The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - The Matt Thomas Show 1-16-20

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

The Matt Thomas Show w/ @SportsMT, @SportsRV, and @ProNickLow 1/16/20Carlos Beltran Steps Down As Mets Manager (0:00)Jessica Mendoza Calls Out Mike Fiers (11:23)Non Florida Stories (1:12:53)Ross' Conspiracy Theory (1:22:19)Fantasy 5 Thursday Edition (1:40:50)

Lunchtime is So much larger than Life Lunch Timers is the Matt Thomas Show 1202 and H-Town What's happening

Lunch Timers? Good afternoon to you and welcome to a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790 alongside the birthday boy Nick Lowe you look great for 52. I really think you do.

Aging gracefully. He's no longer on segment suspension. Well, until he says something inappropriate. Give him a time. That's Ross. I'm Matt. We hope that you are having a decent day. Sports-wise, around here. I have some good news.

What do you have? Good news is relative. Good news would be that you go to your doctor and you say, you know, your blood pressure's down, your cholesterol level is good, your weight's good. That's good news. Good news is your daughter is doing great in school or great in athletically. Okay. Good news is we're going to give you a $5,000 bump at the office. Those things are all great news. Okay.

So this is relative, but in light of what's been happening around the local sports scene, George Springer has a new contract for next season. He does? $21 million. He will avoid arbitration. So if you're a George Springer fan, he should be happy because he's going to make an insane amount of money. He doesn't go to arbitration where things can get kind of dicey because, as some of you may know or may not know, when you go to arbitration hearings, it's client versus team. And sometimes things can get contentious because they're both trying to figure out how they want to win their side. So you avoid that.

Well, he can't hit outside curveballs. So he's not really that good. We want to pay him less. Or he gets awkward. Or he misses time with injuries, that kind of thing. Or he can't steal a bag. And then ultimately, the reason why it's just kind of relatively good news is because you're not getting a dime of that $21 million. In fact, you're paying for it.

But it is good that in a week that has had immense, terrible, bad news on the sports scene that George, at least one of the Keystone Cornerstone players for the Astros Organization is locked up for the 2020 season. that's good, but it was going to happen anyways. It was just a matter of how much he was going to get paid. I mean, there was a $5 million difference between what the Astros wanted to pay him and what George thought. Now, the next nice thing that could happen was they could tear this arbitration year up and sign him to a nice long-term deal and really start to get a little positive mojo on that. We'll see. And maybe, you know, we've been talking about like, you know, within like two years ago how George Bringer was likely going to be the one who wasn't kept long term over a guy like. like say Correa, but Correa's have so many injury problems that now you know that's up in the air.

George would be interesting. When he's a true free agent for the first time, remember he didn't join the major league team until he was 25. Yeah. He was, and it takes six years of major league service ticket to that 31. Yeah, as some hosts pointed out, he was in he was in the minors for quite a long time, even though he was mashing. Some hosts, I think every host wasn't doing that, right? Okay. All right.

George Springer. God, that was great. 1937 George Springer highlights. the old time he film in the background. All right, today's show is going to feature a variety of a plethora of topics, as you will. And first and foremost, we'd love to have you on the program. The last few days, you guys have had a lot of opinions on a variety of things, whether it be the Texans meltdown to the fact that Bill O'Brien is the most powerful man in Houston

when it comes to perhaps sports. When it comes to not owning a team, he's next in the line. I mean, Bill O'Brien has Kirby taken care of. He and Jack Easter be. The Astor's devastation. The fact that Alex Cora is out of work, the fact that Carlos Beltron may be out of work soon with the New York Mets. They are evaluating his situation right now as we speak.

And then the Rockets last night fell for the second straight night to a sub-500 team. And it was a longer Mike Dan Tony visit yesterday with the team. Longer weight. Yeah. normally oh yeah it's interesting sorry yeah he's within about five minutes of the game i actually say five within 10 minutes of the game being over with he'll go and talk to the guys and then he'll come pretty quickly to the media room where he speaks to the media in a podium i'm sure many of you've seen it before uh it probably was in the 20 to 25 minute range somewhere in

that area um and so that's very atypical for mike because one of the great things about mike and i am a huge mike d'antony fan is that he's he he's he's He likes, at least from a public perspective, Ross, he tends to let things roll off his shoulder pretty quick. He's not going to begrudge a bad loss, nor is he going to celebrate a win like it's the NBA finals. So his even keeled approach, generally speaking, his help. Well, when you are gone twice as long as you normally do, that means there were some things that had to be said yesterday. And one of the things was last night the defense against Portland was terrible. We need to play the soundby here.

Here it comes in three, two, one. But the biggest thing is, is our defense. You know, we're just first half to have 60 points. We've got to do better than that. And, you know, every time we got some stops, we can run and Russell and the open court and James, that's where, you know, if they're going to use those junk defenses, then, you know, a lot of other guys are going to get wide open shots.

Got to try to knock them down. But we've got to get in transition a bit more, and we can only do that with stops. and we've got to get a little bit tighter out defensively switching, and we just make some mistakes that we're down to five points, and we're making it come back, and no switch on one side and no switch on the other, which we were switching, and two mistakes,

that's back up to 12, and it's, you know, our love, it's a little deflating. We will address more of this as the game as the show progresses, but right now we have some breaking news, literally. What was your favorite Carlos Beltran as the New York Mets manager moment? he is stepping down with a career record of zero and zero. The fallout continues. Only player, by the way, mentioned in the report.

Yes. And mostly probably because he's not an active player. Oh, I think it's 100% the reason why. Right. So, yeah, Ken Rosenthal tweeting out that he's stepping down as the manager. not necessarily a huge surprise. It just felt like it had to trend in this direction, the way things were going,

and the way, I mean, how huge this scandal is, the Mets would be having to answer questions about it at every turn. And like you said, even if he's good, then you're just going to question the integrity of their wins. So not you, but, you know, people would be questioning the integrity of their wins. It was just a no-win situation for the Mets. I'm sure they said, hey, we're going to let you go. And he said, okay, I'll step down.

So Mike Piazza is getting a street named after him. in Port St. Lucie, Florida. That's where the Mets have had their spring training. And apparently during this whole event, a lot of front office people where the Mets were down there, and they were just being peppered and peppered and peppered with it.

And so if it's bad on Mike Piazza Day, imagine when it's like it's spring training. Imagine what it's going to be like first day. You know, it's also New York. It's a city that has 15 newspapers and 20 television stations. It would have never been able to survive, especially because,

Carlos's name was directly put in the report from Commissioner Manfred. So now you have, we are down to about 30 days before pitchers and catchers, give or take. You have three managers. Three people looking for managers. That's crazy. We have one general manager in this town. Well, Bill O'Brien's a general manager. Yeah, but the title is not there.

You know what I'm saying, though. That's, yeah. Yeah, let's not focus on what's happening in Houston right now. It's almost like, can we do, do we want to do Dallas radio today? Should we do, well, no, not Dallas. Who's having a, who's having a good run right now or something fun? Well, okay. Nashville?

Did they talk to a example? Did they talk about L.A. L.A., the Lakers keep winning games. Okay. They lost last night to Orlando, first lost in a long time. Their city council wants the Astros to lose the 2017 World Series. Give me a break. We can talk about that.

We can, what else is going on L.A.? I don't know how the Kings of the Ducks are any good. Clippers are okay. The Angels, what was the Angels big signing in the offseason? Oh, Jason Castro, clearly. No. Didn't they make a, I don't remember. No, we have to stay Houston.

Rendon, right? That's the reason why we are. Anthony Rendon, serious money away from the Nationals. Let me tell you, we are Houston sports good and bad. And I'm hoping, and frankly, I think the guys in the locker room from the Rockets know that, you know what, what's happening these days is not particularly good. It's not great basketball. And that's why they met extra long yesterday.

But there's a certain faction of the city of Houston that's kind of hoping the Rockets can do something here, take away the stench that is the Houston sports scene right now. Big game coming up against the Lakers on Saturday. That's a good way to get things mojo going, certainly. And they just lost to the magic last night. So they are beatable. We are going to have some fun today at 150 this afternoon, non-Flority Story. We take every state in the union and use them except Florida for crazy stories, usually involving arrest.

Yeah, or something, yeah. Or something that was found. Or something that was dead behind a refrigerator back in the 70s. What are the three themes of Nick? What did he have, like a 100-year-old urine or something like that? Yeah, thinking it was wine and it said it was urine. Oh, yeah. Mine today is from, Kansas.

It was pretty good. Okay, you got to Kansas. I've not looked for my story yet. I have spent a lot of time. we have a fantasy five today. We don't ever do the fantasy five on Fridays except under special situations. And today and this week, frankly, is a special situation.

There have been hundreds of number one songs in the 1980s. We're going to do 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s ultimately over the next couple of months. We start with the 80s. Some of them were absolutely wretched. Ross and I will come up with the definitive worst number one hand.

hits of the 1980s. That is coming up today at 230 with a special Thursday edition of the Fantasy 5. 713-212-5-7-90. 7-1-3-21-5-7-90. This is Craig Vigio. Vigio!

Back to Matt Thomas on Sports Talk, 7-90. Oh, we're having some fun. You're home with the Stros. 1219, a Matt Thomas show continues. Carlos Beltron, out as the manager. of the Mets. So,

truth be told, Ross, I have been very interested to see what the national shows, I mean, every show,

has said about the rocket situation and I was watching the first take show. You mean an Astro situation? Astro, excuse me. That's Stephen A and the other goof.

I do like Steve. Max Kellerman. Yeah, I have no respect for Max Kellerman at all, but I do like that. I don't know how Stephen A became the sane one on that. show. It really is the truth. It's just the truth. So they had Jessica Mendoza on the show today.

And you know that she's the analyst on the Sunday night baseball package. Well, she was asked today, and I have not seen it on, and we're going to try to get the audio because it's better for her to say than in me, but I'm going to paraphrase. Basically, she was asked about what her initial take was about the Astero situation. And basically, I'm paraphrasing her. She's like, I can't believe how this came out, how a baseball player would snitch on the team. She's crushing Mike Fires? So she's basically, and like I said, give me a minute here because I do want to read the, I'll give you a quote. But it was basically, yeah, the Astros did something terrible, but Mike Fires is going to have a very difficult time pitching in any baseball stadium over again.

He's going to have a very difficult time working in a clubhouse. And I think other people were saying basically that there's going to be a difficult time. for him to be really a guy that you want to trust in your clubhouse. That's what comes with this territory. Whether it's wrong or right. I mean, again, the asteros run wrong. So I'm not trying to say this is all my fires bit. But it's interesting how she was asked about the Mets situation in Carlos Beltron.

When Ross, she's a special advisor to the New York Mets. Was that right? I didn't know that. Yeah. And you and I've actually talked about this once before. Play-by-play guys can have two jobs. They can broadcast for a national network. and they can also do the regional team.

And I'll give you some examples. Mike Breen, a longtime voice on ABC and ESPN of NBA, is also a next broadcaster. Iron Eagle, who you guys see on CBS and TNT, he is a NETS broadcaster. Dave Pash.

Dave Pash, who does college football and NBA is the voice of the Arizona Cardinals. These things happen all the time. When do we get you on ESPN, Matt? Well, it's going to be a little bit of a wait. I'm very busy today. I need a nap in the worst way,

but I'm enjoying my life right now because there's so much good stuff to get to. the analyst's role where it's an opinion role, that's where I think that the line can be somewhat crossed. You know, because she is intimately involved in trying to make the Mets better, right? When you're an advisor, that means you are trying to advise that particular company.

True. That you are supposed to, you know, when you're a broadcaster, you have really no say as to if the team is good, the team is bad. For instance, Mike Breen's been calling Knicks games for a long time, and it sucked. Mike Breen doesn't make the Nix games.

any better. Jessica Mendoza's stance on how the team should direct its team can clearly make a difference in it. You know, Alex Rodriguez is a special advisor to the New York Yankees. Same situation. Yeah, he's got some Yankees bias. So it's really peculiar how she would get involved in this. And again, she's an employee of ESPN, so they ask her to come do it. But how do you effectively walk that line when you're an employee of the Met, and on top of that, what you say and what you do is to improve the team.

It would be like me if I was the I'm on one of the voices of the Rockets and I'm employed by them but I'm also in a situation where I'm trying to help them win basketball games. Like Darry has me in his office,

you know, scouting people, which I want no part of it. Yeah. How are you scouting skills, I'm a talk. or not an evaluator. No, it's weird because, yeah, like you're talking about Dave Pash and all that or whoever. I mean, that's just, yeah, it's one job.

It's a broadcasting job. And if she's, I mean, what is her role with the Mets as far as, what is special advisor? I don't know. Is she, I don't know. Yeah, she's a special assistant. But definitely conflict of interest. Yeah. Honestly, here's the quote.

This is from ESPN this morning. Honestly, it made me sad for the sport that is how it all got found out. out. This wasn't something in MLB naturally investigated or other teams complained about because they naturally heard about and then investigated happened. It came from within. It was a plate that was a part of it that benefited from it during the regular season when he was a part of the team. When I first heard about it, it hit you like any teammate would. It's something that you don't do. Basically, again, what happens in the club? Because she's a former athlete herself, All-American softball player. I mean, there's that bro slash ciscode, Ross.

that Mike fires said, I'm going to break. Good thing he's in the American League. And he won't pitch in Houston. I was talking to my wife about that today. She goes, how's he going to react when every pitch he throws is booed when people throwing things in him? I said, it's funny. Ross and I were just debating that the other day.

I think it's a worse look if he doesn't pitch than if he does. I don't know. You know what? I understand we're coming around that, but there's also a worse look that fans are going to throw things, yell things, say things. Houston fans don't throw things on the field.

Houston fans don't see asterix put next to their World Series titles. It's not an asterisk, Matt. They're not taking the title away, and they never can. 2017 World Series Champions for wherever and always. When I say 2017 World Series Champion Astros, we're just going to leave it at that.

Yeah, I don't think. Okay. I will accept that. I don't know if I believe it, but I'll accept it. I feel. I wish you were the voice of America. But your one small voice... Yeah, you probably don't want me being voice of America. I've heard your voice.

Let's... Here's the audio from Mendoza. This is on... First Take her on the morning ESPN show. This is on Golic and... Yeah, their morning show. Okay, go ahead. Fire it off.

Do you have a problem with Mike Fires, leaving the Astros, going to another team, and then going public with this? Going public, yeah. I mean, I get it. If you're with Oakland A's and you're on another team, I mean, heck yeah, you better be telling your teammates, look, hey, heads up. If you hear some noises when you're pitching, like, this is what's going on for sure. But to go public, yeah, it didn't sit so well with me.

And honestly, it made me sad for the sport that that's how this all got found out. I mean, this wasn't something that MLB naturally investigated or that even other teams complained about because they naturally heard about and then investigations happened. but it came from within. It was a player that was a part of it that benefited from it during the regular season when he was a part of that team. And that, when I first heard about it, it's just it hits you like any teammate would, right? It's something that you don't do. I totally get telling your future teammates, helping them win, letting people know. But to go public with it and call them out and start all of this, it's hard to swallow.

Basically, it's snitches get stitches. And that's exactly what she said. That's interesting that that's her take. Hmm I don't know I don't know I mean do we need to put that much stock into what she says anyways

Not really but it's just one person's opinion She's a national broadcaster You think And a Mets employee How about I put it this way? Yeah There's probably a lot of players who agree with her I would say if I took a

How much key there's 25 Well 26 players in every team Times 30 teams 750 or so players 760 right Yeah I bet you 725 of them are like Mike, shut up, don't tell anybody this. Probably.

That's a 95 percentile. Yeah, there's a code that he violated. So what you have to balance is the good and integrity of a sport versus what happens in the clubhouse and on our team stays in our team. But did he do the right thing, though? Is this something that needs to be out of baseball? I think I would agree. I would say yes. I would say he's maybe going to get crushed and he violated a code,

but I think baseball will be better off in the long run without this type of stuff happening. If the buck stops here. The reality is cheating can't happen. I mean, there's cheating in sports all the time. And much of it you get away with. This was to a different level. And also, I will say, if this is something that has been stopped anyways, because apparently according to the report, according to Rob Manford,

they didn't do this in 2019. They won 107 games. And we're talking about what, 10 or so games, give or take? I'm not sure exactly how many games that they did the trash can thing. Trashcan thing, I think, was pretty short-lived. So you know what? Maybe, hmm, yeah, maybe that makes it worse that he came out and this is something that's not going on anymore. Look, we could all be at a bar, and this is what the show is, frankly.

We're at a bar, having a couple of cocktails, trying to decipher what side is the best. because we don't believe in cheating. We don't believe that you should win by artificial means. But there is an element of what happens at the office, what happens in the, you know, and again, this isn't about a crime against a person. This isn't a, this isn't a, this isn't a,

this isn't a heinous act. This is just awful cheating and trying to use artificial intelligence. But, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're Mike Fires fans, fans, Mike Fires family, thank you for speaking up. Thank you for not allowing this to happen anymore. But most people are going to say, wait a minute, you were there, you let this go on, you didn't say something right away.

Say something right away. And that's what A.J. Hinch got fired for. A.J. Hinch did not believe this was the right thing to do. But he said nothing. 1229 on the Matt Thomas show. Alex Bregman here. Get 790. And Bregman drives it pretty deep to left field. Get your stroes on the radio.

That the wall looking up, and that ball is gone. Astros did interview a couple of folks for their managerial job. Buck Showalter and John Gibbons. Showalter, long time. Krusty old, old school manager. John Gibbons, former Toronto Blue Jay manager, among other places. He's not a guitar player for a Zee Top? Ironically enough, he does both.

That's Billy Gibbons. It's John's sister, my brother, I mean. Hey, somebody asked me about this in the halls today. Who do you think they can be a good manager? Do you go Joe Espada, the bench coach, knows the guys, would try to create much of the same culture that was in the clubhouse before? Or do you go somebody that says, you know what, this is going to be a difficult year for a PR standpoint?

And there's going to be a lot of, you know, hands in the air, shoulders moving around, don't know what to say, don't know what to do, don't know how to react. Because it is going to be a hellhole for Astros to, go on the road this year. Every city is going to pounce on the Astros when they play in that city. It'll be for at least a year.

Every city will do that. So who do you, so who do you? The answer, they said it means, who do you want? And I don't have an answer for them. I don't know what that locker room, that clubhouse needs. Yeah. I mean, I would figure somebody on the slightly younger side, not necessarily super old school. Somebody who's progressive with numbers and on board with analytics.

Somebody who's cool with a ton of shifting. Somebody who's a nice to interview and a smart guy. And it will be pleasant to the Matt Thomas show on a weekly basis. And has a background from a very smart college and a playing career. So I want AJ Hinch. I want A.J. Hinch too. I'm mad that he didn't do more. but we're all mad at people for stuff.

And you understand where he's coming for. He was in a very difficult position. Very difficult position. He was in the Mike Fires position. Yeah, I mean, if you, if. But did Mike Fires, when Mike Fires Rossi had ever said a word about this, if Mike Fires was on those playoff rosters and still was pitching for the Houston Astros in 2019, 20?

Oh, hell no, he would not have. This is part of, you let me go, you didn't put me on your roster, whether it was deserving or not, the Astros have to make decisions. Teams have to make baseball decisions. He doesn't do any of this. We don't know about any of this. If Mike Fires is the number five pitcher in the Astros rotation in 2020. I guarantee him to you that.

You think he's bitter? You think... Bitter? I mean, I remember him in the clubhouse celebrating like he was on the team. He shot Budweiser into my eye. He didn't seem bitter then. He felt like he was part of the team, it seemed like. at the end of the year, they said, Mike, we don't need you anymore.

I don't know how in how so many words they said it, but that's just what it was. And I will say this, having interviewed him, I think at least once at Fan Fest, he is a guy who seemed like he would take things to heart. For example, when he got traded over here, we called it the Carlos Gomez trade. And I think that bothered him a little bit. I think he is a guy who kind of takes slight. So you know what? Maybe there is a little bit of something to that.

He is a guy who could possibly hold a grudge. This is just me opining after talking to him a couple of times. So I could see that. But I also remember him celebrating and acting crazy and going crazy, just like he was part of the team and celebrating with the guys and all that. Answer the question. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking to people in the audience.

If Mike Fires is still a part of the Astros' bullpen, roster, starting rotation, if he's the bride peacock, does he go to the press with this? I say yes. Oh, hell no. He kept it inside when he was an Astro, so why would you think he would... You think he's just... He's got a vendetta against the Astros, and he's trying to take them down? I think Vendetta is...

That's what it would be. Vendetta's too strong of a tournament, so you know what? I'm no longer a part of that team. I don't have to keep the secrets. And why didn't he go, and this is like, this is an email or our buddy, uh, Strow's relegation? Why didn't he just go right to Manford? Why did he go to the athletic to tell him this? Well, did they come to him or did he go to them?

I don't know. Because I think the athletic was, I don't think he said, hey, Ken Rosenthal, this is what's happening. I don't. My understanding is that the athletic was doing a report, started asking around, and he was one of the ones who spoke. And he could have said, I have nothing to say. Right. Just like, and by the way, people are asking me why the astro players aren't speaking on this. And this is not an opinion that I've formulated on my own, is basically you tell us what happened and we won't

issue. That's just the truth. Don't. You spill the beans and you'll get immunity. They basically struck a deal. Jay and NASA on 790 and 1239. Hi, Jay. How's going? Man, this whole

this don't seem right here. You know, if you can look at the history with Beltron, he signed with the Yankees at the same time instant replay was implemented in MLB. And then he spends three years with the Yankees and the two months or whatever with the Rangers signs with the Astros. Alex Corr was even in baseball, signs on his first job in MLB was a bench coach for the Astros. I think Alex, I mean, this is a conspiracy here, but Alex Corr is the scapegoat.

Beltron is a true ringleader and the true mastermind behind all. He's what he knew, the end and outs of the replay system and everything else. He's a true ringleader. And I'm not going to leave this up. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I don't want to put conjecture out there anymore. There's been a nine-page report. There was a four-month investigation.

Alex Cora is not a scapegoat. No, Alex Cora is never going to manage a major league baseball game ever again. No, no. Maybe I shouldn't use the term scapegoat. But what I'm saying is, is that I think if Beltron would have been the bench coach, it would have been, I don't think he would have, I don't think, I mean, instead being a player, I think it had been a totally different report. And the fact that Beltron went back to the Yankees,

and then, of course, you got the core interview where he rolls his eyes or winks or whatever. I just think that, you know, to go, and maybe Beltron had a deal with the Astros, hey, you signed me and then bringing my buddy, Cora as a bench coach. I mean, you go from out of baseball. Never being baseball, your first job is the bench coach.

And the next year you go to manager? I don't think. And thank you for a call. that happens quite a bit. Guys don't, you know, when you play the game for a long period of time, how long did Alex Cora play in the major leagues? You look at his career,

yeah, I can. It's not out of the ordinary for recently retired. For instance, AJ Hinch was a manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks fairly quickly after he was playing. Cora retired in 2011. Yeah.

He wasn't that far removed from the sport. So don't, yeah, you know, you don't have to go to single A, double A, you're not a baseball player when it comes to working way up the ladder to become a major league baseball manager or position coach. You don't have that that's in a requirement. A lot of guys. I mean, there have been a lot of strange reasons why become,

look in the 90s in Houston. Larry Dirker was a broadcaster. Didn't have one ounce of major league or minor league for that matter, coaching or pitching experience. He was a manager of a baseball team and did quite well. Kench retired in 2004 and then was the manager of the Diamondbacks in 2009. Yeah. Five years removed. That's not much. No.

Don't take much. Don't take much at all. 1243 on the Matt Thomas show. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790 is how you reach our program. If you want to reach out again via Twitter, you can do that as well. At SportsMT, at SportsRV. And to the birthday boy, pro-nick-low, who will not tell me how old he is. he looks in his early 50s.

I don't believe that to be the case, but it just sounds like, you know, that's what you are. Left side to Westbrook, on the baseline for the tie. He makes it, and he's fouled. This is Russell Westbrook. One thing is for sure, I did not get my amazing style from Matt Thomas. Oh, hammer job.

All right, 150. We've got non-Florida stories, which will try to ease the pain of what it has turned out to be a sucky week for Houston. And we've got, the worst number one hits of we're going to draft this in a few minutes I know you're ready for your draft correct yeah we'll see

hmm there's a lot of different directions to go with this one so there's some things that I there are some songs that I don't personally think are very good that a lot I just I have a little bit of a different flavor of music taste than most people I would say but these songs are all number one

right so some so the majority of an American at some point were light. Yeah, that's true. But it was the 80s, a lot of drugs. She always said that there's a lot of drugs in every decade. That's true. Are there more drugs in 1980 or in 2020? 1980.

You think so? Yeah. You and I have no evidence. When Pablo Escobar was running the place. Are you remembering to include the meth in your calculations there? I don't know. Just asking. Is meth getting really huge?

now. Meth is strong. Not that I would know about it, but excuse me. You know what I meant. There weren't laboratories in 1980. They just weren't. At least I know. I was also eight years old. Yeah, you just had Pablo Escobar and just flying over truckloads of or plane loads of cocaine. Speaking of that, I think in March, we've got the new season of

Ozark coming out, season number three. Very excited about that. I'm still like only three episodes in. You've got to watch that show. it. I just never really continued, followed up with it. It's not my cup of tea per se genre, if you will, but I'm too much violence?

Yes, that's exactly right. You should try HBO's new show The Outsider, also starring Jason Bateman. Boy, he's all over the place on non-traditional TV networks. Yeah, the next show I'm going to watch. I just finished the second season of you. Love that.

And then I'm going to be looking forward to Ozark and then I'm going to go to the HBO show Succession. It's won a bunch of Golden Globes, but a lot of my friends have said that's a great show. And then you're going to start with episode one of BJ and the Bear, right? BJ and the Bear? What's the matter with you?

I've already seen every episode. 713-212-5-790. By the way, the Texans still had Bill O'Brien as their head coach and general manager and plate caller and personnel guy. Okay. Why do... Why does traveling Texan accept that? Some people are just rabid fans, Matt.

And I have to appreciate it because rabid fans are what sports radio is all about. Very milk-toast, medium fans don't listen to sports radio. The red rowdies are, you know, supporting the rockets through thick and thin. But at least there's been something exciting. They have gone to the playoffs on many occasions, have won a boatload of games. And it's not the same familiar pattern every time. AFC South champions, two years in a row. Four years out of five.

Four and a five. Got update that. Yeah, as Meatloaf said, 45, ain't bad. It's still two years in a row, it's accurate. That is true. Kelly in Jersey Village on 790. Hi, Kelly. Hi, guys.

How are you doing the fleet? We're wonderful. It's Twitter Warrior all week for these Astros, and I wanted to call about your Mike Fier's statement. Everybody's all over the Internet, seeing he has courage. and I'll just start. I'm truly disappointed that our Astros cheated, but it is what it is.

But I kind of pissed about this guy because, as everybody's already said, he won his World Series with us. He had two years to talk about this, and then the Astros are a huge reason why they had to play that wild card. against the race, and then they lose the wild card, they don't make the playoffs, and all of a sudden, a month and a half later, he's speaking out about the Astros cheating, and he's the one that has all this courage. So I just think, I can't really believe it, honestly. I'm just upset. I'm so upset.

Kelly, I would say have a drink to take the edge off. Not right now, but when you get home tonight. No, yeah, well, I'm working, Matt. I'm working. So the other thing I wanted to talk about was, you know, if Mike Fires came out, made a point to the athletic, then MLB started an investigation on Astros. Why is that not being done right now with these other teams? Well, we don't know that it's not. There's other teams.

Thanks, Kelly, for the call. I think there is going to be, the Red Sox are going, they're going after the Red Sox. Something's going to happen with Red Sox, I believe. There's too much smoke to the 2018 Boston Red Sox for them not to be at least kicked the tires on it, so to speak. Yeah, I don't think it's done. I don't, I don't, I don't think they're investigating the LA Angels. I don't think they're spending a lot of time worrying about Cleveland. But Major League Baseball is going to find out exactly what's happening right now in Cleveland and in Boston.

Their World Series winning manager has been let go. So, I mean, they've already been affected. And they'll probably get some sanctions and fines, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as well. Yeah. So needless to say, other teams. And look, the Mets lost their manager who they just hired. And again, I said this before, spring training, what are we today? It's January 16th.

What pitchers and catchers report about the 12th, 13th, 14th? We're talking less than 30 days. And that's why this managerial hire for the Astros Ross is going to be interesting because do you just say, all right, this is too short of a time to find the guy we ultimately want? Maybe it isn't. If they get this done by the end of the next week, it will be a moot. But are you looking for a stopgap or are you looking for the guy that hopefully

will be the manager for this football team for the foreseeable future? What does Jim Cring want? A stopgap? Because next year, there will there be some new candidates? Because you would think on the presumption of that all the best candidates for jobs would have been available, say, right after the end of the regular season. Right. I think your goal is to look for somebody who's a long-term solution.

I mean, the names that are being brought up are guys have done it before. Been there, done that. Please not Buckshaw-Walter. Yeah, I really don't have an opinion on who should be the guy to go to. Real quick before we get to the top. I say Joe Spada. All right, let's go to Stephen Cyprus before the top. Hi, Steve.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Hi. You know, I feel Kelly. pain a while ago. I'm a native Houstonian, and so I have lived and died with this team for the majority of my life, and really got attached to Hinch and Luno, you know, for what they did. I can tell you, I'm as big a fan of theirs as I am out of Tvier-Springer. So it's been, you know, just, it's been tough. It's been devastating without question. But I wanted to ask you something regarding Hinch and Luno, and I noticed a while ago that you mentioned that Corps would never manage a

the rest of his life. And so I'm curious, you know, what does this do to Luno and Hensch? What does their future look like? I mean, surely these two guys with all the success that they've enjoyed will be hired sometime in the future once this slide kind of, you know, settles down a little bit. I just wanted to get your thoughts on their future because, you know, I'm attached to them now, and I'm concerned for them, and I feel horrible for those situations. Thank you for the phone call.

AJ is going to I think this is all just purely guess on my part. I believe AJ will get another opportunity. I don't know if Jeff will get a chance to run a baseball team again. If I were handicapping this, yeah, definitely Deluno would be the favorite. I mean, you have,

first of all, number one, time heals all wounds. It's not going to be, you know, next week. It's not going to be within the next couple of months. It won't even be this year. But this will blow over somewhat. He has it in his corner that he did not approve of this. He has it in his corner that he has it in his corner that he has it in his

corner that he tried to stop this. And he could always argue in any interview that he goes into, there's a code that I was abiding by, and that's the code. And I should have maybe done more. But I, and he can say, you know, he's remorseful for all that. And he can just get hired by somebody. And whoever hires him is going to get a very good major league manager. And I don't believe, we talked about this yesterday.

I don't believe it would be a straight path. He'll have to go special assistant, uh, working a front office, maybe even a bench coach, something like that. Because AJ is a proven winning manager. Yeah. Is the Matt Thomas show. 103 on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show.

With Pro Nick Lowe, who celebrates a birthday today. You know what? You should win the weird non-Flority stories this week, just because it's your birthday. I don't care how bad your story is. You should win by default. We're weird or off-color. going to beat my story anyway.

There you go. He's confident. You've been suspended this segment. I think I am. What? What already? We just drafted our Fantasy 5 special at 230 today. Yes. Worst number one songs of the 80s. And it's funny because Ross and I kept going through our list.

And we're like, yeah, that song's terrible. Oh, yeah, that song is terrible. There wasn't one song that that's actually not true, but I'm corny when it comes to music choice. We're probably going to, yeah. There was only one song of years that I thought was not fair. Okay.

And it's because I've had this crush in this woman for a long time. But that's not here or there. All right. Nick, I need you do me a favor. Could you go get that Jessica Mendoza soundbite again about when asked this morning about what she thought of the Mike Fire situation? This is what she said this morning in ESPN, basically saying, you know what? We don't like snitches in Major League Baseball.

Do you have a problem with Mike Fires, leaving the Astros, going to another team, and then going public with this? Going public, yeah. I mean, I get it. If you're with the Oakland A's and you're on another team, I mean, heck yeah, you better be telling your teammates, look, hey, heads up. If you hear some noises when you're pitching, like, this is what's going on for sure. But to go public, yeah, it didn't sit so well with me. And honestly, it made me sad for the sport that that's how this all got found out. I mean, this wasn't something that MLB naturally investigated or that even other teams complained about because they naturally heard about and then investigations happened.

But it came from within. It was a player that was a part of it that benefited from it during the regular season when he was a part of that team. And that when I first heard about it, it's just it hits you like any teammate would, right? It's something that you don't do. I totally get telling your future teammates, helping them win, letting people know. but to go public with it and call them out and start all of this, it's hard to swallow. Well, guess what, everybody? Jessica Mendoza had to go and apologize for that.

I clarify her comments, she says. I'll read. Oh, let's get some music or something. What kind of music do you want? Just instrumental, no words behind it. Yeah, just bring any instrumental you can find. Anything instrumental, except for the Benning Hill family. Are you going to read this in your Jessica Mendoza voice?

I want to read it in my thoughtful. oral interpretation voice. Cool. He's looking. He's looking. He's looking. He's found something. One of your songs is not a number one song,

by the way. We have to... Oh, we'll have the redraft? I think so. Okay. Better find out. We'll figure it out. We found something, Nick.

This works. He said whatever. It was random. This is fine. You did good. This is Jessica Mendoza just a few minutes ago. thought it was important to clarify my earlier remarks about the sign-stealing situation in MLB.

Most importantly, I feel strongly that the game of baseball will benefit greatly because the sign-stealing matter was uncovered. Cheating the game is something that needs to be addressed, and I'm happy to see that the league is taking appropriate action. The point I should have made much more clear on was this. I believe it's very critical that this news was made public. I simply disagree with the manner in which it was done. I credit Mike Fires for stepping forward. Yet I feel that going directly through your team and or MLB first could have been a better way to surface the information.

Reasonable minds can disagree. Ultimately, what matters most is that his observations were made public and the game would better for it. In regards to the Mets, I told you this is going to happen, Ross. I want to make it extra clear that my advisor role with the team does not shape my opinion in any way. shape or form in this manner. I feel this way regardless of what teams, players, or managers are involved. Can I play the first five seconds of her comment again? Sure.

You have a problem with Mike Fires, leaving the Astros, going to another team, and then going public with this. Going public, yeah. Going public, yeah. What she wanted to say was, it's a bitch move. Maybe she meant going public through the media and not. what she is saying. Private. Because if you went through the play, if you went to your team or Major League Baseball, that's going private.

Yes. If you go to the team or go to the commissioner's office, that's private. Yeah, that isn't necessarily conflict with what she said, which her clarification. She didn't have to clarify. But in this clarification, she says it should absolutely have been made public, which is. Well, she means public through the. Yes, that Major League Baseball conducted an investigation, not because of the athletic or not because any of ESPN reports, it's because. they wanted to tell you in advance prior to anybody from the journalism side of catching us.

I think I get what she's trying to say, but I don't know. It's like the Watergate scandal. You didn't need Woodward and Bernstein to tell you this. Richard Nixon should have gone and said everything to America first. That's unfortunately not how the way work. Things work. So there you go, Jessica. Is Alex Corr going to say, I am not a crook?

I can't even do a Richard Nixon impersonation. No, we're particularly working in 2020. No, we only need you doing, let's see. The only ones I like that you do are... Airplane pilot. Irish voice. You don't like my Bill Cos. Oh, Keith Jackson.

Yeah, just do Alex Quartz. Oh, Nelly. George Springer got him a $21 million deal for 2020. 15, 10, 5 is in the end zone. Keith Jackson is on point. Little known fact. Well, actually not a little known. In 1986, Astros Mets,

one of the greatest postseason series ever, Keith Jackson called the play-by-play on ABC Sports. With a young Tim McCarver, now old AF. And out of touch. And out of touch. If the count is three and two, and the next pitch doesn't cross the plate, it's a ball and he gets a walk.

If it crosses the play and he doesn't swing or swing through it, it's a strike and he's out. Oh, thank you, Tim McAver, for that breakdown here on ABC Sunday night baseball. All right, to the phones we go. AD on 790 at 110. 80, what do you got today? Matthew Thomas.

How are you, sir? Wonderful, what's going on? I got to tell the city of Houston to please step away from the edge. Please step away from the edge. This is not something new. I mean, I get it. Monday started out really badly because of the fact of what the Texans did. But when we all look back on the Texan season, they're exactly.

where they were supposed to be. They're not supposed to be Kansas City on the road. They weren't going to be Baltimore on the road either. So to me, yes, going up 24-0 was bad enough, but you're not supposed to win that game. So that did start out bad, okay? But people calling in saying that they can't trust the Astros ever again and that this was my team from since I've been a baby boy growing up and all that. Please stop.

Please stop, because this makes absolutely no sense. Major League Baseball is using the Astros to make sure that technology does not take over the game. That's the only reason that this report came out. The only reason that the Astros pulled the trigger like they did is because of the fact that they're scared of being labeled cheaters. The biggest issue to me is that everybody's doing it. It's in the report. There's at least eight or nine teams that are named. in addition to that we're going to investigate all the teams and make sure that everybody's doing it,

that is what they're supposed to do. So for Astros fans have been there, Astros fans their entire life, and you're all of a sudden going to just get rid of the Astros, we don't need to anyway, okay? Because your whole, oh, I sat through the 100 games that we lost like three or four seats. You're also the ones that we're calling every day going, man, we suck, we need to sell the team. We need to trade everybody on the team. So now we're going to trade the best roster in baseball because a couple of people stole signs and they used the monitor to do it.

Give me a freaking break, Astros fans and Houston fans in general. Wipe yourself off, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and go on about your day. We're still 2017 World Series champions. Nobody's taken that away. Nobody's coming to get the trophy. Nobody's taking the rings. Nobody's taking the banner. And we should be damn proud of this.

team for accomplishing what it has in the last three seasons or whether they were cheating or not because of the fact that when they've you ever played, Matt, have you ever played Little League Baseball? Yes, very poorly. Right, but what do they tell you to do when you get on second base? Don't. Well, I never got the second base, but go, oh, never look at the catcher stains. I get you. I understand where you're going with it, yeah.

Okay, you're looking for catcher signs every single time, whether it's a one or two. Yeah, but you're not using a video camera, really. That's not that's not the sign ceiling 80 I got a roll or a break thank you that isn't the issue it's the putting cameras in having a communication system put into play artificial intelligence yeah it's a whole different ball of wax by the way beltrane does have a he has release a statement and it says oh well I need some music we'll do that come back I'm going to come back Carlos Beltron statement and I got to figure out which one of my five songs are not number one I'm a little disappointed that I didn't do the proper research on that non-flora stories coming up in 35 minutes more your phone calls too on the trail it's hard that it drops it down with a left hand this is coach danton matt thomas is a great guy

and always listen to the radio show on mute what a shot you would notice how coach dantonies not nice to me i'm just joshing with you man he teases because he cares as you would say is that what you think it is By the way, the latest all-star voting is out. Front court for the West.

LeBron James and Anthony Davis and Coir Leonard. L.A. L.A. L.A. L.A. Oh, by the way, in fourth place, Paul George, L.A. Dwight Howard in 10th place, L.A. So five of the top 10 spots in a Western Conference are by L.A. teams. The Western Conference Guards, this is only part of the way. The fan vote only goes for a certain percentage. This isn't the definitive, I don't think.

Luca Dachich is one, followed by James Hardin. Luca Dantzich has almost 4.6 million votes. Hashtag international vote, right? Fair to say? Probably. James Hardin is second at 2.9 million. Third is Damien Lillard at 984,000. Russ is in fifth place.

You know who has more votes than Russell Westbrook for a guard in the NBA All-Star game? Damien Lillard. One of the greatest players ever to play college basketball at Texas A&M. AC law? Alex Caruso. Oh, that's right. Lakers fans are out of control with this All-Star voting. They're the ones that got Kobe Bryant into the All-Star game in his final season when he was terrible.

And then that's when I got in my argument with that hoops critic guy, but we'll move on from that. But yeah, they're out of control with this Alex Caruso love and calling him the goat and all this stuff. Like, it's kind of funny and trolley, but it's over the top. Just comprehend that for a moment. Alex Caruso has more NBA votes than Russell Westbrook does. Alex Caruso is averaging nine points per game. And Russ is comfortably over 20 now, right? I think he's at 24 or something like that.

He was a really good lesson. He was the most consistent player. In consecutive weeks, or two times within seven days, it was the second half of a back-to-back, and Russ was in Ben McLemore, where like two of the only players to show up. Yeah. I think Rockets are really worried about their defense right now.

I'm worried about their defense. I mean, everybody should be. But I think they're like, wait a minute. Come on now. Oh, I'm sorry. Alex Caruso is averaging 5.7 points per game this year. And he wears a headband. White people should not wear headbands.

Well, he's balding. I mean, he's 25 in balding. The headband ain't going to work. What do you want him to do? Do you just want him to shave? Let me tell you something. Bald is beautiful. Look at what an Adonis I have become the last handful of years.

According to whom? Most people that listen to the show. Okay. But he's got like uncomfortable weirdo baldness. We just finished. We just finished our fantasy five. And I had to take one song off the book because it was only in before. You try to slip one through the goalie there.

Two of your five songs I'm very upset with. Two of them. Well, that's one of the reasons I drafted. So you really did just agitate me. Well, you know. That's how the Matt Thomas show works. Let's just adjutate each other. Spencer and Kingwood at 121.

Spencer, good afternoon. What's going on? How are you doing? Good, buddy. So let me ask you a question before I get into this. What to you define the cheating scandal specifically? What is the main thing to you that defines the cheating scandal? I don't understand.

Like the use of the monitors in the dugout or the communication of the trash can. All of it. I don't need to say. It was one long, big scheme to circumvent a legal system of, you know, yeah. Stealing signs is always happening in sports, so that doesn't bother me. The television cameras, the relay, the trash can, the 25 players or so that knew it, the manager, the general manager, that bothered me. Using the replay phone as well. Yeah, all of it.

Well, here's my aspect to it. And can you remind the audience who Tim Flannery is if they don't know? Do you know? Yeah, he's a longtime bench coach. It was a fringe major league player. Third base coach. Yeah. But he's been a long-time position coach, right?

True. Absolutely. He came out, and granted, this is from Facebook, so he can't give it too much worth. But at the same time, he came out and said that as a third base coach, every single night, he had cameras pointed on the catcher. He had cameras pointed on the third base coach. He had cameras pointed on them every single game. And every single game, he would hand out different signals to different players.

because he knew that people were picking up on his signals. He would tell them, hey, I'm going to call a hit and run here. Don't swing. They're going to throw you a ball. You're in a hitter's count. It already works out for you. This has been going on since the dawn of baseball. And I actually agree with Mendoza in a sense that my triers should have gone to MLB.

This should have never come to the public's eye until it had been fully situated. It has fully been acknowledged by MLB and everything else. That being said, I don't think that Mike Friars has any business stepping in Houston again. Not necessarily because he's going to get hurt or anything of that nature. But I don't really think he has much place stepping into another clubhouse. How can you trust a man that went out outside of his team, broke his team's code, to them break another team's code? How do you do that?

Well, thank you for the phone call, Spencer. Good stuff. We're about to find out. and you can say you can go all your well this has been happening since the dawn of the time and it's happening everywhere and it's part of the game blah blah blah blah blah rob manfred this is the issue it's not only that the astros were cheating it is that rob manfred sent out a memo to all 30 teams in september of 2017 they dinged the the yankees and the red sox for what they

were cheating and he said cut this out if you do not cut this out there will be big penalty And the Astros didn't cut it out. So you can make all these talking about since the dawn of time, and you can call us and bring up a Little League and what you're doing when you get on second base in Little League. It doesn't matter. The crux of the matter is Rob Manfred said stop, and they didn't stop. So that's why they're getting hit hard.

And that was it. The warning from Manfred was, okay, if y'all done it before, cut that blank out. Yeah, cut it out. We're not going to investigate. We're not going to, you know, we're just letting you know. We've caught these two teams. this needs to stop now.

It didn't stop. And it sucks. You're going against commissioner's orders? You're going to pay the price. You pay the price. Because the athletic found it and because Mike Fier said it and because the investigation, they had to lay the hammer down because if he didn't,

then Rob Manfred's powers commissioner would have been moot. No one would have respected any sort of decision he would have made on anything. So he had to say something. You can argue the merits of the law you want. The fact is they broke the law. Kevin in Baytown on 7-90. Hi, Kevin. Good, what's going on?

Hey, man, I listen to you all the time. Thank you. But it's something I have to disagree with you on today, my brother. Okay, go ahead. And it's that, you know, you keep saying some different things. You know, you kind of go against what you say. Okay. You're saying, you said earlier that Matt Pryor's and Hitch,

were in the same they're in the same situation which I disagree because just like you just stated just before you came to me on the phone is that if the commissioner

when he came into hey this is what was going on and he came and gave them the warning that they needed to stop yes okay because you said the commissioner he knew of it and so he had to say something

and if because if he didn't say anything in reference to it, that it would discredit his credibility, correct? I'm saying that he put that, hold on, hold on. He put the statement out, and that if he would have done nothing to penalize the Astros based on the evidence that was put out there, then no one would have respected the office anymore because he put the warning out and he had to have acted harshly on this situation. That's what I was saying. Okay, back.

Let's go back. Now, let's go back to hints. Okay. When the commissioner came and gave the warning, and he was aware of the warning, and he did not go to his players in reference to this warning, does that not also discredit him in the same sense? Because you were given a warning and you knew what was going on with this situation, but you decided to hold your peace. Now, it doesn't put him in the same situation. No, you're right. Hey, look, A.J. Hinch doesn't win any brownie points because of this.

He doesn't. It doesn't put him in the same situation as Friars because Hintz had the ability to end it. Yes, he did. Fires was caught up as a player. You know what I'm saying? And so, you know, he couldn't end it. He could have said something today and he would, he would receive the same, same treatment that he's going to receive today. Well, no, my point was that Hinch, my point that.

would Hinch and Fires were in the same clubhouse. They both knew what was going on. I fully believe that everybody in that clubhouse knew what was going on. And no one wanted to say anything until well after the seasons were over with, and Mike Fires was playing for a different baseball team. As I said before, I don't think you can argue with me. If Mike Fires was still playing for the Astros, this never would have come out. Oh, yeah, no.

Oh, no, it wouldn't have. Maybe not in that sense, but, you know, we really don't know because this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. All right. When you cheat, when you cheat or when you break a rule or when you go against the law, you don't get to choose what repercussion happens. It's just like, you don't get to choose. You don't get to say that I'm going to break the rules.

But if it come out, I wanted to be in this nice little way. I don't want it to really cause any problems. I just wanted to kind of just be brushed under the rug a little bit. You can't choose that because you make a decision. decision to break a rule. So whatever, when you make a decision to break a rule, you also leave yourself open to hate. I got to accept however it's come out because I know from the beginning that I'm breaking a rule. So I don't get to choose if a fires, if a player come out and say something about it or if somebody happened to run across my information and they go

and tell it, I have already made a decision and I'm across that line. So whatever happens, on the back end, I'm going to have to be willing to live with it. Thank you for the phone call. I've got to get to a quick time out here. They're all living with it now. A lot of amount of work. In an organization, it's going to have a lot of work to do to repair its image. This is Alex Bregman of your Houston Astros. From Clutch City, Rockets, basketball, to Crush City. The Houston Astros.

Sports Talk 790 is home for your home teams. Time is 135. It is the Matt Tiles. Thomas show, Sports Talk, Seven Ani. So many of you still want to have your two cents in on this Astro stuff. And by the way, there is a series of tweets being put out there by, is it John Boy, is that who it is? About some sort of buzz. John Boy tweeting right now? Yeah, some sort of buzzer scandal involving a niece of Carlos Belcher.

I don't know. I'm just, you got to be very careful what you read on Twitter. I don't know of any of this going on or if anything has been discussed. But I'm not going to, I'm going to let the nine-page report from the community. missioner's office tell me what happened not somebody on twitter looking for clicks that's just how i see it uh we've got some non florida stories coming up we're just going to read them to you because we just need a little bit of leviting in this show because we've had just so much okay yeah so there's tweets from the uh from beltrans niece apparently okay i'm told to i'm told to stay quiet but i refuse sorry to yo jose altuvae and bregman

wore devices that buzzed on inside right shoulder from hallway video guy let's get it out uh let's all get it out Now, I have pictures from Locker. I will keep for rainy day. Altuva didn't want his shirt turn off. But I remember maybe his misspoke, but Chapman gave up the home run in the game. Remember he didn't want his shirt torn off? And he said it was because of his wife. Maybe he didn't want his shirt torn off because he's wearing an electronic buzzer.

I'm not supposed to be speechless because that doesn't help the radio. Why would Carlos' niece want to get involved in any of this? why would Carlos' niece throw her uncle under the bus? They're also claiming that she broke his resignation yesterday before anyone else. She did tweet yesterday that he was stepping down. I did see that. But somebody's already tweeted out, Marley Rivera ESPN. Beltran family told me that this individual who claims to be Carlos Beltrane's niece

is not related to the family in any way. Okay. This is nauseating. This person may or may not have additional information about the Astroscience Sealing scandal, but they are not related to the Belton's case. trends. Here's the thing. I don't want that to be true.

That seems... That makes sense. I'm going to go the other direction. It seems really preposterous that someone would take that kind of risk to do that. But the thing that I have to at least consider it, unfortunately I do is because, again, these players were probably told, go in, spill your beans, and we'll protect you from this. Right? Yeah.

I don't know And please, please, please not let it be Alex Bregman and Jose Al-Tubei. When I said make sense, I mean the buzzer and the don't take off my shirt thing. And then we were supposed to read Beltrans statement, which we haven't gotten to.

Go ahead. Thank you. This is from Carlos Beltran. Over my 20 years in the game, I've always taken pride in being a leader and doing things the right way. And this situation, I failed. As a veteran player on the team, I should have recognized the severity of the

issue and truly regret the actions that were taken. I'm a man of faith and integrity and what took place did not demonstrate those characteristics that are so very important to me and my family. I'm very sorry. It's not who I am as a father, a husband, and a teammate, and as an educator. The Mets organization and I mutually agreed to part ways, moving forward for the greater good with no further distractions. I hope that at some point in time, I'll have the opportunity to return to this game that I love so much. I feel like we should be swaying to the music or something. We should be in a country bar in a small town west of San Antonio with a couple of lone stars. Yeah. Listen to this and crying over our baseball team.

It's good. It's fitting music, I'd say. I hope the buzzer thing is. complete hogwash. Well, there's, the Beltran family is saying she's not related or at all. But does that really matter? Who is this person? I don't even know. Is it a, just a regular old Twitter account? Yeah, it's under, what do you call it?

It's locked now, so you can only, you have to request to follow it, which I just did. Let me ask you. So let's do this. If you're that person, whoever that person is, it's putting it out there, whether it's related or not, why don't you go around to a newspaper? It says no autograph. I'll give you her bio. Okay. No autographs.

Simple girl in a difficult city. Texas Longhorns alum. Struggling Med Student. My favorite uncle is at Carlos Beltrane 15 with a heart symbol. And her name is? It just says QT. Okay. You can't tweet at her because she's got it locked.

Right. I just requested a follow. Let's see how that goes. Did you? Yeah. Will you get a follow back? I don't know. She will only let me follow me if she approves.

Her account is locked. Could you imagine if she's my 30,000 Twitter follow? Well, it's going to be a couple years. I'd rather have a porn bot than have her, actually. I've been picking up a lot of followers at Sports RV last couple days. We'll get to Vegas eventually. I'm at 9,300. We're steady climbing to 10K.

I am at 24-538, so there's a lot of meat left on that bone. Too much meat. I think Ross, you and I'm going to Vegas on our own next year. We'll get the listeners to go in 2022. too. All right. And then there's the video of him saying don't take my shirt off. I don't want to look at that. I'm not looking

at it. Roger and the RGV, go ahead. How are you doing? What's up? There's bigger stories in this now. I mean, I don't get it. They've been judged. It's over. I mean, guys been fired, Beltron,

Cora, you know, Hinch, the GM, you know, let's move on. I mean, how, this is a media driven story. No, it's not. ESPN. Yes, it is. ESPN's got it all 24-7.

Because it's the biggest story in sports, Roger. What are you expecting to talk about? What's going on in the Pac-12 basketball championships? How about O'Dell? Oh, that's getting run, too. But O'Dell Beckham slapping a police officer's ass is nothing compared to a baseball team using cheating techniques to try to win baseball games. I get it.

No, you don't get it, Roger. three managers got fired. It's not media-driven. This is team-driven. I understand. I understand, Matt. I mean, but the thing is in reality, I mean, what can you do if they cheated?

Are you going to take away the trophy? No. I'm not defending what they did. What I'm saying is what's done is done. I mean, I'm not going to, my Astros are going to come back better than ever. They're going to learn from this. That's the fan that should be out there calling the radio station

instead of calling them big-time cheaters, you know, I know they cheated. I mean, what, what, I mean, how bigger can you make a cheat? You know what I mean? It just doesn't make any sense. All I'm saying is they've been found guilty. Everything's happening. It's done. I mean, what can we do?

I mean, really. Nothing. We have a lot. And thank you for the call. We have, we don't, we, you and I can't do anything, Roger, except talk about it and figure out what the hell is going to happen. Because right now, the team that we love doesn't have a general manager and doesn't have a manager in spring trainings in 30 days.

And our baseball team that we have loved since I was seven years old is the laughing stock of baseball right now. That's the truth. And it pains me. And it will. And yeah, time will heal this. But it ain't going to be in 2020. It's not.

It's just the truth. This is crazy. This is going to stick for a while. It just is. We're going to run through some more phone calls and give you a few non-Florida stories that we love. We're not going to vote this week because we just got two other things that are going to, but we do have stories we must tell because we need to make, we need a few chuckles on the radio show today. Mine is from Central Michigan.

Nix is from Kansas. Ross, where is yours from? It's from all around, but also in Texas. Uh-oh. Is yours coming with audio or no? Hopefully not. No, no. We're not competing.

the lines as well. 144 on the Matt Thomas show. The Houston lunchtime sports conversation most respected by head coach Bill O'Brien. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Matt Thomas. In his career here in Houston. Of sorts. The Matt Thomas Show. Back on it with you because so many opinions are out there.

That's what we're here for. Matt Ross, Nick is the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. Really quick. Here is this week's non-referencing. floor a story from me. Four suspected drunken drivers were arrested after a motorist complained they were throwing

beer cans. That happens all the time, right? Yes. But not from a horse and buggy. Gladwin County Sheriff's Office said that it received a complaint from motorist Sunday afternoon after four men were riding on a buggy

through Beaverton Township in central Michigan. The four men appeared to be intoxicated and were allegedly tossing beer cans out of the buggy on the roadway. When deputies caught up with a buggy, suffice to say it was not a high-speed chase. The four gave deputies false information about their ages and refused to give their names.

They were later identified, all of them underage. Deputies found several open and unopened containers of alcohol in the buggy, and quote, all four suspects were under the influence of alcohol. The subjects were charged with felony obstruction of justice, disorderly person, and issued civil infractions for minors in possession of alcohol, a cash bond in the amount of $3,500 was set for the tour. The horse, by the way,

was not charged. Where was this again? In central Michigan in the city called Beaverton Township. It says while there were no indication the men were Amish, Michigan has a long history of Amish settlement. So, yeah, if you're in a buggy and your four dudes, you're Amish. Nothing's wrong with it. I'm just saying that's just a little bit odd. They could be quakers. that could be Quakers too okay we've all thrown beer cans out we just wanted a hybrid of speed

we weren't going to was there a boombox no it's not 1986 because I did one a few months ago there was the Amish guy and beer and they were on the runaway buggy

and so it sounds a lot like a story I did a while ago no these guys I think they had a boom box my Amish had a boom box it's just a very common occurrence with these were arrested in December the 31st

so okay all right partying for new years huh Ross you're next because we're going to the fate of complete with the birthday board over here.

Sure. Okay, Matt. The University of Texas at Austin is a fine institution. If you want to go get educated, if you want to go watch failing Big 12 teams, although the basketball team did win

last night over Oklahoma State, Oklahoma Horns. They're also, apparently, the most popular university in the entire world when it comes to students who have sugar daddies this according to

Sugar Baby University a scholastic branch of the world's largest sugar daddy and mama dating site seeking arrangement actually is what it's called who have recently released a report it says that 8,722

female sugar babies and 3 million I'm sorry 8 million and 3.2 million male sugar babies are on the site with 2 million sugar daddies. So there's 11 million sugar babies, 2 million sugar daddies. How many sugar mamas?

Only 370,000. All right. So they listed all the sugar babies by university. And, well, let me tell you, University of Texan as Austin is number one with 1,100 sugar babies. So there are 1,100 hot women at the University of Texas that have significantly old boyfriends who are looking to get help with their tuition dollars. Number two is, it's a lot of Texas in here.

Number two is Texas A&M University. University of Houston came in at number five with 863 sugar babies. This is an intriguing story. We don't have time for it today. So you can go onto this website. Can we circle back on this? If you're a man of substance and money, you go onto this website, and you look for a sugar baby

who's looking for a little help with her tuition money so basically we'll have sex with you and go out to dinner with you pay my tuition basically yes what's the maximum age to be a sugar baby I would think sugar baby's under 30 right yeah maybe probably under 25 well I know somebody that's a sugar baby that's

29 really mm hmm okay Nick all right A Kansas man is having some troubles. He's going through a terrible divorce and custody battle with his ex-wife. His name's David Ostrom, and his wife's name is Bridget Oström.

And he is saying that her and her attorney, Matthew Hudson, have already destroyed him legally. So he wants to finish up this several months. long custody battle by challenging his wife to a trial by combat. What? He is, he said he, this is, here's the quote from Mr. Ostrom. Quote, I now wish to give them the chance to meet me on the field of battle where I will rend their souls from their bodies. And he officially asked the judge for a three month delay so he could obtain some Japanese

samurai swords and be ready for this. planned combat. He also said that his wife, you know, not really fair for a guy to take on a smaller-sized woman in a trial by combat. So he said that she can name her attorney as her champion. And he will fight her attorney in this trial by combat to settle their custody battle. So the attorney himself actually has a quote here as well. To this day, trial by combat has never been explicitly banned or restricted as a right in the United States. But I think I've met Mr. Hudson's absurdity with my own absurdity. If Mr. Hudson is willing to do it, I will meet him.

I don't think he has the guts. Well, the judge didn't like all this. And the judge decided that until proper procedural steps to initiate a court proceeding are followed, this court will take no form. further action concerning any motion, objection, or petition filed by either party at this time and just told him get out. Oh, that's a big old fake story then. Why don't they have like a, what did they call it back in the day when you'd walk 10 steps,

turn around and try to shoot the person? A duel. A duel. Yeah, that's what you needed to have. That's how you solve things. That's essentially what this is. Yeah, but the judge said you can't do it. Well, he's not going to condone it.

Oh, but he's going to have to have the after effects of it for sure. possibly. All right. That's the non-Floridder's of the week. 157 on Sports Talks. And a final hour to get to half hour more on the sadness

and is the Astros. And Rossi, this preposterous this Twitter account is, it's got plenty of holes in it, right? Well,

it did have that, remember it said yesterday or the day before that Beltran was stepping down and that was correct. That could have been a guess. But we could have all guessed that. That's true.

I mean, we guessed that it was probably going to happen. Yeah, I mean, am I going to go on there and say that Alex Coror is never going to manage again? And I get it right. I'm going to brag about it later? No. It's shady. It's got holes in it.

But it still makes me sick to my stomach. And this John Boy guy needs to be stopped. He needs his account blocked. You know what? We've got to find out that there's a lot of people in this world that have multiple Twitter accounts that like to take shots at you. And I'm thinking, why do you have this time to do this? What are you unemployed and don't work? I mean, is that the reason why you have multiple Twitter accounts?

because you have nothing else better do in your life? Everybody y'all grow up and have one Twitter account. Put your face on it. Put your name on it. And if you're going to take a shot at somebody, be honest about it. If you're going to say something nice, say something. Put your face to it too. No need for burner accounts.

Because you're going to wind up screw it up. Ross, I can barely handle my one Twitter account. I could imagine having five. Yeah. I'm not in the burner game, unfortunately. I'm not in the burner game either. I'm thinking about getting one, though. Nick, you in the burner game?

Not yet, but I think we should all do it I don't think so I think we should all three No Yeah we can make three burners We'll follow each other And then y'all can have to try We can play guess who's burner account is who

The Matt Thomas show is the greatest show ever Everybody else pales a comparison Yeah you'd at least get We gain one more follower if you made a burner account That's true Maybe if I can create 10,000 burner accounts Yes

I'd get to that 30,000 number It's true Yeah I'm on my way is the Matt Thomas Show. Here we go. One hour remaining on this edition of the Matt Thomas show for a Thursday. Tomorrow, Brian T. Smith for a few minutes.

Some handicapping help and hopefully no strange Twitter accounts. I just got a copy of the last tweet that this account sent out. It is at S.O. underscore Blast 1 burner account, right? Yes. Perhaps. Perhaps, possibly. It did have it right that Bell Tram was stepping down. This tweet came out at 1255 today.

So an hour and 10 minutes ago. My family has upset at me and threats from Astros people, I'm forced to delete and it has the crying emoji with a single tear. Just know all info was 100% correct, as you can see from my TEO's hiring and forced to quit yesterday. Was Tio? Is that a Spanish? Is that Mexican for uncle? Yes.

I'm just context. Pseo. Pia. You can dig on your own and find pictures of Astros players with bandages covering buzzers. Oh, hell no. You know, Ross, I'm done. Matt's walking off the show, apparently.

I'll be back in just a minute. I mean, look. Why don't want to do this? I don't want to. This is my team. We are deep in it right now. I was a Astro buddy. I was there.

I skipped my. eighth grade class to go see Mike Scott throw as no hitter. I was there in 2004. I came back to Houston in 2010 and did Astro Post game shows for 100 lost seasons after 100 lost seasons. After 100 lost seasons, I had to live through Jimmy Williams and Bo Porter

and I didn't look through Cecil Cooper because I wasn't here, but apparently he was a miserable SOB too. And then I get AJ Hinch who I try. Oh, Brian Mills forgot about Brad. Super guy. terrible manager. Said everything was special and the guys battled. So finally, they go to the wallet card.

I create the logo hashtag Crush City. I don't, I don't, stupid me, doesn't trademark it. Shirts are made. It would have been difficult to trademark. Can I have zero problem making those shirts? That's true. 40 different other little small vendors had no problem making shirts. I still see Chris City shirts at baseball games all the time.

I should have trademarked it. and told the Astros suck it, I'm going to make some money on this deal. Instead, I didn't because I was a nice guy. That's true. Nice guys finished last. It's a fact. So they go to the Waldcard and they beat the Yankees and they go to Kansas City and play a tough-ass series against the Royals. 2016, a little bit of a letdown.

2017, they win the freaking World Series. 2018, they get damn close. Getting beaten by, you know, associate lead cheater Alex Cora. 2019. I can just win one home game. They don't do it. I'm there. I'm still here for all of it. Still feeling good. Still feeling positive.

And then this crap comes out. How did we lose our baseball mojo in such a short period of time? Thankfully, George Springer today signs his contract for $21 million. I'm going to have a, I have a conspiracy theory on this. Well, then if we have that, we need music. Yeah, I need some conspiracy theory. We just don't do conspiracy music shows without music in it. It's just not the way the production is put together here.

Is it Okay, here we go We're going unsolved mysteries Yeah, I'll lay back This seems a little too convenient For this account To be popping up over the last several days For it to be tweeting

About Carlos Beltran For it to be putting Carlos Beltran in its bio And for it to be mentioning something that happened in 2019 against the Yankees. It feels like it would be convenient for a Yankee fan on Twitter to make up this account

to say that Carlos Beltran is going to step down because that wasn't the greatest prediction of all time. And then to tweet things about what happened. to the Yankees. Because then you as a conspiracy theorist, you as somebody who's poured over hours of tape and would know about the shirt thing, which seemed like a sweet, innocent story,

and you who have been obsessed about buzzers, and you have who have had the buzzer on Robinson Trino's hand and thought it was a buzzer when it was a sticker, and it was confirmed as a sticker, and when in the report it said they didn't do anything, in 2019, and you're so obsessed with taking down the Astros that you would make this burner account. I like it.

And try to take down the Astros. I totally 100% believe you. I'm talking about John Boy. Wouldn't that make sense? Yeah, John Boy. Let's call John Boy. Can we call him? No. Let's not give him any more. You're right. We're done with him.

We shouldn't have given him as much shine as we did. Burner accounts are real. Ask Kevin Durant. They're real. and they're going to create perhaps artificial chaos. Okay, there's a wrinkle to this now. Wait, how new of a wrinkle?

A wrinkle from... Yeah. Go ahead. Trevor Bauer. Oh, no. Yeah. Quote tweeting the tweets from the niece

says, I've heard this for multiple parties too, for what it's worth. But could Trevor Bauer just be latching on and trying to get... For what it's worth what he said? That's the end of the tweet. I've heard this for multiple parties too for what it's worth. Well, Trevor Bauer is just a known...

Yeah, she is troll. Yeah, he is a barnacle on this ship and just kind of latch on. I don't know. Or maybe it's all right. It's all true. Maybe it's not her niece, but it's somebody she's close to her family friend. Not Beltran's niece. if this was true

would the MLB not have uncovered some of this? See that's what I think That's another thing Here's the thing. It was major league baseball They had been responsible enough To include the information

That they found They didn't give out Everything they knew Because if they had all these interviews guys And all these emails And all these in person conversations The report was only nine pages long, right? There was no

mention of players And what was said and not said and what protection they may or might not have. If something was happening in 2019, they probably would have spoke about it. That's why I'm thinking nothing happened in 19, crazy Yankee fan burner. John Boy is the culprit.

I like it. Howard and George. Or George and Howard. Or the rest of you. Or George Howard. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. That's how you reach our show today if you'd like to get in.

23-212-5-790. We have what we think is going to be a fun fantasy five at the bottom of the hour, just to kind of shake off this just nasty stench, Ross, right? Is that we're calling it? Nasty stench? Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. 7-1-2-5-790. 7-1-3-2-5-7-90 on Twitter at SportsMT,

at SportsRV, and at Pro Nick Lowe. Don't leave Matt Thomas in your car. Take him with you. Download the free IHeard Radio app for your phone at sports790.com. Just remember you'll have to feed him. 216, Matt Thomas show continues until 3 o'clock. You know what we got to do right this second? What's that?

I want to give away two pairs of Houston rocket tickets. And you know how we're going to do it right now? I want you to tell me. me, the university that has the most sugar babies in the country. If you listen to non-Florida stories. Okay. If you know, we have two sets of tickets, I think, for the game on Monday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. It's an MLK game, right?

Yeah, I believe we have two left. Two pairs. If you know the answer to the school that Ross told you had the most sugar babies in the country, 713-212-5-7-90, you get those tickets to see the rockets against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Thanks to our friends of the Houston Rockets are dropping them off. Wonderful. Rockets and Lakers, by the way, Saturday night must win? No.

Much needed win? I would like to have it. Really need it badly win? Get your mojo back win? Yes. Must win? No. If you lose, you'd maybe drop to six in the West.

But again, you're only a couple games out of two, so it's not like it's the worst thing in the world. Yeah, it would be nice if they could be in the two spot. If they didn't drop a lot of these games, they did drop. Yeah, a lot of the back-to-backs have hurt. Let's go to George in downtown on 7-90. Hi, George. Hey, Matt, what's going on? You and Ross, how y'all did you?

We're great, thank you. Yeah, sugar daddy. That'd be the University of Texas, right? Yeah, but you had to call in separately. Don't hate me for that. I don't have two phones. I'm not Paul Pierce. Wow.

That was an outstanding comeback. You'll still get nothing for, but it's an amazing comeback. No, whatever. Well, I wanted to give a PSA that even though we're bummed out about our strows in Texas, our rockets are in contention, and they're a very fun team to watch and to support. I enjoy it. Not the last couple of nights. Yeah, it is what it is.

They've dropped three four, but you know, you know what? Ross is playing really, really well. I'm really honestly concerned about PJ Tucker's shoulder. His shooting touches dropped off a lot in the last handful of games, and I need my Daniel Houseback. Is that the one I'm seeing the last five or six games, not the one I saw in the first 20 or 25? Yeah, which brings me to my question about the other day you were talking about Russell Westbrook not playing in a game of the back-to-back. So it kind of makes me think about, I guess, the chemistry and the games that he may or may not be sitting and, you know, getting players to play consistent with their roles.

But also considering how tight the second 26 seat is, do you envision maybe further in the season that they'll scratch that and be like, hey, our seating is going to be a little bit more important? We need you to play this game so we could avoid probably the Clippers and the Lakers. Yes. Short answer, yeah. Yeah, I don't, I mean, no one's told me that. But if it's down to, if you got, if you're a game separates six and two or six and three or four and five and you have a home court and there's a back-to-back coming up, yeah, I would see. I'm going to look here in the month of, I'll go late, late March to early April. The last, okay, there's a Friday, Sunday, Tuesday to end the month of me.

March in the month of April, Thursday, Sunday. There's a Tuesday, Wednesday, but the Tuesday games in Dallas, the Wednesdays games at home in San Antonio, Friday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday. So really, as I'm looking at it, and again, I'm looking at the last 15 or so games of the year, there's only one back-to-back. That's really good news, right, if you're going to hold to that policy, George. Yeah, so second question, it is outside of the Los Angeles team. Is there any teams that you would most want to avoid or rockets could take them on any of them regardless on any given night? All right. I'm going to give you a plain and simple fact.

There is no team. Like I was legitimately scared of Golden State. I mean, they just had the Rockets number. They had everybody's number except for Toronto towards the end. There is nobody in the Western Conference that I'm like, there's no chance the rockets can't beat them. I never felt that way the last couple of years. I really thought Golden State was just. just, it was just, they were just the dominant dynasty legacy type team.

I think there's holes in the Lakers. I think there's definitely holes in the clippers. Denver, the Rockets, I mean, yeah, there's just, now could they all lose to all of them? Could they be a first-run exit? Absolutely. I'm not saying that they're good enough to get, no matter who they play. But I don't have the fear factor of there's no chance. I'm not saying the Rockets, any chance against Golden State, but the chances were very small.

There isn't anybody that I fear as much as I feared the Golden State Warriors for about four or five years. Does that make any sense to you? Yeah, I mean, there arguably the greatest franchise in NBA history. Well, at least that run it was. Thank you, George, for the phone call. I appreciate it. You agree, Ross. Do you feel like, is there anybody that scares the bejes out of you this year like the Golden States of yesterday?

No, not nearly as much, but I think the Rockets are Tier 2 right now. Tier 1 probably being Lakers, Bucks. I mean, even though the clippers aren't there as far as standings, I mean, they're only about a half game, a bunch of nuggets. Nuggets don't scare me a lot. Jazz aren't super scary to me either. No, jazz aren't beating anybody. And I give them credit because they're not losing the teams they shouldn't be losing to.

But so you give them credit. But the best team in the West right now is L.A. Lakers, two through six can be flipped in about, I don't know, 72 hours. be very fluid, yes. So I'll just put Lakers Bucks tier one, and then rockets in a mishmash of tier two. Howard on 7 out of your 223. Howard, what do you got today? I have a couple lines of thought.

Number one, did Luno know in effect that this cheating technology was going on? Did it start before him? He says no. He says no. He says nothing of this. nothing at all of this. And he said he's being unfairly characterized as someone that was complicit with this. And he says he did not know.

Because the story I heard is the owner said that he did nothing to stop it. Well, if Luno did nothing to stop it, who was above Luno in the hierarchy of the team where this all started is not the owner, the one that Luno says, hey, this is going on, and then is told not to stop it? First of all, turn your radio down and having your own voice distracting. I forgot what his question was, honestly. He was saying, I guess, that how could he have stopped it if he didn't know? It's under the notion of, well, it's on your watch.

It's your organization. You know everything about baseball. And also, it was communicated in the report that Jeff Luno, Jim Crane gave the memo to Luno and said, make sure this is not happening. And Luna said, okay, and then didn't do anything. Yes, the delete key essentially. Right. And there are people.

And again, people is a highly speculative phrasing to describe it, but there are people to believe that Jeff did know in that he's getting away with this. And I can't corroborate that because the report says that he was unaware of it. But sometimes you can hoodwink a system. I think he knew. I think he at least had some idea. If you, if you, if we, I would think common public opinion would say that people thought he knew. If he's around the team on a daily basis, if he's meeting with A.J. Hinch on a daily basis.

If he's anywhere around, he absolutely knew to me. Yeah. By the way, he either knew or he's negligent. And like he doesn't have his finger on the pulse on the team. My feeling was that Jeff knew every moment of every time of every second in baseball operations with the Houston Astros. Hmm. And that if you are that kind of person that's that wired and that connected to everything within your side of the field of your operation, then you would know that something fishy was going on. By the way, congratulations to Andrew and to Leo.

Andrew lives in League City. Leo in Pearland. They got our tickets right and for our tickets for the Rockets in Oklahoma City. What do you have more stuff? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Now people are putting up a picture of Josh Reddick with something on his chest with his shirt off and saying it's a buzzer. when in fact it is, according to Jetredic, his wife, it's confetti.

Hey, you idiots, this is confetti from the celebration. You think he'd do an interview if it was something bad, face palm emoji. Hashtag you are all idiots. What a mess. See, and she's posting pictures of confetti. Falling on everybody. Good. That ends that, I think.

Wow, this is. This is. So Roger and the RGV listening to us? Taking on a life of its own. This is taking on a life of its own. It's not us. Wow. Houston's official sports cliche translator.

I'm working hard. I'm trying to be a good teammate. I'm trying to go out here every day and do my job. Matt Thomas. Taking it one day at a time. I just got to do this for the mental health of the show. I mean, we can talk about the future third round pick of the Texans, but that's boring a.F.

We got to have a little bit of fun in this final segment before we get to believe it or not. Ross, what is topic of believe it or not today at 252? One Carlos Beltran. Carlos Beltran. Fantasy five time. We don't normally ever do this on a Thursday, but, you know, Ross, I feel like we need it today. We're going to do this. Once a month, we're going to take a decade of music, and we're going to find out the number one hits of said decade.

And we're going to say to ourselves, how in God's green earth this song ever become a number one song? Okay. We're talking the Billboard chart. So today we are going to do worst number one hits of the 1980s. We need five judges. If you'd like to judge 713-212-5-790, 7-1-3-212-5-790. If you think you're a music aficionado and can help us judge the Fantasy 5, it's worst songs that were number one hits in the 1980s.

Ross, when Ross and I do this, we usually default that he thinks he's won the previous one because he usually wins two out of three at least. So you gave me the opportunity to go first. Yes. And these are in no particular order, right? I didn't, I just pick songs that I happened to see that just were atrocious. We will start with my first one this week, and we'll go to the year 1989. Boy bands were becoming more and more prevalent by the year during this time of the decade of the 80s. and I present to you

an absolutely train wreck of a singing group known as New Kids in a Block. They had a band and an album with the lead song on the album This atrocity known as Hanging Tough. Awful. A bunch of OOO's for an hour and a half.

It's pretty bad. It's awful. So my first song of my Fantasy 5 list is This Howling God's Green Earth That Ever became number one Hanging Tough New Kids in a Block

Some people are going to be upset with you This was on my list It was high on my list as well So But I don't know Hearing that it kind of gives me Feelings of nostalgia Definitely some 80 stuff there

But I think we're going to get a lot on that list So not a horrible pick Matthew But I'm going to go with one that is Absolutely horrible there actually had two of them, this band Starship that I thought we was going to go with, and I wrestled and I wrestled, and I went with, we built this city. How can you say we built this city on rock and roll with this soft new wave crap? This is not a rock and roll song.

And you're saying rock and roll. This song isn't great, but it's not one of the worst. No, this song is horrible. It's very mid-80s, I'll tell you that. It's making me want to vomit. Watching the video makes it worse. Hitting number one in 1985, we built this city. All right.

The next song, this one I have a serious bias towards. When I was a young man, a very young man, like 10 years old, I had a massive crush on this next performer. I understand. She is to you what Mariah Carey in the Dream Lover video was to me probably. And I understand, but this song blows. This song is really good. It's Olivia June. This, nothing catchy about it.

It's not any good singing. This song, Let's get a physical. This song. It's about sex. Yeah, that's what every song is about. But it's Olivia Newton-John talking about sex. This song sucks.

She was in Greece and she was wonderful and she was sandy. Now she's a sex pot. Crank this up for a second, Nick. This is what they play for terrorists in Guantanamo Bay to get them to crack and give up all of the whereabouts of their cohorts. The worst part about this song is the video. Is that really true? No, it's not. Don't listen to him.

The worst part of the song is that it's got dudes in a video and work out clothes. This song sucks. Fat guys, yeah, right? Really fat guys. Harry fat guys. Go ahead, Matthew. I love this. I don't have a problem with physics.

I might even download it before the end of the show. Next is a song you hear in NBA arenas. Ross and I make fun of it all the time. It still is played. It's not good. It gets played. And you know what? frankly, it doesn't get much of a buzz, but yet it's still played.

And I love arena music. I just don't like this one. It will kibosh any sort of positive feelings in arenas. Not even a big Billy Idol fan. How could I even defend this? You can't. It's just awful. This was number one in 1987, by the way.

By the way, Levy Newton John was in 81. My Moni, Moni here in 1987. Next, we're going to go back to, I think, I think 1985 may have been the worst year in the history of music. It's pretty meaty, yeah. Something called Ready for the World. This sucks. Yeah, this song sucks.

Again, when 80% of your song is the term, oh, Sheila. Sheila, yeah. First of all, he sounds like he's got, somebody's holding his testicles. Is this a guy or a woman? I would assume it's a dude. It is a dude, I can confirm. Okay. Ready for the world.

No surprise, one-hit wonders. Oh, Sheila. Oh, sucks. What were people doing in 85? 85 number one song. Wow. Horrible. All right.

Let's keep it going here with some terrible songs. Now, Matt, you try to defend this song? A little bit of defend. This is catchy. This song sucks. You're going to, you're losing. There's nothing redeeming about this song.

This song gets way too much in radio play. This song, it's a, it's, It's on sunny all the time. I hear it all the time on sunny. It must be very popular. This is the only culture club song I can stomach. Do you really want to love me? Awful.

Do you really want to hurt me? Or whatever it is. That one at least makes me think of the wedding singer, which is hilarious. This song sucks. Oh, the synthesizers, the poor singing. What is a karma chameleon anyways? I don't know, but I can tolerate this song. This isn't as bad as you think it is.

Let me recap things. So if y'all are writing down at home, we need judges, by the way. And Nick can't answer the phone right now because he's doing the songs here. But so far, I have Hanging Tough, Moni, Moni, and O'Sheila. We're not, we'll recap it again.

And then we have, we built this city, physical and karma chameleon. And you have the fourth pick. Yes, yes. One of the worst names of a band in the entire 80s as well. What the hell is a Mr. Mr. With Tyree.

This is it? You lost? Why? This is a great song. What? This is a great song. What? This song blows.

I went and saw Ringo Star and the All Stars, and the lead singer for Mr. Mr. was in this band with him. Oh, my God. And the entire crowd at Cynthia Woods, McVillian, was singing this song. No, they were not. We loved it. Okay. I think I don't need any more help than to know that you love this song for knowing that it's crappy. What's worse?

This song or take these broken wings or whatever? Oh, man, that's bad. I don't like that song in there, but I like this one. What is there to like about this song? It's catchy. When everybody screams, Kyria, the very end. This is an abortion of music. No, it's not.

It's just catchy. No, it's not. You want to sing at the top of your lungs. No, you want to take this cassette tape, throw it out of your car, and run over it. Oh, stop. Oh, yeah, this is good. You're wrong. You're getting.

squashed on this. No, not. This song sucks. I don't care if anybody votes against me. My list is the true and the rec list. But go ahead, Matt. All right. My fourth and fifth. Durand Duran doesn't bother me, typically, but this song does. Rack, right, right, right, right, right, sucks. This is not a good song, either. What is going on with the 1980s? The 80s absolutely were awful when it came to music. Turn that off. All right.

My final pick, I believe this was a two-hit wonder. Okay. Something called Falco. And I believe 86. I actually don't dislike this song that much. Have you ever heard the German version? No. I don't like the American version.

Why want to listen to German version of it? If y'all are trying to call it and judge, just hang tight up and explain our music. You would like them to hang tough? I want them to pick me because my songs are significantly worse than your songs. Listen to this. This is awful. It's not good. Believe it or not, this is the English word.

That's too bad. Maybe speaking English. All right, moving along. My final pick. I think Matt loves like four or five of my picks, but that should tell you that I am the true. correct winner of this one. You will lose harshly on this one.

How is this a number one song? How does anyone find this as good? I thought it was 1980. It is. This is yacht rock at its finest. Yeah, yacht rock sucks. You shut your dirty whore mouth. Why would you listen to this?

This makes me want to vomit. I would not be able to turn this off more quickly enough. Christopher Cross sailing number one in 1980 This song sucks I went and saw Christopher Cross two years ago Actually I called him Chris Cross

I bet you did We had a great time Uh huh He sang this song beautifully Chris Cross to come on in the 90s version Oh there's no doubt Chris Cross makes that list All right so let's swipe all the music off

Here we go We're gonna recap the list We're gonna recap the list I'm gonna do it twice Okay Matt's list Again you're looking for the worst who has the worst list. Matt's voting mine for the best songs of the 80s.

Hanging tough. New kids on the block. Moni, Moni, O'Sheila, the Reflex and Rodney Hummandias. That's my list. Poutred. Ross's list. We built this city,

physical, Carmar chameleon, Kyrie, or Kiri, not Kyrie, Kiri. It is spelled Kairi, though. Yeah, it is spelled Kiree.

And sailing. Let's play the Fantasy 5. Line 3, who has the worst list? Me or Ross? Line 3. George has the worst list. Thank you. That's me.

1-0-0. Ross. Line 4, who had the worst list? Who had boy George? Me, Ross. Okay, the other guy had the worst list. Oh, man. That's classic, man. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. What? Come on. Stay on as long as you'd love. That was a real plot twist. We literally had one vote for Ross because he picked the George, and one vote against because of him. Boy, George, what is going on?

Line one, who wins a fantasy five, Ross or me? Who had the worst list? Matt. Thank you very much. That's two. Line two, who had the worst list? Ross or me? Hey, Matt, it's Jay Wells, man.

I called in to vote for you, but I can do. Blue is Rock. It kills you. Thank you. Jay Wells, your vote doesn't count. You live in San Antonio. What's it count now? Two to two or two?

Line four. Line four, who has the worst list? Me or Ross? Ross had the worst list because he hung up on my one when I was trying to win those. No, that doesn't count. No, that is it not count. You said Ross has the worst list. No, he hung up on you for something.

No, it doesn't count. Line four, line five, who has the worst list? Ross or me? You. Thank you. That's three to me. It's three three. You really want to count that?

You're going to count Bill, really? He's voting for me? Nick, we need a rolling. Bill Lives Matter. Yeah, the vote counts, I think. Oh, then it's three three. Final votes, Nick. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, that's me. You are the deciding vote. Hurry, we got 30 seconds. All right, real quick. You both had terrible, terrible lists. I dislike most of these songs. But I'm going to say that Ross's is worse, and here's why. I like Duran Duran.

There you go. I don't mind the reflex. The reflex, the re sucks. The reflex. Matt, you lose. There's the one that lost it for you. God. I think that's a...

I hope you have a terrible birthday. I'm sorry, can we get a great song? Can we get We Are the Champions? Let's come back. Hey, Nick, let's come back from a break. Come back with your least favorite 80s number one hit. Your personal least favorite since your birthday. 246 on the Matt Thomas show.

Craig Bizjo here. The heart of the order is up right now. Matt Thomas is swinging for the fences here on Sports Talk 790. This is wrong. This song is awful. Have you ever read the lyrics to this song? We've used this song for decades. If this wasn't your birthday, you'd be on weak suspension.

Now, if you would have gone with Say, Say, say, say, I probably would have gone with you on that. If you're going to really try to needle me with Paul McCartney. You've got two of the most popular artists of all time, really. Yeah. And they produce a song that looks like it was written in crayon. Jeez. This is slander. Listen to how he's just.

Learn to live. It's a song that brings people together. They're on the piano together at the same time. Tends to... Together. I'm going to download this song when I get home. I'm going to put this in the car. That's what you call it.

Live together. Beautiful harmony. Ross, how do you love this to happen on our show? I don't know how Ross didn't have this on his list already. This was on a lot of lists of worst number one song. Say, Say, Say is much more of an atrocity. to me. Was that a number one song? Yeah, I'm sure it was. With Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney? I would think so. This is not one of Paul's best works, but my no means is it one of the most

awful songs in the number ones. Oh, I mean, there are some Beatles songs that I like less than this. Sure. This isn't a Beatles song. I know. All right, let's go. No, we can have time for this. We're going to play America's a fast-growing game. I hate you. I don't get you a gift, too, but forget it. Five minutes left to go on the show. What should we do? We should play America's fastest growing sports game show. We simply called it. Believe it or not. And here's how it works. You'll call 713212-5-790.

7-1-3-2-1-2-5-790. Today's edition of Believe it or not. Brought to you by Houston Woodhouse Day Spas. Print out the gift card for the gift of relaxation at Houston Woodhouse Spas.com. The category today is all things about Carlos Beltron, the former manager the New York Met, statement completely utterly accurate. You'll say this. Believe it.

Be running as full of bunk. You'll say this. To believe it or not, and a row win you a prize. Ross, what is the prize? I don't know. Some good stuff. Probably Tesla or Adamant.

Okay. I'm that's a great endorsement for a gift right there. Johnny on 790. Ready to play, believe it or not? Yes. In his younger days, Carlos Beltrae was an excellent volleyball player, but decided to pursue a professional baseball career. Believe it or not.

Not. He did. Sorry. Paul on 790. Ready to play. it or not. Believe it. And, Matt, your lift was way worse. Thank you, friend. Thank you, Paul, very much. Carlos Beltron played for seven different teams in his major league career. Believe it or not. Believe it. Believe it. Statement number two for the win. During his baseball career,

Carlos Beltron was a nine-time all-star and a three-time gold glove winner. Believe it or not. Believe it. Believe it. There you go. Congratulations. Excellent taste in music. And we'll in the game. Pat on 790, ready to play Believe it or not? Yes, believe it. Carlos Beltron had 435 career home runs, which is fourth all time for a switch hitter. Believe it or not. Believe it. Believe it. Believe it.

Statement number two for the win. Carlos Beltron played for Puerto Rico and the World Baseball Classic for four different times. Believe it or not. Not. Oh, he did. If I said it once a thousand times, you got to know, members of the Puerto Rican World Baseball Classic Team and how many times they played. Line 3. Kevin on 790, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Carlos Beltran opened up the Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy in Puerto Rico back in 2009.

He donated over $4 million of his own money to the project. Believe it or not. Not. Believe it. Yeah, he's a charitable man. A cheater, but charitable. Matt on 790. Matt, your favorite part of the radio show today.

Matt? Matt's gone. Oh, sorry. Lost you there. Let's go to line number, where we going here? I need a name. Line number one. Ronnie on 7.90, Ronnie.

Ready to play, believe it or not? Carlos Beltran's wife is Jennifer Giva Carmelta Campos, who was Missed Puerto Rico back in 2007. Believe it or not. State number two for the win. Carlos Beltron was a first Puerto Rican baseball player to land and endorsement. deal with Nike. He signed with the brand back in 2005. Believe it or not. Believe it. No, he didn't. Sorry. That's a good one. All right. All right. Um, oh, uh, I want to remind you about Shaw's jury one more time at the corner of West Gray and Montrose. Been there since

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today at Shaw's Jewelry. Open Monday through Friday, 10 to 7, Saturdays ago, 10 to 6. Same exact location. Same corner. 1966. They started there. It's 2020 and they're thriving right now. West Grand Montrose, that's Shaw's jewelry. And that is it for a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas show. More crazy internet possibilities, trolls, burner accounts. Why don't you all call Adam and find out how many burner accounts each one of those two people have? I'm going to put Wex at about three Clinton six to seven. Talk to y'all tomorrow for an anything goes Friday here on Sports Talk 790.