The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - The Matt Thomas Show : Jose Altuve's Tattoo and Jim Adler on a Mobile

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

The Matt Thomas Show w/ @SportsMT, @SportsRV, and @ProNickLow 2/17/20Brian T. Smith discusses the latest on the Astros Scandal (11:56)Jim Adler on a Mobile (1:03:24)Michael Connor joins Live from Spring Training in West Palm Beach (1:42:53)

So much larger than life. Yeah. Lunch timers is the Matt Thomas show. What's happening in lunch timers? Good afternoon to you and welcome to a President's Day edition of the Matt Thomas show. Man, our third floor, the people that are, you know, helping us pay our bills. they're sleeping.

They're gonna midday's nap. That's good, Matt. They work hard. They've earned the day off. Nick Lowe, you are here. Congratulations. Happy Presidents' Day to you. Multiple people will ask me this weekend if I had Monday off and I just laughed in their face. Yeah, we're good. There's no days off in radio. Yeah, we grind.

Except for the big ones. The headliners. I see no reason to celebrate presidents either. Most of them are not great people. So you're telling me if Barack Obama didn't walk in here, you wouldn't shake his hand and say, hello, Mr. President? I'd get an autograph and then sell it on eBay. Okay, I see how you roll. All right, Rossi, I knew as a child, I wanted to be in broadcasting.

I didn't know what I wanted to do, whether I was going to be a weatherman, newsman, game show host. You wanted to be a game show host, but now you're here with me, sorry. Yeah. I mean, you want to be with Vanne White, but you had to settle for me. Option A, it was saying, and here's the start of the prices, right. Matt Thomas, and I opened up the door and everybody gives me a standing ovation. That was option number one. And you have, well, it wouldn't be Barker's beauty, so it would be Thomas's,

Tutsis? It would be Maddie mates. Okay. Just trying something different. Matt's matrons? Yeah, okay. You're the greatest

in pushing me off care. I know. Sorry, go ahead. Okay, so game show, a whole bit is gone, but I've carved out a nice career as a sports character.

It's okay. I mean, I've done it well. I feel pretty good about where I've gone. Never in a million years that I think I was sitting in the halls

of the University of Houston studying broadcasting or my time at any of the radio stations. I thought to myself, Maddie, at some point, you're going to discuss whether or not an athlete that you cover, talk about, watch him play, had a tattoo or not to justify whether or not he was going to have his shirt taken off. I never in a million years would have thought that would have been in play. But today it has been. Is it a tattoo? The answer is yes. Is it the reason why, at the end of the day, Jose Al-Tube did not want his shirt off.

What a bat-blank weekend it has been for the Houston Astros Major League Baseball team. Pretty funny stuff. This is, I mean, just after having, when the buzzer thing first came out, it was one of the wildest days on Twitter. And I'm like, this doesn't, this is all circumstantial evidence. There's nothing that's pointing anything. There's no smoking gun.

And then everybody's like, what's the reason for this? how come he doesn't want his shirt take it off? Of course he probably has a buzzer. Then it comes and then Correa says Well, he didn't want, his wife got mad Even talked to my wife and got mad about me Ripping his shirt off so I wasn't, he didn't want me to do it again And he had a bad tattoo

That's why. Oh, well this is made up Like people are clamoring for answers And going after the Astros. They give the answers. They don't believe them. They dig up pictures on Instagram from him on July 29th or whatever When he had a, he didn't have the tattoo Like if you get it, if you don't have a tattoo in July, it's impossible for you to have one by October.

Like, I forgot there was a six-month waiting period. It's like trying to get a kidney for you to get a tattoo. Like, it's completely impossible. Then the photo surface of him where you could kind of see a little bit of a tattoo on the collarbone. And people were even using that picture to say he didn't have one. I'm like, if you look close, idiot, he has one. And then it looked like a script, M or something. And then it comes out, he has Melanie.

I guess that's his wife name or his daughter or something. I don't even know. It doesn't matter what it's, I mean, it could be a Z, it could be an R. Could be his dental hygienist. I don't know. So basically here is our life as sports fans of the Houston Astros and people that talk about the Astros for a daily basis. We're going to spend every day checking our tweets to find out which Major League

Player is mad, which general manager is mad, which... His daughter is named Melanie. Okay. And then we're going to have to go to hear whether or not baseball player from the Astros wants to justify or argue with or shut down any of. the opponents ridicule of them. This is a blank storm. You know how tornadoes just move?

You know how sometimes the worst tornadoes don't ever move? Or the hurricanes? Or hurricanes? It comes over here and like Allison. Yeah. We have Hurricane Astro over us right now. So Harvey hovered as well. I think that was part of the issue, right?

Tropical storm Allison for sure hovered. I found a nice one. Well, sort of nice. A nice what? A quote from a base of Major League player on the Astros. Okay. This is coming from Jesse Doherty, and it is a quote from Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals. He's 21, by the way.

Yeah, that he is. His quote is, when he was asked about the signed stealing scandal, quote, I don't want to push them into the wall. We're human. We make errors. You mean the guy that helped the Nationals beat the Astros has been nice? That's what it looks like. It's very weird.

That's why that one stood out. Well, that may be the only one. You may have to start. You know what your responsibility is, Nick? you're going to start finding players that are apologetic, not apologetic, but accepting of the apology.

Well, I got the one. You got one. I don't know how busy you're going to be, but you're going to, that's the one. Well, I don't know that that means he was accepting. He just said he thinks they're human.

That's different. That's okay. We're moving on. Let me tell you. That's the nicest one of any other opposing player we've seen in three weeks. Yeah. And that's the whole other thing is everybody,

look, I get, there's a lot of layers to this. First of all, the notion, and Rob Manfred talked about this in his interview, the notion that the Astros did not get punished at all is ludicrous and stupid and you're not paying attention. For you to get your manager and your general manager, and especially the general manager part, the architect of your championship winning ways, for him to get fired over this, which MLB didn't mandate, but it was basically Jim Crane's hand was forced, for him to get fired over this, for you to lose the maximum amount a fine in $5 million for you to lose all the draft picks that are coming up. And now for all this firestorm and everything that's happening to the Astros, for all that to come down on them,

absolutely that's punishment. So anybody who says that, you're ridiculous. Before you're going to be further on this, how about Rob Manfred on the over the weekend saying that they had seriously contemplated taking the title away? That's pretty intense. That's definitely interesting to me, making them take down the banner and all that type of stuff. And that's what a lot of people want. I mean, we can argue the merits of that either way. To me, it doesn't matter. MLB can come and say, hey, we're taking this away, and you're not the 2017 World Series champions, but they always would be, right? It would just be, it would ring hollow, I think. Well, in our minds, it won't change. But the whole thought of pulling the banner down, right?

That's, I mean, we don't see that in sports. That's true. Unless, I mean, the last time, I remember, that was what, 2013 Louisville, they had there. Minnesota, Louisville. Louisville, Minnesota did it during the Clem, Haskins days. I mean, it doesn't happen that often. To have banners pulled, to have records pulled, pretty damn intense. And so another thing when people want, the one that actually intrigues me would be postseason ban. If they did that for like a two-year postseason ban, I think that would be a pretty bad punishment. And I think that would be fair because you're not punishing players. Because when you get into punishing players, that's when things get kind of hairy.

That's when things get difficult. Because Rob Manfred struck this deal, right? If you tell us everything, we will not punish you. If he did not strike that deal, this would have been long drug out. You would have had some guys speaking, some guys not speaking. He said, she said. You would have had depositions. You probably would have had like Congress getting involved in subpoenas and all this type of stuff.

And then you know what would have been happening in the midst of all that. Everybody would have been talking about how Rob Manfred is mishandling this and how he can't keep Major League Baseball under control. The players would have been fighting him tooth and nail, I feel like. If this deal wasn't been made. information would have been, it would have been a trickle of information. There would have been no trickle. There would have been, we don't have enough to penalize them.

Right. It was like this situation, if we lived in a world where he didn't strike this deal, this would still be going on. The Astros wouldn't even be punished right now. It would be like court case after court case after court case. So Rob Manford kind of had to make that deal. And he admitted as much. He says, look, if I don't strike this deal, I'm going off of one person's

knowledge of this, but I don't have enough to convict. And you're probably not going to hear from everybody else. And frankly, that happens in some... My guess is Ross, if we went to the detective's division of HPD and said there is a massive drug deal going on, drug cart, whatever you want to call it in a certain area of town. And five or six guys say, yeah, I bought drugs. Yes, I've sold drugs. I'll give you the goods for immunity.

I bet they take the deal. This is not abnormal, unfortunately, in society that guys sell out to get immunity. And that's what Rob Manfred said. If Rob, and I think I've said this five million times, and I'm the only one that's saying this. If you do not give immunity, you don't have enough to spike the Astros. You just don't.

Yeah, so that's the thing. When people are coming out and saying, hey, the players need to be punished. I get it. I understand where they're coming from, but this would have went down a completely different avenue, probably to me, in my opinion, an uglier avenue, a more difficult avenue,

if Rob Manfred did not make that. deal. And we wouldn't have all this stuff. We wouldn't have all these smoking guns. We wouldn't have these admissions. We wouldn't have people coming out and saying, hey, we cheated in 2017. We're sorry. None of that would have happened. How about this? So you can't say, punish us or punish them when

you wouldn't have known anything if the deal weren't made. What about this? Name me another baseball team that would have taken the same deal. You know how the Mike Trout today was mad? The Dodgers were mad. The Yankees are mad. Would they have taken the same offer that the Astros would have taken? Of course.

Brian T. Smith went to hear Rob Manford yesterday in Florida. He'll join us at the bottom of the hour. Jose Altuve spoke today. Are we getting that audio in from Michael Connor? I'm assuming we are, I think at some point that he just spoke a few minutes ago. We'll get that. Michael will also join us from West Palm Beach. I didn't think it would be this big of a mess and maybe I just short-sold it.

Now, I knew it was going to be big because there were others that said, nah, this is just passed. This isn't going to pass. I didn't realize that when I'd get in my car yesterday, driving downtown to go see the roughnecks play, that I put on two different national radio stations, and they were both wall-to-wall on the Astros. We are, weak as we are Houston. We are for the H. We are the most hated sports city in America today.

Between Rocket Hate and the Astros, we're the hated. 713-212-5-790. 713-2-1-2-5-7-90. How's it make y'all feel? We are the most hated sports city, not so much by the Rockets. I mean, there's James Hardenay. I get that.

But the Astro hate is pure. It's genuine, and it ain't leaving. How do you feel about that? Rockets basketball. Rockets PA announcer and sports talk show host. One might get the impression Matt Thomas loves to hear Matt Thomas's voice. Go ahead, Matt, Matt, for us.

I just had to hold some restraint back with someone from ESPN that earlier this morning tweeted out, I mean, one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. And I've heard a lot of dumb things. Marley Rivera, she is a national baseball writer for ESPN. I've never heard of her. Is she with ESPN Deportes? No, I don't think so. I think she's with regular ESPN.

Okay. Maybe Deportez, I don't know. She has 38,000 followers, so she obviously already had her party. She probably didn't throw a party, but that's okay. At 1026 our time this morning, she tweets this. A player suggested a very unusual punishment for Astros, so I thought I'd show. Now, this is a player, suggests this to her. Every single team refuses to take the field that minute made part.

Visitors forfeit every game there. Astros go 81 and 0 at home, but affects their revenue. No fans and no games played, quite an idea. Go ahead and cue up the, what you just said is one of those dumbest things I've ever heard. He's on the phone. Okay, it's fine. I originally read this as her idea. thank God.

And I hope maybe it is legitimately a player. By the way, we're going to check in with Brian T. Smith here in just a second. Or at bottom of the hour. Nick, there is some video coming in from our Sports Talks on a Twitter account on Jose Al-Tube. When you have that first one ready to go, will you lock that in? Because I think that's what we need to play right off the top

because it's the fresher stuff. Jose Al-Tube is speaking less than 20 minutes ago to the media. And I think we've chopped them up in a couple of video segments here. By the way, you can check our Twitter account out. at Sports Talk 790. Our coverage of a spring training company from West Palm, brought to you by Carbock Brewing and by Visit the Palm Beaches. And we will have that for you here in just a couple of seconds.

I'm not even going to dignify that with a result. It is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. I've ever heard. I'm done with America. I'm done with America. America, you stupid. No wonder we've got such problems in a country.

We've got stupid people. Lots of them. The dumbest thing I've ever heard. So if Marley can, I've just invited her to come on this show. I'm not going to try very hard. But that's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. All right, I'm going to take a phone call. And then Nick get us some of that audio from the Sports Talk 7-8 Twitter account.

We'll play that for you here before we go to Brian T. Smith. Let's go to Wade and Katie in the Matt Thomas show. Wade, good afternoon. Hey, I got a comment and a question. I don't think they're ever going to punish the individual players with only 10 guys still on the roster. They're essentially just going to be punishing the other teams that they suspend and that kind of thing. So even though they want it, it's not going to happen. But the question I had is, this is interesting.

How are the Dodgers going to react when the boxers thought? investigation come out and Mokey Betts and David Price are right in the middle of it and that's all I have all this yeah by again we need to stop talking about astral punishment it ain't happening

America baseball players executives fans they're not getting punished Rob Manfred tripled down on that yesterday if he goes back on his word on this that would be one of the biggest blunders in sports history

There's no way he can go back. I'm sure it's some kind of, I don't know if any, I don't know if paperwork was signed or how this immunity deal, immunity deal was struck or if the MLBPA got involved or whatever. But the deal is the deal and that's, that's it. Yeah. And oh, by the way, yeah, they're going to run to mooky bets right away, as they should.

Yeah, and then everybody asking like, acting like this is a grave injustice that the players are getting off scot-free. You were referencing, like immunity deals that get struck, like literal murderers. get involved in in immunity deals and they get off and they go into witness protection or whatever and stuff like that. Like in real life, people have come who committed actual horrible, terrible crimes for years and have injured people and families and fractured families and all that type of stuff. Like they get off scot-free. So let's not try to act like this is first of all unprecedented.

And second of all, some kind of grave injustice that is that is ruining everybody's life. Oh, no, it is ruining people's lives. Oh, please. Well, okay, I'm sorry. If you want to be an obsessed fool on the internet and you want to let this ruin your life, then you can let it ruin your life. I'm just telling you right now, you better be really damn careful, non-astro fan, because I feel like there's a lot of people that are just beating the hell out of them,

and they should be beaten the hell out of. But how's your house? I want to ask you that again. How's your house? Are you going LeBron James on these people? These people got sad lives? No, I'm asking them, how's your team's house? y'all do everything on the up and up?

I thought you were saying going personal. No, no, no, no. No, no. Personal on Twitter, 140 characters. They up the characters. That's right. 280 is it 280 now? Something like that.

I can't remember. All right. We are slowly trying to get this audio coming in here. We're just trying to get something so it's audible. Unfortunately, the stuff we're getting is just not audible. So Michael Conner, if you're listening to us on IHartRadio, please send some audible stuff. We can get it because I'd like people to hear. what Jose L. Tube had to say.

Let's go to Pete and Katie before we go to Brian T. Smith. Hi, Pete. Hey, how you doing? Good. Good. Hey, I just want to add some levity to this whole thing, and everybody that's talking about, I'm hearing things national radio, they should vacate the World Series, and crazy stuff like that.

Now, we all know they cheated, but my thing is, I don't know if anybody's looking at the numbers. They're batting average in 2017. team was higher on the road. They had more RBIs on the road. They scored more runs on the road. They won the World Series games, clinters on the road. So I just don't hear that come up in this debate conversation at all. So, yeah, they were wrong for cheating. I just don't know if it helped them. It did. I mean, let's not be naive. Please. Carlos Correa said it helped them. Yeah. If it didn't help them, they would have stopped doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe it didn't

help as much as they thought. Looking at the numbers. We're getting very subjective here. They obviously thought, and thank you for the phone call, Pete, that this was the way to help them win the World Series. It just was. All right. Now, before we get to Brian T. Smith, who's down in Florida,

here is Jose Altova on, my God, the tattoo. When? Middle of the season in San Francisco. How many, I guess, sessions did it take to finish the tattoo? He then indicated with his finger, two holding two fingers up. He did not answer that question vocally. I'm going to be really honest with y'all.

I'm highly confused about the tattoo. I'm confused about the T-shirt. Okay. I'm confused about when it was, how long it took. And are we doing this because of John Boy? Is this what we're doing here? Yeah. He's the only, I mean, basically him.

And then Trevor Bauer, I keep calling him Tyler because that's funny. No, he called him Tyler. Tyler. Tyler also said, well, I have sources that have told me about the buzzer as well. Then he wrote, then Tyler Bauer wrote an entire article on the Players Tribune talking about, I wish I was wrong. And you read the whole article? I was like, wow, okay, is he going to come out and talk about some buzzer stuff? I read that entire article, and he talked about all his speculation with, with Coca-Cola and Pintar, and that has nothing

to do, nothing to do with the sign stealing. And he doesn't mention anything about the buzzers in that whole ass article. So I think, and we know that guy's unhinged and he hates the Astros. So I don't know how much credibility he has on the issue, and then it's just our guy, our internet celebrity, whose name I don't even want to say. That's it. That's the only source for anything like that. Internet speculation. There's no evidence. Rob Manford, speaking of Rob Manford, tripling down, he said nothing in 2019. We looked into it. He mentioned specifically buzzers. Carlos Correa, we didn't do it. Garrett Cole, I didn't see anything. George Springer, we didn't do it.

Everybody's denied it. There's no evidence. But the one thing he did say was, do I know with 100% absolutely absurd? 100% certain that they didn't use buzzards? He can't say that. That's true because you can't be 100% certain about a lot of things. I can't be 100% certain.

There's not mutant turtles fighting crime in the sewers right now. You can't prove it. So, I mean, there's a lot of things we can't be 100% certain about. But I mean, it's just that's life. And people are running with that. Like, that's a smoking gun. That's just a statement of fact. The morning sports show for those who partied in Midtown way too hard last night.

The Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790. Our friend Brian T. Smith normally with us on Fridays, but I just thought today was an important day because he's down in spring training. He leaves. Ross and I get down there tomorrow. So it's a good way for us to segue. way. Brian, first of all, thanks for joining us. Secondly, we are very fortunate. You, myself, a lot of other people in our business are very lucky we get to go to spring training for the most wonderful time of the year, the pre-game show before the start of the season. It looks miserable down there, and for the first time in my 25 years of doing this, this is about the least looking forward to seeing a baseball team. How miserable is it just the aura around the Astros right now? I think you set that up well, Matt.

I was actually, I can't mention the person, but I was discussing it with someone earlier today who has been employed by the Astros since I came here in September 2012 to cover the rebuilding Lastros. It's still a major league baseball team. I could be working for some small podunk paper. You could be interning or trying to break into radio. We live in a big city. Houston is awesome. The Astros will recover,

and they still have star players, and it's a very nice facility. So, yeah, did I sleep on a couch for five days? And if you want to ask Jose Altube a question, are there 50 people around him? And I wrote about it this morning

at Houstoncronocta.com, kind of trying to capture the media circus slash zoo that's surrounding this team. I think it's from the outside, looking in, so much of it is probably very frustrating or depressing or annoying or you feel like everyone in the world is taking shots at your boys. I mean, whatever your perspective is on it, but at the same time, you know, you and I are still very lucky to have the jobs that we have, especially in the current media market. Of course. And I'm going to be honest, Matt,

it's also an absolutely fascinating time to be around the Houston Astros again. So I'm not going to whine about having to cover the Astros. Yeah. With that said, though, the tenor has certainly changed. You went cross-date yesterday to Rob Manfred State of the Major League team address, where yesterday that he just basically doubled and tripled down on the, if I didn't get these guys immunity, I wouldn't have a case. Why is that still so hard for so many Major League Baseball players across his country to not understand that?

Well, it's a great point And credit to you You were saying I heard you saying that at the start I did yeah You did You did I think you real quick

Give credit to Michael Connor Nobody appreciates Michael Connor But he's working hard In West Palm And he's always right on the side He always figures up a way To get right on the side Of the star players

To get the best Video clips for 790 It's a good skill It's very very good It is Back to Manfred Here's the thing though Yes yes

That's 100% true. He needed immunity from the players, and once you get immunity, you can't prosecute. I think we all learned that in the eighth grade watching television. That being said, that doesn't appease anybody who hates the Astros right now. They might understand it. They can still hate it, Matt. And, I mean, Mike Trout came out today. Bellinger's come out.

Udarvishes come out. Chris Bryant come out. All of baseball, the baseball world, little league coaches. I mean, everybody is in on the Astros, except for the most devoted Astros fans, and even they are completely conflicted by this. So, yeah, the immunity thing, understanding it is one thing, allowing that to say, okay, well, they had immunity. So, of course, they couldn't be punished. Everyone outside of devoted Astros fans still want the players punished. They do.

Brian T. Smith with us here. One thing I brought up last time with Ross. if it was the angels being investigated, and Mike Trott was given the opportunity to tell his side of the story on Phil Immunity, he'd be doing the exact same thing. These are human reactions. I get it. But I've told this to the audience at nausea, Michael, or Brian,

that if you are given the exact same opportunity as were the Astros, every single Major League Baseball player would have taken them up on the offer. No, that's 100% true. And so do expect anything more or different from Jose Al-Tube or Carlos Correier, Alex Bregman? And that, with that specific situation, is absolutely ridiculous and unfair to human beings living real life. Everything else, the cheating, the sign stealing, the trash can banging, participating. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I get, I mean, I'm swamped with emails.

And half of the readers, and I'm sure half of Twitter, you know, they get it. And they actually want me to, quote, unquote, I'm not saying a piled on, but they want me to, quote, unquote, pile on more. The other half, Matt, everyone lay off, you know what I mean, like drop it. Dude, you can't drop it right now. This is the biggest story in professional sports. It's going on for months, and it doesn't go away. And every time it should go away, Carlos Correa goes off. And I'll tell you what, Matt, 30 minutes ago, I mean, we specifically at Jose Al-Tuv.

You know, Correa said you didn't bang on the trash cans. Is that true? Al Tuve being Al Tuvei only wanted to talk about the team and said, hey, I'm just here to apologize to the team. You can read into that how you will. But again, that will, you know, kick up the conversation again because all of a sudden the Astros haters is going to say, well, Altuve didn't say that he didn't do it. That's just how it's going to go. It's going to be an endless back and forth. somebody will get thrown at.

Somebody is going to slide hard in the second base. The Astros are going to lose some games. They're going to win some games. Everything will be a reflection and some type of public comment on the 2020 Astros still paying the price for 2017 and 18 and maybe 19. Give me your perspective of being around Jose Altubi when he was asking, answering questions about the tattoo. Yeah, no, it's a good question. I'll tell you what, you know what was more striking to me was Thursday. So I've been around Al-Tuve a hell of a lot since 2012 and really 13.

All right, I mean, I don't know, 500 times, a thousand times, and just about every imaginable situation. Highs and lows. Al-Tube on Thursday, in the clubhouse, not on TV, in the clubhouse, which is what the Astros should have projected. on national television, because that was real and that was honest, and that was incredibly contrite. Jose Al-Tuvae was very down. I mean, I thought at one point, you know, I mean, it almost felt like there were going to be tears in his eyes, and maybe he was holding it

back. He's really feeling this, and he's caught in the middle of it. And Matt, if he didn't bane the trash cans, I mean, my gosh, are you in a difficult spot? Half people are going to say, well, he should have spoken up. It's also, it's so easy to say that on Twitter and so hard to do that and fight your whole team in a modern Major League Clubhouse. So I think more than anybody, Al-Tuvei kind of captures just the really uncomfortable, tough divide, this team, the organization, everyone faces, and it's going to take a long time to get through all of this. Okay, so Correa today says, I'm ready to talk baseball. Yeah. That's easier said than done. You had 50 reports.

today, by your account and your Twitter account, I was telling Ross, I said usually it's 10 or 15 in the first day. Yeah. It dwindles down as a spring goes along. So just because he says it doesn't mean that's going to happen. Matter of fact, it's not going to happen. Is there any signs beyond him just publicly saying that today that guys are already getting tired of it or they know that, you know what, you can be all tired all you want. It's just not going to go away right now.

Yeah, I think the main thing is that they know they have. they have to stop talking about it, right? And this whole back and forth like today, and I'm not, you know, someone was just doing their job, but they started asking by Glyber Torres, right? I mean, if we continually, and some of this is on the stupid media, just the really stupid media that, you know,

rushes to Altuve's locker and you have 20 TV cameras around it, and he's not even there. I mean, it's really TNZ Kardashian-ish. but if the players constantly respond and get into this, you know, verbal volley, when they've admitted that they cheated, to my perspective, professionally, there's no win in that. You're not going to win that battle. So on some level, they do, Matt. They have to move on, and they know that.

I mean, Correa tried to do that today. Al-Sue, they tried to do that today. Gregman tried to do that today. But here's the thing. they're going to go to Oakland and you're going to have Mike Fires and they're going to play the Angels and you're going to have Mike Trout and all the national media will be asking those questions and then somebody's going to start banging a trash can behind home plate or something crazy like this. They're going to have to find a way with James Clicks and Dusty Baker, Matt, to just try to navigate through this as professionally as they can. And I'll keep saying this. The only thing that will really start to make it go away is win.

on the field. I got 30 seconds, I'm late, but you're bringing good stuff. You were in Florida on the coast yesterday. What blew me away from all Rob Manfred's comments over the weekend, and I mentioned this to the audience half hour ago, was a legitimate thought of pulling the World Series title? Yeah. Were you blown away by that as well? I was. He had not admitted that. Those were his first comments. And, you know, I asked him about, you know, in a real, in a perfect world, you said you would spend the Astros, those two things stood out to me. And they are just my. And they are just mind-blowing if you know your baseball history, if you know the Astros, if you followed this team for the last seven years or the last 50-plus, Major League Baseball had a serious internal

conversation, an extended conversation about taking away the title, and Manfred would punish the players if he could. And it's very telling that the commissioner said that publicly. Safe travels back, my friend. We'll catch up on an airport sometime soon. All right, Matt. Thanks for having me on. I see. You got it. Brian T. T. Smith with us from West Michael Connor, who is all a part of that today as well. We'll join us at 2.30 this afternoon. Lance McCullors. Hey, Lance McCullors.

Back to Matt Thomas. Turnball, swinging a miss strike three. On Sports Talk 790, your home for Houston Astros baseball. Like I always said, and I'm not going to say this right now, I always said that I like to talk about team. I like to talk about team results. You know, I'm here taking full responsibility for the team. I appreciate what Carlos did, you know, believe me. You know, that tells you what kind of person, what kind of teaming he is.

And I tell him a hundred times what I feel about what he did. Brian T. You brought up a good point, Ross. Do you think Al Tuva is like, you know what? I didn't do any of this, but I have the word Astros across my chest. I knew about it. I'll jump in with this. I'll take team eat. Yeah.

He didn't stop it. He understands. Jose Altuve is playing this all right. I think he's handling this well. Carlos Correa came out a little strong. I have some issues with what Carlos Correa did. But over the weekend, basically, I mean, the gist of what Carlos Correa said was, we did this in 2017.

We're sorry. We have to own it. But a couple of players didn't do it, including Jose Altova, so he didn't steal the MVP. So get your facts straight. Also, we did nothing in 2018 and 19. So get your fact straight. And if you don't have the details, you shouldn't open your mouth.

Or I actually said shut the F up. Shut the bleep up. Right. So, okay, he could have worded a little strongly. And I don't agree with the Mike Fires need to give his ring back type or apologize for whatever. Who said, maybe it's just who being America,

said, why is Mike Fires smiling when he got his ring? It's like, why not? Why wouldn't he? Because he was happy and he was happy when he wasn't even play. Did he even throw a pitch in the World Series or the ALCS that year? He was definitely out of the last two rounds.

Yeah. I don't know if he even threw a pitch in the playoffs. But also, I mean, he doesn't need to give up his ring. He doesn't need to apologize either. Because all he did was talk about the truth. So I don't agree with that part of it. So Rob Manfred says, we're not going to strip the asteros of the title because we don't know what to do with it. Does that make sense? Well, you give it to somebody else or just there's no, there's no winner that year? If I was commissioner and I had the responsibility, I would give it to no one. I'm not going to why would why would the Dodgers want a default championship?

I mean would they would they be celebrating that? Probably not. I guess the whites I mean the will the whites are whoever they lost to I don't even remember that team won so they wouldn't strip them of the title I guess. Yeah this is the Cincinnati Reds. Folks you got to realize Ross and I are going on a grown ass man's trip to Florida tomorrow. Yeah. And I don't I don't even know what we're to expect. First of all the room that we normally do it in.

is our room. It's the sports talk 790 suite. Apparently, Michael Conner's told us today via text that we're sharing it with a bunch of other people because there's so many media there. Okay. So they're going to hear us? Yeah, too damn bad. Oh, that's fine. We got to bring the major market. I'm going to tell you to all this well in advance, and I'll think I'll preface it again. I don't know what to expect on the guest. I don't know who it's going to be. My guesses are not going to be overly forthcoming joining us. And, you know, I don't think they can say don't talk about it.

I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about it. Yeah, maybe one question, one or two questions. Anything to say to the fans about this whole thing going on or what? And I think that's the responsible thing for us to do. Because I think if you open up a seven-minute conversation with, how's your off-season? Well, that's not going to go necessarily particularly well. So I'm just going to tell you ahead of time. We will do the, what do you want to say to Houston?

because Houston's going to be listened to us tomorrow and Thursday and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Tomorrow may not me not so much because tomorrow's photo day, and that's just a big old CF. But Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Chicken fry. Chicken fry. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, if they bring us people, I'll say, you know, you got a chance. You got to, because this is a hardcore Astros audience that listens to this show. Of course.

We've come to figure that out. We love that. You get a chance to say what you want to say. Maybe Ross, you and I'll ask one question, and then we'll move on. Because, again, berating them is just, it's not going to do anything, and it's going to do anything, and it's going to make it awkward. And they've said what they wanted to say. I know that Carlos Correa and George Springer have said it's time to move on.

Unfortunately, they're the ones, and I think they know this, Ross. They don't get to decide these things. They don't get to decide when people stop asking because guess what? A new batch of media comes in. When the game starts playing, a new batch of media comes in, Fox Sports, another group of ESPN, and then you have the whole regular season. So it's very interesting to me how this is going to work out. 1255 is a time.

Let's take a timeout here. behind with Brian T. Everybody on hold. Chris, Jason, Byron, Will. One call, one line open. If you want to get anyone, we're going to talk to y'all to open up the second hour of the show. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. Your chance to speak is next. We're going to mix in Josh Redick. We're going to mix in what Mike Trott had to say, Jose Al-Tuve. Anything you want to hear, you're going to get it between now and three o'clock. Plus, I do want to very quickly mention Ross. All-Star game yesterday of the NBA. That fourth quarter was fantastic. It was incredible what we wanted an All-Star game.

And Aaron Gordon got robbed again. Aaron Gordon got robbed, and Shaka Khan was awful. Well, she started out okay, and then she just got wacky. Can I ask, can I tell you a serious thing? And I don't mean this to be really rude. Tell me something good, Matt. I thought she was dead. You thought Shaka Khan was deceased?

I thought Shaka Khan was dead. Dang, so if we had a Shaka Khan alive or dead, you would have lost on that one? And I'm the second person when I said that yesterday. Oh. They're like, yeah, me too. We thought she was dead, too. Well, she's alive. She was alive and she butchered the national anthem.

And, you know, it is what it is. You got to call it as you see it. Vanessa Hudgens was incredible. Or not, what's her name? Jessica, not Vanessa Hudgens. Jessica, Jennifer Hudson. Yeah. Why did I say Vanessa Hudson?

I didn't see her. I just saw Shardt. No, Jennifer. Go back and watch the Jennifer Hudson. Who saying, oh, Canada? It was very weird because you, I don't know. You had this wonderful Jennifer Hudson rendition of this soulful song. and then Common introduce the players rapping for everyone,

and they're just just Canadian girl with an acoustic guitar. Hey, y'all. Time for O Canada. It was a very interesting transition. And by the way, O Canada sucks. The best national anthem. Wrong. Our country greater than theirs.

They're anthem better than ours. You are fake news. Second hour, the Matt Thomas show, starts next. is the Matt Thomas show. Why did you choose not to? You know, again, I'm not trying to individualize myself here. It's just something that I couldn't do. It's just something I couldn't focus on anyway.

This game's hard enough as it is to be focused on outside stuff like that. But like I said, I'm not trying to make it about me. Yeah, Pete Rose used to always say guys would be on second base. They would try to flash him and let him know if the picture of his. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. It'll mess with my head. Yeah, yeah, that's a completely different scenario.

You're looking at guys trying to figure out what they're doing from there, looking in to see their signs there. So, again, I'm not a big fan of that either. I just am not very good at doing that kind of thing. Usually it's something that I know what's coming up right on, whether it's at my neck or in the ground. But, you know, it's just one way that I work. I want to play cards with Josh Redick, because he adheres to my rule.

I don't want to see your cards. Oh, like I said, You get one warning. That's it. That's the sports. And I don't even know you that. If you're tipping your hand to me for why you give you one warning after that, it's fair game. And I'm punishing to the full extent of the law.

I have a question for you real quick. Yeah. So I'm sure Jose Altuve and Josh Redek are very appreciative of Correa coming to their defense and all. But isn't him exonerating these players also at the same time throwing other players under the bus that he has. not exonerated? No. How? Well, because if he's telling you who didn't participate... No, the presumption, Nick, is that everybody's doing it, and those two, and by what Correa is doing is saying, okay, you can say everybody except those two guys. Yeah, you can look at the data. He talked about the three who didn't do it, and then he said the, basically, he said he used

it and with everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you are saying there's a presumption. Well, there's not a presumption. I think it's a guarantee that unless Carlos Correa said your name, you use the strategy. Here's the thing, gentlemen. And we'll use the this and we'll go to our phones here. Part of me goes, I want to know what the pitch is, so I have a better chance of helping my team. Also, if I'm in a massive slump, it would help me. But also, there's part of me that would say, if I'm a really good athlete, there may be more pressure on me to succeed if I know the pitch. Does that make sense? That if I know what's coming and I don't drill it out of the ballpark, I'm really letting my team

down. Those guys swing at a pitch. They know it's a curb ball coming, they swing at it, and it's a little lazy pop fly to second base. What are y'all doing? You should have crushed that ball. You knew it was coming, right? Yeah, okay. That's why you don't want to know. So you can save yourself from that. Some of people, yeah, just depends on the approach. Yeah. So what kind of approach are you? Tell me and I'll take my chances. Yeah. Knowing that if I don't succeed, I'm going to face ridicule because I know what's coming. It's like hitting on blackjack, Ross, if you know what the undercard is. on the car. If you know the dealer, if the dealer has a

face card up and you know underneath for somehow some way, there's a seven under there. Yeah. And you're still hitting. You know, you know it's there. You bust out. Your fault. Maybe that's the greatest example. But my point is that... No, maybe that works. Yeah, if I have a 15 and I know they have a 17, I've got to hit. Actually, it wouldn't be a 7. You know there was a 600, meaning you

had to keep hitting. Oh, no, then I'll stay. I'm staying on a 15 if I know they got a 600 there. Okay. But they could get a five. Yeah. I'm just saying that it's not as easy as I know it. I'm guaranteed to hit it. If I know it's coming and I don't crush it, then I'm going to really feel crappy.

They did all this and they didn't bat a thousand on it. You still have to hit the ball. But it did help. Oh, no, certainly. It helped those who think, I mean, or at least they thought it helped. I don't know. Yeah. We're going to hear, Nick, we're going to take a call here.

But let's get Mike Trout's comments in if we can after this call because I want you all to hear what he had to say. There was Aquamity Life in the conversation. You know, we always get a chance to play Acre Media Live on the show. With Ross and Nick, I'm Matt, we appreciate listening here to Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-7-90. Let's go to Byron and Richmond's been patiently waiting. Byron, how are you?

Oh, I'm doing fine, sir. How are you? Good. Hey, you know, I want to talk about the Rockets. I mean, the All-Star game last night. Okay. And the last shot when James Hardin made and they said it was a charge. Okay.

You know, I kept watching it, and it's just impossible for the rockets to come out or somebody representing the rocket to come out as a hero. I think if it was Leonard or James, LeBron James, or even Luca, who had done that same move. Not true. It would have been getting it. No, that was a charge. The referee blew the whistle.

I don't think it was a charge, by the way, because Larry was reaching in. But I don't care. It doesn't matter. So the referee in his head was like, this is a Houston rocket. I must blow my whistle. You don't believe that. Come on, Brian. Come on.

You're smarter than that. Well, look, they even mentioned the last person that filed out of the All-Star game. Guess who it was? No clue. Probably a rocket. A team of a team of a lot. Absolutely. years ago. So Hakeem Olajuan was

targeted by the referees and this has been a, the rockets have been targeted for decades in the All-Star games and the referee said James Harden is a Houston rocket. I am calling a charge on him. I cannot let a Houston rocket win this game. Absolutely.

Byron, come up, Byron. You know what the best part about this is you don't even believe your own phone call. And for that, I appreciate that very much. We'll see you later. All right. Byron, come on. Yeah, I do.

Again, I didn't sit there and look at 40 different angles of it. Yeah, no, I think it was a close call. Calling it a charge isn't the worst. But it looked like Kyle Lowry was reaching in, and so that's why he was in James Hardin's space. That forearm push is pretty damn pronounced. To me, it was a 50-50 call. And LeBron James called for a Kyle Lowry charged like a few minutes before, right?

Oh, it felt like the last five minutes of the game, there were about five offensive foul calls. Yeah, that was interesting. It was fun. I liked it a lot. Okay. I would like to comment about something about the NBA, but I can't because I'm getting trouble. So I'm going to let you guess what it was. The fouls calls? All the fouls at the end? You're not saying anything.

You're right. Okay. Well, what's wrong with that? Seven was happening. Okay. 713, two, one, two, one, two, five, seven, ninety. The officials have a very difficult job. some more than others. There were some bad calls at the end there.

And I'm done. 713.2. Are you just here so you won't get fined? No, I just got to be careful, you know. Okay. You got to make sure you speak as honestly, but yet don't go over the top. The officials miss calls. I'll say it.

The officials blow calls. They get all right. They get some wrong. It's every sport. All right. Here is the American League MVP. That's the right call. He won the American League MVP, right?

I mean, we're talking about Mike Trout. Yeah. Yeah. Over Bregman? Yeah. Yeah. It was close. Super, super close.

He's a better player. I liked Breggman in September. I love Breggman and he was on a more successful team. I get all that. I loved him in September. He did more to make up as much ground. Here's Mike Trout. Was this yesterday or today from Angels?

They might have been today, I think, right? I first saw it today. Okay. Here's Mike Trout speaking about the punishments. You know, just I don't agree with the punishments. You know, the player is not getting anything. You know, it was a player driven thing. It sucks. Like you said, guys' career has been affected. A lot of people, you know, lost jobs. It was tough. It would be me going up to the plate, no one was coming. It would be pretty fun up there.

So, yeah, like I said, a lot of guys lost respect for it for, for, you know, it was a lot of, you know, some of the guys and you know it seems like every day something new comes out so how do you feel about it's um you know i got close relationships for all the guys you know it's tough seeing stuff when it comes out you know a lot of guys reached out to me and um just it's tough like I said it's not good for baseball and it's sad to see it's completely human ross to be pissed off that a competitive years doesn't get punished I will follow my sword in agreement with them on that okay that's just that's just being honest but two things

one these players will realize once time heals this that the information that the major league baseball received would not have come if not for the immunity clause and secondly if Mike Trout and his angels were doing the exact same thing they would want the exact same treatment they just would

we're all being hypocritical about everything about this Ross we we don't Some in Houston. Fans, media, don't understand why Houston's getting pounced on. Guess what? If the New York Yankees were doing this, Ross, we would be relentless. Of course. No, I understand.

I don't get it. I think you and I both do. And I understand why, like you said, I understand why Mike Trott wants the players punished. But there's a difference in this world between theory and there's in practice. In theory, it makes sense. Players cheated. I want cheaters punished. they should be punished.

In practice, however, how you got all this information, you wouldn't have got all this information, there would be grievances with the league, there would have been people being silent, there would have been maybe other teams even getting involved and ratted out, and Carlos Beltran might have gone like full nuclear on people. Rob Manfred admitted as much that he would have had a terrible time

with the Players Association, suspending players without concrete evidence. Right, and then how much do you suspend, how many players? And do you suspend, there's 10 players from the 2017. You suspend all 10 of them, so now you're down to. 15 players, you call them up. How does that go with the 40-man roster? Do you get a special

exemption? They get 10 more players on your 40-man roster who are gone after these suspensions? Do you suspend them for 50 games? A hundred games for 75. Does he, yeah, right. Why do you hurt the Mets because of this? What about pitchers who didn't do anything, but they knew about it, but they didn't say anything. How much do they get suspended? And then you've got to go grievance by grievance. And then you have to, it might not even gotten any of this information, so you're going on speculation. Then you go, he said, she said. Then it goes to a court case. then you can't really prove he said she said in a court case so then you lose and then probably at the end of the day you have a lot of players not getting suspended anyways and then you don't have the information and then everybody's crushing rob manfred and saying how he screwed this all up and he should be removed so he said everybody's crushing him now he would have been crushed if this was handed him differently he knew this was a no win situation for him unfortunately and the matt thomas show up the new york yankees were the were the 2017 world series champions and they were the ones doing this matt thomas sports rby would be doing the exact same thing, we'd be pissed off.

We'd be like, how do you let them get away with it? Strip the title, strip the players. We just haven't been the ones that we're watching the team. But I'm not tone deaf to understand. Here's the problem I have, is 143 Cody Bellinger screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs. Can we, did Cody Bellinger, Matt, well, how much of the nine-page report did Cody Bellinger read?

There's no chance he got to page two. No chance. Justin Turner crushing it. How much of the nine-page report to Justin Turner? Maybe he read some. I think I would believe Turner or Trout read some before I would believe Cody Bellinger, even sniffed of the PDF of the nine pages of Manfred's report. Yeah.

All right. 113 is our time. We resume on the phones. We'll check him with Michael Connor down at Florida at 230. You and me at 713-212-5-790. Of course, today's edition of Believerna, I'm giving you the heads up. Things about presidents. Little anecdotal things.

Fun, interesting, light things about presidents. You know what we should call it? we should call it whatever truth would be and then if it's not if it's untrue fake news. Rather than believe it or not, believe it or fake news. And you could play your fake news soundbite.

We can do believe me. We have him saying believe me. Believe me. Right? Somewhere. How about believe me or fake news? Believe me or fake news on this president's day. 1-14 of the Matt Thomas show. Good news. It's the Matt Thomas show for lunch. Let that boring brown bag lunch rod in the employee

refrigerator. Oh, what's that smell? The Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. All right, 120 of the Matt Thomas show. Nick, are people wearing you out on the phones? What's going on back there? You're all right? All right. Nick, I need you to get a sound bite out that we usually only play on occasional Fridays. We're going to play it right this second. It's what I like to call a special person in the city of or maybe in the world of sports. It's this. D of the Week. Dateline Houston Sports RV.

An Astro's season ticket holder has filed a $1 million lawsuit against the Astros organization. Following the cheating scandal, wants to stop the team from raising ticket prices. Some douche and humble, I'm not even going to say his name, alleges the scandal diminished the value of his seats for the past three seasons as well as the upcoming season. The lawsuit was filed Friday in Harris County. In addition to Dush, his attorney, Duce's attorney, said the lawsuit is a class action suit for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 full and partial season ticket holders.

By their wrongful actions, inaction, and or omissions, defendants violated the rights of plaintiff and each class member in the same way by overcharging them for season tickets while defendants and their employees and representatives knowingly and, ooh, this is a big one. Surreptitiously? Serptitiously? Serbidiously. Engaged, big lawyer crap, engage in a sign-stealing scheme in violation of MLB rules and regulations and secretly put a deficient product on the field that could result and now has resulted in severe penalties instituted by MLB. In addition to asking for $1 million, a lawsuit ask a judge to prevent the Astros from increasing season ticket prices for the next couple of years. The of the week.

I don't get it. They're alleging that he wants a million dollars because his... Because he paid for a team that had cheated a way to win baseball games, that the game was not organic. That he's saying, I went to a game that was corrupt, and I should be paying ticket prices for a corrupt game. It's going to be tough to prove that an experience was devalued when you didn't find out about it for two years later.

This is stupid. This should be dismissed. That's why it's D in the way. That's the worst part about this is people's making lawsuits and trying to win money. I think there's a daily fantasy player who's wanting to sue because the results of the daily fantasy things were affected by all this. And it's just like, get over yourselves, people.

I bet when this season ticket holder was selling World Series tickets and making thousands of dollars, he didn't have a problem with it. Let me ask you this. Should I sue the Astros for wasting my breath talking about a team that was winning games? Let's start a lawsuit, Matt. Let's give Jim Adler on the phone. Hmm. 130, Jim Adler and a mobile joins a show.

I'll ask him if I have any legs to a potential lawsuit. That's ridiculous. Well, downtown on the Matt Thomas show, Will, what do you got today? Hey, what's up, Matt? I just wanted to talk about one thing I don't think anybody's talking about. I want to go back to 2015, and I think we have the worst trade in Houston sports history. Think about that. We traded Josh Hader, now best reliever in baseball, for Carlos Gomez and, you

Mike fires. Carlos Gomez turned out to be terrible. Mike fires, probably if he doesn't say anything, we're not even talking about this Astro scandal at all because everybody's doing some sort of there, some version of this all across baseball. But I just want to get your thoughts and see what you thought about that being the worst trade in Houston sports history. Well, in retrospect, the answer would be yes, because Carlos didn't do anything. Frankly, for a lot of the time, we talked about this trade will. Mike fires was the bonus card. This was the, the, um, the untapped resource that we got to use a little bit, which we didn't think much of him to begin with. Remember, he

throws a no-hitter, he helps his team in the rotation, he's supposed to be a good guy, and he makes you forget about the awfulness of the Carlos Gomez deal. Now, a hater, while again, yes, has become a very good pitcher for the Brewers. It's like the Astros have had serious

problems with their closers. Now, they've had a couple over the years, but that happens with most baseball teams. I don't think anybody thought at the time that Josh Hader was going to be this amazing pitcher for the Astros. And remember, you have to get something, and to give up something to. So I don't regret the trade, but the way that you've kind of formulated it, it sucks because one guy didn't help you, and then one guy threw you under the bus.

I mean, rolls you under the bus. Yeah, well, hold on. Mike Fires did hold the rotation together in 2017 when everybody was getting injured. What was it like McCullors and Keikle and others were getting hurt? Right. He held it down in 2017. I don't think he played one playoff inning during that entire postseason. And think about this.

If Josh Hater pitches in. in game seven of the 2019 World Series. Do you think he gives up that home run to how we can't? There's too much butterfly effect. Get out of here. I'm not buying that part of the argument, Will. Thank you for the call, my friend. Talk to you soon.

7-1-3-2. So, you know, if the Astros would have been able to put Billy Waggar on ice, would that have been able to help the team? Yeah, it changes too much. Yeah. No, the Astros need an outfield help. Things happen the way they happen. It's fine.

They needed a guy that was going to make contact. Remember Carlos Gomez before the trade was hurt a little bit, but was hitting, he had a 30-30 season before the season before he got traded. So the asterisk needed some outfield help. Remember left field was still a big mess? Couldn't figure out what they're going to do with that. So yeah, he was brought here for a reason. They weren't training Josh Hader, just to trade Josh Hater.

Let's go to Renee on the Matt Thomas Show, 125. Renee, what do you got today? Hey, a quick question for you. I know we're talking a lot about the saddle and get off the up for a little while with the pitching rotation and the loss of coal. I want to be really good following lots of colors and surgery and his rehab. I wonder if you have any insight into how he's doing and where do you think he fixed into that rotation for this year.

Well, I'll tell you this. He threw off the mound in the first couple of workouts, which is a good sign. I would expect him to throw no more, Renee, than 150 innings this year. If you get to 150, it's a bonus. I had a matter of fact, I bet she's going to be under that. I went on a radio show today and won't. Washington, D.C. and they're asking about how big of a fill

he is, and is he a key? Ross, he's a factor, but the Astros, frankly, can't say that Lance McCuller is reaching 125, 140, 150 is going to be the difference between them and winning and losing the American League West. It's just not.

It'll be interesting to see how to have a... To me, it's Granky and Burlander. Of course, yeah. I mean, those are the guys that are making more money than anybody else on a baseball team. They're the ones that have the history of giving you lots of innings. Yeah. We don't know what Lance McCuller is like throwing lots of innings.

It's going to be a very unknown. Because he's never done it. Yeah. Even when he's held, he could probably, I mean, he could go out there and something could happen and he could miss some time because that's basically been his entire major league career. Great stuff. Great talent.

Works hard. All that type of stuff. Right. It gets injured. So we'll see. My issue is, okay, I presume that McCullors comes back, but I have minimal expectations. Not because I don't like him. I don't think he's going to be good.

I just don't know about anything that anything short of him getting hurt at some point. Is Jose Orkidie ready to take that spot in the rotation? He certainly had a wonderful September. That's my huge concern is four or five. What's going on four or five? Is four as Willie ever going to sack up and go? Let's go. I would hope so.

He apparently added like 50 pounds or 40 pounds of muscle or whatever it was. He's like he's a hulkster now. Yeah. That to me is a bigger issue. And who replaces Will Harris? That's what we should be talking about. This is the spring training. These are all the storylines, right?

Yeah. We should be like, oh, this guy put on 30. Did you see Josh James has retooled his delivery to replace Jake? Jake Marizek always retooled his swing. Now Josh James has retooled his delivery. You see Alex Breggman lost weight, apparently? This is the fluff, the spring training fluff we should be talking about right now, rather than this gigantic, enormous scandal, one of the biggest in the history of the sport.

We should be on spring. We should do a segment of spring training fluff, Matt. Breggman gaining weight or losing weight. Whitley gaining weight. Josh James retooled his delivery, like all that type of stuff. We'll get our voicemail to go, it's time now for spring training news. You should care, but you really don't.

Exactly. Spring training fluff. That's what we... But it's not fluff. It's actually good stuff. Okay. Fluff would be what's your favorite meal down in West Palm Beach? Yeah, we'll ask those questions next week or tomorrow, I guess.

Well, maybe not tomorrow. Next couple days. Maybe like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We'll see. We'll see. I don't know how forthcoming they're going to be. That's fine. It'll be interesting.

But we're trying to get, you're losing your spring training virginity on this trip. Okay. Just like yesterday, I lost my roughnecks virginity. Oh, you haven't even talked about that. We got to get to that. Lots of phone calls to get to as well. 713-212.5-790. Lots of audio coming in from all over America.

I feel like Nick, you are like the epicenter of audio coming in. One preposterous thing from fans. One Jose L. Tuve conference about his tattoos. Josh Reddick, George Springer once. Didn't want to talk about a new deal today. I mean, it's a dusty Baker trying to be the grandfatherly figure. They're keeping me busy. Rob Manfred, saying we wanted to pull the title away,

but we knew it wasn't going to be any good of doing that. Astros Baseball, 2020. Catch it for the age. Matt Thomas, we'd like to thank his parents for only giving him two first names. Because who would listen to Billy Ray Thomas talk about Houston sports? The Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790. Here we go, the Matt Thomas show.

713, 2, 1, 2,125 790, 7132-1-2-5-790. You know who needs new contract sports RV? I buddy George Springer in his last year of free agents, or of arbitration. Yes, see, this is another storyline who should be talking about. Bring training fluff. If we didn't have this, we'd have... You keep saying fluff. That's serious stuff.

Is it serious? Somebody lost 30 pounds as serious? Here's George. On his contract's status. You know, we've discussed a lot of things between me and my representation. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, you know, whatever happens will eventually happen. But it's way too early to make that decision. All right, there you go.

you know what here's the thing Ross Jim can't be miserly during this time you don't want the reputation of a team that's got in trouble for stealing signs and oh by the way can't sign it's free agents especially George wants to stay here well they have one of the highest payrolls in baseball he's not miserly if you let him go the Boston Red Sox just traded away mooky bets to save money

so I mean if you let George Springer walk it's not because it doesn't necessarily have to mean you're being cheap He's one of the best center leadoff players in a baseball today. And he just got traded away by a major money market, a big time market, major money franchise. Major market money. Yeah, whatever. It makes a lot sense. I get it. You know what I mean. I do. And I don't want him to go. You need a little safe face territory and not suing your own team. Seriously, stop suing. Let's stop suing everybody. Oh, if we were supposed to have Jim on. Oh, go, go, go find him. You want to go find him? Let me take a call and you go find him.

713-21-2-5-7-90. Jim Allen & Mobile joining us here shortly. Joe and Spring on the Matt Thomas show. Joe, how are you, sir? Yes, sir. I need to ask you a question, and I'll listen to you on the radio. If all of them, if the players on the outro team knew what they were doing, why didn't somebody go to the owner and tell them,

or why didn't somebody have the manner enough to tell the coach stop doing that? And one more, in my mind, I think the owner know about it, and he ain't telling the truth. That's all I got to say. Thank you. There's no evidence that has that. And the baseball investigation has said on multiple occasions that Jim Crane did not know. That's for you to decide. I'm going to go off of the findings of the report.

Okay. I'm just going to do that. And there were, to answer your original question, nobody had enough stones to stop this. AJ Hinch being a leader saying, I didn't have the stones stop us. And the players saying the exact same thing. That's been the core problem of all this, is that they knew it was going on,

they knew it was wrong, and no one had the stones to stop it. Jim Adler on a mobile joining us here on the Matt Thomas show. Jim, there is a lawsuit out there with an Astro fan trying to sue the team because he feels like that he wasn't watching pure baseball out there. Does this guy have a case here or not? How's it? How's it going? Good to talk to you after. It's been a while now. Jim, Adler & a mobile on the Matt Thomas show. Jim, what do you think about this lawsuit? Well, I think in my professional opinion, I would hammer for every dollar if I was on this man's side,

but this is an absolutely ridiculous accusation. There's no proof. He probably didn't have any problem making money off the assholes when he was reselling his tickets. Now he wants to go after Jim Crane, who Jim Crane is a friend of mine. He's a fine young man, and I tried to give my legal advice to him one time, and he actually had me thrown out of his hotel, but that's another story for another day. But at the end of the day, I don't think that this has any legs for anybody to get hammered on this. I will hammer the insurance companies for every dollars they have, but if you try to hammer

the Houston Astros, Jim Crane will come at you like a rabbit dog. All right. I didn't realize a rabid dogs come after like that. I like it. Jim, I also want to know, can I sue the Astros? Because I've spent a lot of my time discussing them on my radio show. And maybe there's a little bit of a little civil suit action between us and all radio hosts. What do you think? Well, man, once again, you are just speaking out of your rats. That's absolutely ridiculous. The problem is, legally, you're going to have to prove that you would have done something productive with your time that you were going to do that. We know. Matt, that you probably just would have spent it watching soap operas and game shows. So you're saying I've got a chance, then? I think you have no leg to stand on, just like the insurance companies don't have a leg to stand on when I go and hammer them in court for millions of dollars. If you've been hit by an 18-wheeler, please call me at the offices of Jim Adleran Associates.

Jim, any final comments about just watching all these other baseball players getting so upset that the Astros weren't punishes as players yet you. You know, because you're an attorney, that immunity is a very strong thing that opens up a lot of people and being honest about the situation. Yes, Matt, I've been offered immunity in many cases in my day. It's something that is very good to use, keep you out of jail. Obviously, this would happen with Manfred and the commissioner in his report. And the problem with these players is they just don't know anything. They try to hammer baseballs.

Let me handle hammering insurance companies. You are big on this insurance company, but aren't you, sir? Every dollar. Jim Adler and Associates. Jimadler.com. Bye. You didn't want to talk baseball. He just wanted to every insurance companies.

I mean, I got respect for that. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-7-90. Let's go to Jeremiah in Jersey Village in the Matt Thomas show. Jeremiah, what do you have today? No, Ross, what's going on, man? Well, great. Chuck, that All-Star game last night, did you all happen to catch one of?

Yonis off of the Coupo gave a real Chief Shot elbow to Hardin and the paint. Did y'all see the hells, man? I only watched the fourth quarter or whatever that last quarter was. Did it happen during that time? I think it happened sometime in second half. But it's on Twitter you can check out, man. I just don't know the beef between Janice and Hardin

because you know it came out before the All-Star game was something out he wouldn't want Hardin on his team if he don't pass. And then after, you know, post-game, he's like, well, our game plan was basically go after whoever it was Hardin was guarding. There's some beef going on that's off the floor with these guys. I don't know where it is, but it happened right in front of the referees, and the bench reacts to it. He comes with a clear elbow. There's no ball involved or anything.

There's rebound, and Yonis was going straight elbow to the chin, and knowing no referee saw it. But I see if y'all saw that, man, because it was pretty much cheap shot. Can I tell you something, open and honest here? And, Jeremiah, if Yannis and James have beef with each other, first of all, I wouldn't know it. secondly, if they want to dispute it, why don't they do in the NBA finals? I'd be more than okay with that. I'm good with that. Yeah, I can't imagine anybody having beef with somebody that's, first of all,

they're about eight or nine years separating each other. Second of all, they play each other twice a year. They don't share a same agent. I don't think they share a same shoe company. They should a woman. I don't know. No, no, don't start that with this show. Come on.

No, no. You remember when we played them, before a couple of weeks back, maybe more one month ago, he intentionally threw the ball up hard in space too. You know, that was like from a year ago, I think. It wasn't, yeah, okay, it was the one to get out. It was last year or something, yeah, but there's just something going on between them. I just don't understand, man.

So I thought, if y'all see that on Twitter today? Well, here's the thing. You know what, first of all, do that for you. Secondly, the Rockets and Buck still got to play in Milwaukee this year, so maybe we'll see more what you're talking about a month from now. All right, I enjoy the show, guys, man. Have a good one. Thank you, buddy.

Appreciate you calling. Yeah, their offensive strategy was to get through the ball, do whoever James Hardin was guarding and it didn't work. How about James giving up the baseline shot? Oh, do you mean that layup at the end? Yeah. Yeah, that was really bizarre. It was weird.

Do you think he did it because he wanted something? I had this feeling that LeBron was supposed to make the winning shot to win the game. Well, James Harden took that. Well, remember when he drew the charge, he was trying to knock down the game winner with Lowry. Yeah, and he actually made the shot, too, ironically enough. It should have counted. in my opinion. I really wanted

because LeBron was all mad after that block. Remember there was the review of the was it a block or was it a goal ten? And then he chucked up the mid-court shot. Oh man, if that had it went in for the win, that would have been amazing. I do love the new format.

They should keep it under all circumstances. And by the way, Ross, do we give ourselves props for the NBA's All-Star MVP award? Oh, somebody tweeted us. Janus did chuck an elbow at James. What? What? I was thinking that was like fake news or something.

Why don't you retweet it out so then I'll retreat it out? We'll show people. Wow. Yeah, go to at SportsRV. It's a great follow. You're almost a 10,000 followers, right? We're like 94 and change. I'm getting close to 25,000, which means they're halfway to the party of the 30,

which will be some time, I'm guessing, 2022. Okay. Unless it's something that's going to get me viral pretty quick. Do I need to throw a party for my 10K? I will throw. Where do you want to go? I don't need a little party. It's fine.

This is Carlos, Carlos. Back to Matt Thomas. That's poor stock seven night. It's your home of Vassos baseball. You'll go to Michael Connor in West Palm Beach at 2.30 this afternoon. Believe it or not, is all things anecdotal, fun, interesting about presidents on President's Day. By the way, so we get President's Day off as a company? Are you going to comp day on this, Niccolo?

I don't get days off. What? We got to renegotiate your contract. I don't have a contract. Oh, sorry, too soon. Ross, I've got to renegotiate your contract. I'm not on, I'm not on. Okay.

This got awkward pretty quick. Yeah. Time and a half, maybe? We don't all make that Matt Thomas money, you know? Speaking of that, I had to fly coach. Oh, no. Let's all shed a tear. I know.

I know. What I said as I said. For Matt Thomas. Are you okay, buddy? Do you need a hug? You're going to make it? Yeah. Get done wiping the tears out of your eyes, sitting with us pours and coach.

I actually bought Economy Plus on the right home yesterday. Yeah, I bet you did. I did a nice thing. They bundled it for us. 52 bucks for my wife and I both. We don't care. Fancy Matt. But, I mean, when you're accustomed to a certain lifestyle, you have to live it.

Yon. Terrible. You and I are flying our own private jet tomorrow. That's true. where all the seats are in first class. Yeah, well, something like that. That's the way they sell it. Or the boarding groups are all the same.

Shout out, B-37. Let's go, baby. Let's go, B-group. Holly, if you're in the B-group. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-70. Top of the hour, Nicholas. We're going to run through Best of Manfred.

I'll just fire him off. Best of Manfred. A little bit of Al-Tube. Some people would call it the worst of Manfred. How do you think he's handling this? No win? If it's a no win, you can keep it at that. It's definitely a no win, but I feel like it can be handled better, but I'm trying to think of, you know, if you say that, if I say I want this handled better, I need specific reasons, right? I can't really come up with any off the top of my head. It just feels like it was a little bit mishandling.

Okay. Put it this way. You can't get the information unless you offer immunity. True. It is the ultimate embarrassment to have something pulled from you. He could have done that. He could have stripped the title He could have stripped the title He could have told him to give the rings back He could have You can't suspend the players

Can't do it It's not not up for question It's not According to Coles Correa though They didn't use it in the playoffs That doesn't matter Not in general people's minds Did it once you did it every game

Whether it's true But if the players gave him that information While they were in immunity And they were divulging everything But to get there, they had to use it. And they used this part of 2018, apparently. Apparently very early in 2018, it was abandoned. So I will say this.

Would America have felt any better? Not us. Let me tell you, if they would have pulled the title Ross, we'd have been sad. We could have gone to, here's what we would have said. In our minds, we remember 2017. We were reminded the Bregman double to win it. We remember the game two, the game six, the game seven. We, we're all fresh on those.

but there would have been a you must take down any logo that says 2017 World Champions and the one that's most prominent right now is in West Palm Beach when you enter the 15 ballpark you go left to the Astros, you go right to the Nationals there's a big ass star you've all seen if you've been there

either you've seen on a picture or video or we've been there big star, 2017 World Champions pulling that off pulling the flag would have been horrific. It would have stung. Wouldn't it open up another can of worms though, I think? Well, the question then is you pull that, you pull every team's title that had anybody

did anything wrong. Right. Like the 2009 Yankees are all on PEDs and the biogenesis scandal and stuff like that. That's why I didn't do it. It just becomes that much more complicated. Robert and Katie on the Matt Thomas show, 154. Robert, good afternoon. Robert.

Yes. You're on. All right. I just want to say, go Houston Roughnecks, go U of H, TDCU Stadium. It was rocking last night. Love the game. All right. So I wanted to talk about the fans, the Astros fans. I'm an Ashos fan.

What if I go to a different venue like the Dodgers Stadium, how are they going to treat me? Are they going to? Should I bring an entourage? Can I bring my wife and kids there? Or, I mean, is this going to be something that we actual fans have to deal with when we travel to go see the team? How do you guys feel about that? I'm going to tell you right now that if you can't wear an astro gear to any road stadium, then we're in a wrong, then we're in our society is screwed. I would not risk it.

It's not worth the risk. Well, you can go there and cheer. It's just not worth it. I'm just telling you, Robert, alcohol plays a huge factor in it. And if you go to a place like Seattle or Cleveland or, I don't know. Yeah, I would say for this year, the uniform needs to stay off. And I hate to tell you that, but that's just being the truth. I hate that.

See, that should not. We are avid Ashro's fans, and we are so proud of our team, even though people are going to say it's painted. But we were Astros fans way before all this even happened. So it's like to go somewhere else and watch our team, I mean, it's like saying, hey, you know what? I love my team, but we can't wear our gear. Yes, that's correct. Especially in volatile places like Los Angeles, New York, my guest, Chicago. Hell, for instance, I'm guarantee you Arlington's going to be really pissed off too.

And they've sucked for the last couple of years. It's never a good idea in Oakland. Oakland is not safe. Before this even happened, you probably shouldn't do it in places like New York. York and stuff like that. Oh, well, definitely New York. I mean, New York's a given. Even with before all that happened, it was, we already knew what the fan base was like.

Oh, I would think you could wear Astros gear in New York and be okay. Yeah. No, I don't know. They've been in the play this year right now? Well, why can't you do? Why wouldn't you able to do it prior to this? Do you see the videos of the guys getting beer thrown on them and getting beard thrown on them at the, at the yearnals? The guy's getting season ticket.

He's got World Tour. tickets out of it. It was a win-win. No. There's people who probably didn't end up on the internet who got stuff thrown at them. That's true. Thanks for the phone call. And who's somebody's somebody's wife was a Kate Upton or somebody else's wife was getting yelled at or whatever? New York fans are a-hole. It's

not worth it. Why do you have to have a certain shirt on? I understand you want to support your team but at the risk of injured to yourself or he said if you're going to go with your family, it's not worth it. Because all it takes is one crazy person to throw a throw a full can of beer at you and then hit your child or hit your wife and then it's a whole ordeal. It's just not, it's not, it's not, it's, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not worth

the risk. It's too volatile. Because I've been thinking about this because I've been, I told, I think we talked about it on air or something. Like one of my, I want to try to go to most more ballparks and I wanted to go to Fenway this year. And I was like texting a friend of mine who lives up there. It's like, hey, do you think I would be okay at Finway this year? He says, well, since we're guilty too, you'd probably be fine. So maybe I'll be okay in Fenway. Realistically, and Ross doesn't realize how serious you are about this. If there's one safe venue in Major League Baseball, it's Fenway Park in 2020.

Right. It really is, because they're going to get handed down something here shortly. Right. And then you could just yell at them, Patriots, Spygate. Boston, 2, Houston 1? Just saying. Is the Matt Thomas Show. Oh, this feels like we're at 1958 at the Polo Ground.

right. Popcorn, get you, pop gone here. No video of it is here. We don't even have video. It's 1958. Although there were people cheating in those days. There were cheaters in 50s and wires and... Yes, Yogi Barrett. Well, he can't ask him. Is he did? He said it. Here we go. To the round of sound, around the world of sound, right? Okay.

Rob Manfred on Pulling the Astros title, had he thought about it. and of course it's on mute so this will not do well for us production value on the Matt Thomas show at D-minus here we go now let's try it one more time this is on the potential stripping of the title

and it's coming up right now on sports talk 790 what type of consideration have you given to stripping the World Series title well in the

context of my original decision, it was something that we talked about and analyzed extensively. It was a big topic of conversation between me and my senior staff. All right. Cody Bellinger, Los Angeles Dodgers. He says the apologies were weak. I thought the apologies were whatever. I thought Jim Cranes was weak. I thought Manfred's punishment was weak, giving him immunity. I mean, these guys were cheating for three years. You know, I think what

people don't realize is Al Tuve stole an MVP from Judge in 17. Everyone knows they stole the ring from us. Everyone knows that. Everybody knows that. So does Chris Brian to the Chicago Cubs. A lot of the apology yesterday was a lot about

2017, 2017. It's like, I'm pretty sure it was going on in 2018, 2019. team too. And that's just so sad because it's like just because I mean if they didn't get caught they'd still be doing it. And you know they're only doing this apology because they got caught. And that's yeah, I mean, there's a lot of feelings on it. And I know everybody around the league is really upset and rightfully so because it's a really disgrace to the game. Should we play tears of a clown or something with a tears when it's the other team? probably because I just find this what is Chris Bryant what evidence does he have the 18 and 19 no he's just pissed off fellow major league baseball player and I understand it but there's but there's hypocrisy everywhere if the major league baseball comes after the Cubs Chris Bryant's like okay you got us I want full immunity it's just the truth I'm not done playing sound Carlos Correa on Cody Bellinger's comments Cody Bellinger's job is to look for information get informed know the facts for sure before he's

in front of cameras to talk about other players, you should get informed. You should be informed before you talk about other players. If you don't know the facts, then you got to shut the... Get them, Carlos. Get him, Carlos. That was so amazing. You know what? There are a lot of people don't like Carlos in Houston, Texas.

Ross, if we spent August and September crushing him. No, I didn't. Well, I'm talking about, generally speaking, for IP players, we tend to go stop being IP. Debatable. Are you got tears ready? you had tears of a clown. What other tear drops keep falling on my head? What other tear songs are there?

Tears for fears. That's a band, actually. Big girls don't cry. All right, why don't you play that and see how this sounds? This works. Oh, this is good. This is a classic. This is Bryce Harper.

Of course, the guys that, like, Robertson, being shelled in New York in 17, or sorry, in Houston, 17. You know, that's tough as well. I mean, that's kind of World Series or not, you know, for those guys. And then, you know, guys like Aaron Judge, you know, going through in 17, absolutely, you know, killing it that year and, you know, gets beat out by, you know, great player in Altovae.

So, I mean, it's just guys like that, you know, that really miss out on things. They're, you know, a guy that comes up for his first start, and they have his signs, and he gets absolutely shelved for seven or eight, and they send him back down, they never come back to the big leagues. So those are just the guys that I feel for. Here's Mike Trout. You know, I don't agree with the punishments. You know, the player is not getting anything.

You know, it was a player-driven thing. It sucks because, like you said, guys' career has been affected. A lot of people, you know, lost jobs. So it would be me going up to the play knowing what's coming. It would be pretty fun up there. So, like I said, a lot of guys lost respect for it. for some of the guys. You know, it's like every day something new comes out.

How do you feel about it? You know, I got a close relationship for all the guys. You know, it's tough seeing. It's tough when it comes out. You know, a lot of guys reached out to me, and it's tough. It's not good for baseball. It's sad.

Because we have people that are listening to us all across the country. We just do. That are not Astro fans that listen to Houston Sports Radio. I appreciate y'all listening to the IHeart Radio app. We're not saying that people, these players can't have a gripe. But as Allison Footer just tweeted a minute ago, she must be listening to show. Hi, Fuddy. This was collectively bargained by the union so that they could have these kind of conversations with the commissioner and get this sort of immunity.

Every single player that has bit Shimon about the lack of penalty to the directly to the Astros would take it in their particular. case every single time. There is not a single player Ross that would have said, hi, I'm Chris Bryant. I did this. I know that if I tell the commissioner what I did, I know I'm being offered immunity, but I should still pay a penalty because I'm a bad human being.

Not one time it would ever say that under any circumstance. These guys were forthcoming because they were offered immunity. Major League Baseball doesn't have a case. And as you alluded to an hour ago, it would have taken years to figure out who said what, who did what, who was involved, who wasn't, if Rob Manfred did not get the information that he's obviously got from the Astros and probably getting right now from the Boston Red Sox.

You would have had just a much bigger mess on your hands. It would have been much more to wade through, much more to get through with all of this. I'm not even kidding when I say, I think like Congress would have gotten involved, like they got involved with the PED thing. We would have, I truly believe we would have seen that. and players getting subpoenaed. And then coming up there and, I don't know, going like Raphael Palmero, and I never did anything, period, and pointing fingers at everybody. Ron Manfred is deathly afraid of the Players Association.

The Players Association is built of union members. Those union members should love the fact that the commissioner of baseball is afraid of them. Period. End of story. I mean, and then Tony, I mean, do you, apparently Tony Kemp and Reddick didn't do it, but you might not have gotten that information. if you didn't make this deal and Altuve didn't do it? So do they get punished, but did they let it go on? They didn't say anything.

How much do you punish them? And then does that go get appealed and does that get lessened? It's just it opens up. You open yourself up for so much more if you start with that stuff. Speaking of Altube, he did speak today a couple of hours ago. You'll hear that next. We'll go to mode phone calls. And at the bottom of the hour, we go to West Palm Beach and Sahara, our friend Michael Connor,

who is down there, courtesy of Carbite Brewing and the Palm Beach is Florida. We'll find out more from him on what he saw today and what he heard and this whole tattoo bed. 2-11 is the Matt Thomas show. Sports Talk 790. We take this program to 3 o'clock. Believe it or not today is, well, no, are we going with Believe Me or Fake News?

Do we find the signby? Yes, yeah, we got it. Okay, we do. It's production value of the show. I kind of like it. Believe me. We've got more production value on this show than any other. It's not close.

Big news. We are the most interactive show in America. We're the most production value of the show. You are fake news. Well, Indy Klu says the most interactive show America's He doesn't know what he's talking about. We are the most, we are the most interactive show.

713-212-5-790. We take your calls, plus hear from Al-Tubei next. Lunch-timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. All right, 217 on Sports Talk 790. We'll get to some more phone calls in a matter of moments. We'll check in with Michael Connor coming up at the bottom of the hour. He is in West Palm Beach.

Jose Al-Tube had to speak. Well, I'm getting confused when he's speaking. when he doesn't speak, he had the press conference. He spoke a little bit after that, a couple days off. Well, here is some of the best from today. Jose asked about the tattoo, asked about how many sessions with the tattoo. It's 10 seconds long. When?

Middle of the season in San Francisco. How many, I guess, sessions did it take to finish the tattoo? And Nick, you put his fingers up in the ear and said? Two. Teammates have had your back all throughout this for, Jose's response? Yeah, absolutely. I have, you know, we, in sight school, how we have every, each other's back.

And, you know, that's what we're looking for, support us as a team and move forward. How about Al-Tube talking about Correa saying that Jose never used the trash can? Yeah, like I always said, and I'm not going to say this right now, I always said that I like to talk about team. I like to talk about team results. I'm here taking full responsibility for the team. I appreciate what Carlos did. Believe me, that tells you about what kind of person, what kind of thing he is.

And I tell him a hundred times what I feel about what he did. And, And, Ross, how do you know, what did Glaver Torres say? Was he speaking ill of our MVP? I don't know anything about what Glaber Torres had to say. Again, honestly, you lose track of all the different nasty things that are being said by other people. Oh, there you go. He thinks the Astros were cheating in 2019.

All right. Here's Al-Tubey on that. Glaver-Souris had some kind of things to say about Chufay. Have you heard from some of your peers around the league? And what's that been like? What? Who said that? I think it was Glabor Torres.

I don't know what his comments were. Here's what we've deduced today. And Ross, if I'm speaking not for you, tell me when to stop. We have the feeling here on the Matt Thomas show that Jose did not use the trash can, as Carlos said, that he is taking the bullet for the entire team. He knew about it. He allowed it to happen, but he didn't personally do it himself. The tattoo of M for his daughter is legit.

That the T-shirt being on, being off, that there were no buzzers involved. Am I missing anything? No. So we as the Matt Thomas show, I mean, we may be naive on this, are to believe that Jose Al-Tube is being the ultimate teammate by basically every time referring to anything that happened during 2017,

it's not me, I, it's we as a team, not trying to separate himself from people that may have done something. Right. Okay. I like it. I hope there's 100% truth. I am looking at some of the stuff that Glaber Torres said, which he thinks the Astros cheated in 2019. He said, if you cheat in 17 and you won,

why don't you do that for the next year and the next year, too? If I play video games with you and we face the TV and I saw your control and I saw what's coming and I win and I tell you, let's play again, I do the same thing. They did for 17 for sure and they did in 18 and 19. Even though Garrett Cole said they didn't, his teammate, right? Correct. Glaber Torres, the New York Yankees, by the way, for those of you do not know.

That first series, Ross, on the road at the A's, can be interesting. The Angels are apparently Dodger fans are going to infiltrate Angel Stadium. My guess, Yankees is a trip to New York, by the way. Let me take a little. I don't know. I don't have to find me. Astro, oh, it's the final week of the race. It's a final week, weekday series.

Mm-hmm. So they will, the Yankee fans will not be able to say what they want to say until at least September the 21st. Maybe that series will mean a lot for like best record in baseball. Astros Red Sox series? Maybe the quietest series in baseball this year? That's in May 22nd, 2030, 24th.

I was looking at going to Fenway in that weekend. You're going to go or no? I'm thinking about it. Boston's one of those cheap places to fly to. Everything else is just ridiculously expensive. I went there for a wedding lap, but it was only two nights and all I did was go to the casino. I'd rather go do actual Boston things.

Boston in a couple weeks. You should come. Should I go? Yeah, what are you doing in a Celtics game? Yeah. How's Bill Simmons feel about that? You're not happy. Howard.

I'm sorry. By the way, the word you used last week would impress me was the word moxie, which I believe has a connotation of being smart, sharp, using things to really help you with knowledge. It has a whole general meaning. and meaning a stand-up guy who knows what's going on, that kind of thing. That's number one. Number two. Great point.

Were the Astros the only team over the last five years using technology? In other words, the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Angels, the Yanks, and the Red Sox, the Phillies. None of them use technology? No, I think a lot of people use technology. matter of fact, every Major League Baseball use technology. It's the question of, did they do it legally or illegally? Well, are they, the astros, the only, how do you define, if you've got a scout with binoculars or a coach in center field, honing in on the catch's signals, is that legal or illegal? And is the binocular lenses getting better?

and some of them may be having AI in them. What? Artificial intelligence. In other words, being able to decode the signals. Is that getting legal or illegal? And when do you stop? You've gone from a just plain binoculars that the military may use to highly sophisticated binoculars with maybe artificial intelligence.

When do you have to stop and how do you define it? find it. I'm not going to define it. I'm going to let Major League Baseball define it. Major League Baseball, in fact, this year is going to make sure that video becomes even a less factor in live games, which I'm okay with that. Ross, I'm okay with not having the chance to go look at a video camera and look at a swing during the middle of the game. I'm more than okay with that. Let the game, you want to go look at it before the game or after, have at it.

But not during the game, because you're opening up. You know, matter of fact, here is the commissioner on just that topic. I do expect that we will for 2020 have really serious restrictions on player and playing personnel access to video in game. I think it's really important for us to send a message to our fans that not only did we investigate and punish, but we altered our policies in a way that will help make sure it doesn't happen again. Don't you agree? Yeah, that's good. because obviously majorly baseball teams can't behave themselves.

Well, in 2019, apparently, they changed everything. And they, this is according to Colm McHugh's wife was tweeting about how in 2019 they changed stuff. And they had in the replay rooms, they had MLB officials in there. And also that the Washington Nationals apparently swept Minutemate Park looking for illegal video cameras and didn't find anything. That's according to Collin McHugh's wife. And she's not going to lie. Her husband's on a player report. Is Connick you have a job, by the way?

I don't think so. I don't think so either. Let me go to Chris and Spring on the Matt Thomas show. Hi, Chris. Hey, what's going on, guys? We're good. Hey, I don't understand for the life of me why people aren't getting on Mike Fires as well. Now, I do have somewhat of a different perspective.

You know, Mike Fires, before he came to the Astros, his career essentially was hanging by a string. He plays decent for the Astros. He goes to the World Series. They win a ring. He then a couple months later gets a contract from the Detroit Tigers, two-year contract. And he benefited from that cheating financially. Then he comes back to the Astros a few months later or into the next season of 2018, weighs at the crowd, cheeses at the crowd, and accepts his ring and everything.

But now, you know, all of a sudden he's looked at as the hero of what he's done when I think that if anybody should have any punishment, I know the players aren't getting punishments now, he should be the first one that gets punishment. Why should he be punished? Mike Fires? Yeah. Why should he be punished?

How did he benefit from his pitching and getting benched by the Astros and not playing in the World Series? How did he benefit financially from that? I'm not putting that together. What I'm saying is that, you know, he wasn't that good of a pitcher when he came over here in the first place. He had some success.

He did benefit from getting the World Series ring. And how do we know that the Detroit Tigers would have signed him to a two-year contract X amount of dollars had he not won that one of a World Series? But he had nothing to do with it, though. He didn't play in the playoffs. The Detroit Tiger said, you know what? He was on this World Series championship team where he had nothing to do with the win. So we're going to give me, it was a one-year $6 million deal, by the way. okay okay

you're putting too much in the too many facts that are not in evidence here is to use a little legality here on the show I mean I'm trying to look at his postseason numbers and I'm going to let you go on that know because I've got to get to our update down in Florida he did not pitch in 17

yeah he did not pitch the Detroit Tigers and say well since you wore the gear we'll give me the good contract no no that's not true I'm going to tell you though he was celebrating a lot I told you I've told the story number of champagne You got Budweiser in my eye. My eye was suffering because of Mike Fires. Cold, crisp?

It was cold. Was it crisp? Well, it wasn't as refreshing as an ice cold Dosakis, but there was Budweiser in my eye that Mike Fires turned to me, looked at me, shook up his Budweiser, and I didn't think he was really going to do it. Shot it in my face. Whoa!

What? Whoa! The Budweiser. Go ahead and keep down. The Budweiser. Okay. The Budweiser. What?

I deserve that one. It's got weird, really quick. Hi, this is former running back of Herschel Walker. You're listening to Matt Thomas in the Sports Talk 790. We have some very nice folks at Carbock Brewing and the Palm Beaches.com that bring you spring training coverage. Chris Gordy started it. Michael Conner's tour today and tomorrow. Ross and I will be there tomorrow afternoon.

And Michael joins us from his palatial hotel room in West Palm Beach. And see what's going on. I tell you what, after today I would love a ice cold Crawford-Bock because I'm tired, man. That was an exhausting first day of full workouts. It was an absolute media circus. So strap in if you guys are ready for a lot of coverage down here. Yeah, we got it. And I'm going to assume you've not been to a lot of these, and I don't know if you've been.

This is my fifth in a row, actually. Okay. But first day compared to previous years is Brian mentioned 50 people. normally it's 10 or 12 so to have five times the media members in one clubhouse on the opening day had to be quite startling. Yes, it was wild,

especially considering we were here in 2018 after they won it in 2017, and there was a little bit more that year, but like this was, when I tell you, you wait for the, to get into the clubhouse in the lobby right there in the front, it's completely full right before you get in there.

It's just absolutely insane, the amount of people that are there. I'm in the room this morning, doing the show and it's just covered with people. Usually we had that room to ourselves. Like, it's everybody and their mother down here covering this thing. And it's unlike, it just doesn't feel like spring training. You just, you feel it in the air that they're part of this scandal and baseball's watching

every move they make. Take us through the perspective through your eyes and your video and all that of how Jose approached answering all the questions today about the buzzer and the tattoo. I could tell that he really didn't want to have to do it, but he just stated. that he is appreciative of Carlos Correa saying what he did. He stood up, though, still like the team leader that he is and said that I'm taking the responsibility of this because we're part of the team and I'm part of the team and I have to speak out on that. So he didn't really address the specific tattoo thing all that much, which is, again,

this is so wild that we're having to have these discussions about a man in his tattoo because of theories about buzzers. We did see the tattoo. It's very real. I don't know if it's bad or not. I wasn't close enough to see it, but it's very much there. And I just want this specific part of this story to go away because it is getting tired. Well, I don't know if there's been anything in my life.

And granted, social media has taken over the last 10 years as compared to the first 10 or 15 of my broadcast career. But how a fanboy has let this go on for as long as it has, and it's gathered so much steam that Rob Manfred has had to spend probably 25, 30 percent of his investigation. ever since the announcement talking about these buzzers. And I don't know about you two, but I'm just completely pissed off kind of with the way that Rob Manfred handled it yesterday by saying that we found no evidence of it. Nobody corroborated any sort of story behind it. There's really nothing that actually links them to this other than theories. And then he says that I can't absolutely tell you that no, they wouldn't do this.

Like, just shoot it down. Like, this is just going to continue this story of why he, gave any sort of fuel to keep it going. And then to this story reaching out to the point where we're asking players and other camps about how would you handle the team, you know, ripping off your jersey and everything. Why? Why are we having to do this?

And I don't care what somebody else thinks about their teammates doing it. We're not in Jose Al-Tuvae's head. We don't know his relationship with his wife. How can we sit here and say that, oh, you know, his wife shouldn't want, if his wife doesn't want his shirt pulled off, I know this. We've been around Jose Al-Tuvae enough. I actually think he respects people and he respects his wife what she wants and doesn't want his jersey ripped off. So he has a tattoo.

We've heard about it. Let's move past this buzzer thing because it's just wearing me out. But unfortunately, it's going to continue to grow legs and it will always be in the back of some people's mind, including the commissioner. Rob Manfred said as much yesterday. He cannot without 100% certainty say that these buzzers weren't in plain. That's sad, and that's something that we're going to have to live with. Other things. You were around Dusty Baker today.

very foxy, very much as advertised. How do you think, you've been down there a couple of days, how is he handling all of this? No one's talking about the game. No one's talking about the rotation or the bullpen. It's all about how are you handling this very combustible topic? Yeah, hopefully at some point we get some, you know, actual discussion about the team that he's probably still having to learn a lot about and a lot of the young guys that are around. But, you know, I did not want Dusty Baker to be the manager. It wasn't anything against Dusty Baker.

down here and getting the feel of everything, I really do, like, have found myself buying into that this was the perfect hire for this season. It's a one-year type of thing. He knows how to deal with the craziness of it. He's doing a good job of it. He's protecting his team. I think the most important thing was for somebody to come in that can just keep everything in place with the way it is because from the baseball side of it, they're actually good

and have every reason to keep doing it the way they've been doing it the last couple of years and not mess around with what they do and how they operate down here. believes in off days. He believes in, you know, guys monitoring guys and talking. He just feels like he's the hands-off type of manager, but he's going to obviously monitor everything as the baseball world watches them all season long. I just have gotten the sense just from being down here in the short time that he really is a good fit for what they need right now. Any idea about when the national contingent is going to start to leave West Palm Beach, or do you think they're going to be around for a while?

I honestly don't know. I think that they might be around again tomorrow. But at some point I think this week, they're probably going to start branching off into other camps because there's just so much that you can say about this over and over every single day, right? Hopefully, for my standpoint, doing the show tomorrow, they're not there because I don't want anybody in that damn room.

They were annoying. They're all talking in the background while I'm trying to talk on the air and say, hey, y'all know I'm doing a live radio show right here. Were they nice people, or people we'd recognize? Jeff Passen set directly next to me, like literally right next to me. Do you introduce yourself? No. Okay.

I just prefer not to. Fair enough. He's enjoying this. He's getting more Twitter followers and more people watching them on television. I mean, there's, you know, it happens. It's driven. So much this is driven by clicks and ratings and everything, like talking about and putting out and asking all these things that's going to drive the stories, you know, going to be what these guys. do there's absolutely motivation behind it. Not to rip the astros down, but to continue

getting their own clout in the story, right? Yeah. All right, you're down to the Palm Beaches, and people that are wanting to go down to spring training should check out the Palmbeaches.com, the website to book your hotel, restaurants. What do you going to eat tonight, by the way? Have you figured that out? Good Lord, I do not know. I'm going to go back on with the A team at 515. So sometime after that, I'll tell you this last night, I was so tired from being up all day. I just went to Whole Foods and got some stuff because it's right down the street. Nice. I really might end up just doing the same thing because this bed is kind of where I want to be before the craze of tomorrow again.

Yeah. Thomas simmer down so when Ross and I get there, because Ross is losing his spring training virginity tomorrow. So we need to make sure that it's a warm, comforting place for him. Yeah, he's picking the absolute worst time to finally get to one of these because, like you were saying, it's typically, you know, it's not a vacation for us because we are working and there's actually a lot you have to do early in the day for it. but it's more laid back and relaxed with the players, and it's more fun. You get to talk a little bit more. There's absolutely none of that going on down here.

All right. Most important, the game's coming up soon. If you are headed out for a vacation to see the Astros down in West Palm Beach, check out the Palm Beaches.com. And while you're here in town searching, you should have a Crawford Bock in your hand, enjoying some of that Carbock brewing. Hey, Michael, thank you for the time,

and we will see you in about 18 hours, I think, somewhere around that range. Yep. Safe travels, and I'll have a couple of those. Crawford Box, if you can bring them to me. I can do that for sure. There it is. Michael Connor from West Palm Beach, joining us here on the program. Before we get to, believe it or not,

Dan's in the Woodlands on 790. Hi, Dan. Hi, how you down? Good. I was wondering about the All-Star games. Dusty's managing. No, I mean, it's in Dodger Stadium this year. Oh, that would be a blast.

So, like, if the Astros have, well, I know they have to have at least one representative, but, I mean, what do they do if, They've gotten some of those guys like El Tube and Bregman and Correa. I mean, would they actually throw at an all-star player and an all-star game? Your guess is as good as mine. I know the Commissioner Manfred has said you've got to be careful on this. If you start throwing, there's going to be quick triggers and my guess will be quick suspensions.

I think the Astros will absolutely get the Benin for the doubt if other teams want to get frisky with throwing in people. I know. I know. I know that. I just think it's an interesting scenario. I mean, like, you know, Asher gets thrown in and charged them out. I mean, does this fellow American leakers join them? I mean, do they say we're not getting involved in this? It's just a weird thing because of the all-star game being where it is this year. And I know all-star games not really that big a deal, but I think this one, you know, is going to be a little bit spicier than the ones in the past. Well, I'm going to say is this. Thank you for the phone call. it's going to be weird for whoever does represent the Astros to be in the dugout and in the clubhouse with his fellow American League teammates. Look, me tell you something, gang. Everything about this year is going to be weird. Everything. Tyler White here. Back to Matt Thomas.

And it is gone. And sports talk, 790. Home of Astros baseball. Look, Rice White's funny. Eric Winston's funny. Do we really need to be playing Tyler White sound bites drops on the show anymore? The Great White. What's wrong?

Why hasn't he chimed in on this? Because he's not with the team anymore and he couldn't bat his weight for the longest time. That hasn't stopped anyone else. You want to go run? Who's he? Is he the Dodgers still? I don't know. Look it up.

I'll look it up. Tyler White. Playing sound on the Matt Thomas show still to this day. Let's take a look here. Tyler White is still with the Dodgers, it looks like. This is what Wikipedia says. Okay. Last year, he batted 236 with 26 home runs.

No, that's his career numbers. 26 home runs, 103 RBIs. Oh, no, February 10th, 2020, he was designated for assignment. Doesn't mean he may not be in the, he may be in the Dodgers' Rinal League organization. Is he in the transfer portal? They don't have that. Who's then transfer portal the other day that was interesting? Oh, the kid from U of H that came from Alabama that kicked off the team for violation team roles.

You know, as we do. We hammer things people at the University of Houston. We don't allow people that are bad people to be at the University of Houston. Yeah, and you get wins vacated for cheating. That's not, you know, everybody gets a win here or there taken away. Not everybody, but speaking of Lach-E-H. Speaking of lack of wins, quick rundown of the Texas Iowa State game from Saturday. In three, two, one.

It was not good. The offense hasn't been good. They're missing one of the best players. Jericho Sims. They had another player. I can't remember who who went down. And let's just say, I didn't watch a whole lot of the second half of that game. I watched the second half of the Cougars' SMU game.

By the way, my hotel room, you ready for this, Ross? No. ESPNU was in standard deaf. Unacceptable. Are you going to be okay? You're going to make it? I wasn't. They lost by a point.

Oh, no. You had to fly coach this weekend. and you had standard deaf TV. Won't somebody please think of poor Matt Thomas? Are you going to be okay? Are you still recovering? You need some time off? I'm here today.

I'm going tomorrow off. I'm proud of you. By the way, Ross and I are. Things are not going well for Longhorn basketball. Yeah, it's okay. Look, the NIT's fine. You've done well there before.

NIT champs. Why don't you put that? My NIT champs shirt came in this week. Did it just this week? Go put it on eBay. See what you can get for it. What can I get for you on eBay? Not any more than I just paid

As a running gag, it'd be hysterical That's who I'm going to wear it Oh, you are? Yeah When? Where? We're wearing the plane tomorrow? Oh, do you want me to?

Yeah. Okay. No, you have to put a collard shirt. We're going to be a collared shirt. Why? Because we got to look like we're prefer to somewhere. We're going to land. You can change a shirt.

I have to wear collared shirts? I don't know. Why? Because it's, you have looked professional. Well, I heard that somebody was in a, like an Astros fan shirt from some other station. That's the other station in town. Yeah.

You can't, you can't fan boy in the Astros Clubhouse. I heard a rumor. People from the other station are wearing Astros T-shirts in the clubhouse. I wouldn't do that. I just wear like a regular t-shirt. You can get one of those new Astros T-T cheaters shirts.

No. I'm not going to get a Houston Astroch shirt. I'm not going to walk in with a... I'm not going to walk in with a trash can around my waist. An adult wearing a trash can? Yeah. Who would do that? Who would do that?

Five minutes left to go on the show. What should we do? We should play America. Because fastest growing sports game show, we simply call it. Believe it or not. And here's our it. Your call 713, 212-570.790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. Today's edition of Believe it or not is brought to you by our friends at what Houston Woodhouse Spas. Paws. Put out your gift card for the gift of relaxation at Houstonwoodhouse Spas.com. Houston Woodhouse Spas.com. We celebrate President's Day on the show. And the category is all things about your favorite presence or maybe

least favorite presidents. I'll read you a statement about a president. Now, today you've got to say something special. If it's completely and utterly accurate, you've got to say this. Believe it. What? I thought we had this down production-wise. You forgot. Believe me. Or fake news?

If it's completely true, you say this, believe me. Give me one second. Those will me read the prize and then we'll go. Read the prize and we'll flip it. Read the prize. Well, if you get two in a row, I've got a pair of tickets to Brooks and Dund. Don, Travis Tritt, and Tucker Bethard?

June 6 at the Wildens Pavilion Information and Tickets at LiveNation.com. Those three have to fill up just Cynthia Woods? That's cry, cry. Why? You would think the first two could have their own concerts, right? I don't know, Travis Trit. I've heard of Brooks and Dunn. Yeah, Brooks and Dunn.

Yeah, Brooks and Dunn. I only really heard of Brooks and Dunn because there was that old 93Q jingle that mentioned them. You mean the new 93Q? Oh, yeah. Are you ready back there? I didn't do you guys not have these? Here we go. If you believe the statement, you say this.

Believe me. If you don't, you say this. You are fake news. All right. We ready to go? Let's do it. Line one. Sean on 790, ready to play, believe it or not.

Yes, sir. The first president to get elected who did not serve in any active military service was Bill Clinton. Believe it or not. You are fake news. Oh. was John Quincy Adams. Thank you for playing. Todd on 790. Ready to play. Believe me or fake news? Believe me. The first U.S. president to be born in a hospital was Jimmy Carter. Believe me or

fake news? Believe me. Believe me. Statement number two for the win. Donald Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009. Believe me or fake news? Believe me. Believe me. Believe me. Congratulations. You got some serious country music coming your way. Line number three. Paul on 790. Paul, your favorite part of the radio show today. Oh, I just like all the ongoing astro stuff. Harry S. Truman's mental name was simply S. Believe me or fake news? Believe me. Believe me. Statement number two for the win. Before becoming President, Andrew Jackson was shot in a duel. He survived the shooting and even killed his opponent in the duel. Believe me, your fake. news. Believe me. Believe me.

John, another winner. Sorry, Nick. Tyler on 790. Tyler, you're ready to play. Believe me or fake news? Believe me. Teddy Roosevelt was blind in his left eye because of an injury he suffered during a boxing match. Believe me

or fake news? Believe me. Believe me. Statement number two for the win. Ulysses S. Grant was once thrown out of his own cabinet meeting for being too drunk and combative with his secretary of War, William W. Belknap. Believe me or fake news? Believe me. You are fake news. Sorry. That was nice. That was really wordy and sound informative. Matt on 790. Ready to play

Believe me or fake news? Believe me. Barack Obama doesn't care for ice cream because he says he ate too much of it while working for Baskin Robbins as a teenager. Believe me or fake news? You are fake news Believe me So you're He doesn't like ice cream What's his favorite Flavor?

Yeah I guess that makes sense though Yeah I know my brother-in-law He hates Taco Bell Because he used to work there I worked at McDonald's

Yet my body still loves it Yeah I worked at Cheddar I still like me some cheddars By the way I'm not afraid To say I like McDonald's Yeah that's I don't know

I don't know No no You give me a big mac With fries I'm good to go baby Yeah You know what I'm gonna get one

Right now After this show Matt Yeah And I'm gonna go to Big City wings for dinner. I'm just going to have nothing but fried food tonight. That's how we roll. Hey, oops, steam cleaning. If you spill McDonald's at your house, like you spill the mac sauce everywhere, you spill a chocolate shake, 281, 8220561. If you spill the wing sauce in Big City wings, 281, 8220561. If you spill, uh, Crawford-Bock beer at your house and it's stained the carpets,

281, 8220561, anything that stains or smells up your carpets, your upholstery, your tile, your rugs, upholstery, of any sorts. Grout 281, 8220561, online, oops, steam.com. Call them today, tell them that your buddy, Matt, from 790 sent you to Oop Steam Cleaning. Tomorrow, Ross and I find ourselves in Florida,

courtesy of Carbock Brewing, and the Palmbeaches.com. We'll be with you live beginning at 12 noon. A team is next. Talk to y'all tomorrow from West Palm here on 790.