The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Rockets vs Hornets Tonight! Baseballs Future Is In Trouble!

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Rockets vs Hornets Tonight! Baseballs Future Is In Trouble!

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Welcome to a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Today I'm coming to you from Charlotte, North Carolina. Ross is back in our Houston studios. Ross, I miss you so. We've spent a lot of time with each other in the last four or five days. I think that's a lie. I think you're fine, but that's okay, Matt.

I will say I do not sleep on the pull-out couch, a sofa bed. Thank you. You know, I'm taller and wider, man. I needed the bed. That's true. That's true. That's true. I will say this.

It was an interesting day for me yesterday because we finished the show and then we drove down to Fort Lauderdale to catch our respective flight. You flew back to Houston. I flew here to Charlotte and, leave less to say, the airfares between Fort Lauderdale and Charlotte are very expensive. Really? Really? That actually did okay. I will give props and I will actually not rhyme them. Spirit, you did well yesterday.

We left on time. The seat was nice. The people were nice. I got huge... I did buy the first-class version of Spirit, so they gave us free snacks, which was kind of nice. Wow, first-class spirit, huh? There is such a thing. That's like the VIP booth at Golden Corral.

It's kind of that way. I got free, and I can get it free. I bet Internet was included. King-sized bags of M&Ms were a part of the package as well. For free? Well, I mean, not for free. I mean, I was paying a higher fare, but, but point. You know what I mean?

Included, yeah. Okay. Yeah, included for sure. The thing I forgot and I didn't realize was that you left at one time, and I left five and a half hours after I didn't leave the Fort O'Donel Airport until our flight was at 9.56. Yeah, what did you do? Did you go and collect those cards for quarters?

I, um, I walked the entire terminal four. I got 10,000 steps in. I was pretty happy with that. Oh, that's great. Because we've been eating kind of poorly. Ooh. I mean, when you're on vacation, these things have. happen. Not vacation. It was work.

We don't order work trips these things happen. But you're not running home and opening up a TV dinner. You're eating dinner and, you know, people take you out and whatnot kind of thing. So, needless to say, I know the Fort Auderdale Airport intimately. Okay. And everything was good. Terminal 4

for life? That's right. Terminal 4 for life. But yeah, a good trip. We hope that you appreciated and we certainly enjoyed our bringing up our spring training coverage to you. And we are back in the regular mode of a radio show. Now we will have some spring training games coming up next week, which will shorten up our shows a couple of days next week. We're doing that for the next handful of weeks,

but we kind of need it, and we're going to get to something today on the radio show, Ross. You know what rhetoric is, right? I mean, everybody, I think generally speaking knows what it is. Yes. It's about rhetoric for four hours a day on this show. Yeah, I mean, we could be the Matt Thomas show or Ross talk show, but it's really the Matt Thomas show with Ross rhetoric. We're already starting to see it. You know, the Players Association hired their new union chief yesterday. The interim guy was, or the number two guy behind Tony Clark, who apparently does not have salacious relationships with his sister-in-law, got the bump up.

That we know of so far. That we know of. These union chiefs, we've got football and basketball and baseball not behaving themselves, so it's not on the ordinary. But the reality is we're going to start to see a lot of rhetoric coming in, especially with this union chief going to start visiting all the 30 different major baseball teams. Rossi, I was teasing you and you're actually teasing some people down in West Palm Beach.

I said, we'll see you all in two years. And they did a double take. It sounds every bit as ugly as I think it's going to be. We have a baseball union, Rossi, that is not at this point. Now, granted, we're February 19, 2012, 26. Certainly things could change a year from now. But when you bring up the work,

salary cap they're like not only no but a hell no it's it's going to be interesting and you've had comments from yeah the players and are you referencing i saw chris bassett had some bass that we're going to talk about today yeah okay

yeah it's it's gonna get ugly but is it good that it's getting ugly now you can kind of get it all out of the way because look and uh i was talking about this with you i mean i can't remember off air on air it's like spell this out for me

everybody says lockouts coming lockouts coming lockouts coming if everybody knows that and we are months and months and months out and we also know that baseball isn't going away major league baseball isn't going to fold up shop so there's going to be an agreement

somewhere when do we start inching towards that agreement oh when games are missed when games are missed and they're going to just kind of dig in their heels and and cost the the owners revenues. When people lose their jobs, that's stadium employees, that's players not getting checks,

that's not money coming in from ticket sales and endorsement deals, and, you know, the networks aren't going to pay for, you can't, you know, they have very new TV deals for the next couple of years. They're not going to pay for non-games. I mean, it has to hurt the wallet. And until the wallet gets hurt, we're not going to see anybody make any sort of substantial movement. What we're going to see is we're going to see, as I said about two minutes ago,

Rossi, rhetoric. Rhetoric. Now, here's winning in the court of public opinion. Yes. Now, here's the hardest part about us as fans. And I'll put us as fans. Forget about media on this. I mean, I've dealt with this all of my broadcast life about

labor strife. I mean, I've talked about it way too much than I ever thought I would, but it is what it is. So we're all labor, right? You are labor, I am labor. We do not own the radio station. and we are not senior management. We have no ownership stake in it. We are simply employees. So in theory, you would think,

generally speaking, the average person is going to be like, you know what, take it for the man. You know, if not for us, there is no sports talk 790. If there is no Yard and Alvarez playing, there is no stadiums being full. There are no television deals. There are no competitiveness. So it's easy to go on the labor side.

but the reality is in this is you just said a minute ago this will get resolved it may be way too longer than we want it to be but it's going to get resolved how painful it gets we won't know we saw the 1994 season go away that's how painful it got and that was tough ross because you were a kid when this happened but man it took a long time didn't didn't mean people went away forever but it took a long time and get people back but as i'm saying all this even though we are labor and 99% of the people that are listening to our show are labor. You have to think of it from the owner's side of things because they do ultimately control the business. And if they don't get what they want, now it does take some push and take on both sides,

but if they don't get what they want, and I feel like they absolutely, without any doubt in my mind, they want a saddle recamp. if we don't get some sort of salary cap and or floor, we're never playing baseball again. Oh, I should say never playing it, but it won't be played again until there is a reworking of the labor negotiations between. They're not going to go standstill. They're not going to not have a salary cap.

They're not going to have a salary floor because the owners want to protect themselves and they want to say, we're going to cap how much we are giving the athletes. Now, you and I were kind of talking to the drive from Fort Lauderdale, or from West Palm to Fort Lauderdale. Your gut says salary cap, but not a hard cap. Yeah, my gut feeling would be salary cap, but with a luxury tax, where teams can, you're still going to have halves and have not,

and of course, a salary floor. The interesting thing to me is, though, is that haven't the players come to the owners saying to open up their books, and doesn't the NBA and the NFL, this is maybe above our heads, Matt? The NFL and the NBA, their salary cap is percentage of revenues. That is correct.

A certain amount of money that is generated by the NFL. I know this for sure. And I'm sure that it's NBA. It's like 51-49. And it's definitely a percentage of revenues with the NBA as well. So there has to be opening up books to say how much money is coming in. Now, I don't believe Major League Baseball does that because every individual team has different money. The number one thing, and I was looking at this because I had five and a half hours at Fort Lauderdale Airport yesterday.

Oh, nice. The number one thing that frankly, the two things I should say that separates the NFL from the other two leagues. One, it's insanely more popular. So you are dealing from a strength of we are making more money than anybody else. But number two, and this is the one thing that was talked about, I think on multiple different things I was reading yesterday, they all share the same television dollars. That in itself allows Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Carolina, where I am, the smaller market teams

to be able to get to a situation where they are sharing the biggest chunk of money, and that's the television deals. Now, I don't know if the television money, I know for a fact it's not as big as it is in baseball as it is in football, because football is creating new packages every single year. But that to me has been the storyline. The more you can share, the better off the owners will be because the Dodgers don't,

the Marlins and the Guardians don't spend like the Dodgers and the Mets do. The twins don't even spend like the Astros do. So if you can't get on the same page when it comes to how you split up the proceeds, I don't know how you're going to be able to collectively come together and convince the union. the players that they're working together as one when they don't have equal footing on the most important thing,

at least on the NFL perspective. And that is, they make a crap ton of money and it's equally distributed on the television deal among the 32 NFL teams. Yeah, this is going to be interesting because there are so many angles to this. With the way, I mean, it's just unfeasible.

The way the economics are in baseball right now, especially the Dodgers and what they're able to do, and then everyone else. But the players sound like they're going to fight this salary cap, tooth and nail. And historically we know, Matt, it's been the strongest major players union in sports. Yeah, it created for agency to be in with back in the 70s. It has bestowed a salary cap. There are the luxury tax thresholds.

But Ross, again, I don't want to spend four hours on this, but it's certainly very important to me because we are in, the baseball is enjoying fantastic growth. It has a new television deal. It has full stadiums. The marketing of the sport has gotten better. The games, I mean, you had Toronto and the Los Angeles

Dodgers playing a Game 7 of the World Series, and you had two countries losing their mind over it. That was tremendous buzz and tremendous postseason. You've got expanded games. You've got international games. I mean, their, Major League Baseball is never going to be

never going to be the NFL, but it's getting damn close. Well, I shouldn't say, damn close. It's getting closer. And a work stop, which is, can stop that in a millisecond. And I'm afraid it's going to happen

and it's going to be ugly. And the thing of it is, Rossi, we've been talking about this for two years now. And also, we talk about how long it took people to come back in 1994? When, I mean,

people had cable, but for the most part, I mean, there were four, what, four broadcast networks? Yep. Now, I mean, you get one bad season of something.

show you love and you move on. And I'm not saying us, we're diehards. Die hards aren't going anywhere. And that's great. But we know that they want the casuals and they want to pick up new fans. So I wonder, if we talk about how,

you know, to an extent, almost irreparable damage was done with the 94 stoppage. What if you do it in 2026? And there's a thousand streaming options and there's a thousand other things to focus your time on. It took basically, again, there's no definitive word on this. It took baseball four years to get over it.

And it also took the fact that Sammy Sosa and Marlowe were... A couple of juicing guys going for all-time records. Saving the sport. I think you're right. I think people will find things on Netflix and Apple TV and other things and they will spend other time watching different stuff. Aaron Judge was chasing Roger Maris a couple years ago. That wasn't...

What would you even call it? A tenth of the story that Sammy Sosa and Mark McMor? McGuire were? Not even? Yeah, because every single night, every sports cast, every newscast, every time you put ESPN on the Sports Center, they were going live to, Rossi, they were doing batting practice live reports from every stadium. Those two guys were going to.

They're not going to, I guarantee these TV networks and these stations are not going to use time to do that. Yeah, Aaron Judge got a lot of coverage, for sure. Like they were doing the live look-ins and like coming up as Aaron Judge and was on MLB network, but not ABC and not, you know, it's interesting. We got you guys in a good mood today. I'm happy about that. Very interesting.

Rockets Hornets tonight here in Charlotte. Your favorite referee will be the crew chief in that game. I don't know if that makes anything difference to you. Do you know who- Zach Sarba? No, it's going to be Scott Files or your buddy. It's not my buddy, but. For the sake of the show.

Rossi, do who Darren Peterson is? Yes. we're going to talk about him today because I'm confused about this whole thing but yeah okay I want to get to that because I'm going to give you the name Darren Peterson he plays for Kansas he'll be the reason why I would never want to be a general manager

in the NBA and I'll explain that coming up on the show today plus speaking more business sense Rossi we are getting one step closer from the Chicago Bears to the Northwest Indiana Bears oh they're going to change names? No, but they're going to be changing states. Because Indiana's like, come on. We'll give you

it to you whatever you want. That's why we're going to be thinking about the Bridgland Texans or the Waller County, Texas. You never know. 1015 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross if you want to chime in and join our conversation, we would love to have you today. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-9. Anything is fair game today is we did not take a lot of phone calls the last sample days because we did have a lot of Astros chatter. But if you want to get in on the Astros, certainly the Rockets against the Hornets. I don't know.

I saw the reports on Twitter about Kevin Durant's denial slash non-denial of the whole burner thing. It feels like to me it's more social media driven. I've not seen any players yet here. I don't think they were throwing hands when I got to the hotel last night. So I think that they're moving on from that, but certainly it's something that has been at least talked about on the young kids social media streets. We'll get to that. We mentioned Chris Barrett from the player perspective of what's going to happen with baseball. And when are we going to stop talking about C.J. Straub being traded, Ross.

That's what I want to know from you. I don't think we started. Well, but whoever started it should apologize. And is it McShay that owes us an apology on this? I think so. We'll get to all that. 713-212-5-790. Matt and Ross with you here.

This is Sports Talk 790. Matt and Ross with you. Sports Talk 790. We are with you today until 2 o'clock. Rossie, we have not done shut your bum ass up this week. We'll do that at 1130 today. All right? Can't wait.

I told somebody yesterday in Fort Lauderdale, Politely to shut his bum ass up. I forgot about that. I had a pleasant interaction with this person. Now, we're going to talk about this at 11. 30? No question. Okay. I will just say I wasn't there and I had a pleasant interaction with the person. It was very polite. You asked him one question. Yes. No, I asked him two questions.

You didn't have a dialogue. No, we kind of did. I asked him two questions. What was your second question? I asked him where the bathroom was and he's like, oh, it's outside and I said, hey, do I need a key or anything? He's like, no, it should be fine. Thanks. He was very polite. Yeah. I will just say this person swore at me, and I did not swear it. Damn. Okay. You know what? Yeah, we'll get more into this in an hour. We'll break this down. Okay. Now, was I sarcastic? Yes. Yeah, you're acting like you had a little halo on your head and you went in their hat and hand and then walked out and got cussed at. Yeah. But the best part was he couldn't win because he started calling me names and I just didn't say anything back to him.

That's the worst part. If you start cussing at somebody, you expect them to cuss you back? I just nod in my head. I said, you know, now, okay, I will say more of it. But if you want to hear Matt's gas station story at 1130, you need to listen to that's here on Sports Talks. We need you listen to the entire four hours. I mean, we'd like to walk.

The 10 o'clock is still around. Just wanted to just double check. Yeah, we're good. I mean, we're back. maybe we're in spring training mode and people are expecting us to have a bunch of interviews and play some audio, but we're here for you folks.

I think there were phone issues in the last couple days. Oh, really? I'm going to shock you, I know. You mean our parent company still can use to use internet if only phones and we... That's not going to stop. Yeah, no. Yeah. All right. So if you'd like to call in again, 71321, 1, 5. Yeah, test the lines. Yeah, we did

a line, we did a 10. We didn't do it at 10 o'clock line tester. Does our multi-billion-dollar company have phone lines at work in Houston, Texas? 713212-5-790. All right. So let me give you this little conundrum about this basketball player. Now, again, look, if it ain't Houston sports, and even sometimes when it's Houston sports, we don't particularly care.

But I want to give you this, this is a kid by the name of Darren Patterson. He is expected by some to be the number one overall picking this NBA draft coming up. He's number one in the latest ESPN. what I saw. He is insanely talented, but he just, there's one problem with his life. He doesn't necessarily play a lot.

He's missed a bunch of games with a variety of ailments. Some physical, well, I mean all physical, but, you know, some like bones and legs and some of it was, I'm not feeling well.

So here is a guy that has been playing for this national championship contending team in the Kansas Jayhawks. Last night they played a game at Oklahoma State. He scored 23 points in 18 minutes. That's pretty good, right? You're honest. I mean, that's a pretty good ratio, right?

That's amazing. It's amazing. He took himself out of the game because he said he had cramps. He misses a lot of time. He doesn't play 30 minutes almost ever. And if you just did a little bit of a wiki search on him or just Google search Darren Peterson, you're

going to find that he is the anti-Cal Ripkin. He is the anti, I will go, we'll use a local angle list. He's the anti-Cavin-Durant. Kevin Durant, 37 years old, play is the third highest minutes guy in the NBA. Number

two is a man Thompson. So I mean, you could use a men Thompson or Kevin Durant as your standard. And you're going to tell me for a guy who has barely played this year for variety of ailments, including cramps and not feeling good, that I'm going to invest millions and millions and millions of dollars into this guy to be the number one pick of my draft when the draft apparently this year in the NBA is supposed to be awesome.

Ross, if this guy, and again, I don't know much of it, except what I see in the highlights in Sports Center, and obviously his self, the coach at Kansas yesterday said, yeah, we would like to have gotten more out of him. He flat out just said it. we were kind of surprised when he called his name and said, I got to go to the bench. He was cramping up. How are you supposed to build a franchisor on a guy that just doesn't have any sort of endurance? Maybe because he's 19 years old and he can improve.

But if he's pulling this at 19 making whatever he's making in Kansas, how the hell is he going to be at 23 when all that money is guaranteed? I don't know the makeup of the young man, so I feel like if I made a judgment on that, it would be too sure. I'm going to make a judgment. Okay, good. He does it. No chance, no way, Hal.

He's never going to make an all-star team. He's not going to the Hall of Fame. He's going to be a bust of a pick. He's the worst. No, no, no, he's the worst player I've ever seen. Any franchise who invests in Darren Peterson is making a massive mistake. I'll put my name on it. This would be a terrible pick.

Why would you pick Darren Peterson? Cramping in his legs? How weak is that? He's the worst. That's pretty spicy. Yeah. Let's go with that. Sure.

I wasn't expecting that. But it's a concern, self-tells reporters. I thought we were past it, but obviously we're not. It's certainly a concern. Yeah, look, it doesn't sound great, obviously. I don't recall any. Any other recent high-level college player continuing to pull themselves out of games with cramps or having some kind of flu issue? I believe he called out of a game.

He could say he had a runny nose. Oh, really? Yeah. Or quote-unquote flu-like him. He wants to be at 100%. And also, maybe he wants to preserve himself for that draft cash. You know he kind of reminds me of? And I saw this firsthand many years ago.

And I think you were making fun of me at the time, but I think I'm right now. What's that? Ben Simmons. I told you when I called a Ben Simmons LSU game. He didn't love basketball. Oh, I didn't make funny about that. Somebody else did. Shmish,

Smitty. Oh, that's right. Shmish, Mordy. You can never take any shots of LSU players because you're just wrong. I don't think Darren Patterson loves basketball. Peterson, excuse me.

Okay. And if you're doing load management when you're a freshman at 19, it's not going to get any better. Because guess what they're going to do? They're going to give you better nutrition. They're going to give you better hydration. You're going to have no more excuses. And by the way, you're going to be paid $5, $6 million a year

and more as your MBA career moves along. The reason I brought this up is like, if you're a general manager, 10 plus $1 million for a first pick. Yeah, and your job is incumbent and successful on building players to the draft. How do you take this cat when he doesn't love to play? You investigate more. I mean, he could legitimately have flu in the cramps.

I don't know. And I said it's rare. This is the first time we've been doing this show. How long that? 16 years. If we ever talked about a college football basketball player for the lottery pick pulling himself out of games with cramps, no. So I'm definitely cognizant of the fact that this seems like a rare case. Or maybe he doesn't like basketball. But I don't know. He also, to your point, he also could be saving himself.

He's like, man, why am I wasting my energy at Kansas? I'm going to be out of here anyway. I don't know. I just, I don't think it's good for. for college athletics. I don't think it's good for this guy. And I don't think it's a great way to promote your, hey, we're taking Darren Peterson with the number one picking the draft. Oh, tell us about his college career.

Well, you know, he played four games, and then he played, and then he got a high watermarker of 22 minutes. Let's get him some pickle juice. Let's go. Is that what we're going to do? Yeah. Let's get him some better hydration. That's what I'm saying.

Drink more water. It just, it feels like this is a disaster into making it. I would monitor the situation. I'm just me personally. I'm not going to jump to to conclusions too much because I mean, I've heard of the guy but I don't know. It doesn't sound good and Bill Self doesn't sound happy. Bill Self

has dealt with a lot of top lottery pick. He certainly has. Yeah. I just thought it was just a really odd way for him. This guy was crushing it and all of a sudden he's cramping up. He's like, oh, 23 point. Did he hit his over? Oh, now wait a minute. Wait just

a minute. I'm just asking. Now, you think I'm bad. You just give him a gambling aspect to it. I just asked if he is. head it's over. I just ask the question. All right. Thanks for that, Ross. Now we're getting him sponsored by a betting service.

1031 of the Matt Thomas Show and Ross, if you'd like to say hello, we are here for you today at 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Ross and I have been separated for what? How many hours we've been separated now? 17 hours?

Something like that. We should discuss our takeaways from Astro Spring Training Camp. We'll come back. Matt and Ross with you on to this Thursday. I'm here in Charlotte for Rockets against the Hornets. You see Lamellox ball got an accident yesterday here in downtown Charlotte. Somebody hit him. I did see that. I saw the video too.

He's okay. That's good. I think he got into an accident in a high-end sports car and then somebody picked him up in another high-end sports car. It looks like a hummer or something. wasn't like an 80 wasn't like an 89 chivad or anything like that yeah he yeah apparently he accidentally and he went yeah he went in the middle of the lane or he swerved he's okay though he'll be playing tonight meanwhile miles bridges and musa diabate will not be playing they were busy throwing

hands against the detray pistons that are serving a suspension oh okay that's good good for the rockets i don't think it's terrible put it that way uh rockets at 33 and 20 the hornets 26 and 29. The Hornets have won 9 of 10 before the All-Star break. All right, 713, 212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. The launch pad tonight starts at 5 o'clock. Yes. Tip time at 6, and you'll be hosting the Rocket Trap call-in show after the game. After the Rockets, get the victory and cover the 4-5 versus the Hornets.

You heard you here first. Oh, yeah. By the way, did you see that I got a couple of my picks right last yesterday? Not every one of them. I saw people giving you credit for the Yukon one, and I thought I brought that one up. No, I'm giving you credit for that. Okay. I'm definitely giving myself credit.

Matt, called the Creighton upset. I was like, wait a second. Our voices sound similar. No, they don't. We're like twin brothers, exactly. I did have Kansas at Oklahoma State wedding and cowering. This is my favorite one. The one I did not get right.

You were so close. So close. I did have USC. at home getting points against Illinois and Ross do you have a final score in front of you? I don't have it. 101 do 65. Yeah, it doesn't work out well. That's okay.

Collectively we went two and one. Two and one on the locks of the week. That's a winning week, Matthew. I got inside information. I didn't sign information that Kansas had it by Kansas and Kansas even know about it. What a scam. Okay. All right.

So you and I have not spoken since we said our fond farewells. So you got on a flight at a normal time. I had to wait five hours, but it's under here nor there. I mean, mine was delayed a little bit. How was flight by way? Nice and smooth? Well, there was an old lady with a hacking cough sitting next to me. First of all, she was in the middle.

Okay, now she just, she was confused. I think she got a middle seat. And then I was like, hey, can I get by you into my window? And then she moved to the window seat to try to give me the middle seat. Oh, how nice was that? How courteous of you to do that? No, no, no, no. I was like, no, that's my seat.

That's funny. I was like, no, I like the window. I'm a bigger guy. I like to be, you know, I don't like to be in the aisle, and I don't like to be in the middle. I like to be in the window. And then she's... You want to place to rest your head.

And then she was hacking, coughing, which was fun. But eventually she did put her mask on and went to sleep, so that was good. Okay. Other than that, flight was pleasant. Okay. So, any takeaways that you and I, You and I'm not organically Organic conversation coming up.

Any takeaways you would like to let the audience know about our three days down there in West Palm Beach? It just feels like And I know a lot of Astros fans still can't wrap their head around. The biggest takeaway is that this infield log jam is not going to be a problem deep into the season. It just feels like something's going to get happen, is going to happen as far as a possible trade. I'm feeling pretty. maybe it's just because he was so nice and pleasant.

Like I'm buying stock on Zach Cole. I'm buying stock on Christian Walker. Oh, I am being biased. These are all guys we interviewed. And I'm buying stock on Spencer Argetti. What's up? I'm not saying I'm going to hit on all of them. Yeah.

The thing that kind of threw me off a little bit was Dana yesterday on the show discussing that the corner outfield guys are not guaranteed to make the roster coming out of spring training. He said, well, we hope they make team was something like he said something basically to that effect yeah which i'm with you it was an eyebrow razor for me as well wasn't like i was startled by it but it it was oh we're looking forward to giving these guys every opportunity to be major league stars we we've given them the faith

and we're ready to do this it's something to me that yeah i'm still waiting for the phone call to come in that's going to give me the best deal for east side that's going to include an everyday corner outfielder and one more thing i'm feeling better about my uh chips and casso about low perfeito taking and they'd be with the all-star space cowboys. Yeah, I think you're right about that. Because, I mean, he, when he went to Toronto a year and a half ago, he wasn't given a whole lot of length. I mean, he'd have many of bats he'd had last year.

Not very many. I think it was around 100 plate appearances or something like that. Yeah, give a take, yeah. But I wasn't Kurt, we had him on, and he talked about how he'd kind of, he had been changing some things in his setup that were really working for him in Toronto, and he's trying to replicate that here in Houston.

So, I mean, he's not a spring chicken. He'll be 27 on May 11th. But that's what the Astros are looking for because they don't have a lot of, if you don't have top 100 prospects, Matt, you're looking for late blooms. So that's what you got to do. Yeah. I will just say that Loper Mania will get underway fairly soon the first time that Cam Smith goes 0 for 4 or Zach Cole strikes out with the base is loaded.

Yeah, you know what? We should try to do that at some point. predict the storylines because in years past we've had Dubon needs to play every day right we've had low perfido needs to play every day chas McCormick is being held back by

dusty Baker but we we should do it predict the storylines okay we can think about this for a minute so let's do this coming back what are going to be what are we trying to come up with three preposterous storylines okay

that Astro fans and maybe even we'll expand it to Astor's Twitter is losing their mind. They're going to glom on to, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Three preposterous storyline, not preposterous, three. That's a better phrasing of that.

Why isn't this happening got to happen kind of storyline? 1044, the Matt Thomas show, Ross, 713, 212, 5, 790. 1050 on 790. Matt and Ross with you here. I'm here in Charlotte, Rockets and Hornets. Tonight we'll have it for you beginning at 5 o'clock with the launch pad, 6 o'clock tip time here on Sports. board to talk seven on me all right so let's do this if lopi loperfeito is the number one

how how we want to describe this not the astro's hot take early hot takes so you want to go with something like that yes uh astro's twitter twitter twitter hot takes twitter teter twitter takes astro twitter takes what a future astro twitter takes how like this okay i'm having a hard time with three, but I have one right off the top. Well, there's one that's a staple of every single year in his low-hanging fruit. Go ahead. Joe Espada screwing up this game. Oh, yeah, but that's not going to say.

Is that a staple? Is that like on the full-time menu and we're looking for the rotating menu? Yeah, we're looking for like the Mahi-Mahi of the Astros Twitter hot takes. Yeah, because that's a staple. Well, you know what it could be. It could be the McRib of Hot Takes. It's not a full-time menu, but it's always around three or four times a year. It's like the tour of Italy at Olive Garden.

It's going to be around. It's not going anywhere. So here's the first thing I thought of. Time to bench Christian Walker. Ooh, yeah. Why isn't Esauk Parade is playing over Christian Walker? Yep. That's one.

That's an easy. Honestly, it hurts, it hurts me to hear that. Christian was so nice. Let me tell you something. If we could root for players, which we differently... Which I do. Obviously, we root for anybody wearing an Astor uniform, but... Yeah, I'm not going to...

Especially root harder for him. I'm not going to get pom-poms out, but I'm wishing... You can wish them the best. For sure. For sure. If some guy's an A-hole and doesn't want to speak to us, I don't always wish him the best. Yeah, you know, if he breaks an arm and it's no bail off. It is what it is. I mean, we're not biased that way or anything.

I just call me... We would never hold grudges on this show. Oh, are you kidding me? No chance. Okay. So I give you one. Do you have one that you thought of? Well, that's a good one that you brought of.

And we're going to go with Loper Fido, you said, as a staple. That's kind of a staple. That's on the full-time menu. Okay. I'm going to go with ESAC Paredes needs to be playing over. Carlos Correa, if he struggles at the plate. Oh. That's the natural spot.

I'm going to give you one, but this is also more the tour of Italy. This is on the one that's always there. Why doesn't Jim Crane spend more money? Oh, yeah, that's definitely. I mean, that's going to be a staple. That's special for 2026, sadly. How about this? This is too much of a staple?

Lance McCullors needs to go to the bullpen. Wow. Oh, how about this one? I'm going to take, I'm going to pivot off that a little bit. How about it's time to, this is fresh for 26. Just pivot, take your loss, and release him. There's no reason why he's taking up a major league. roster spot when there are other guys at Sugarland who are more willing or are more deserving

of a shot to get up here on the big league team. That's a good one. I'm trying to think of who's going to be because normally there's, can there something come out of the backup catcher situation? Because that's kind of an underrated topic. It is. And it really wasn't talked a whole lot about it while we were down there. But there isn't anybody that's asking for more Sejar-Salazar time.

You know what I mean? If you had a, if, I mean, I don't. I don't even think the general public has any idea who Walter Yannick is. No. Or Yannick, however they're pronouncing it. You know, because he's a little older and he has not made a serious. I mean, we're not hearing daily updates from him either a AA or AAA. He hasn't made AA yet, I don't think.

I don't know where he is. There's really nobody pushing for playing time there. Remember, because way back in the day, when George Springer was clubbing home runs left and right, a certain radio host on the station would play old-timey music and give us updates about how George Springer was doing for the triple-li. team and why is you not here and all that kind of stuff so i don't know i maybe bryce matthews my brice matthews could be the guy uh there could be i mean he needs to play more last year it was duby's got to play every year every day oh gosh cam smith absolutely without a doubt must make the 2026 25 roster coming out of spring training oh how about how about calvin bizio never got a fair

shot. There will be some, maybe some fans doing that. You're disrespecting the legacy of Craig Bissio. Yeah. Could Kevin not make it the 26-man roster and hurt the relationship between Craig Bishio and the team he only played for?

Yeah, that doesn't feel like enough sizzle to it on there. You know what? We really don't. We have low proffito and we have the infield mess until it gets resolved because anybody that doesn't perform in the infield is, I mean, now again, you could You could go with, you know, maybe does Yorna and want to play more left field?

But no one's asking for that. It's like he is a defensive gem and that the Astros are precluding him from doing what he does best. Because the thing he does best is hit the baseball. He's a decent enough fielder, but he's not going to ever threaten for a Go Globe Award. Maybe Ross whoop turned the corner. Maybe we're going to live on low perfido time the entire season. How about if Brian a Brayu blows a save early on? Oh.

He just can't do it. He doesn't have the mental... Yeah, he just doesn't have that mental fortitude. Yeah, yeah. Or like, let's say he pitches 31 pitches. He's not a ninth inning guy. He was great and high leverage last year. I think he started Great Ross and he dropped a good.

Oh, you mean when he was out there for like 80 games? well that's what he's been doing he's the workhorse exactly I don't let's see I felt like to me that September was a labor some month for him in terms of number of pitches and you know there was a lot of congestion on the base paths way but too much for a guy that you're expecting to be a 1-2-3-9th inning guy

because that's what Josh was where he got hurt save situations 206 ERA last year in 37 games give his log in front of him yep how many pitches was he throwing in September games per rounding. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I have his page. I can pull the game logs one second.

That's what it felt like to me that when Josh was out, that it wasn't the one, two, three, 11 pitch inning. There was guys at first and second. I could be just mixing my games up here. Going in order from last outings, 8, 12, 11, then there's a 32 in there where he got four outs. then 12, 11

That's all good to me Then a 30 And this is the start of the month So maybe you're thinking of the start of the month Yeah, maybe so A 30 and 19 and a 30 And those were all one innings So he did labor for three outings

In the beginning of September But then he settled 11, 12, 32 with four outs And then 11, 12, 8 Last outing he got Yeah, he got a couple of outs on eight pitches Okay, you know what? I'll take that. I'll be more than happy with that

So I mean, do I think that Brian or Bray you can do is absolutely But it just, there were times in September that I think we were doing post games going okay. I ain't worried. Is that I'm going to drop off? Let's get the second hour of the Matt Talba show with Raw started. We are a half hour away from shut your bum ass up.

And ain't nobody got time for that. And I'll have a story that I'll, it's funny, when I give you my stories, I feel like I'll lose these stories more times that I win them. I'm just going to throw that out there. But I really thinking, I think yesterday I did nothing wrong. I wasn't

there. So you'll be hearing it as I gave you my version. Yeah, I want to hear his version of the story. No, you don't, because he's going to use swear words. And I didn't swear at him. 7-1-3-212-5-79. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ross, I just saw the video of Lamello Ball.

He swerved into oncoming traffic. Yikes. Yeah, it looked like he was a little distracted and crossed the median line. I'm going to tell you all something, and it's because I have been guilty of it for, I mean, ever since you and I've worked together, I spent too much time texting and driving. And it was a terrible, terrible problem I had for a long period of time. And I got a lot of close calls over it, and it was ridiculous. And I should have never done it.

So now I've voiced a text. Yes. And that's a game changer. Now, the only frustrating thing is when they get the wrong, you got to slow down and make sure you're slowing down and enunciating. So what do you have to do is you have to slow down. and then the Siri text tells me back what she says, and I have to sometimes do it two or three times, but that's still better than trying to text and drive at the same time.

Shout out to anybody that does that, and if you want to send me weird text with illogical thoughts in it, I'll know that you're driving. Yes. Let's put it that way. All right, 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-1-2-5-790. Kyle sent us a couple of good ones, Rossi,

on Astro Twitter storylines and Justin's got some on the phones as well. This one I don't know if it's going to be 01. Why won't the Astros update us on Renel Blanco and Hayden West Nesky recovery? I don't know if it's top of mind. But the next two. They'll probably be

yeah. Probably fine. The next two. Why did we get Nick Allen? We love Dubon and he will go to the Hall of Fame. Kyle, that's a banger right there, my friend. You replace Kyle Allen with with Maricio Dubon,

Nick Allen, what are you doing? Marisa Dubon was the greatest utility player in the history of the Astros. Bill Spires, sorry, but you're out. It's now Nick Allen's turn, or to be the, Marisa Dubon's to be the turn to be the hero. And then we'll probably get some why isn't Zach Cole playing more? Well, I think, you know, my guess is Ross.

If Zach Cole makes a major league roster, he's going to be the starting left field on opening day. He's going to get looks. And again, it's just, I'll be curious to see the leash for everyone. That's what's important. Because, I mean, baseball is a game of, it's the long game. You play the long game in baseball more than any other. Christian Walker was terrible for a couple months.

And then he was great for a couple months. We've seen this from, you know, Kyle Tucker. Somebody as good as Alex Bregman. If we only looked at his April. May, a lot of years here in Houston, we'd be like, why is this guy out there? Yeah. We got to look at the June, July, August, September. So what if, you know, what if Zach Cole is, it gets off to a slow start and he's got to figure some things out?

And then all of a sudden, he's, he's busted down to AAA. I don't know, man. It's tough decisions to be made. Or how about this? Any AAA Astro pitcher crushing while other guys are failing. Miguel Uyola? Or a. A.J. Blueball, if you will.

Oh, J.P. France seems to be a fan favorite. I think it's the stash and the Rexpex. Like, okay, here it is. Why are the Astros carrying Lance McCullors when A.J. Bluebaugh... Oh, yeah. Miguel Uliola would be better for this, too. A.J. Blue Ball is a good one. He's a good fan favorite, too.

I love A.J. Blue Ball. I'm a big Blue Ball fan. Yeah, that's it. Insert AAA pitcher, killing it. Yes. Replacing one or two astro pitchers who are having an off run. Yeah. We're working on this list. This is a good job by y'all. Let's talk to Justin in 1107 on the Matt Thomas show Ross. Justin, good morning to you. Good morning. Okay. We're going to have a repeat of Kyle Tucker, Thaga, his injury. It's going to be with Josh Hater, and it's going to be, why won't the Astros tell us what's wrong with Josh? favor. Oh, man, come on. I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong, but that hurts to hear. You spoke that into existence. What are you doing? It's going to happen. Again, I'm not going to say you're wrong, but I don't, I want you to be wrong. Well, I've already, I've, I told you this when the injury was first announced that I'm not anticipating him anytime soon. I'm, when he plays, he plays. I'm not going sooner rather than later, or man, he threw 90 feet today. It's training that must be awesome he's on the on the precipice are coming back damn it you justin you're right this is terrible two thousand twenty seven thanks justin you're welcome that's it that's it

when of the astros are going to be more forthcoming about josh hater i don't know there were videos yesterday him throwing yesterday while we were on the air he's having a catch having a catch okay fine he's playing catch you were you we were listening to Yes, we were. Was that what you got that from? Yeah. Okay. I used to know it kind of hard.

Yeah. That's it. Why aren't the Astros being more forthcoming on Josh here? Why haven't we seen your frame-by-frame breakdown of this? No. You know what? I think the Astros will have learned a little bit. Now, again, they're not going to be like, oh, here's our medical report

on a PDF that y'all can enjoy this. They're showing the video on Channel 3 here in Charlotte, Lamele. He's totally his fault. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you on that. It's okay. Yeah, it was kind of startling there.

Okay, so, yeah. But I think the Astros are going to be better about it. They're not going to give you updates every 24 hours like maybe some people want, but I think they're going to be better about it. I think the national perspective on this and the way the Astros were being so naive about the Kyle Tucker situation did hurt them. And I don't know if it ever hurt them with Frayden. because I think ultimately in the day it's about money.

But I wonder if there are people like, man, are they protecting guys or are they misdiagnosing? And that's why I think part of the reason why they wanted to get a new set of eyes on the Astros Medical's team. And I think that made a lot of sense. How was Jeremiah Randall doing these days? He has got a job. I can't remember where. Was it the Braves or something? I want to what I was going to say first blush answer was the Braves on that.

Okay. If we both did that, then it's probably right. We heard of He checked his LinkedIn. Yeah. I don't know. Apparently his wife's speech, Roep Beach.

Okay. Just throwing that out there. 1110 on the Matt Thomas show at Ross. If you would like to chime in, we will have phone lines available for you at 713-212-5-790. Oh, Pirates? Now you're second-guessing ourselves. I don't know.

There is a Jeremiah Randall with the Pirates. Oh, I mean, how many Jeremiah Randalls are in Major League Baseball. It's like Joe Smith in baseball. I don't think so. I know one. You give me another one. Yeah, Jeremiah Rattle, the backup catcher for the Reds. Okay, very good.

713-212-5-7-90. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. It is a Matt Toma-Maw, Ross. I'm here in Charlotte, where tonight the Rock's take on the horn. Is you ready for the second half of the year, Ross? Can't wait. I'm feeling good. I think, you know, hopefully, I've been putting a lot of stock into this team.

needs a rest and refresh of the All-Star break. So if they come out and go like, I don't know, two and six in their first game, I'm going to be feeling real sad. But they looked sluggish. They were travel weary. They had the weird yo-yo. They had all those like 11 out of 14 games on the road,

and then they were yo-yoing a bunch of town, like a little butt of all-star break. We're all good, Maddie. It's all good, baby. Win Thursday, win Saturday, and I'm feeling good. What do you think about Kevin Durant's response yesterday? I think it sounds guilty.

I think if he had nothing to do with any of the burner accounts, it would have been, no, man, that wasn't me. That's funny how the internet ran with that, but I have nothing to do with any of those accounts. He didn't say that. I will say this. And again, I'm not privy to ask him that. He asked the answer. I think it's a dead story, but you never know.

I mean, it's social media. But somebody did tell me yesterday, not affiliated with the team, that Kevin Durant, and you would know this because you've followed his life more closer than I have. loves intrigue. There's a little devil inside, a little NXS, if you will. Okay. About, hey, would I be capable of doing that? Or would I not?

Yeah, he wants to play the game and mess with the media. A little bit of gamesmanship. That's possible. But I think when it comes to like, yeah, I mean, besmirching the names of his teammates, calling them trash and calling former teammates terrorists. One person is a really, really horrible name. I don't know.

know. It could be a combination. Again, the easy thing it would be is if, see, let me give you this interpretation. Has he probably besmirched a teammate before in the past? Yes. Right? Yes. We've done that here at the station.

Oh, and how? I mean, every single one he is. Oh, yeah. The things I've said about Ross, ooh, lord and, lord, lordy, lord. Yeah, some of that gets back to me, by the way. I know, I know, sadly. But, so if he says, I, I've never would have done that before,

then somebody would say, well, I've got absolute proof. Again, I think largely it's, it had to be asked. It was certainly answered. And again, to me, it gave more intrigued than anything else. But if the Rockets win five of the next seven games, no one's going to care. Now, if they lose six in a row, then it's, well, Kevin Durant's divisive. You know what Kevin Durant is, he's about to become the fifth highest, most explosive score in the history of the NBA.

Oh, how close is he to catch an MJ? I'm glad you asked. I did. He is 431 points away. Okay, so four games. Four games of 100 points? It'd be quite the run, wouldn't it? Yeah.

Well, if he scores 20 on average, it's going to take him 20 more. He may not even get it done before the end of the year. You don't know. Oh, he's going to get it. I mean, barring injury. Barring injury. Yeah, 431 behind Michael Jordan for fifth all time. He's going to pass Michael freaking Jordan.

He's got to get his turnovers down. He's averaging almost six turnovers in the last four games. He's going to. He's a little tired. You promise? No. But yes. Yes.

You know what I will promise? You're going to make that one of your locks of the week? It's my lock at a week and put my name on it. Would you say six a game for how many games? It's six a game for the last four. Okay. And the next four games, he will be under six turnovers per game. Oh, really?

You have my personal guarantee. Way to go on a limb on that one. Thank you. That's what we call you the NBA analyst. Yes, sir. All right. Shut your ball ass up. Nobody got time for that coming up in 15 minutes.

Sit down. 1120. Sports Talk 790. Coming up at about 10 minutes. My interaction with a fine young man at a Fort Lauderdale gas station yesterday. I thought he was a lovely fella. You weren't living my life, so you don't know. You in a car relaxing, closing your eyes, getting some rest.

No, it wasn't relaxing. I know. All right. Chris Bassett is a Baltimore Orioles pitcher. He has pitched what with Toronto in the past. That's what he's best. Oakland. He feels like he would sometimes, he would either go six innings of shutout ball.

the Astros or then get crushed? Yeah, one or the other. He is on the subcommittee for the Players Association. And apparently if you're on the subcommittee, one of the things you are a sub of is you are in the labor negotiations. When asked yesterday about the salary cap in baseball or a potential salary cap, here's the quote. The salary cap doesn't fix anything.

If you look at every major sport that has a salary cap, we have the best parity. The salary cap is not the issue. Having suppressed salaries across the league so owners can make more money is not the answer. Now stay with me on this. Quoting Bassett, like, if I tell you in 25 years, the Dodgers will be playing

and going to the 10 World Series and winning seven of them, is that an issue? Because that's the Patriots. Then chiefs have been to six or seven. The Philadelphia Eagles have been to four or five. The parity in our sport is better than any other sport. So we will make changes to try to help the so-called bottom teams out, but a salary cap in suppressing salaries and taking from players to try to help the so-called bottom feeder spend more,

that is not the answer. Because again, if you're trying to make a competitive league across the board, we have proof that every single league has less parity than ours. So how can you sit there and say a salary cap, is going to fix this when every single salary cap sport has less parity than ours. It makes no sense. Want to chew on that for a minute? I will say, now, when he says there's the better parity than any other,

he's talking about teams that have appeared in the World Series. You're talking about leagues. When he says our league, yeah, I know, but we have better parity. What is the definition of we have better parity? How is he defining parity? Is it champions or? That there are been numerous different. World Series champions.

In the last 10 years, we have seen the Astros win. We have seen the Braves when we've seen the Nationals, when we have seen the Rangers when we have seen the Dodgers win. He's saying, if you go look at the NFL, who's typically there? It's been New England. It's been Kansas City. If you look at the NBA, you think of what, largely what, the NBA. There's been parity there.

Denver has won a championship. Gold State's won a bunch. It seems like there's been a fair amount of parity in everyone. So I'm wondering what the measure is and what exact numbers he's using. And I will also say baseball is susceptible more to randomness than the other two sports. If you do especially, certainly NBA, NBA is the least random in a seven-game basketball series, which each game is like 200 possessions. Generally, the better team is going to win in a seven-game.

game series. Generally speaking. Barring injury. Baseball, I mean, you get like, you get Joe West calling a home run that wasn't. You get, I don't know, a ball rolling off of the top of the wall at Fenway. Like stuff can bloops and weird stuff. I feel like baseball is more of that than any other. To where we talk about, like, the worst, the worst of the absolute worst teams can still win.

like they win generally 60 plus games. Let me put it this way. And I know this is a comp or not. I can't tell you that a small market team may win a bunch of NFL games next year. There might be a chance that what was the smallest of the market teams? Would you be your Jacksonville? Jacksonville's. It could be your Carolinas.

It could be to a lesser extent the, the Packers, up in Green Bay with Milwaukee. I have a pretty good feeling, not guaranteed feeling, but a pretty good feeling, Rossi, that we're never going to see a Marlins versus Guardians World Series. Yeah, the Diamondbacks caught lightning in a bottle and made a World Series.

Like, oh, it's a great parody. The Diamondbacks were, the Diamondbacks made a World Series. Yeah, but the Diamondbacks weren't good that year. I mean, they won, what, like, 84, 85 games, and they got hot in the playoffs. I don't know. I guess we can, there's a number of examples we can think of. Like the Patriots, for example, you could argue

didn't deserve to be in the Super Bowl, so maybe we can do this to every league. Can you have a league that has a floor without a ceiling, without a cap? I mean, in theory, I guess you could. Oh, only a salary floor and no salary cap? Correct. Right. I guess. Is there a way you can do that?

You could do it, but I don't think you can get the owners to agree to that. That's what I think Chris Bassett wants. He even said it as much in his quote. He's like, how do we want to help about the bottom feeders? want to make sure they're more competitive. Because generally, what is, let me look it up. What is the floor and the cap in the NBA?

Yeah, salary four is 140 million, which is, so yeah, their floor is 90% of the salary cap. That's not going to happen in baseball. Cap is 154 million. Floor is 139. So let's just call it 140 and 155.

Yeah. That's only 15 million at wiggle room. There's no way. baseball owners agree to that. No way. So the owners are going to say, all right, you want a floor, we get that. But we're going to cap too. I'm generally in these types of situations, generally on the player's side.

But I can't buy the, oh, we have more parity than anybody else. You can't use parity as an explanation as a logical reasoning for no need for a cap. The haves have a much greater long-term advantage in baseball than any other of the major sports, and it is because of the lack of a salary cap. And the Dodgers, while enjoying it now, have basically said, hey, we want our contracts are already crazy right now, part because of us, or a large part because of us, we need a governor. And the baseball player is like, well, that's your fault.

You can't control your spending, and that's on you. you're the ones and want all these players so look you can see if on both sides of this for sure you absolutely can't when you go to a player and you say we're putting a cap on something that means they're going to cap

the amount of money the players are going to get there will not be a Los Angeles there will not be in New York they will not be a Chicago that will say budget be damned because if you have a cap you have a budget and that's what the players do not want let's talk to

our buddy Aggie Doug here maybe he's in a Economist here on the Matt, Tomas, Ross. 80, what do you got today? I am definitely not an economist, but I do know that this is basically playing from a different rulebook. I mean, that's all it is. I mean, you basically say, okay, well, our field is, you know, 100 by, you know, 75, but the Dodgers field is only 80 by 60. It makes absolutely no sense.

You can't play with a different set of rules. Just because the Dodgers have more money, that doesn't make them basically, they can go out and money with it. I mean, the Yankees used to do it in the 80s and the 90s. So yes, absolutely. I agree with Bassett that that's not a recipe for success. It's not a guaranteed recipe for success because obviously we know the Yankees, they sucked even when they had paid all those players. You've got to pay the right players.

The point of having this whole parody conversation, it's a different sport. In the NFL, if you have a franchise quarterback, you're probably going to make the playoffs. And the NBA, if you have one or two superstars, you're probably going to make the playoffs. So for them to sit there and say, oh, well, you know, if we pay, you know, our top 15 guys, let's just say top 15 out of 26, significantly more. Let's even say 25 to 30 percent more than any other team can even afford. Not even like they can, but they can afford. So that's a completely different set of rules. Yeah, I'm not smart enough to do this, ADL, I think any of us are.

It's hard for me to cross over sports and say, well, if one sport does it one way, we should do another way. I can't. I can't figure that out. And I'm more going to be... Well, think about it. Like, if you have a stud pitcher, right? Like, if you have a stud pitcher or, like, we had Jordan and we had, you know, our two or three pitchers that were great with Framber and Justin Verlander. I mean, but we had to have a lot of other guys do a lot of things.

And we paid them a lot less money than the doggers would ever even think about pain. So I guess that's just my point is that when you have the ability to pay 30% more for even a guy that's just a guy on some other teams, and that's just your plug-in guy or your bench guy, that makes absolutely no sense. Thanks, Sacky, Doug, for the phone call. Appreciate it. The players are deathly afraid, Ross, if there's a cap. there's not enough money to go around. Yeah, that's interesting.

If there's a cap, then the Dodgers just bank all these profits that the players have no access to. That is correct, because the television deal for the Dodgers doesn't change unless the Major League Baseball owners collectively say, we'll take all of our TV money and put it together. And the Dodgers have no interest in doing that.

Like, yeah, we're going to take this straight to the bank. And then if you make a cap for the, you know, the same cap for the raise as the same cap for the Dodgers, that's just letting the Dodgers keep all their cash. And the players, you're not allowing the players to get into that. Yeah, I don't know. This is interesting. Again, we got a lot more minutiae to go to over the next calendar year.

I would just say the overriding sentiment was, I wouldn't be booking West Palm Beach for 2027, put it that way. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. I will be telling you about my pleasant interchange exchange with a West Palm Beach gas station of attendant. 713-212-5-790. Shut you, ball-ass up. Ain't anybody got time for that next year on 790.

All right. Jonathan, you've not heard this story. Ross, you've heard the story. Fade the music down a little bit. Keep it going a little bit. Here's what we've got to do. Anybody got time for that? Shut your bum ass up.

7-13-21-2-5-790. 7-13-212-2-5-5. 790. So Ross and I left West Palm Beach and I said, let's stop and get some gas close to the Fort Lauderdale Airport. So we pulled off to a gas station. I went to put my credit card into the machine and the machine wasn't working. It said, please go see attendant. So I went to the attendant. I said, attendant, I am filling up my gas to take it to the car rental place. I'll come back and pay for it when it's all done. He goes, how much do you want? I said, I don't know.

I'm filling it up. He goes, it's a simple question. How much do you want? I said, I don't know how much it's going to cost. He was, what do you need? I said, don't you understand? I'm filling the car up. If I fill it up to $15 and it takes $25, my job was not done.

so then I was starting to get a man and I said put $249 in there you said that that kind of got him mad he goes bro it's not difficult I said I'm trying to fill my car up I'm taking it to the car rental place I don't I can't guess how much it's going to cost

I was just I was wondering why you're in there for so long he said give me an amount I said I don't know the amount and I said fine I'm out of here I said, you don't know what you're doing. And he goes, you have a nice day, sir. My response was, I don't want you to have a nice day. That set him off.

He comes out of the little gate area, you know, his little box, a little window area. Yeah, it's bulletproof glass. Bulletproof glass and start bulletproof glass and starts swearing at me. What do you say? If you, M-F, er, you don't know the F you're talking. talking about just all the good ones oh nice he then gets out of his little room and comes outside i didn't see him oh i did i said ross let's get out of here this guy's losing his mind

because i told him i did not swear in him i said i don't want you to have a nice day now i think you can put a certain amount and then refund you i think that's what they do it was an option all he kept saying was, bro, how much do you want? I was like, dude, I don't know. I'm trying to fill the car up. So he comes out, he's throwing his hands up, yelling at me again, and I simply just not at him, not at him as we drive off. I didn't call him a name.

I didn't put the middle fingers up. I didn't want to call. I didn't want to call him at the gas station, but you told me not to do that, so I didn't do that. What were you going to do? Call him and do what? Just tell me it was going to, I didn't want to, just want to make sure he knew he, I didn't want him to have a nice day. Why don't you say it to his face, Maddie? I did.

I said, do not have a nice day. Well, you're going to call him and then talk mess. No, I didn't feel like I needed to, but he came out. He came out of his little glass area. Then he comes outside. That is the, if you, if you found me a stack of Bibles right now, that's exactly how it went down. Okay. I did say, give me $249.

that didn't make it very happy at all. Wow. So for that guy, who by the way, the machines don't work outside, and the fact that I cannot fill up to the appropriate level because it's a full gas of tank, I say, ain't nobody got time for that? Ain't nobody got time for that? Now, I will say I just needed to use the bathroom, number one. And I just asked him where the bathroom was.

I'll say, is there a bathroom in here? Because I tried to find, there was none inside. He said, oh, it's just outside right around there. I was like, okay, do I need a key or a key code or anything? He's like, no, let's go open. Everything was pleasant with that guy. It seemed very nice to me. It was cordial.

Two different conversations, Ross. Had a smile on his face. I didn't get any, you know, any bad vibes from the guy. That's because you were asking to take a piss. I was looking to get gas. Yeah, so I don't know. I'm feeling like you incited this young man. False.

First of all, I think you can tell him to put like 50 bucks on there, and then if it's less, then you should go back. Or you just... Why didn't he offer that as an option to me? I don't know. Maybe you're yelling at him too hard. Matt, he did give you the option. He just needed it in the mouth.

Oh, Jonathan, what was I supposed to say? Matt, this is what I do when I go, okay? So you just say my car gives around like 25, 30 fill up. But I don't know. This is a rental car. I don't know what this thing costs. So that's what you... So, all right, you just give a ballpark amount.

Be like, all right, put 35 in there. You go and you pump it. Say it only put 32. and you go back in like Ross was saying at only 232 can I have $3. Okay. But what if I short it? What if I asked for $25 and I needed 35? Then I'm going to go back and do this again. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Not my fault. Your equipment sucks. He would bro to me. Bro, how much you want? So I said $249. He was more upset when I said, do not have a nice day. Yeah, that was rude.

No, it wasn't. I could have said something a way worse. Oh, you could have. You could have said something way worse. You could have said something worse, but that doesn't make it not rude. I could have made fun of his hair. What was wrong with his hair? It looked like I hadn't washed it in weeks. That seemed fine to me.

Well, you didn't have a chance to intimately talk to him. You want to know where the... I didn't have any issues with his hair. He just had some long locks. We're kept very well. I mean, you know what? He was in the right. I was in the wrong.

The customer is always wrong. That's what I heard all the time. So guess what I did? We went to cross street to 7-Eleven. I used my credit card, had zero issues, had a very pleasant experience. Oh, you did have to go in and get the receipt. I did. But I didn't make a big deal of that because, you know what?

Stuff happens. Maybe the paper machine was jammed up. Bro, it ain't hard. Have a nice day. I don't want you to have a nice day. And that's what got him really mad. I don't need to give everybody to have a nice day. It wasn't the truth.

He didn't want me to have a nice day. He wanted me to have a terrible day. He got time for gas station and attended to light of me. He extended in Olive Branch and you slapped it out of his hand. No, he didn't. If he extended Olive Branch, you just said, all right, I'll turn the pump on for you and then you can come back and pay for this when you're done. You didn't trust me.

I wouldn't trust you either. Shut your bum ass up. Ross, what's on me? I'll just go with people getting on planes with hacking cough. Ain't nobody got time for that. Put your mask on, cover yourself up, do whatever you can. Come on, man. There's two people on the plane yesterday.

The entire plane? Oh, no. That I could hear. And then within a few, two people within a few rows. Oh, and you know what? On the flight in, the lady that was talking the whole flight super loud, ain't nobody got time for that either. Jonathan, what's the matter with you?

Me and my girl had like a little restaurant. sitting at the bar and this older white couple comes in. It's a Mexican joint. And they just start, what's the best way to put this? Start questioning every single thing that's in the food and the items over and over again. Like, oh, how are the beans cooked? Asking the bartender like she knows over and over again, kind of like berating her because they don't know. Like, oh, my husband doesn't like this.

Like you got to make sure it's this way or he's not going to give you a tip. ain't nobody got time for that man if you don't just order your food you came here like I don't doesn't make sense to me like why are you doing that why are you be raiding this poor lady just old and cranky

that used to happen as a former waiter people say I remember one person came in it's like hey do you use pepper on this yes we use pepper on everything okay this needs to be cooked without pepper and it needs to be on a grill

that no one is going to get pep I'm extremely ill allergic to pepper. So this needs to be cooked separately on a different grill, not near anything else that gets cooked with pepper. And we're like, yeah, sure, ma'am, sure, whatever. And I mean, it was grilled without pepper, but it wasn't on a different, it was on a different cooking service.

They could go back in the back and be like, look, go spit in her food. I don't know, I just, I never treat. Oh, hell yeah. That's going to happen. You know what I just never would do that. I just, I think that's so, that's, uh. Yeah, I think that might have happened to us when, when Matt asked the lady if the tea had been brewed yet at the other restaurant we were at.

What? What? Ruger ring? No. Oh, oh, yeah, because it took off of the tea. Hey, we asked for two. Man, I'm like, man, they're going to spit my tea now. Matt goes, hey, has the tea been brewed yet?

Like, what? Oh, man. Oh, no. No, no. No, no. I can't do it no more, man. I'm going to put you. He'll be stuck over there, man.

Wait a minute. I got something for you. When I was at McDonald's, when I worked at McDonald's in high school, women would come in and ask for no salt on their fries. which means we had to clean off the fry bat because there was salt to bray in the bottom. Anybody got time for that? If you're not putting... Oh, yeah.

If you can't eat fries with a little salt, shut your bum ass up. Nobody got time for you. That's a tip people used to try to get fresh fries, yeah. Yeah. Really? I'm on to your scams. Oh, that's lame. All right.

713-212-1-2-5-790. 7-1-3-1-2-5-7-9. I just got a... On my Instagram account, it was a photo of our stuff in West Palm Beach. Some douchebag. It just said, Matt, why don't you just die from terminal cancer? What?

On Instagram? On Instagram. People are usually pretty pleasant there. He doesn't follow me. I don't even get where this comes from. Just block them. Where'd you post? On my Instagram, at SportsMT.

Matt, why don't you just die from terminal cancer? Okay. Thanks. Give him a fraud, or Valdez, thanks. Steve is a USAF veteran. He's a fan of the 49ers, the Spurs, the Giants, University of Houston Athletics,

proud husband and father of nine boys. You know what? Your nine sons hate you, Steve. You're a douchebag. You're setting a great example for your nine sons. Shit your bum ass up, man. All right. He's a nut job.

It looks like to me. This must be a bot account of some sort. It's got to be right. I don't know. I don't see the, is it on the last picture you posted? It's the one with the three photos I did. One of me talking to Joe

one of me talking to a... Yeah, where I didn't get any photo credit. It's fine. Well, I'll give it to you. No, it's okay. No, don't worry about it. No, it must be a hidden... Did you hide the comment? I don't see it. It must be a hidden... It says there's two comments and then there's only one shows up, so the Instagram probably hit it. So that's good. People can't see it. Not good. 713-212-790. Let's talk to Robert and Cyprus. He's got

somebody... He says, ain't anybody got time for. We'll do that next year on 790. Back on the phones, we go at 713-212-5-790. Let's go to Robert and Cyprus. Robert, what's the matter with you? Hey, I'm just calling about the, possibly, the free agent we can pick up on the offensive line or whatever on the offense. And what do you think on the top five linemen's draft possibility for the 20th position we're in? And I'll hang up and I'll listen to you. ain't nobody got time for that

exactly that's exactly what I would have said perfectly done Johnston Jonathan says that's not what he was told when he screened the call you go look it up I'm not going to go tell you I don't know five offensive linemen are

I believe in doing an entertainment show not a not a lecture series no you go look it up now Ross has done more time he's in a more deeper dive on the offensive line. Sure, why not? I think the Utah tackles are good.

I think somebody saw, I think I had saw somebody mocked Caden Proctor the Alabama tackle to the Texans. Good. Because I've seen a lot of him play, and I want to make sure he's a part of it. This is maybe more a question for, I don't know, Chris Gordy.

Yeah. Gordy, go to give you the breakdown of Alabama Alignment. By the way, anybody that plays in the SEC is an amazing NFL prospect, and if you play any outside of the conference, you probably suck. You go by the draft numbers and the pro bowl numbers and the all pro numbers. SEC's doing pretty well.

Now, in fairness, to the caller, we will have experts on down the stretch, but you just can't come across. For ain't nobody got time of that and shut your bum ass. I'm asking about the five best alignment you think it could be available at 28. That's not what this show is. Well, this show is, is people making fun of me for being just trying to do. I just wanted some gas. It's all I wanted.

It's all I wanted. And when the guy told me not to have a nice day, and I said, I don't want you to have a nice day. He was a little charged up. Yeah, we did have half. I'm trying to just think of it. I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, Matt. Because we had a half tank, but I don't know how much gas that thing holds either.

We had a re-rim, re-errain. Mm-hmm. And I mean, I'm going to guess it holds like 20-something gallons. What was the gas price? I didn't look. And I will be honest with you. the next time this happens, if it does, I will ask for $50

and then I will get the change back. Yeah. You know, it's all we can do in life, Matt, is learn. But I mean, I mean, are we trusting, am I going to trust a gas station that can't use the credit card machine properly in the... Yeah, I've done it before. It's, I've been places where, yeah, they'll just refund the money on the card. Okay.

So, again, because they, I mean, it's not their fault. They have people who go and say that and then they'll just run off. and maybe that's and that's a problem of that area I don't know yeah but I just was like he he was like bro what do you want?

I'm like bro $249 he didn't seem very happy with that number he should just charge you for $249 and let you get the gas he didn't get my card he'd have done that for sure Yankees Keith on 7 out of 8

Keith what's going on what's the matter with you Well, I'm hoping what I heard, these rumors I heard is not true, that the general manager said, this ain't our year, and he really made it even clear by not getting anybody in the, in the, you know, we didn't get anybody to do any chance we could get somebody. And I'm hoping that the hormonger didn't say what he said about his own teammates. if he did ain't nobody got time for that ain't nobody got time for that

All right he's talking about the Rock Is that the Hoormonger K-D? Everybody's got new What that term Doesn't that mean like a Like a John? Or no, no

No, that would be a Pimp Who's the Hoagalow? Is the Hoarmonger the Chip? The Pimp or the John? I don't want to look this up Because I already looked at Snoop. I already looked up Snoop.

doggy style album. It's a person that deals with them. Okay. So the pimp. It's like a pimp's assistant? No. The junior pimp? The vice president pimp?

The vice pimp? Yeah, let's just say that. You know what? Let's just do that. No, no, no. How about this, John? The pimp's people. I guess.

The pimp assistant? Do you even need pimps in 2026? I think so. I don't know. I mean, can't Venmo just take care of this usually? Well, as you know, Matt, pimping ain't easy. Apparently not. It's not.

And I never saw... Oh, by the way, Yankees Keith, since he called in, I wanted to... And he always talks about his great predictions, and I wanted to read something that I wrote down. Go ahead. He did have Rabel as coach of the year. Okay, that works.

He had Jabari and Tari traded. Okay. And he had Matt Stafford as MVP, which was correct. But he also had the Rams beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Yeah. Well, I mean,

he picked a couple of chalks, right? I mean, he didn't go out and eliminating that stuff. He had a men

Thompson as an all-star wrong. And Katie on IR and the rocket's not making the playoffs. Yeah. And by the

Raffel never said this wasn't our year. He said it may be, he said we, we, his words were basically like, you know, with all these injuries,

it has us thinking maybe it's not our year, something like that. Yeah. A paraphrasing of that. Dustin on 790. Dustin, what's the matter with you?

you. These guys that eat lunch at the gas pump, and I got to wait until they get done. Oh. Oh, man. Nobody's got time for that. I'll take two bites of my taco, and then I go. Dustin, I need a ruling. Are you still there with us, Dustin?

Yes, sir. What if you get one of those roller, like tacos or hot dogs? And you can finish it. If you're getting $4. As you fill up, perfectly fine. Yeah. If you see somebody behind you, you got to go. Yep

I'm with us And it's very fair I get it Thank you very much Because you don't want to drive And get Yeah mustard and relish all over your shirt I can tell you

Or tacos al pastor I can crush a fried bean burrito While I'm getting my gas At the Kingwood gas station A fried bean burrito Oh absolutely But we don't eat tamales or enchiladas man Yeah because Mr. Texas

Has a wider palettes A wider palettes I tell it. How many of you, let me tell you something. How many of you eat fried bean burritos out of a gas station? This guy does. That makes you, Mr. Texas. It does.

Your qualifications are you drove to Lubbock that one time, and you eat fried bean burritos. We went to that gas station yesterday. They weren't fried beamedos there. They didn't have anything. Zilch. In Florida? No. Nope.

Koso on 7 out of Kesa, what's the matter with you? Quick question. What do you guys think about? people who check their food in the drive-through after getting their food. 100% for it. 100% for it? Okay. I'm going to say the same thing.

Sorry, I got to check what I paid for. Bum-ass up, man. What the hell was all that crap? Second of all, you are, Mr. Texas. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. When a man named Kayso calls me Mr.

Texas, that's all the validity I need. Oh, look, we got a full. offensive line breakdown from Chris Gordy. Oh, no. Let's go. We need people listening to the show. We don't be able to be tuning it off. I like this.

What is it coming up? People like Texans talk and draft talk, Matt. Not in February. Hmm? All right, what is he going to do? 12 and a half an hour? Oh, he sent us an email. Oh, he gave us the line.

Yeah, we got a full breakdown. All right. The news at noon coming up with SEC flavored offensive linemen. You're going to break down all A. Vega and Iaone From Penn State That's what separates us from the rest of stations in town Scott and River Oak

Scott what's the matter with you? How was Palm Beach? I was so busy the last three days I barely got to I didn't get to hear as much of the show while y'all were down there as well I would have liked to How was it? Scott Scott Scott Shut your bum ass up Scott we love you though

Shit your bum ass up man I went to Spring training last year I have a buddy that lives in West Palm Beach, so I stayed with him. That's a beautiful spot. If you guys want to pitch in on purchasing some real estate down there, like their downtown area, buy one of those mansions. So we can go to spring training and play golf with Jim every year.

Just let me know. We can see if we can make it work. But what I don't have time for, I'm tired of this idea of floating ESOC. Did you guys hear any possibility of trying them out in left field for 80 games a year? y'all were down there. I mean, not Dana not being able to trade this guy

and then now making him feel isolated to that part of the team. I don't know if that was the vibe y'all got when you all were there. No. Not a vibe by God, Scott was, and thank you for the phone going to be traded.

The calendar doesn't tell us to win. What's that? You got the same thing? Yeah. By the way, someone on Instagram, not me, Matt. This is not me. Somebody's asking,

did you say, whiter palette? No. Wider. Oh, okay. We just want, wanted clarification. Let me tell you all, if you ain't eating fried bean burritos when you go get your lottery tickets and your gas,

you ain't part of Texas. Shit your bum ass up, man. Exactly. No, that's to you. That was our landing statement. Oh, man. I'm going to tell you all something. When I get back to town on Sunday, I'm going to go to that gas station the one I go to on North Park in Kingwood. Yes. And I'm going to pump, get some gas. I'm going to go in and get the bean breed.

I'm going to eat it live on Instagram. No, we're good. And it's going to show you again why I represent the Lone Star State better than anybody else in the marketplace. Ridiculous. 1202, the news at noon is next. This is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. 7 and H-Town. Hour number three of the Matt Thomas show at Ross begins with the news at noon.

Yes, Matthew, we start the news at noon. talking about the winter Olympics. As now Canada and United States are facing off in the women's hockey gold medal game, you'll be getting a live update, Matt, from, I don't know, somebody. It starts in about 10 minutes. Who you got? Team USA. That seems about right.

All right, elsewhere in the news at noon, rockets are back in action from the All-Star break. As are you, Matthew, taking on the Charlotte Hornets. Lamello ball expected to play despite his accident that he caused in the streets of North Carolina, Rockets holding as four and a half point favorites in this game.

You have, who's suspended? Musa Diabate and who else? Miles Bridges. Miles Bridges. Miles Bridges is suspended as is Musa Diabate. I feel like it should be a rested and refreshed

Houston Rockets team as they take on the Charlotte Hornets tonight, and then they will take on the New York Knicks on Saturday. Yeah, back to every other day schedule for the foreseeable future. Still, I think there's six sets of back to backs between down the end of the year, by the way. Yeah, that seems ridiculous, because there's only like 30-something games. I know. So over a third of those are going to be back-to-backs?

It was fun hanging out with you. That's all right. Well, it would be a little. long playoff run too. Hopefully. I hope so too. I'm all for that. All right.

What else is going on? The Major League's Baseball Players Association have quickly moved to name Tony Clark's successor as they announced a unanimously unanimously elected Bruce Meyer as their new interim executive director.

Their voting board is made up of 72 major and minor league players elected by their teammates on two year terms of service. For those who are unaware, the representative for the Houston Astros is Hunter Brown. I was very surprised we found out about that. Yes, I mean, he's kind of young, but he's an ace and seems very intelligent.

So in years past, it had been less close junior. I can't remember who else, but it is Hunter Brown as the NFLPA board appoints Bruce Myers at Meyer as interim executive director. expected at some point he will be full-time executive director as the successor to Tony Clark as it looks like both sides playing to the public mat talking about the owners and the players Chris Bassett we mentioned this earlier in their show one of the latest to fire back at the idea of a salary cap in major league baseball he says the salary cap is not the issue having suppressed salaries across the league so sorry my page refreshed by itself

having suppressed salaries across the league so owners can make more money is not the answer you brought up the Patriots in the NFL and also said the chiefs have been to six or seven Super Bowls Eagles going to Super Bowls over and over again he said the parody in Major League Baseball is better than any other sport

first blush poll question for you ready for this okay I'm not holding you to this not even a gut feeling please don't The over-under of number of games being played in 2027. I put the number at 61 games. Okay, good. Now, the number that popped in my head when you asked was 100.

So I will say over. Okay. I think once you start... Yeah. I think once you start getting under 100, though. Ooh. Okay, so I said 61. Yeah.

You're taking the over-up. I will take the Oval. Okay. I would lean to it over to, I think if you missed an entire season, you could have long. Now, again, the owners are obviously much more prepared for this than the players are. Although, if you're making crazy money, look, $25 million is still $25 million. You're losing. But if you're making that ridiculous money, you're doing it.

You've done it for a long period of time. But that's funny you'll also never get back, too. Yeah, and I think the more I think about this, I mean, why should the Dodgers spend as much as Tampa Bay raise? I kind of get the player's side on this. Well, they're also, the owners are saying that as long, we want to put a cap on ourselves because we don't want everybody coming to us and saying,

hey, we'll just, when in doubt we'll go to the Dodgers and play. Yeah. They want to use the cap as an excuse to say we can only spend so much. Yeah. But, you know, into the players' perspective on this, nobody's forcing the Dodgers to pay all this money. Nobody's demanding that the Dodgers overspend to get Kyle Tucker and Shohei Otani and Freddie Freeman and all those kind of guys. They're doing this on their own.

Yeah. And one more quick news item, Matt, with the Olympics. Australian reporter Danica Mason, are you familiar with her work, Matt? No. Let me ask you this. Is it worthy of a Google search? Well, she's from Australia and she's on TV. What do you think?

I would say sure. She's attractive. Okay. Well, she has to, she has issued an apology after getting on air while being a little drunk during the Olympics and randomly talking about iguanas. She was slurring her words on the live Winter Olympic broadcasts, having totally misjudged, she said drinking alcohol before appearing on camera. Well, when was she judging it was going to be okay to do that? I don't know, Matt. Now, I might have had a cold one or two.

That was, you know, what's the statute of limitations on this? It was the 2022 World Series celebration show when we're on to 3 a.m. After 10 o'clock, you can drink as much you want. Okay, good. Because let me tell you something. When the Astero sucked, you know I got that margarine machine out. Good. I didn't even hide at that point.

I was like, you're making me do 100 post-game shows of a team that's losing the 100 games. Yeah, I'm having a cocktail. Okay. Well, I found her Instagram and you have a lot of. lost me for the segment so all right that's the news the new thank you very much for that uh 1214 is the time we are going to hopefully between the two of us and the great listeners of the matt thomas show ross try to end this ridiculous is cj strout on the trade market let's cj and discuss it next 1214 on sports talk 790 all right we've got to end this nonsense of c j strout's trade talk

but Ross was able to dig deep into the audio vault that is the ever-growing I-Heart Sports Network, and we found the young lady that works for the Australian TV network, correct? Yes, Channel 9 Sports in Australia. Her name is Danica Mason, Matt. Judge the drunkenness. Literally, the price of coffee over here is actually fine. It's more the price of coffee in the U.S. that we are going to have to get used to. I'm not sure about the aquinas.

Where are we going with that one? But anyway, let's get into the day's spot because there is plenty happening back at home. We're going to start off with some actual Bruce from Rockos gearing from the, actually their trip to the US, the UK rather, because Bruce Walsh has stolen the show. He, of course, did that in the last year, the series. Growning for four tries and claiming England's fans,

but return the UK just three months following that UK club challenge I've heard worse have you no I can't know she was not formulating sentences

and she started talking about iguanas sometimes 10 to 2 we're healthy that as well we're sober you started talking about iguanas and coffee coffee prices yeah I guess they're high in America

I don't you know what the you can get the best coffee for the value is the old rim Rortons in Canada That's what I heard. Yeah. That's what you and, you and Lopey were talking about.

Yes. Joe, Joe Cook. Two cake donuts and a coffee for $3. Are you kidding me? Mm, delicious. All right.

So, she lose her job, suspended or just admonished? What was her penalty? Does she have anything? She has just issued an apology. I have not seen anything about her losing her job. I mean,

I'll be honest with y'all. And I don't want to besmirge names. so I'm going to keep it name free on this. Some of your favorite TV anchors when you were growing up as a kid would go to mini a lounge in between the 6 and 10 newscast. I don't have a couple of pops. Yeah, she said she should not have a had a drink and she was cold in an altitude and had skipped dinner.

Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense now. that makes a lot of sense. All right, Ross, can we, are we going to have to, and I know the boys in the morning we're talking about this today,

do we need to crucify Tom McShay for bringing up this whole C.J. Stroud trade conversation. We played the audio. We crucified the people who ran with it. Because he was, he's doing a podcast. He's like, yeah, you know, you think of these trade candidates.

Like, I don't know, maybe C.J. Stroud. It's basically the way it came off to me. It wasn't like, sources close to me, say C. Jay Stroud is on the trade block. He floated out a name of a quarterback who struggled and could possibly thrive elsewhere. And then all the

aggregators and content creators, they jump all on it and make entire shows and videos and all that stuff. This is just the nature of sports media in 2026. There's so much of it. You have to think of new ways. I mean, because let's be honest, it's not a

really robust time for sports. We don't have, I mean, the NBA doesn't necessarily move the needle. the Olympics are cool but doesn't move the needle you're i mean if you if you watch you the tv shows they're getting into a lot of hypotheticals on the NFL front like i literally turned down ESPN this morning when i woke up and it was is it a bad sign if lamar jackson does not attend o'ta's with the baltimore ravens that's why doing national sports is depressing we can always find some nibble of a thing to get to on the houston side of things but could you

imagine having to go in? Now, Graham, they're probably making six times what we're making, Ross. Yeah. I'm putting on some makeup and saying, hey, can you go two segments about whether or not Lamar Jackson should show up at OTAs? Yeah, I would like to get whatever salary, Jason McIntyre is getting from Fox to go on and say

Mike Evans hasn't sniffed a Super Bowl. Yeah, that's not great. That would be Super Bowl champion. Correct. With Tom Brady and the Bucking years within the last six years. Yes, 2021. Yeah. I mean, we get stuff wrong.

Oh, my God. Yeah. And we don't want to get things wrong, but, you know, when you're, it's just, but when you hire it so authoritarian, like the national folks are always so much more authoritative as local guys. I know everything. You know nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's exactly right. Okay. Thanks, Skip Bayless. Well, he's doing a podcast. Steve, and he's making $30 million here. He's doing great. Oh, by the way, did you see this? I forgot to mention this to you.

Do you see what Pat McAfee's doing now? No, I did not. He hired an entertainment agent. Okay. He wants to get into television and movies. Oh, like he wants to be an actor. Correct. Huh.

You know, good for him. He wants to become, I don't know, his words or somebody that was involved with him, the next Sylvester Stallone. Stop. Stop. What does that even mean? It must be like a Rambo remake? I mean, he's always got his guns out. Yeah.

Action figure got a guy. Yeah, for sure. You know what? You only get one life. And Pat McAfee's trying to live his best life. So I'm wishing him the best on his journey to be the next movie super. Star. It's not going to happen, but all you can do in life is try. So I'm wishing him the best. I mean, he's doing very, look, he's transformed sports television.

Yeah, how, though? What is, what does he do that's so different? I guess I just, well, it's swearing. Okay. It's Brosky swearing. And there's a segment of the population that likes that kind of stuff. I can tell you that years ago, all my son's friends, which are, you know, 22, 23 years old, thought Pat McAfee was the greatest thing since. sliced bread. But then it wears on you. And it's

when you don't reinvent yourself and you're the same, it's the same stick every day. I mean, putting on Grancowski or Brady or JJ Watt, it kind of just kind of runs it out of gas.

And so that 22, 23-year-old doesn't find Pat McAfee nearly as endearing or as entertaining and is funny as it does it say 26 or 27. That can be said

for a lot of things. I mean, people grow up and grow out of certain things. But, you know, look, the best thing that Pat does, to his credit, he has kick-started game day. I mean, when Lee Corso was down the home stretch of his career, Pat McAfee added energy. The kicking contest that he does on Saturdays is a huge part of their show. He does have a niche, and he does, and there is some talent to that. But, yeah, just going on your TV show and swearing and having a bunch of your guys on who, by the way, you're paying to have his guess. I mean, Aaron Rogers wasn't doing it for the kindness of his heart.

He was being paid a lot of money. And, you know, there was a good return on that. But, yeah, Pat McAfee doing movies. I mean, he seems like he could at least try it, right? I mean, I don't blame him trying to do this. Can you think of one successful person that's gone from sports media into acting? And been successful? Or sports athletes?

Yeah, I guess Sports athletes, I guess we can think of a bunch. But I think of him, I guess, more of as a media person at this point. Would you count Stephen A. Smith? Oh, beyond that show. He's on that. He's on the, what is it, guiding light or whatever? General Hospital.

Come on now. Guiding lights. I've been around for a long time. Oh, I'm sorry. I know. I tuned to our resident expert on soap operas. There you go. Much better.

I know. Stephen A's going to go run for president, apparently, it sounds like. No, he's not. I mean, he is doing a lot of political stuff. He is. He knows. Well, he doesn't have my vote because I'm not voting for me about it. No, I will literally vote for literally anybody opposite. I literally am not voting, so.

Okay. All right, so really quick to wrap this up. Cicero's got to be laughing his ass off, right, when he's seeing these things. Because you know, you know he's seeing it. He may be saying he's not seeing it, but he's really seeing it. Yeah, he's got to be. Because even if you are the biggest CJ, non-defender, you're not going to just trade a guy for two lousy playoff games.

If CJ was terrible the entire season and underperformed and basically didn't get you to the promised land like going to the playoffs, then I could see this being more of a decent conversation. He just never matched what he did in the first year. And that's what people are looking for. And here's the thing. To be a C.J. Defender, if you want to be for a second, there's no reason why he can't go back and be that what he was a couple of years ago,

but he's done it once. Unless you're of the belief that the injuries have cost him, some of that twitch that made him so special, or that other teams have been able to figure him out. And that's why I think this upcoming year for the Texans will be the important year because you'll be able to answer both of those questions. 1230, it's a Matt Thomas-Jew at Ross, Sports Talk 790. Ross, what is today's edition of, believe or not?

What? Yeah. We're doing that? We have a lot of prizes giveaway today. We give away nothing this week. What did we say? Didn't some people die recently? I would presume a lot of people have died recently.

Was somebody a lot of Easy E? He's been dead a long time. Oh, Robert Duvall passed. Robert Duval. And then somebody else famous, I thought. I can't remember. I also want we could do Astros players, so I got a lot of good info. on that.

You want to do that too. It's up to you. We're at spring training. Yep. And by the way, tomorrow on the show, we are allowed to talk about Florida stories because we were in the state of Florida this week. Oh, that's right.

I'm very excited about that. That'll be, Jonathan, that'll be the easiest search for you all over and doing your entire life, looking for crazy crap that happens in the state of Florida. That's for sure. 713-1-3-2-1-790. 7-1-3-2-7-90. It is Matt.

Ross, Jonathan, with us here. We're here at 2 o'clock. It is the Matt and Ross show here from Charlotte on Sports. Sports Talk 790. Matt and Ross with you at 1235. It is Sports Talk 7.9. It was fun talking to Masters.

Baseball with you folks the last three days. So storylines that Ross and I came up with that were not necessarily organic to just us, but everybody was the infield looks like it's playing nice, but there is a, it's not Ross. It's not a dark cloud. It's not. They're professionals. They get it. There is value in extra depth for sure.

But when you are void in one particular part of the game and strong in the other, you don't normally go into the season going, well, our outfiel offense may be horrible. At least we have an extra infielder. That's the reason why I think there will be phone calls made. It may not be during spring training. It may not be during the start of the regular season. But I would be completely and utterly shocked. if he's like preters come August 1st is wearing a Houston Astros uniform.

August 1st. Yeah. It would be the all-time, I'm saying all-time shocking moment, but it would be one of the all-time shocking moments. Of course, we think of the always caveat barring injuries. Right. Right. That's right.

Other takeaways, at least for me, and I'll let you jump out on a couple of these as well, that the corner outfield spots are still very much up for grabs. Um, there is a lot of pitching for this team. And there's a lot of guys probably bumping around in that clubhouse, Ross. I think they're the number four or five starters that they're going to be probably the one or two starters at Sugarland, if it makes sense to you. I think they're still looking for a left-handed bat. Dana Brown has not hidden that notion as part of what he's looking for.

I think that they're going to probably still try to kick the tires. Maybe I'm getting a little additional depth of the catcher spot. Caesar Salazar has no. never shown an ability to be a long-term number two in his career. So as he gets longer in the tooth and is more experienced, I can't imagine that being a plan. And we got to keep an eye on a couple of things on the injury front. One is, you know, will Yonair Diaz be able to start running soon? He can hit.

He can catch. But that's just 66% of the game. And then ultimately, you know, when does Josh Hader start to test things a little bit more than just throwing on flat ground from 90 feet? but for me all things considered now the first storyline is the biggest one and it's been a storyline the Astros have had for several months so this is nothing out of the ordinary but for me

this first storyline as big as it is the rest of the stuff is kind of stuff that every team's kind of going through right now yeah there certainly are a number of different stories a lot of its not massive impacts to the season

And the good thing to me is that you have answers to questions when you say, okay, well, who's going to end up at the back of the rotation? Well, you got like six answers. Who's going to be in the outfit? You have answers. You don't know who it's going to be. You don't know who is going to take over the reins. You don't know how good everyone's going to be. But at least if you go to Dana Brown and say, what's your plan here?

There's a plan A, plan B, and a plan C, it feels like with all these types of things they were talking about. And then when you bring it to the infield, there's a great plan A and then a great plan. plan B and C or whatever, how you're going to configure the infield. So most of the problems are good problems to where you don't think there's massive holes in the roster where there's going to take some kind of long shot

for something to happen for them to be good. Yeah, I'll say this. I love what could be a fun season. I mean, I'm trying to think how do we feel a year ago at this point? You know what it was? We were just talking about

Tucker being traded. Yeah. And who is this Cam Smith? And who is this Hayden Wisniewski? And oh, by the way, you're getting rid of a five-toe player. We were all kind of shell-shocked. But then Cam had that great march. And it became a huge, well, this guy's got to be on the baseball team.

He's got to be in the opening day roster. Yeah. I remember story number one from around this time last year. It was Al-Tuvae move in the left field. That's absolutely right. And the fact that they had been one. working on it for several months. It wasn't just something that he just showed up in Florida and said, let's try this thing out. Right. It's interesting that

we're now in a spot where that has no longer come in a conversation. Because, you know, look, as you know, great infill position players tend to move around. Great catchers become ultimately first baseman towards into their career. Guys that go from shortstop and that have an amazing range wound up ending at third base. Carlos. Carlos Correa. being you're an example of that. Cal Rip can be maybe the ultimate example of that. But to have Jose, whose the metrics were not great the last handful of years,

when just last year was years before that, going to try something in left field because you're thinking, well, if you're going to go put him in a, if you're going to take a minus defender, where can he hurt you the least? He goes out to the left field, tries it, and probably, and nothing public has ever been said,

but this has got to be a situation that Jose said, like I tried this and this is, I don't want to do it. And I'm Jose Al-Tube. Hmm. Right? I think so. Because when he got back to second base last year,

it wasn't like he all of a sudden had this additional range that he didn't have before, right? He didn't catch the fountain of youth over there playing second base. No. The numbers weren't good there in a very short stint. So the question, so the aster's have decided. For a guy that has meant as much as he has for this organization, whether you want to call him the greatest or the second greatest of all time, he deserves the opportunity to play where he wants to play.

And he'll be 36 on May 6th. 36 years old. Wow. I remember when he got called up. Me too. He's been like crazy in the minors. Oh, yeah. It moved up very fast, too, right?

I mean, little stops each one of the three different spots. all right so um but yeah i don't i don't come away going oh my gosh this is this crowded infield thing is going to be the worst thing in the world i'm not proposing it stays this way i want to make sure i'm very clear on that because i'm telling you the moment that outfield slugs one home run per series you're going to be screaming for some outfield help you just are now the easiest thing can happen is if zack cole can do what we thought he did in the same thing that's the thing that's month of September and obviously Cam Smith has a bounce back second year. Then you're really dealing with strengths.

That's a huge if at this point. 1243. It is Matt and Ross. We are taking this program today until 2 o'clock. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. Rockets start the second half of their season, although today this is game number 54. So down the 28 games.

left to go. What are your expectations if you want to chime in on the rockets? I'd love to talk about the rockets with you guys. 713-212-5-790. 1249 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 7-13-1-2-2-5-7-90. My timeline for my

friends of Chicago are all flipping out, Rossi, about the Bears taking one step closer to going to Northwest Indiana. It's harder for us to fathom, but could you, I mean, look, the Giants and Jets play in New Jersey. They've been doing that for 40 years. That's nothing out of being ordinary.

Not that like going to Northwoods, Indiana is two hours away from downtown Chicago, but it is still weird for a team that has had so much history with Chicago and Soldier Field that they're going to go out of the verbs. Yeah, and beloved and embraced. I mean, I think the more recent one, too, is Kansas City. I mean, the people in Kansas City love the Chiefs. Absolutely. And they'll love them in Kansas, too. It feels like, I mean, it was shocking in itself that, I mean, do they just keep asking for more and more money?

Is it Bud Adam style over there? This is where they keep losing all these votes? To where they're going to have to move from Missouri to Kansas? Well, what it is is they want what Jerry Jones has. They want these monstrosity stadiums on cheaper land. and they want the extra stuff around it, the restaurants, the clubs, the hotels. Is there a bunch of stuff around 18?

I guess the Texas live stuff is not far from 18T. Yeah, that's pretty close. Yeah. You also have Jerry Jones own that all that? Yeah, Six Flags is over there. Yeah, Arlington is kind of like the, you know, the entertainment area of the Metroplex. But I think the district in Atlanta where the Braves play

has made a huge difference for them. as a franchise? I thought I read recently that a lot of the Texas live restaurants were closing in Arlington. Well, that's because Arlington's just not great. You can build it and try, but I wonder how... Building and try. How's Pudge Rodriguez's Taco Hut doing or whatever? Why wouldn't it be like an Italian bistro?

Hmm. There's, I think there's the Troy Aikman's 8, right? It's like a beer place or something? I was at DFW last week, and Drew Pearson has an 88 restaurant. Now, maybe they may have just paid for his name, but, you know, I'm assuming that Drew, Drew, Drew Pearson's not just going through the menu at the DFW airport restaurant. I think the Adoles Garcia Testosterone Clinic is doing very well. Like that.

Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. But, and I feel like I'm overcoming full circle on this because everybody 30 years ago, Rossi, when you were growing up, When I was younger in this, you were trying to refurbish downtown. And they're like, yeah, we're good. Yeah, it was a big deal when the Toyota, the house that Stevie built was getting built downtown. Well, the first stadium that was built like downtown, downtown for baseball was the Baltimore. I remember how they took the Camden Yards area and turned into a big shopping and restaurant district.

And they did a good job with that. There was supposed to be all these restaurants and bars popping up around the, I mean, minute made. No. Nope. Toyota Center? No. Nope. I mean, I like Rurt Rar, but it's a couple blocks away.

Right. In your house of blues. Yep. Yeah. And the number one thing is they want Toro Town is going to be largely run by the by Howard Hughes Corporation and the Texans who are in cahoots with each other. Yeah, I feel like it can definitely work because A, the land is cheaper and B, Texas, I mean, Houston is just such a spread out city anyways. Right.

Right. Toro Town is one thing. It's going to be, do they post? the bear at trying to go for a stadium out there. I think you try. Oh, I think they do too. Now, there is precedents that say you don't have to have your practice facility next to where you play. The greatest, greatest case of that is Los Angeles, the Raiders and the Rams.

I know. The Raiders, the Rams and the Chargers and in Dallas. I mean, the star up there is, I mean, it's got to be 40 miles from Armington. Easy. From far north Dallas to, like, what about the play? Like, where do the players live? I mean, I guess it doesn't matter. Usually they live close to where the facility is.

Yeah. I wouldn't know my players driving as little as possible. La Mello Ball says hello. Yeah, exactly. Tyree Kill says hello. And you think about it, you're only there 10 times a year minimum, max 12 when you think about it. Yeah.

But yeah, if you, oh man, this is going to be very intriguing to me. And how much of this can you? get if a team how much public tax assistance are you going to get when you can't win the big game? I don't know. I mean, even as we said, Kansas City,

they're like going to every other Super Bowl. They won three recently. And they first try to get a roof on Arrowhead, and they're like, no, shut your bummed ass up. Yeah, and they're like, let's refurbish this a facility that looks awesome. It's a perfect football. Nah, we're good. We want our own place.

Want you to tear down Arrowhead and build us a new facility? No, we won't do that. Oh, Kansas will have done. Because honestly, from where Bridgland is to where, like, Walter County would be, that's probably 15 more minutes. It's far, though.

Yeah, but you're only going 10 times a year. Rodeo wouldn't be there. You're building your own place. Yeah, how much does that matter? I'm being honest, I'm not trying to say one way or the other. No, no, no. You and I don't know the experts. Yeah, I don't know.

He's on this. I do believe there's going to be a dissolving of the relationship between the two. Not so this bad, but it's just sometimes you just want your own stuff. Oh, it's only 33 minutes from around here.

That's not terrible. It's not great. I mean, I used to drive in, when I had to drop camera, painting off at Prairie View, I'd drive in from Prairie View to come to the show, and it was an easy drive. Long, but it was easy.

A lot of miles on them. No, don't mind me. Vehicles, many? You get the oil change every two weeks? I got to. Oil filter. Change now. I did it last week.

I said change it now. Yeah, bridge. I can tell you, I've got some great friends living bridge on there all for this. Everything's going to go up in value. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they're happy. Now, and again, there's so much money over there that it's not going to be, you're not going to see no disrespect to Timmy Chang's, but they're going to be some higher-in places to go. Hey, hey, now. They'll be hating on machos like that.

Is it machos even still there at 6'10? Is it not? I don't know. We've been there in like 10 years. Hey, I like the one on Westheimer still kicking. Is it really good for them? You can't go inside. They're tired of being on you, ever since the pandemic. They're like, nah, we're sick of every weekend.

Drive-thru is good for you. We're on YouTube every weekend when people get brawls. By the way, when I flew mirror it yesterday, I was ready to throw hands. Nobody wanted to throw hands. Yeah. Everybody was polite. The plane was clean. Now, granted, I looked behind me.

Everybody was stuffed in like sardines. Like, I'm assuming that a normal airplane's got 35 roads. This one had 66. So you were literally on top of each other. Oh, wow. I'm just kidding. It wasn't that bad. It was like a triple decker.

On a plane. they were like what do they use when you uh you stickums on top to put people upside down on the flight it's only an hour and a half a little charlotte you can live with that head rush i just saw some broadcasting news matt that i think it's going to make you upset can you talk about the top of the next hour yes i can 1256 final hour before i read it what is it that said take some deep breaths before i read this coming up how do you know i'm going to be mad about this i have an inkling All right, that's a radio. That's a radio tease, ladies and gentlemen.

Believe it or not, coming up in 50 minutes. It's a Matt Thomas show with Ross here on 790. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. What a shout out a new IG follower of mine, Sports RV. His name is Matthew, and he says, he sends me a known. He says, Matt, that guy that wished you dead just got you new IG follower. Don't die of terminal cancer, at least until your career ends on your terms. Maybe he's an oncologist.

Thank you very much, Matthew. So that's the thing is, folks, if you feel sorry for me at all, somebody wants me to die of terminal cancer, follow me on at SportsMT on Instagram. You're asking for pity follows now. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Okay. I got a lot of activity on my Instagram at Sports RV.

Matt, this young lady Naomi 974-623 just liked a bunch of my tweets. I think she's into me. Yes, as a matter of fact. she's asking for my number and if I want to meet up later. Yeah, things are going well. So if you would like me to not have terminal cancer, follow me on Instagram at SportsMT. All right, so I'm very curious what this broadcasting news is.

Well, did you see who is being added to March Madness coverage, Matthew? I did. Okay. Nate Burleson. Yes. Going to be in the studio. In New York City for Mitz, March Madness. Yes.

This is the man on CBS, NFL coverage. Also, he hosts many games. What game show is he on? Hollywood Squares. I thought it was another one, too. Nope, that's it. Okay. And now he's on March Madness, Matt, your thoughts?

Good for him. Now, he does host some. something. So it's not like it's going to be outside his comfort. He's on the NFL today, not the host, but he is the analyst. Yes. And he also is one third of the CBS morning show that, I mean,

really nobody watches, but that's on the here and there. He does host that too. He does host the Hollywood Squares. I have a serious problem with that. Serious, serious, serious problem with that. So I'll just leave with that. I wish him but the very, very

best as he as he does the studio hosting of the NCAA tournament, which I have not seen him do anything in the form of basketball. I'm sure he's going to be great at it. He's a professional. He's able to take his career as a football player

and with his meeting exposure and carve out a nice career for him. Again, no problem with him hosting CBS mornings. No problem with him hosting the March Madness. Serious problem with him hosting the Hollywood Squares. Oh, he was also on the Minnesota a love boat. Remember that whole thing?

Were you in Minneapolis? I just moved there. Just moved to Minneapolis. October of 05? Yep. Because it happened. I got my first day on the air there was January of 06, so they were still talking about it for sure. Wow. Three months later? Well, are you kidding me? It was a Cescapades? Yeah, they were talking about it.

It was a sex party on Lake Minnetonka. Yes. With 17 Minnesota Vikings players. and was it consensual or was there some issues on that? I don't remember. I will believe well.

It was consensual, but also paid, I believe. Oh, so paid consensuality. I mean, that's in my boat. Paid consensuality, ironically enough. Oh, I thought, you know, I thought you're going to do it. I thought you're going to tell me, you know, also that the ESPN announced today. You know, they're not doing ESPN Sunday night baseball anymore. Ah, we knew that.

They're doing Sunday night women's sports. Oh, I didn't think, I mean. I did see that from Chris Gordy alerted me to that news. Yes, they're going to mix up. They're going to have WNBA and NWSL games on. Sounds great. You know what? There's an audience for it.

Enjoy yourself. As much as we love sports, we don't watch everything. No. I mean, you clue into whatever you want to. By the way, speaking of which, Canada leading USA won nothing in the gold medal game in the second period. Good. This is the gold medal game here?

Yeah. Are we the favorites? I think it's about a 50-50, but slight favorites you say? This is a total guess on my part. I don't know. Are you a lot to bet Olympics? Yeah. Why not?

Well, I just curious if anybody's doing it. You can bet on the temperature, what the temperature is going to be today in Houston. That's true. No. Yeah. Look, I know everybody is losing their mind yesterday because of the USA hockey team. Oh, minus 480. Get it together, USA?

Oh, that's a super heavy favorite. That's ridiculous. Almost 5 to 1 for people unaware. That's like USA beat Russian 80. Miracle. That was probably longer odds, I hope, I think. I don't know. Minus 480.

Let's get it done, ladies. Let's go. Wake up. It's 1-0 in the second period. Uh-oh. They've already played 20 plus minutes then. Yeah. Yeah.

I love Cole Thompson. and part of our morning team. But he's trying to, again, this is what hockey fans have done every single time here in Houston. Something cool happens with international. And it's, hey, this will work in Houston. I don't know if people understand that we are,

Ross, we are a sweet, fun, interesting sports market, but we're pretty damn finicky, too. Frontrunners. I'll say it. What's up? I've lived here my whole life. I can call it. I can call it my own.

Well, but tell me how many cities are not front runners. It's probably more cities with like hundreds of years of in-grade fandom. Like people still show up to Cubs games when they're terrible. But also the Cubs have been around since the early 1900s. That's right. But they don't go to White Sox games. I wouldn't consider a White Sox fan being a front-runner fan. I mean, they just, you know.

So I think there's more front-running in sports than maybe even people will let on to be. You need longevity and you need good winning history. And then there's just not a lot of that here in Houston. Yeah. You do need that. And you need a rich hockey history. And you can't use the arrows because that was 30 years ago. And the arrows were 50 years ago.

And as I've said, with anybody that ever asked me about it, it's not about filling 16,000 tickets. Now, that would be a huge part of it, obviously. But it's about what you do in the corporate community. can you get automotive and beers and airlines and furniture places and insurance companies to spend millions of dollars to back up the product itself and that's where the rub is you can't go to you can't go to gallery furniture every time you're looking for a sports marketing dollar he's he's only going to have so much money to spend you can't go to a particular dealership over and i mean they're going to want return and if those i and if it's six i and if it's six

16,000 people looking at it and that's it. The television ratings aren't good and it's hard to get the games on or it's hard to find them. It's just so much more. It's not a sport that says if you build it, they will come and they will eat it up. It has to be really good, especially because there will be people the first year or the first two seasons that will want to embrace everything about it because it's the new cool hip sportser thing to do. But it's too big of a business. The hockey is the fourth of the, of the big.

big four, but it doesn't still mean that guys don't get paid millions and millions of dollars. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't take millions and millions of dollars operate. Now, there's good profitability in sports franchises, obviously. That's another thing. If you buy a team for expansion, you're going to have to recoup that money pretty quick. I just, my gut tells me the corporate community just couldn't back up the dollars that would take ultimately to sustain, even if the team wasn't doing great on the ice. but I could be wrong.

It's not up to me. If it happens, it happens. I don't watch hockey. I don't get into hockey. Maybe I'll watch, I mean, I got this Olympic gold game on. Do the men's play? Men are going to play the gold for the gold too, right? I think the championship game, the gold medal game is,

they're in the semifinals. I think the gold medal game is on Sunday, right? In the morning, I think. I sure, why not? Are there any Olympic watch parties? The big bar downtown that was the hockey bar, gone on a business. Oh, I know.

Some of the Maple Leaf Pub? Yeah, they didn't pay their bills. Well, I mean, just Midtown real estate expensive, Maddie. I know. I know. But, yeah, I applaud, I will say this. I applaud the thirst that some people have here.

But it's, it's so much more than just, oh, I'll buy tickets. It's, you know, you'd have to get your arena up to code. you'd have to have a build a practice facility. And it's easy to sit there on your couch and say, I'm going to go, I'm going to go and I'm going to get season tickets. And then when you get the, it's going to be how much? I'm good. You always will have more interest of verbal interest than actual interest.

Right. Because again, if you know the Rockets and you've been a rocket fan for all your life and you know basketball, you're going to suck it up and say, right, I want to sit downstairs. It's going to cost me 150. If you're spending that down to sit downstairs in a hockey and you don't know the intricacies of hockey, and you just want to be in the building, it's harder to spend that $150 per ticket. Oof.

I mean, you take a loan. Let's get you on the games, Maddie. I've never called a hockey game. Yeah. Craig loves hockey. These chicks are getting chippy. Uh-oh. Are they throwing hands?

No, there's more like chucking, more shoving. They don't really, they don't really throw hands in the girls hockey, do they? Do they cat fight at least? What does that mean? You know what women in catfighting is. Explain it. Jonathan, explain what women in the catfight and do.

No, you know what, man? I'm going to put this back to you. What is it? All right, I'll start. It is time for a break, Matt, if you'd like to break. Two. Oh, damn. I'm going to go to a break.

Oh, we got a break. We got to hit our breaks on time. That's important. Well, I was going to tell you how what women do when they catfighting. but I can't do it now. Oh, well. 713-212-5-7-90. Don't ask.

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118 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We've got Rockets basketball. I'm here in Charlotte for tonight's game. Tomorrow I'll be in New York City for the Knicks and the Rockets on Saturday night. All right, Ross. We've not really got much on the Rockets so far. today, what do you want to see? And then I'll give you my answer.

Let you go first. What do you want to see from the Rockets over the last third of the NBA season? Yeah, just a little bit more energy. That's what I think was kind of sapping them. And they were able to, well, they lost that last game of the Clippers and Kaua Lentner went nuclear and he's just been so good. What did you have, 19 points in that four quarter, whatever it was?

That was right. So I want to see the better energetic team. It would be nice to see Tari Isson consistently and back-to-back. You know, one of the things that made me think they were kind of just losing energy was the 50-50 balls, the offensive rebounding slipping, lazy, bad turnovers, just like things that end up when you get physically tired, then you get mentally tired and you see lack of focus and losing guys on basket cuts and not rebounding and not all the little type of things is what I want to see. Yeah, I want to see maybe more. more consistency in the three. The numbers have dropped after the first month of the season.

Not that they were going to shoot 40% the entire season, but it runs ebbs and flows on that. I would still think they should take better care of the basketball. They're going to be a higher turnover team Ross just because of who there's doing the ball handling. There's on a true, true point guard. But you're living on

the edge if you continue to turn the ball over 18 plus times for a game. Yeah, and then that's the thing. Look, the NBA, we talk about this, the margins are so ten. If you one unfocused lazy turnover leads to a basket and one time you lose a guy in a basket cut that's four points

that's a spread tonight. Spreads four and a half. Like that's the game. It can be those little things they just don't let them pile up on you. I'm generally pleased. We've got some phone calls coming in at 713-1-2-125 7. I'm generally pleased with the defense. The

turnovers bother not necessarily stretching minutes stretches of not scoring. That happens with every NBA game. But it's, I wouldn't even say they turn the heat down a little bit, but there have been some games where that

fourth quarter should have been an opportunity to maybe rest some guys down the stretch and they were unable to do so because that second tier group had a difficult time scoring. I really do want to see a men and Katie's minutes dropped here in the next 25 or so games. I don't know what's

going to happen because we keep asking for it. There just hasn't been enough confidence in order for that to happen, but that would be a nice thing to see their minutes drop a little bit. Yeah, blowing some teams out and you don't necessarily have a ton of easy matchups left on the schedule. But that would be nice too. That's good. Do you get the guys? Because you're not going to all of a sudden, EMA is not going to all of a sudden start playing 10 guys. You've had two major rotational players down. Nope. And Fred Van Fleet and Stephen Adams that are not coming back. So the pathway to limiting the minutes is big victories are unfortunately

and blowout losses, but you don't want that to happen. And at this point, everything has been pretty quiet on the buyout market, so if they're looking for additional depth at either the five or the point guard spot that has not coming to pass at this point, you know, they have never hidden the fact they like, I mean, stay true

to what they said pre-trade deadline, they just weren't very interested. They kept saying over and over again, they were guys, there were teams, they were more interested in their players than they were interested in other teams players. Right. And, I mean, that makes sense. And also, we have to continue to bring up that they are so close, they're close to capped out.

Yeah. I wish, and it could take me, if for a fellow and I went to lunch, you probably could give me a basketball salary cap for dummies lesson. Oh, some bad news, Matt. They're doing the wave at the USA versus Canada women's final in Cortina. What's the score? It hasn't popped up yet. I think it's still 1-0, Canada. Yeah, but what do the Euros do?

I don't care. Okay. So outside of the United States, it's fine. I don't think it's fine, but I'm saying I'm not nearly as bothered by it. Okay. Still 1-0-840 left in the second. Remember, WaveBusters-H-O-U only focuses on what's happening in the U.S. Right.

It's not WaveBusters ITA for Italy. Let me see how many followers of WaveBusters has here. I think we're at 1,050? It's not terrible. That's good. It's great. I mean, we can, you know what, again, it felt like last year the wave was not as big of a deal at Dykin as it was in previous years. I think you're right, Matt.

Maybe it's working. All right, back to the rocket. Sorry. I got distracted. I saw them do the wave. That's okay. I'm glad you told me that. That's kind of basically breaking news on that.

Okay. So I'm trying to think. Is there anything else I'd like to see? Reed Shepherd, be more consistent offensively? I think he needs the All-Star break low-key. He's young. But as we mentioned, he's played like 1,300 minutes. He only played 600-something all the last year.

And you're expecting some sort of wall to hit for him, which would be not a typical of athletes that played as much as he has after not playing a whole lot the season before. Let's get a fresh shepherd out there. I want to see the Dorian Finney-Smith that we saw one of the Lakers and Mavericks. I mean, I'd like to see some of that. I forgot about it to him.

He's a huge difference maker, but if you're going further down your depth chart, you need some help offensively. If you're starting Tarysse and in DFS and Capella and Reed Shepard are your only bench players. Yeah, you need some production out of there. Because I'm going to tell you, Clint Capella ain't going off for 30.

He's just not. So you need to get it from somewhere. And Dorian Finney Smith absolutely has to be one of those resources. Yeah. Because he did it. I mean, that's the reason why the Rockets put good money in his piggy bank. for this year and next year for sure, is that he was going to be literally a 3-&D guy.

Yeah. Okay, so that's kind of our sketch of what we want to see over the rest of the season. The West is super competitive. Again, the Rockets right now find themselves as the four seed. They're a half game in front of both the Lakers and Minnesota for 5 and 6. Now, if the season ended today, the Rockets are

the tiebreaker over both of those teams. The Suns are two back, and the Rockets of the Timebreaker over them as well. But you're talking about Denver and Phoenix. That's three all the way down to seven being separated by three games. Doesn't sound eerily familiar to what it was like? It sounds like every year now. The West, it's ridiculous.

I'm glad Yon has stayed in the east at least. Yeah. And the question, where will he be next year? I don't know. I mean, he dropped the Wolf of Wall Street. I'm not bleeping leaving, meme. I tell you, I mean, does Milwaukee make a significant? moves if they can get rid of Doc Rivers and Janus is now it's his team and has nobody to

interfere with any of the playing and who knows what they're going to do on that. I'm telling you a teammate you got to look out for next year, not that people who are here in Houston are looking out for this, but Indiana is going to be good next year. If Halliburton comes back, Evitz of Zubots is a huge addition to that squad. It just is. Getting other guys back if who else is the neck? Nemhart, it plays a full 82. or close to that.

Pascal Seaccom. Pascal Seagum. Now, Matherin is now playing for the clippers, but you had to give up something to get something. That'll be interesting. Yeah, stay in the east. Everybody stay in the east. Everybody stay in the east.

We want no more Westpatch. And you know what? If Yokich wants to retire because he wants to raise his horses, that's all by good as well. You already got to deal with the Thunder. Spurs are already ahead of schedule. They are too far ahead of schedule, Ross. So the number two seen the West.

Yes. They shouldn't have been rebuilding faster than the rockets, and they're ahead of them. I'm sad. All right. Let's go to our friend Doug in South Padre at 127 on 7-90. Doug, good afternoon to you. Hey, guys. How are you all doing?

Good. Question for you. I wanted to switch back to baseball if I could and maybe get your guys' opinion on this. You know, when you look at the last five fellows that have been inducted to the Hall of Fame, Lance Berksman, his stats are better than all five of them. You know, Dick Allen, you've got a better average. more home runs, more RBIs. Andrew Jones for everybody thought was a shoe in.

Basically the same stats, he's got less home runs, but Andrew Jones batted, what, 2,000 times more than he, or a thousand times more than he did. He's got about 10 fewer gold gloves. Yeah, well, true, but, you know, Lance in the postseason, 317, 9 homers, 41 RBIs, a lot of those guys, you know, didn't do too well. I'm just curious why the, he doesn't even get a shake, a fair shake, and it seems like he should.

curious what your thoughts are on that my thoughts are i love lance a lot i see what i did that oh wow we used to say that back of the day unheralded underwhelming national run which i don't understand why but if i'm being completely honest i i am a huge beholder of the best of the best of the best and I don't know if Lance makes that group. I think, and again, the argument for Lance is that guys of similar numbers are getting in. That to me says you've got to toughen up and tighten up who's getting in your own fame.

I just think that's the way I see it. Yeah, to me, hey, this guy is better than the absolute worst guy and then the Hall of Fame. I don't like those arguments. But I don't, I'm honestly not super familiar with Dick Allen's career. but as far as Andrew Andrew Jones it's 10 gold gloves and more he had over 400 home runs

which Lance I think has let me it's 366 yeah and was a part of a team that was going to the playoffs every year for a better part of the decade right 300 look I would I think Lance is like a fringe Hall of Famer he's just not a Hall of Famer let's see

he's got four top five finishes in the MVP that's pretty good oh no there's no question that Lance Burr can rest today or play golf or hang out with his kids and go, my God, I was a hell of a baseball player. And he was. And played multiple positions for this team. Center field.

Well, that was interesting. Yeah. But only one. Well, only 1.2% in 2019 and then immediately off the ballot is a crime. And that's, come on. No, no. He should have gotten much more run than he did. For sure.

I can't argue that at all. 129 on the Matt Thomas show at Ross. If you'd like to chime in and join us, we've got kind of an open board of conversation pieces. We've been talking some Astros, a little bit of rockets there. We've got a little bit of NCAA chatter to get to when it comes to the NCAA tournament. This will come as no surprise, Ross. They're looking to add revenue.

How do you do that? Shocking! Well, we'll tell you what they do next at 1.30 on 790. All right, believe it or not, it's coming on. And just a few minutes. Topic Ross, did you figure out what you're going to go with? Robert Duvall. Robert Duvall.

All right. Robert Duval, believe it or not. Real quick, before we go back on the phones, Charlie Baker is the president of NCAA. Did you know that? Yes. I'm more of a Chet Baker guy. I didn't know who Charlie Baker was until I read the story this morning. I heard the name. Okay.

He met with ten members of the media in Indianapolis, and he would like to see March Madness expanded. Oh, really? Yes, he would. Could be as soon as next season. He would not give a definitive time on that, but the wink-wink I was, let's go. Is that the official report? Wink-wink-wink?

I don't know. The biggest argument he says is 36 at-large teams is too small for the number of teams that could get a crack at winning a championship. That leaves 36. Spots, Baker says. That means you're going to leave a bunch of the top 50 teams out of the tournament, right? A couple of years ago, I was kind of bummed when Seton Hall and Indiana State didn't get to the tournament because they both had quality wins and quality schedules. The more you do to create opportunities for the so-called bubble teams each year to get in the tournament. So he wants to protect the automatic qualifiers, which I'm all for. I do like little conferences getting in, but he wants to expand the at-large. The thing I'm seeing is 68 to 76. Who were these at-large teams that are winning championships? That'd be none.

I mean, Florida was a one-seed. Yukon won back-to-back. They were, like, basically one-seeds, right? I mean, no, I mean, I think he's adding a layer for, to make some coaches happy. One. Two, to add some more dates and more buildings full of fans or at least fans. And then three, to add extra layer of television to renegotiate television deals. now I don't know how much the first four

I mean the first four basically does anybody ever watch the first four unless you get a betting hand in it for some reason no like when mount st. Mary's is playing Alcorn State are you going to sit down on true TV and watch that I mean you're looking for what does that show that's always on true TV the impot uh when you make fun of people and uh

oh they're practical jokers yeah people are I mean that's what people get mad about you put the true TV and you're looking for your impromptu practical joker's showing boom there's there's the show there's a you know a first round tournament game 35 out of the 40 NCAA champions have been one two or three seeds

26 one seeds five two seeds four three seeds yeah I don't think it's about I don't think it's about giving more teams a chance to win I think it's just more chances that's what he said though there's more opportunities to make money

well it's also trying to get some schools in it to be a part of the madness which again It's exciting for the first second round until you start playing the heavy weights and you wind up getting bounced out. Seven of the last eight champs have been in one seed, by the way, man. Yeah, no. The layer is to add a layer of games.

Yeah, exactly. What's what we're seeing with college football? We've seen it with expansion in baseball. We've seen it with expansion in the NFL. I, boy, I tell you what, is there a number that would be too many? I mean, could we eventually see another 16-team bracket getting into play and going to 80?

Probably. Yeah, look, as I said, I'm done overestimating the greed of these coaches and NCAA, not coaches, but these schools and the NCAA and the NCAA and it can take you more and I always say, well, you're now this class time they're missing.

These kids aren't going to class. No. No, there's no chance. The student athletes, Matt. That is so funny when administrators and like sports information directors do that. They all the sports administrator.

Oh, it's a little. No, they're, they're, they're, they're, uh, compensated. And that's why you can't treat the, you have to not treat them with kick gloves anymore. There was always that when you, when you got into journalism and sports and radio and entertainment, you had to kind of treat the athletes with a little bit of, you know, they're still, scholarship kids. They're still 19, 20 years old. When they're making $2.5 million a year, you're missing free Thursday.

You're going to be called on on it. You just are. Which, by the way, can they jump ball? Is that what you're looking for? I mean, no, I know it's not probably top five on the agenda. Well, I don't get it. That's an I don't get it. Why are we doing the possession arrow in 2026?

Well, we're going to keep things fair, folks. You've got the possession arrow, so it's going to be your ball. What? Can they, you can't jump? Why can't they jump? Someone isn't at my door. You talked to a macro- Is everything okay?

Yeah, I think's fine, I think. Okay, I'll talk to Jonathan. Jonathan, can you help me out with this? Why can't they jump ball in college basketball? Wait, I don't know this. They have a possession arrow. It starts with one team and then it goes to the other. Well, you've jumped the ball.

It's your turn to get the ball. And then the next time, well, now we have another jump ball. And then it's going to be the other team's term to get the ball. We can't have them jump for the ball. Well, we got professional players. It never made sense to me. But now that these guys are millionaires, it makes even less sense. Like let's get them.

I don't know if it's like you're trying not to hurt anybody's ego. They can't go jump for the ball. It's ridiculous. Well, you know what, Ross? What's going on, by the way? You get in room service? Well, can I... God, I hate to out somebody.

Uh-oh. Sorry, Gackerman. Ryan. No, I can't do it. Okay. Okay. I need to help them get the college basketball game down to two hours. We are using way too many timeouts and way too many fouls.

We have to completely shake up college basketball. We can't ask for more reviews then. There was a certain college basketball fan saying review everything. Oh, wait a minute. Who is that guy? I don't even know who that is. He was running around to everybody in the clubhouse

who could listen about the officiating. What was that? It would be talking about McDagger? Hey, I didn't say who it was. I said it. Ryan Ring Record. Mac on 790 Hill. He's like talking to Joey Loberfield. Did you see these refs? I know.

You're going to Yon & Yonard. on Albaris talking about the basketball. It's kind of a risky situation there. Sorry about that. You there? Yeah. Okay. Lance Berkman, his numbers were better.

He was injured almost two complete years in the heart of his career. And unlike many guys who knocked the tower out of the ball against bad pitching, Berkman could hit anybody. I think if you talk to pitchers who faced him, you will be more inclined to think he should be in the hall. And on the jump ball thing, at one point, so in college ball, they're not very good at throwing the ball up,

and there was so many complaints that they went to the back and forth because the college refs were so, unskilled in throwing the ball up straight. And we'll see you all soon. Thank you, man. I hope it's better now. Thank you very much of the phone call. Is that what it was?

I don't, I had not heard that. I know the refs are bad in college basketball. Let me tell you, Ross, they're making a over a grand game. They're making a lot of money. The least they can do is learn how to throw the ball up straight. You said they're making a Gia game? Yeah, throw the ball up straight. At least.

Let's go. At least. Hey, I got an idea. Let's get some offseason practice in. See if I can throw the ball up. I like the energy you have for this, eliminating the jump ball. I love it.

Or adding the jump ball. Yeah, possession arrow sucks. Let's go to John on 790. Hi, John. Hey, how you doing? I think that they ought to create some kind of spiff that somebody would win if they got all the brackets right. Because I don't know how many more quintillion that's going to add to the odds of getting

all the brackets correct in the tournament because nobody's really come close so far. and that's going to really make it impossible, I think. But I think there ought to be some incentive for that. I don't know what you think. About a perfect bracket? Yeah. No, there'll never be a perfect bracket. The odds are several quintillion for that.

Correct. They're going to add more. And so they ought to have some kind of incentive. If somebody should win something, if they get it all right, which I don't think will ever happen. It's not going to happen. It's real something. Never going to happen. Not even a, thank you, John, for the phone call.

Not even a conversation piece. No one will ever ever, perfect bracket. Never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. That's why when I find out, when I find out companies that are like, fill out a bracket, you get everyone right, we'll give you a million dollars. I want to go to their competitor and buy their products. So let me tell you something, McDonald's. You offer me a lifetime and make ribs for a perfect bracket.

I'm going to go to Rurger Ring instead and get a Wopper Jr. That's how, that's how strong of a stand I have on this. do not insult the intelligence of people. There will never be a perfect bracket. Ever. Ever. Ever. Even if there's a fire. A fire. Sorry, that was a movie reference for you.

I went Dan Matthews on you. Alongside Dan Matthews, I'm Matt. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross featuring Dan. Up next, believe it or not, all things, Robert Duval. We're playing for some nice prizes. You don't really care what you are because your prize horse. 713 212 5790 for believe it or not

Yes the game is back 713 212 570 All right Tomorrow on the show I'll be in New York Ross Name another sports radio host that does three shows In three different cities In three days

None See It's why you And it's surviving cancer at this point Terminal cancer Great job All right We'll have

I'm sorry as I get to and we have an all-timer for tomorrow. Do you agree? No, I'm not going to do it. Okay, that's fine. I don't care. And then tomorrow we'll also have a Kelvin Samson on the show

and we're trying to a couple other things as well. So looking forward to hanging out with you for four hours and anything goes Friday. That'll be tomorrow 10 o'clock until 2 from New York City and from Houston. Five minutes left to go on the show. What should we do? We should play America.

America's fastest growing sports radio game show. We simply call it B. Leaving it on and here's how it works. You call 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Today's edition of Believernaut is brought to you by absolutely no one. Category today is all things about Robert Duval. I'll read you a question about Robert Duval's tape is completely and utterly accurate.

You'll say this. Believe it. If the statement is he running as full of bunk and man up, you'll say this. Not. Two believer or nots in a row when you either when you ate. 7-90 t-shirt or a pair of tickets to see dave matthews band may the eighth of the willens pavilion tickets go on sale this friday at 10 o'clock or you can see a pair of tickets to see triumph on their rock and roll machine reloaded tour may 22nd at smart financial center

those tickets are available at smart financial center dot com let's play believe it or not we'll start with line number two bill on 790 bill what was your what is your favorite david david's Matthew's song? Oh, the damn ball looks great. Robert Duvall's father, Robert Duvall's senior, was also a Hollywood actor. Believe it or not. All right, here we go. Statement number two for the win, Robert Duvall served four years in the army where he achieved the rank of staff sergeant. Believe it or not. Not. Not. There is no way Bill's going to see the Dave Matthews band. It's been a while

chances. Huh? It's been a while. He's been striking out. I know. He's like, I should just go to a cop just to go. Andrew on 790. Andrew, you ready to play, believe it or not?

Believe it. Robert Duvall was considered for the role of Obi-1 Canobi in Star Wars, but struggled with an English accent, and the role went to Alec Guinness. Believe it or not. Believe it. Not.

No, Ross made that. Excellent work on your part. Frank on 790, Frank, your favorite part of today's 10-2 radio show. Howdy, Matt? Just listening to y'all, just listening to Y'all Bickr. Robert DeVall was personally trained by famed method acting coach Lee Strasbourg. Believe it or not. Believe it.

No, we do enjoy Bicker Radio 790. Let's go to Jim in the Heights. Jim on 790, Jimmy, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. In 1964, Robert DeVall won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his betrayal of William Lohman in a death of a salesman. Believe it or not? Believe it. No.

I'm sensing a trend here. You want bickering, by the way. Stay tuned. Oh, you... We're going to give you a bicker fest coming up. Ken on 790. Ken, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it.

Ken combined, Robert DeVall was nominated for the best. lead or supporting actor Oscar nine times, which trails only Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. Believe it or not? I don't believe it. Not. No, you shouldn't just seven times by the list of actors. Thanks for playing. Let's go to Greg and Livingston.

Greg on 7. What was your favorite part of today's 10 to 2 radio show? The gas station store. While establishing an acting career in New York, Robert DeVall was roommates with federal struggling actors. Here's Dustin Hoffman and Gene Heckman. Believe it or not. Believe it. Yeah, yeah, Bill.

Stay the number two for the win. Although they were close friends, Robert Duval and Gene Hackman were known to be ill-tempered and had several bar fights between them. Believe it or not? Not. Oh, they did fight. They fit through hands quite a bit. Duh. So Bill, the only wonder we got Bill, he's not going to go to either one of those concerts.

Bill, this is your most impressive win. man. I have to do one for a winner tomorrow. Yeah. Tomorrow is a one-answer win Friday. You get rid of these prizes. All right. Favorite pick up of the show today, Ross, 10 to 2. I don't know. We didn't feel like, honestly, as far as these shows go, I don't feel like we bickered that much.

Yeah, we're the least bickering. We're the least angry of the group. The unbickerers. That's what we call the show. The full of bickering, Clinton and Wexler are up next. there at the A team. I'll talk to you for Rockets at 6 here on 790.