There are things we talk about on the all-air segment of the show that would first get me fired, and secondly, would probably gain tremendous amount of ratings. Anywho. Anywho. 132 on Sports Talk, 790. If you'd like to get into the show, 713-212-790.

7-1-3-212-5-7-90. All right. Chula Hubbard, Chuba Hubbard, Chuba Hubbard. The nation's leading Russia last season. Isn't there one thing about college stats? Do you think the college stats are the most meaningless in all of sports? Can you name the quarterback last year that threw the most touchdown passes in college football? Joe Burrow.

Are you absolutely 100% sure about that? Who was second? No, I don't know that one. See, isn't that crazy? There's so many college teams. I don't know who's second in the NFL. I know that Lamar Jackson was first. But it could take you, I mean, you could probably say Pat Mahomes, you wouldn't be too far off.

And he was farther down, actually. He only had through 26. Don't rule my narrative. I'm sorry. Go ahead. So Chuba Hubbard, the number one rusher in college football last season, said that he is going to resume football activities at Oklahoma State after he had a conversation about Mike Gundy. Mike Gundy wore a T-shirt for something called the One America News, which is a far-right, right-wing news network. Now, Ross, let's put a couple things in play.

Chuba Hubbard had never heard of One News Network until this came up, right? I don't know. No, I mean, let's go. How many 18-year-olds are watching the One American News Network? Somebody obviously must have told him. And it doesn't really matter how he found out, but there's just he would have, if someone would have not told him what the One News Network is, he would not know him. I have no idea who he is.

I don't know if he's any political activist or if he reads on Twitter. I've heard of one American news. Why wouldn't Chuba Hubbard have heard of it? Because first of all, news networks don't tend to have a small demographic of 18-year-old, 19-year-old African-American men. Doesn't mean they don't watch it, but it's on a common channel. I've never heard of it until you ever heard of it. So, I mean. Can you have one person on the show? I don't know the network. I know that they're apparently conspiracy theorists, basically. And they called Black Lives Matter a criminal organization.

But you didn't know that five days ago. I'd heard of them, yes. I knew that they were fire. Yeah, because Trump always talks about him. I have never heard of them. Okay. So that doesn't really matter. But the point is that I,

he had to have been told about the shirt. Because again, it's not a common logo. Fox News channel is a common logo. CNN, MSNBC. So what Chuba did is he was obviously upset. And that's what within his rights. And that's, you know, I applaud him not being afraid to say what my coach is doing is wrong and represent that network.

So what he did, however, is instead of talking to Coach Gundy, first, he went to social media and just really poured his soul out and said, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to play for Oklahoma State anymore. I want change. And all that is well within his rights. But the one thing he didn't do, and this is where you try to teach everybody lessons, whether you're teaching it to your kids, whether you're teaching it to your common man, is that running to social media, as soon as something is wrong, may not be the best. thing. So what ultimately turned out is that Coach Gundy and Chuba Hubbard had a conversation and we had the audio of them on a video yesterday talking about how they've made amends. In light of today's tweet with the t-shirt I was wearing, I met with some players

and realized it's a very sensitive issue with what's going on in today's society. And so we had a great meeting and made it wear some things that players feel like that. can make our organization or our culture even better than it is here at Oklahoma State. And I'm looking forward to making some changes and it starts at the top with me. And we've got good days ahead. I'll start off by first saying that I went about it the wrong way by tweeting. I'm not someone that has to tweet something to make change. I should have went to as a man.

And I'm more about action. So that was bad on my part. But from now on, we're going to focus on bringing change. And that's the most important thing. And that's why Ross, they fist bumped or high-fied. A little handshake? That's not social distancing. No, it's not.

Hopefully, maybe they put Purell on afterwards. That's true. And that's why. And the big picture of this is I love this story for multiple reasons. One, Coach Gundy is obviously aware that things that he does and represents can hurt his team. And he's got to have those players' backs. And he's got to support them. That's what I love.

But I also love the fact that the young man said, you know what? Why did I go run to coach to begin with? Why didn't, why did I jump to my type, to my phone as soon as I could? And that's what I think, and that's why I told my boys all that in my daughter a little bit too, is that if something's wrong, especially with a person. Like if you and I got sideways about something, I would not go to Twitter and destroy you. I'd go to Ross and say, Ross, here's the problem. Now, if I go to you and we have a conversation and doesn't change, then I might be petty and mean and say.

I would never, ever go to Twitter about anything. between us. You sure. That's a bad move on both of our parts. Yeah. I have you accorded on that, by the way. No, my point is that... We've got secrets on each other, Matt.

Yeah, and it's fine. I love the fact that he said, I should have just gone. I should have talked to my coach. And that's what I want. If we're going to learn anything about us being better human beings to each other, we should prod our phones down and our computer... I would say computers, but nobody's just their computer sticker type in these things. You're going to your, put your phones down and let's act like responsible human beings and have these and have these sometimes difficult conversations and not involve social media where, well, frankly, what you did is you went to, what, what Hubbard did is he wanted the wolves to pounce on Gundy.

And they did. And there were lots of negative stories written about him. And I don't even know if that was Chuba's modus operandi, but that's what happened. where he could have or the better story is those two guys settle their differences they did have a great video

and now hopefully it will spark change for both of them well and then Chuba did say don't get it twisted foot is still on the gas results are coming it's not over

I will also say this and I'm okay with that for sure I will also say this I don't think that this is that Mike Gundy has never done anything

to rub players the wrong way and this is the he just all he did everything great and was wonderful and a player's coach and then all of a sudden this happened. Because you have the other tweets coming out from when all this happened, you have Elsie Greenwood who transferred from Oklahoma State in January. He entered the portal. He said, I was called a hood rat and a thug on multiple occasions and threatened to be sent back home all because of

wearing a do-rack and sleeveled shirts. Then you have Patrick Macon, who was a Oklahoma State player as well. At least he talked to you. He would pretend to be on the phone with someone when I saw him in the hallway to avoid interacting with him. That was very uncomfortable. he also said, I was threatened I was going to send, you get sent back to the hood numerous times. How many times did he say he was going to send you back to South Dallas? So, I mean, apparently... Oh, there's probably some smoke to that. That's what I'm saying.

This isn't Mike Gundy, just all of a sudden this came out of nowhere. I think maybe Chuba Hubbard has been told some things from Mike Gundy that he didn't like. And then he sees this and it sends him over the edge. And like you said, he shouldn't have gone through to social media. But it made a little bit of a firestorm. And now our change is coming or not? We don't know. Was this productive or not?

I can't speak to. Well, it's going to be more about his, it'll be much more than his relationship with Chuba Hubbard. It'll be about how he conducts himself as a coach on a campus with, you know, 90, 100 players. And honestly, like we said, kind of like tweeting United. It is bringing in into the public sphere might force results to happen a little bit sooner. I just know that if someone was critical of me for a belief or something I had said,

I would have way more respect for that person that had come up to me and said, hey, here's my problem as compared to going at somebody on Twitter. Yeah, I'm trying to think of it within the dynamic of the player in the coach. We brought up United. Let's go back to that because that meant I've been the best example in the world because the gay agent probably doesn't give two craps about whether or not you're going to be late for a meeting in Cincinnati. You know what I mean? Or why, you know, I'll be honest with you.

I've, how many times have I tweeted at United? I don't know. We could find it. Can you really? Yeah. Every single time? Yeah, I could find how many times you tweeted at them. I will say this.

The last three or four times I have direct messages on something, and they have been very, very responsive. I'd go straight to the public. One time, not so much. I feel like you give results faster. Well, I'll give you a case in point. United, do you know United changed their change fees

about putting miles back into frequent flyer amount accounts when this corona started? and it was for flights during a particular period of time. My father, who lives in Palm Springs, was going to come visit the family, and he decided against it because of the virus. Well, we canceled the flight before United chains or policy, but it was in the time window. They said they were going to give them deposits back.

It cost me $150 to put my miles back in. I used my frequent fly miles from my dad, and it cost me $150. So I wrote a letter to United on a DM'd them, and I said, hey, you said flights between February and, say, May 1st, you could redeposit miles without paying a 150 service charge. I happened to cancel before then. Would you please consider giving me my 150 back because I did cancel within the time he was supposed to fly?

They responded, no. Ouch. Maybe you should have went to the public sphere. So it looks about nine different incidents as you've tweeted at United. You have to show me how to do that because I don't think I've ever looked to see. Let's see, March 2nd, 2012. What did I say? You said, ground crew explaining this to if you're connecting, good luck.

Hashtag one hour late. I want us to grow together during this technical delay. Hashtag free beverage. I was looking for beer in a flight, basically. Yeah. Let's see. United canceled my flight for tomorrow morning. Looks like I'll be walking in Memphis a while longer.

Hey. They can't, I don't remember that. I don't know what to do except rant at United. I'm sorry, followers. This is in 2016. So yeah, you've had a fair amount of. Yeah, so I think I'll calm down. Now, no, no Greg Cook level of run-ins with United.

If you want to look at something entertaining, go to Greg Cook's United, Twitter with United accounts. I'm never flying you again. 143 on the Matt Thomas show, 713-212-5-790 with a message here for Berkeley Eye Center. Corrected vision through LASIC is wonderful, but it takes a very quick text. LASI-K to 48-48-48-48-48-48-8-48 and give the folks at Berkeley Eye Center. Get that consultation, find out about the great technology, the awesome staff, and the amazing doctors.

Best savings ever right now, but you've got to go to BerkeleyI.com or call 713-526-I-S, 7-1-3-2-6 E-Y-E-E-S, or check out the text LASIC, LASIC to 48, 48-48, and, experience all that is the greatness of getting LASIC, no glasses, no contacts with Berkeley Eye Center. The Matt Thomas Show. Back to it. On Sports Talk 790. Escalated.

Home of the Stroes. 148, Sports Talk 790. What are you all up to today? We've had some good interaction so far on the phones. Had a lot of folks in the first hour. If you guys want to chime in, we don't bite right. We're friendly folk. That's FOLK.

713, 212, 5-790. 7-1-3. 2-1-2-5-7-90. We will check on our poll questions at the top of the hour. We have what we're going to name the 2020 season. I want to see if you guys are going to be willing to watch you 48 to 52 games season. We'll give you

updates on that. And we'll also check out on AJ Hinch who tweeted for the first time about an hour and a half ago for the first time since November. Latest odds are out about whether there'll be an MLB season. Again, these are all betting purposes just for fun. Yes.

And to explain we're going to hand you $100 for each one of these bets. Okay. If it's a minus, then you have to give up. You have to spend 100. Well, it depends on them what the minus is. I always have to do a bad job explaining this. So right now, will there be an MLB regular season?

Yes, is minus 250. So if you would like to bet yes on a season, you have to bet $250 to win 100. So it's minus, you pay that number. to get $100 back. If you want to say, no, there is not a season, it's a plus $175. So you would spend $100 to win $175. So it's a little less than $2 to 1.

I think I explained it right there. Okay. So Rossi, we're going to go to Vegas. Yes. And we're going to bet on what for $100? I will bet there will be a season. I'm going to bet that as well. I will lay significant amount of money.

I'm only going to get $0.40, but I'll still get $0.40. Okay. Now comes the end. interesting part of the bet. How many games will MLB play during a regular season? 51 to 65 games is going to pay you 5 to 8.

So it's 12.5 cents for every dollar that you spend, right? 5 to 8 would be yeah. That's like a minus 160 in it? So yeah. So 100 will pay, you have to spend 160 to win 100. $500. $50 or less, that's that 48 magic number. It's 9 to 4. It's better than 2 to 1 on that one.

And I think a lot of reason why that number is the case is because when Rob Manfred met his decree a few days ago, well, there's no equivocally. What is it? Unequivocally. Unequivocally. Exactly. There's going to be baseball this year. I can tell you unequivocally, we are going to play Major League Baseball this year. And I think he was handed the number of 48 and they said, well, it could be a little bit more. Unfortunately, I can't tell you that I'm 100% certain that's going to happen. Don't do this. Don't show both sides of this terrible argument. I'm not confident.

Oh, geez. One way or the other, we're playing Major League Baseball. Okay. Two and a half to one on 50 or less. 66 or more is 15 to 4, almost 4 to 1. And it's funny because Jeff Passon, the man who's, I'm going to pay $100 to the charity of his choice. He wears a T-shirt on ESPN says he could. see a 70 game schedule.

I think that's a reach, especially because if they're not, if the players are not going to take a cut of a prorated salary, the owners don't want to pay 70 games of full proration. That has been the argument since day number one. So if you are a betting man, I'm going to 51 to 65 and having to bet $160 or $1,100. You agree with you on that? Yes, sir. Okay.

Anything else worthy on the old, oh, here's one. Will Colin Kaepernick sign with an NFL team before week one of the NFL regular season? Yes is 2 to 1. You pay 100. We'll give you 200 back. No is a minus 300. So you're going to spend $300 to win 100. What are you going to do?

Say that again? Will Colin Kaepernick sign with an NFL team? No. No. Yeah. As much as his name is, has he said anything publicly during all this? at all? I mean, I don't follow him on Twitter. So, I mean, he's been tweeting,

I think. I haven't really seen anything. Do we even really know if he wants to play? He said he's been wanting to play. But when was the last time he said he wanted to play? Well, he had that workout last year. Okay. And then it moved to a different

because the NFL wanted him. Remember the NFL said we're going to bring him together for this workout? And they're like, oh, it's cool, and we're disappointed. And then Colin Kaepernick didn't show up. And it turns out because they wanted him to sign a waiver that would release them of any liability in any of these cases that he's in. So he's like, I'm not

signing that, so he went and worked out somewhere else. And the same day. He set media from one end the town of the other. Yeah, the NFL tried to bamboozle him. The shield. By the way, congratulations to Roger Goodell, no longer the most hated commissioner professional sports. Wonderful.

Rob Manfred has the mantle with Gary Bettman. Now, we understand that Gary Bettman's always been hated. It's probably the worst. But you know what? Gary Bettman must be doing amazing job for hockey, he's been hated for like two decades. Well, the owners seem to love him, yeah. Yeah.

And that's the bottom line. It's that no matter what you think about a particular leader, and I would also throw Rob Manfred in the mix on this, no matter what you think of Rob Manfred, all he's doing, Ross, is representing the 30 owners. Yep. And every time we want to crush Roger Goodell for being a poor owner, what does he do?

He gets to keep his job. He gets to work out of his basement. And he also makes $40 million a year, which I believe he's taking a pay cut as many of those highly executive, those highly executives are, but point being is that, um, how do you get fire as a commissioner? You basically don't negotiate in the best interest of the people that you're working for, right?

Yeah, who's like, I mean, the last commissioner that we can think of that got flat out fired, not like retired or anything. Ceeleary retired, Tagglybutt retired, Stern retired, Stern retired, Roselle retired. Um, go on and thinking about, what did a Fay Vincent do? Well, he was, he was heavy in the, that the Pete Rose stuff. I don't know if he was fired.

Again, that would be interesting to find out when the last time a commissioner was fired because the owners didn't like... Now, there have been guys that have not had their contracts renewed, but it feels like it's been a long time since that even happened. So, yeah, again, if you're a commissioner of a sport, let's not a mistake. I think we're going on Fay Vincent, 1992. He got fired. Well, it says he resigned in 1992 after the voters gave him an 18 to 9,

no confidence vote. Okay, that's basically we don't trust you anymore. Yeah. So basically he was fired and without exactly saying that. It's been almost 30 years since a commissioner has been fired. And that's in four sports. Yeah. Because Batman's been around forever. Sober and Stern have run things. And Roger Goodell

has been the NFL commissioner for a long period of time. All right. Final hour of the show. Can we play something fresh from the commission baseball that gives us a little bit of confidence that we're going to have a season? Search. I mean, find something.

Fresh? Yeah. The clock is ticking. This is a disaster for our game. Less than 100% confident. Players are having been dealing in bad faith. No. You sure you can't find one thing that gives us signs of encouragement?

You mean to tell me that whole interview with Mike Greenberg and ESPN yesterday was a Debbie Downer for 12th and straight minutes? The owners are committed to get the game back on the field. He says that. We'll play that. We're going to play that soundbite. And we're also going to figure out how we're going to name this season. 713-212-5-7.

If you want to join our conversation, 713-212-5-790, on Twitter at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Brendan Riley underscore. We start the final hour of the Matt Thomas show after this message. Yes, I got to talk to you guys about your mood and how you're feeling and your, just your vitality, your strength, your stamina, how you've been feeling lately. If you haven't been feeling like yourself, let me tell you about my friends at synergenics, where you can experience the life-changing. results of testosterone replacement therapy. Don't ignore the symptoms of low-t. You're feeling weak. You're sluggish.

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833 FixlowT.com. New location in Cyprus now open. Locations all over town. It's Centrogenics testosterone clinics. We go at 201 on Sports Talk 790. Final hour of a Matt Thomas show Tuesday. Believe it or not, it's coming up at a half an hour. Rob Manfred will be the topic of conversation.

And Ross will play for you a positive soundbite about the future of Major League Baseball in 2020. And it's coming right about now. There's like 20 of them. Hold on. Let me find out. I have to sift through all the bad ones, Matt. It's not my fault. I'm confident there's risk.

Oh, here we go. It's like five seconds. The only thing I can tell you is that the owners are committed to trying to find a way through this and getting the game back on the field. There you go. I feel better now. Do you? Yeah.

Okay. By the way, Jim Crane in some tweets to some baseball reporters here in town saying that if the vote goes to the owners, that he would vote for a season to be played. Because there's again, there's two different reports. There's two reports. One says six teams don't want to play baseball this year. another report, Ken Rosenthal says there are eight that don't want to play.

I mean, I just feel like Jim Crane has made the right move just about every turn as owner of the Houston Astros. Jeff Luno and AJ Hinch were the right moves. You don't about 1,000. I'm trying to think of a major misstep. I mean, we were worried about whether or not he would open up the pocketbook to increase the payroll, and he did, taking on Justin Verlander's payroll and paying Altovae and paying Bregman and all those types of things. Now, we can't pay everybody when it comes to, like, obviously,

there's the Springer and Correa discussion and all that type of stuff. Firing, with everything going down, firing Luno and Hinch was the right move at the time, I believe. And he's paying his minor league players. He's taking care, he just announced that he's taking care of all the employees until at least October 31st. I mean, just class all the way, I feel like, from Jim Crane. Probably the most controversial thing that he has done since he's been the owner was Roberto Asuna. Yeah. And when he said.

that. He signed off on that and he said, we're going to watch. If there's any problems, he doesn't get a second chance. This is a zero tolerance. He has to behave himself. And Roberto Osuna, since joining the Astros a couple of years ago, has done nothing but behave himself. So under the opportunity of give guys second chances, Roberto's getting that second chance, and at least for now, knock on whatever this is made up, he's making the most of it. Yeah, I know Buster only probably has some issues with Jim Crane in the way he's run the organization. What happened to Buster? I don't know. By the way, I thought of another the Buster, Buster Douglas.

Hmm. Top Busters for, believe it or not, one day. Buster Brown? Buster. Those are the name of the shoes I used to have as a kid? Yes. Do you ever own Buster Brown? We went through all these. No, I never, I didn't even know. I said Buster Brown yesterday, but I just knew the word.

I don't even remember what it was about. Buster Poindexter. Yeah. I wish we had somebody that could be Buster Moseter. Posey, as you said. Buster Posey. Buster Posey. I wish we could have somebody was Buster Olney and a mobile. I mean, how do you even do a Buster only?

Oh. No matter what, here's how you do it. You're a little radio 101 for those of those of you want to get into business. If anybody wants to be Buster Only on a mobile, no matter what question that Ross and I ask you, you always turn it into a slide about the Astros and you slide about Jeff Linneau. That's how you do Buster Only in a Mobile. Yeah, I guess it doesn't matter with voices. And then you sound a little bit like this.

Hold on. That's your Jeff Pat. You can't do every Smarmy baseball writer in the same voice, Matt. All right. Give me some, give me some prize. Give you some what? Give me some guys. Jeff Passon.

You know, I'm just sitting here talking to some players, and I'm really on the inside on this. Joel Sherman. You know, I'm thinking to myself, this Astro thing doesn't smell just quite right. John Heyman. You know, I was in the clubhouse, and there was a bunch of unhappy people on the Astros Clubhouse, and they must be sad about the upcoming season. Buster only. You know, this baseball thing would have been avoided if Jeff Luna would have built the Astros the right way.

You know, actually, you're going to nail this one with that. boys, Tim Kirchen. Oh my God. I've been doing nothing but Tim Kirchens. You didn't realize you've been doing a Tim Kirchon this whole time. I've been doing Tim Kirchon the whole time. It's actually not bad. I am one of the worst impersonators in the city of Houston,

but yet I believe I can do a Tim Kirkshyn. We're building you a Mount Rushmore. Tim Kirchon's on it now. Keith Jackson. Oh, oh, oh, oh. It reminds me. I don't know if either one of you've done it, you weren't even born. I don't even think you were born.

1980? Are you born? No, I was that. So, AT&T, and somebody please that has been watching this, back me up on this. I need to see one person. If I have one listener that watches AT&T Astro Classic, I'd greatly appreciate it. And play the Philly Series? The Phillies Astro Series from 80.

713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-1-790. It's a little bit before my time. I moved to Houston in 79. I didn't have a real great recollection of the 80 series. It was one of the greatest nationally championship series of all time. It was only five game series, too, back when they only played five. But if any of you have watched it, and please have my back on this,

these AT&T replays are the ABC broadcast. It was Keith Jackson, Don Drysdale, and Howard CoSell in a three-man booth. That sounds amazing. It was amazing. Don Drysdale, Hall of Fame pitcher for the Dodgers, silky, smooth voice, really great broadcaster beyond being a great baseball player. Keith Jackson can broadcast anything and do it great. And then, of course, Howard Kosell just adds a little bit to it.

So they're doing the pregame shows on these things, Ross. They go, let's go downstairs to Howard Kosell, who's talking with Mike Schmidt. And, you know, in today in 2020, you ask a couple of questions, largely their softball. But they're just little thing, just questions throughout there just to get some sort of conversation going. Howard CoSell, which makes him the greatest of all time, and I don't want to do an impersonation I'm going to do it anyway. I'm here with Michael Schmidt. Michael, you're at Veterans Stadium.

You're down 7 to 4. Bases loaded. You're at the plate. You're staring at a 3-0 count. Obviously, manager Dallas Green gave you the green light, and you took it, and you left in a fly ball to send him. field that wasn't deep enough to score anybody. You guys went on to lose

the game 7 to 4. Your thoughts on what you did. I mean, he was savage, Ross, before Savage was savage. It's a different breed. Okay, so then Mike, so Smith gives him a mystery look, and then

he answers the question. You're down, you're now even in a game of peace. The Astrodome's a special place for one Earl Campbell. the Houston Cougars scored 100 points against Tulsa in this facility back in 19168. What makes you think you can get in this building and win two out of three? I mean, just the, like, I want to punch you questions, but they were so good.

It's different. Yeah, you watch those classic games. Just do yourself. I don't know. I don't know if there's any more of the series. I think they're done. But if you can ever go back. No, I think they went on to it.

Are they doing another series? But the 80 series was with Howard Cosell. He crushed him. I mean, just, I mean, you soft play. Let's be honest, Ross. If we have a player or coach on the show

and they had a tough loss, we're going to treat with kid gloves. I mean, we're going to ask him questions. It's what you do. But it is, but it is what is. You don't want to. Howard gave zero Fs. He didn't have to.

He didn't have to. Because he would walk in the building, say, I'm Howard Kosell. I'm way bigger than anything that's in this building today. Mike Schmidt, how in the world did you lay a pop fly up to center field with a 3-0 count when your team needed you most? Your answer, please. I watch a lot of old classic fights with him on it too, and he's editorializing in the middle of the blow-by-blow and stuff. I will say this. He had a lot of issues, did Howard.

And obviously, we knew a lot about them after his professional career was over with. but man, he was never afraid to ask the tough question, and I for that have a tremendous amount of respect for him. And you know what else we talked about before when we brought him up, Matt? I don't know that he'd get a job today. No chance. Sounding the way that he does, not sounding like a Syracuse. Hello, I over-enunciate everything.

I went to Syracuse Broadcasting School. Well, I mean, let's be honest, most of today's broadcasters have to be as, And vanilla is a terrible term. I think, yeah, I think we have just... But there's more vanilla than there has been before. Like, for instance, watching the 98 series, the 30 for 30 on the 98 home run chase. I mean, Jack Buck, great pipes.

Harry Carrey, and Harry died before that, but they showed a little bit of the Cubs highlights before. I don't know if Harry Carrey's around in 2020 doing games, if he's able to do so. they're just the networks don't have it. Howard was a character. Don Meredith was a character on Monday football. Kirk Herbtsch is very, very good, but Kirk's never going to go, wow, did you hear what he just said?

Yeah. And a lot of that, frankly, is because in 2020, we are extraordinarily way more sensitive than we were 30 years ago. There is no if-ans or about that. And it's not saying, sense of saying you said something wrong, but something controversial

that may not, I won't agree with can be astrude as well, you hate that person, you hate us, you hate our team. I mean, Joe Buck fights that all the time. Cancel culture, as the kids call it. Is that what the kids call it? Yes. Okay.

He hasn't done a lot of commentating yet, but what about a guy like Pat McAfee who's done some color? Great example. McAfee might be in that new breed of zero Fs. ESPN just said they don't want him. Is that he said, well, he said that ESPN said they don't want him because they want a Super Bowl winner or a quarterback.

But he did Thursday night football last year, right? I think on the college games? I think he did. Yeah, three-man booth. Let me ask you this real quick question we're getting to break. Who is the most controversial analyst in the sports today, any of the sports? Barkley or probably Charles Barkley, but he's not really in booths. He was doing some for college basketball.

But I would say probably. probably Charles Barkley would be the most outspoken, outspoken analyst in sports today. But that's, and that's great because that's who he was as a player. If you want to go to the character card, just straight, basically a cartoon, we'll go Bill Walton. What about like Jeff Van Gundy? Jeff is just really entertaining to me. I don't never hear him and go, wow, he's saying, now he will bring up things about rule changes and whatnot. He's bought up political stuff sometimes, too, though.

And see, I haven't paid attention to that. I like when he says, we is the league need to do this instead. Or why aren't we doing this? And he always says great things about Houston. So we appreciate it. Yeah. And restaurants and whatnot too? I mean, does he even pay for a meal in this town?

He shouldn't. But who's in football? Troy Eggman, no chance. No. Chris Collinsworth? Tony Rome was energetic, but about football. Yeah, there's nothing. You go, wow, why did Tony say that?

Or he's out of his mind. where Madden would get caught up in the moment on something, it would go crazy. It starts saying boom. Yeah. And the tell us straighter like, this isn't working in that kind of thing. I just think it was, yeah, that's what the thing is, is that Howard Koso, to answer your question, isn't working in 2020. There's no chance, no way, no how. 2.13 of the Matt Thomas show, 713-212-5-79 if you want to get in.

7-13-212-5-790. We're 35 minutes away from, believe it or not, the category today is all things about Commissioner Rob Manfred. Right now a message for the Shell Federal Credit Union. Auto loan rates, listen to me very carefully, especially for those of you looking to purchase new vehicles, because man, there's a lot of great deals out there. But the financing may not be so great. 1.99%, 1.99% APR on any new pre-owned or refinance vehicles from the Shell Federal Credit Union. Plus, you'll get $250 in cash back to skip a pays a year, an outstanding customer service from a group of people that have been lending to the needs of Houstonians and those in Harris County since the 1930s.

10 different Houstonary locations to find the one near you. You go to shellfcU.org. You can also apply online to get that 1.99% APR. ShellfcU.org. That's shellfcU.org. Welcome home. The Matt Thomas Show continues on Sports Talk 790, where Rockets and Astros play and Real Texans Talk.

219 on the Matt Thomas Show. the show. Poll question is in. Cannot vote anymore. Thanks to the thousand that did. Question was, if the Astros and the rest of Major League Baseball play a 48 to 52 game schedule, would you watch and be interested? The answer to those questions, after a thousand, sixty-sixfour votes, 65 percent, Ross say yes, 35 percent say no. Your poll question is still active for the next 23-so-hours. What should we call to shorten MLB season? The leader in the clubhouse is snack size season at 47%.

That was my idea. Great value season and MLB season junior 21%. Other 11%. I hate the other because other usually gets kind of terse. Well, I wanted to put in like a way people, if they had funny things to say. And how to go. What's worth it with some of the funny things?

Let's see. You once had minor length baseball. Not bad. I like that one. That's good. Tiny wooden spoon season. I don't get that one. Okay.

Little League. Oh, hi, I'm MLB, and I have cable, referencing those old direct TV commercials. Yeah. They're not that old, but most people say minor league baseball, the Chipotle meat portion season. Do you think Chipotle puts enough meat on burritos? That's what this guy's saying, no.

How do you feel about Chipotle meat portion? I believe they should go to a second scoop. Usually it's one decent scoop. No, but I mean, I think for the regular cost, it should be a second scoop. Okay. And I think anybody's going to Chipotle, once or 50,000 times.

It knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'm a freebirds guy. Are there any freebirds left? I haven't seen him here in Houston. Yeah, they have, well, there was one on the 59 in Shepherd. Shepherd. Is there still there? I think so.

There's not one around me. Otherwise, I'd be going there. They just opened up a Cabo Bob, which is from Austin. Cabo Bobbs is also good if you're looking for a burrito. Are you with me, Houston, a second scoop of me? Yeah, just pay $2.50 and get one, man. No, no. Because here's the thing.

They'll dump all the rice and beans you could possibly handle, handle on that burrito. See, I don't even get a rice's filler. I accentuates, cilantro line. It's fine. But point being is that, yeah, it takes a while to find that meat. Don't clip that. Continue.

Go ahead and clip that. No, don't clip it. Let's see. The lost season, lockout 2020, waste of everyone's time, bleep show 20. The Padre season, I don't get that one. A short stop. Yeah, I like our idea is better. Manfred is a moron season.

That's good The Bull Bleeper starring Rob Bannford directed by Todd Todd Phillips Okay I really got in depth Yeah it did

Todd Phillips Which who did the The hangover movies And Love the first one The other ones were An utter waste of time They got progressively worse

Have we ever done A Fantasy 5 Of actually good sequels Yes Are you sure We did best sequels Okay Sorry

You probably won't I did I took the Godfather too and you hadn't seen it. That's true. By way, Joe George and I play each other in the Fantasy 5 this week. I must. What is the category? We didn't thought about it yet. Beatles redraft of songs y'all didn't. How about

you do 10 more Beatles songs? No. Everything you drafted is off the board. You could do that. Yeah, but would people care about that? Well, I would. Yeah, but you're going to be off. Yeah, it's true. Doing God knows what. Very busy. All right. Let's go back to us. How's A.J. Hinch's account, by the way.

AJ Hinch, we've not heard earlier today. tweeted about what, 1215, 1230 somewhere in that range? Yeah, let's check the how many mentions he's at. Well, he's getting ratio, but I think it's a good ratio. 161 retweets, 157 replies. He basically retweeted what the player association said about Black Lives Matter.

He said thoughtful message worthy of a read. And he just retweeted that with, and that's what he said. Can't wait to see you in Houston next season. Hope all as well. Miss you, Dad. Thanks for not running away. Please come back. Please come back, please come back.

I'm going to mess without you. I wonder if he's still in the woodlands. I don't know if he's still there or not. Okay. I have no clue. My guess is he probably stood there for the kids' purposes. Hmm. He's from originally Tulsa, but he's got lots of California ties.

He went to, well, he went to Stanford, right? He did. Tulsa, Palo Alto, or Houston? Houston. Yeah, me too. Not even close. All right. On the NBA, still a lot of hesitation, would you say right?

Not a lot of a lot. Some. I think a lot's too much to say. Some hesitation by some players about being in the bubble. And on top of that, some hesitation about whether or not playing basketball is the best way to show social activism. Well, I mean, LeBronis come out and said he wants to play. I mean, Chris Paul earlier said he wants to play. You have Austin Rivers wants to play.

So, I mean, there have been some. you're not going to get 200 people to agree on anything. Right. But yes, apparently the most vocal guy against the NBA has been Kyrie Irving. That's what we heard. He's organizing this call. He doesn't want anybody to be there. But we heard there was a story from Kendrick Perkins who said that Kyrie Irving was actually just sad that he couldn't go to Orlando.

And that's why he wanted everything to stop. Before you play that, why would he be sad not to go? Not mad. Like mad. Like he wants to go to Orlando. He was asking questions on the conference call about how much free booze are we going to get? and what's the food situation in Orlando. So there was a little bit of me in this.

And Kyrie Irving? No. I know that comes as a shock to a lot of people. What? Kyrie Irving is about himself. Well, okay. So I'll go on. Matt Barnes seems to think so.

Kyrie needs to quit bullshit because what I heard was Kyrie wanted to go to Orlando to support his team. They didn't let him. So then he flipped the script. I'm going to give up everything. Bro, you can give up everything to go do the Meyer more shit if you really want to. But at the same time, out without a cause or a purpose

defeats the purpose. And then it also divides us. You know what I mean? But they all got to get on the same page. Open up that communication and understand the moment. And I know the people at the top of the movement understand it, but everyone else has to bite. And I respect, people don't want to play because if it's COVID and you're putting your family

at risk, I get that. But if it's for the movement of the country right now, we have to take charge of this. There you go. Swear words always impactful. You ever notice that? Yes. I could I could read you a nursery rhyme. Yeah. And throw in 10 F-bombs, and it makes it way more entertaining.

That was basically what Andrew Dice Clay did. Hickory, Dickory, Doc. Uh-oh. Don't finish it, Matt. That wants an old lady in a shoe. Okay. She had so many kids in blank. She didn't know what to do?

No. Oh. Part of her body fell out. Interesting. Yeah. Speaking of the campus in Orlando, Doc Rivers, apparently told Steve Carroll, Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll,

about the Clippers preparing for Orlando. Quote, this is pretty funny. We're trying to establish activities to keep everybody mentally sharp. We're ordering ping pong tables, pool tables, I like it, video games. We're doing everything possible

to try to create a normal life. Ross, we did the Monday night meeting yesterday on Facebook, and we had a great response. We'd look forward to all of you and spend a little bit of time with us on Mondays. I asked all of you, what's the one thing? that you could do to appease these players going to Orlando.

And what was the number one response? Letting them have carnal relations with their significant others. Conjugal visits. Lots of them. Okay. Because what I think they're afraid of, I don't mean to speak on behalf of players in the NBA, but they're afraid of not getting action for a while.

Well, you know, Matt, we did an on-flora story about how in Switzerland, they were letting the sex workers, they were encouraging them to do reverse cowgirl and doggy style. So maybe you could have some kind of brothel set up where in Orlando and then you could do that. What do you think about that, Matt?

3.4. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. I'm not, I don't want you to respond. to what Ross said. Just pretend Ross's the last 30 seconds didn't exist. All I was saying is the answer on the Monday night meeting that got more answers to anything else

was, these men need women. She's in a doggy style position. We're going to come back and also I'm going to throw a question out that's non-sports related concerning buffet items. And we had a massive debate about this yesterday on the Monday night meeting that I

and I feel like if Joe George was here... If fired you up so much, you wanted to bring it up on the show, I love that. Yeah. It just did. And we'll talk about what the question was and the responses after I tell you about what's happening over at Shaw's jewelry. Amazing folks that have been in that same intersection since 1966. Do a great job. Find diamond jewelry at a fraction of the cost of the competitors. You can go to the mall and check things out.

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You've got Sports Talk 790. They need it. They get it. Flagship station of your rockets. All right, real quick. And Brennan, you can get involved in this too. One of our questions last night meeting, which you all should listen to,

either Mondays at 7 or 8, depending on our schedules. It's either 7 or 8 on Mondays on Facebook on our station account. If the buffet world is long gone, because of COVID at least and hopefully it'll come back. But if you had a chance to live off of one buffet and one buffet only, what would it be? And Brenna, you get to go first. Here are your options. Froyo, salad bar, seafood, Chinese, or breakfast.

Which one of those buffets, if you had a chance to go back to a buffet, would you be the first one you'd go to? I was pretty heavy on Froyo until you said breakfast. until the very end. I'm a breakfast guy. I think I'd go breakfast. I love breakfast. I'm just not a big egg eater every single day. So I was thinking about that

of how my buffet at the breakfast but would involve eggs every day. So I went Chinese. I went egg rolls, 18 different types of chicken, Mongolian beef, pepper steak, if you will, the soups, all that kind of stuff.

The cold shrimp occasionally on there. Ross, you went breakfast. Perhaps it's stir fry steak. Oh, yeah. Sushi, if you will. Well, Chinese buffet sushi is a little questionable, but I can't say I would be lying if I said I didn't eat it. All right. So you went with breakfast as well. I did as well. And you know, really in my mind, I was thinking brunch buffet. So that's what I'm going with. It's all the breakfast. It's all the eggs, sausage, pancakes, bacon. Waffles.

Waffles. Eggs Benedict. Oh, eggs Benedict. Very underrated, Matt. Different type of hash browns. Who doesn't love a poached egg with a little holidays sauce? Extra holidays. Okay. Brendan, you can appreciate our vote. We appreciate yours. Some Gibroni in our radio station said he wanted to go to the Froyo with his first choice.

When you put that out as an option, I was like, why would he say you even put Froyo on there? Who's going to pick that? I don't hate it. I'm a dessert guy, though. Name the 790 member who went with Froyo. You know him very well in your short time here. Well, then it has to be Joe, right?

It has to be Joe, Joe, Joe. It is Joe. So in the world of buffets, all the different options we did. And by the way, I'm surprised seafood didn't get any run because you got crab legs, lobster, shrimp, saviqi, oysters. If you went like Cajun buffet, crawfish? The Lebo Cuffou buffet and La Beers. Yeah.

How about like a pizza buffet? Like some jambalaya? You know what? I should have gone with that. Like a Cici's, but better quality, hopefully. Well, you know, that's the route out of gone. That's a lot of carbs. and I think you get tired of pizza pretty fast.

Again, unless you're just a pizza holic. So, yeah, I should have gone with a pizza, but I thought I would have thought a clam chowder would have helped the cause. Chowda. A crawfish, a toufe, if you will. That's good, but I mean, the seafood could have really gone a bunch of different angles. I just feel like if you just eat all you can eat seafood, you're asking to get sick, though.

I think you're asking to get sick if you any of those things. That's true. Imagine if I eat 19 days of sweet and sour pork in a row. Can't be the healthiest thing. So those are the types of quitt. We do talk sports on there, but we like to go off the beaten track a little bit. Matt does a great job as the pivot man. All right.

So every Monday, 7 o'clock or 8 o'clock depending. Most time we go on 8 because Ross has the nightcap and he likes to get home for a while, take a shower and have a cognac or something. It's higher quality if I can get my microphone and everything set up and it's better for my background. All right. What Adam and Adam will be talking about, I'm sure, is a lot about the baseball season. who is one of the most hated baseball sort of figures in the last year in the city of Houston

besides Commissioner Manfred besides Tyler Bauer besides Tyler Bauer and Mike Fires Aaron Judge any Yankee any Red Sock any baseball reporter anybody named Buster any of those dudes it had to be John Boy

Oh that's true he's on the list John Boy who still believes there's buzzers in play Does he really? Has he said that? It feels like he has. Well, he's proliferated that stupid, baseless conspiracy theory for a year now almost. He's taken his, he hasn't even gotten 15 minutes of fame.

He took five minutes of it and ran with it. So much so, Sports RV, that he's gone to cameo to pick up some extra cache. Yes, Matthew. Do you know how much it costs to request John Boy for a cameo? I do not. It's $20. It says, MLB commentator, talking yanks, John Boy Media, founder of John Boy Media, a host of Talking Yanks, and laughs from the past. 29 reviews, all five-star reviews.

So he's done 29 more than I have. I don't know. But I've been doing a lot of these on the Rockets account. I've not done anything on my own Cameo account at this point. Okay. So if you want to buy me for introduction of your family or your little league team, go to Cameo, SportsMT. Okay. That's a little plug.

Very little plug. Oh, 35 is a little steep. Probably. I'm just kidding. But you get great value. Maybe I should get one for my dad's for my father's day for my dad. Ooh, that'd be a great. Great Father's Day.

Can you give me a friend discount? Adler for you. Okay, thank you. But yeah, apparently John Boy is now on there. Do you want to hear some of his stuff, Matt? Here's John Boy on Cameo. Happy birthday to Aaron Adler from John Boy here. I think I'm late.

I think I missed it. What? I hope it was fantastic. I apologize for the delay. That's my bad. Just says happy birthday to the king himself, Aaron Adler. A.A. Awesome.

Do you like A.A. Bondi? What? He's a musician. Okay. The first part of his name is your initials. A.A. Oh, I get it. How about that?

Oh, how about this? He's putting a baseball to his hat. Baseball on the baseball hat? You get it? He's got a baseball in his hand, and he has a baseball hat, and he's, What a douche. Putting it up to there. I don't like saying that word a lot.

Baseball. Happy birthday, man. Why is he late? Whose fault is that? Is that the dad? No, can't he? He said my bad. And look, there's another one for a birthday.

Pep. Happy belated birthday. John Boy here. Leo, Mike, and Jamie wanted me to reach out. Hope you have a great birthday. I think I missed it. I apologize, but I hope. We miss this guy's birthday, too.

What is he? so busy with John Boy? It was a fantastic birthday. I hope quarantine didn't get in the way. I hope there being no baseball season didn't get in the way. Check this out. I just realized this. Look. He did the same thing. He's holding a baseball up to his baseball hat. He's so unoriginal. He just did it in the same two things. Here's a legitimate question. Who made John Boy John Boy? John Boy's self-made, Matt. But somebody had to give him run. Somebody thought, oh, the conspiracy thing I think has been

huge for him. But somebody had to run with it. That's America's fault. He was on like W. fan and he was on national outlets. He was all over the place. He was on, wouldn't he on in Houston somewhere? Not here. Anybody that would put John Boy on is a super douche. I don't know why I'm doing this for your video, but now I'm all, boom, look at that. He's putting the baseball on his base. He's got a hat with a baseball on it.

He's got a baseball. I don't know. This is funny to him. Why would you give him five stars? looks like you're into graphic novels, which is awesome. When I was a little kid, I was always told... I don't need how to care. All right, I'm done with that. That's enough run for him. Can we make a request and have him say the Astros didn't cheat in 2019?

Will he do that? Let's see, how can we start writing this out? Hey, this is John Boy, and I'm wishing all you Astro fans, nothing but the very best. I'm sorry that I've taken your team and these half-truths out there and made a career out of it. somebody there's going to be an astros fan i mean there's a lot of smart clever astroes fans out there somebody's gonna prank him they don't have with camo you don't have to do it yeah i know that's what i'm saying

that you have to do it that's what i'm saying you have to be slick about it and get him to say something i don't see how you can do that especially when it says it's from houston texas there's no way well can you say you're from somewhere else they're gonna ip check you but if he's going to be if you're talking about the aster's anything aster's related i've said somebody's got to be clever about it matt i don't know that's not me What could we have him say? What if you just request he apologize? He was thinking that he's not going to do it.

What if you tell him we'll give you $100 if you apologize? I'll do five of them. Oh, ATX says that they went to a brunch buffet on Sunday. The employees just got what you asked off the line. Well, that's cool and everything, but I like to jam my play with as much stuff on there as possible. Part of the charm is stacking your plate at about six feet high. Yeah. Like, for instance, one of my favorite places to go, and they're not a sponsor, just me. I like going to Genghis Grill.

And part of the... They were. What? So Genghis Grill, you can just jam as many meats and vegetables on the little bowl, and they cook it up for you. They'll call you on it, though, if you go over and they get surly. Like, sir, it's falling off of the bowl. You can't put that on your stuff. You want to shut up.

You can't make an eyeful tower of jalapinos on your, on your bowl, Matt. All right. Here is Stroh's relegation. He says, okay, hear me out, MT. We hired John Boy for public appearance fee, and we put him in a dunking booth at the 30,000 follower party, $2 a ticket. We could then raise some money for cancer and cure it with the benefits.

I don't know that he would agree to that. Tom, I love you, but let's just put it this way. With all the inactivity on Twitter of people deactivating their accounts, I'm never going to get the $30,000, unless I do something that's going to probably cost me my job. And I'd rather keep the job than worry about having $30,000 followers. Rossi, believe it or not, is next. And we're talking about Rob Manfred, all things, believe it or not, after I tell you about

oops, steam cleaning. If you own a small business, if you own a home, if you have water remediation issues, either place, if you have orient or rugs at your house, if you have tile and grout in your kitchens and your bathrooms, that is really, really difficult to clean. Then I want you to call 281-8-2-2-0-561. 8-8-2-2-0-561 and get in with Oops, steam cleaning trucks all over town if you live in Cyprus, Katie, Montrose, downtown, the gallery area, Sharps Town, all points in between, even the suburbs. The folks at Oops will come to your home and do a terrific job when it comes to cleaning your carpets at a fair price.

All their employees are employees, they're not on contract, they're drug tested, and they will work for you and have been trained by the folks at Oops. a really good Houston success story. Please continue to support local and please continue to have clean carpets. 281-822-0561. Onlineoopsteam.com. Matt Thomas returns on Sports Talk 790.

Baseball, football, basketball in Houston. Home for your home teams. Is this part of Jock Jam for us? I don't think so. All right. So what are we going to get our next news dump? Are we going to get good news, Ross, on the baseball negotiations? Or are we going to be miserable and thinking about Rob Manfred having a call a press conference to say, this is something I didn't want to do, but we're going to cancel the season? I need, give me some signs. What's the next thing that's going to happen? Well, there is the Tyler Bower theory that this is just a stall tactic by the owners because when the players call their bluff and they say, okay, fine, enact a season, and we'll go ahead and do it however many games you want to have.

If you do that on whatever today is, June 15th, 16th, there is a timeline to where they can enact 70-something games. So if they come out and say right now, hey, okay, fine, we'll do it. Here's 50 games. They say, what are we going to do with these extra 20 days that we have? So Trevor Bauer seems to think it's a stall tactic, and in a couple of weeks, they'll enact somewhere around a 50-game season. Do you think they're going to have to require the baseball players not to threat a lawsuit?

Can they go on with that, or was it just borrish to them? There has to be some kind of mutual agreement. The players aren't going to sign anything that says we can never sue you. They're just not. And if the owners are going to be so afraid of that and so scared of it, then maybe that is something that will stop. stop a season. I think that's maybe the only thing the sticking point. They're going to have to come to agreement with these protocols and say,

players, you're going to follow these protocols, and we're going to enforce them, and then you agree, this is, everything's going to be okay. I don't know. Why would Jeff Passons think there's a chance of being a 70-game schedule? That seems like way too high. I don't know what Jeff is. Where's Jeff's getting that from? Not at full, not a full pro rata. I like proration better. I like that way more. Prerata sounds way too legal. None of us went to law.

No, I didn't. All right. So tomorrow we're going to... Tomorrow may be a rob man. No, it can't be a rob man for a free day because something could happen. Somebody's going to say something on Twitter tonight that's going to spark something. And I'm not letting Tyler Bauer do it. I don't count with Tyler Bauer because I don't think Tyler Bauer speaks for a lot of major league baseball players.

Max Scher probably does because he's on that eight-man committee. I mean, that's a guy that is intimate with the details. Tyler Bauer's just spinning a baseball with his dorky dad. Yeah, he's kind of a little. loser. Yeah. All right. We'll have more of this.

Hopefully some positives. By the way, the Pro Bowl has been announced for 2021. Really? In Las Vegas. We going? Probably not. Oh.

I mean, if we're going to go to go, we're going to go for a real football game. Okay. I mean, like when the Texans play the Raiders. That's like in 2022 or something. Or 2023, maybe.

We can, we'll get rooms down. It's going to be a minute. Probably won't be until Las Vegas is fully open by then anyway. Five minutes left to go in the show. What should we do? We should play America's fastest growing sports game show we simply called it.

Believe it or not, and here's how it works. You'll call 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Today's edition of Believe it or not, it's brought to you by Woodhouse Day Spas. Print out your gift car for the gift of relaxation in Houston Woodhouse Spas.com. Category today is all things about Rob Manfred, the Commissioner, Major League Baseball. I'll read your statement about Mr. Manfred, statement completely utterly accurate. this. Believe it. Believe it. There you go. If the same is the erroneous full of bunker made up,

you'll say this. Two, believe it or not, it's on all things about Rodman for to win your prize. Ross, what's the prize? Matthew, we have a $50 gift card to Hooters where you can get all your fine foods. I'm going to guess it doesn't cover booze. Sorry, you're on your own there, but they have wonderful fried pickles, wings, and other great items. Do we give away two yesterday? I think We did, right? Yeah, I think so. And the chocolate cake for dessert. Oh, he didn't really just won.

Oh, the chocolate cake for dessert is underrated as well. Because here's the bit. If we don't give all them away, then you and I go eat there. Of course, I want you to tip and paid it for the booze. Okay. Let's play. Dwayne on 790. Dwayne, you're ready to play, believe it or not?

Yes, sir. Who is still open? I hope so. It's Bill. I haven't been winning as Bill. Oh, my God. See, you flip the name on us. Okay.

I really want you to lose really, really, really badly. Okay? Here we go. Wow. Rob Manford first became involved in baseball when he represented George Strybrenner in a contract dispute with Dave Winfield. Believe it or not.

That's not a week, not. Come on, you do better than that, Ross. Okay. Ross, don't let us down here, Ross. Here we go. Question number two for the win. Rob Manford is a note of Yankees fan and has said his favorite baseball memory was getting to see Mickey Mantle

playing his final season in 1968. Believe it or not. That is so weak. Not. Not, take it. Yes, I'm back, baby. Hang up on. Well, you can't win for 30 days now, so that makes me feel better.

See in 31 days. Yeah, Dwayne. Kevin on 790. Kevin, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Rob Manford graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. it or not? That's going to be a knot.

Yeah, I've said it once said a thousand times. You've got to know. It's a believe it. It's a believe it, yeah. When someone graduates from Harvard Law School, when they don't. 713-212-5-790. Matthew on 790. You ready to play, believe it or not?

Rob Manford was voted as Major League Commissioner by a 29-1 vote. The lone dissenting vote was never made public. Believe it or not. Oh, gosh. I don't believe it. Oh, it was unanimous. I'm sorry. Go cooks.

Go cooks. Line four, what is your name, please? Luke. You ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Rob Manfred's first major act as MLB commissioner was suspending Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz, and others as part of the biogenesis scandal. Believe it or not.

Not. Yeah, actually, Bud Seleuk was still in office when he did. Here comes state. No, that's right. Statement number two for the win. Rob Manfred's first official MLB role was when he was named Executive Vice President of Economic and League Affairs back in 1998. Believe it or not. Believe it. Believe it is right. Congratulations.

Another winner. I'm sad. That's two winners today. Wow. Line five, who is this? Rob Manfred's son, Michael, is also a Harvard Law graduate and has worked on several MOB matters as out. outside counsel. Believe it or not. No, Ross made that up. And that's the show.

Two winners. Three total. That's enough. That's enough. Bill one. And Adam brought us lunch today. Very nice. By what, did you see the new nickname Adam has on Twitter? What is it? Hashtag Adam Clown Town. Oh, why did see that? That is amazing. That's more of an insult to the city than me. Because it's talking about a Houston guy. He's talking about you, though. You don't know the context of the tweet.

Yeah, shut up, Ross. Yeah, Ross. Shut up. Shut up, Ross. Thank you to Brendan. Thanks to Ross. Thanks to all of you. Up next, Adam Clanton.

And Adam Wexer. They are combined to make the A team. And they're up next here on Sports Talk 790. I'm Matt. Talk to you guys tomorrow at noon.