The Press Box - Trump Is Back in the News Cycle, How to Talk to an Embattled Quarterback, and the Return of Harry Caray

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Bryan and David break down the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago and discuss how the media is responding (0:30). Later, they touch on WJLA reporter Scott Abraham’s sit-down interview with Washington Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz (25:45), before addressing the "MLB at Field of Dreams" game that featured an augmented reality version of the late sports commentator Harry Caray (32:56). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the NFL preseason. Check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever get your podcast. And if you need fantasy football rankings, we've got our rankings, we've got our sleepers at Fantasy Football.com. So come listen to Danny Kelly, Greg Horlbeck, and me, Danny Hyfitz on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Erica Servantes here. Last week, after we got off the air, we interrupted our Joe Biden, the old guy, still got it news cycle.

With a more familiar, Donald Trump has potential legal exposure news cycle. This time it was started by an FBI search of Trump's residence at Mara Lago. The FBI busted open a safe, which is interesting in an Ocean's 11 kind of way.

We later learned they took out top secret documents from the Trump home. One of the things the feds are investigating is whether Donald Trump violated the espionage act. I ask you, David, are we ready for another Donald Trump news cycle? Yeah, the espionage act seems like a big,

like a big hurdle, right? Or maybe that a hurdle, just like a bit, like a kind of change in tenor of the whole thing. Ooh, good only in journalism word there. Change in tenor? It's like if you owe a lot of money, like you owe some money to somebody or whatever, it's like, yeah, well, I'll take care of that,

I'll take care of that. Then suddenly you find out you have a lien on your house or something and you're just like lean that's a different word that i was contemplating um yeah what a weird uh what a weird news cycle this has been uh especially because well first of all welcome welcome former president trump back to the daily news cycle it's funny because i turned on the tv yesterday um after spending most of the day away from the television i was like let me catch up with what's going on with Trump getting, getting rated by the FBI. And it took like four segments for it to get to that. And I think that that sort of represents this sort of weird cognitive dissidents just in covering

Trump in general, right? We're like, this seems on the one hand, like the biggest deal in our nation's modern history. And also it's like we don't, we don't want to overplay it. We don't want to overdo the Trump. We also don't want to overplay the hand. I don't know. It seems it's a very bizarre situation. And of course, the fact that it was kicked off, I believe the news was broken by Trump's own press release on truth or whatever that thing is called. Truth social. Truth social. I mean, that's just, I mean, what a, what a perfect, you know, whole and one to get Trump right back into the center of everybody's attention. your cognitive dissonance point is really interesting.

I think there's a couple reasons for that. One is it is really hard to tell the Trump scandals apart without a program. As we get on the air here, I'm looking at the New York Times. Rudy Giuliani is a target of Georgia criminal inquiry on election interference. That's a different story than what we're talking about right now and one that Donald Trump could also be a target of eventually. Also, the New York State investigation into the Trump organization. I saw like, I forgot who it was, but somebody who, very smart person was sort of conflating Trump pleading the fifth with the FBI raid. And it was like, no, these are actually totally different things.

And the other thing is also what you said. There is a sense on lefty, liberal, democratic Twitter that, you know what, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have been, if I may use the royal we, there has been, people have been waiting for. the big story that is finally going to do ex-to Donald Trump. Sure. Getting kicked out of office when he was president, put him in actual legal jeopardy in his ex-presidency, prevent him from running for president again, whatever it is. It's just people have been waiting and waiting and waiting.

Yeah. And nobody wants to be like, ah, this is it. There's also, you're right. And there's even in the more fantasy-based realms of, Twitter, there seems to be, well, without the guide rail of him being the current president, there seems to be a lot of confusion, like less to discuss, like, you know, even though Trump defied every odd, right, or defied every prediction about his culpability against various charges while he was president, there was at least like the discussion of like, well, does this

mean he's going to get kicked out of office? Does this, what does this mean about his reelection chances like the conversation like the discussion had a certain familiar beats to it and now it's like this really feels like a giant deal but it also feels like there's a million ways and reasons for well it the ending is totally unpredictable because this is Trump because this is a former president for all the same reasons sort of that we the conversations had more direction before now it just sort of seems like i've never seen more people that i respect on twitter just sort of shrugging when it comes to both what's going to happen next, but also just like what is going on, right?

I mean, even if you try to take the most narrow reading of what's happening, you know, why Trump was what Trump was in possession of and why he was in possession of it, whatever else, it's just a deeply confusing story. And I think maybe that's just, maybe the error was before. Maybe the error was presuming anything about Trump beforehand,

because all he ever did was just defy expectations. The only thing that you can predict when it comes to Trump is the leaks, the leaks of people right around him who are very quick and very, very, very, I mean, this is true of just about anybody in power, but people who are very eager to say, hey, all the, everybody around him told him to turn that stuff back over, okay? We were working to declassify those documents. It's like in public. It's only because there was an error in the office.

We weren't able to declassify them. No, in public, it's Trump. issued a blanket declassification decree. But yet the same people, there's not that many people still in Trump's immediate orbit, right? And there's people who are directly leaking to major newspapers. Listen, we told him. We told him to return everything. But he really wanted to hang on to some of that stuff.

The search set off a whole cascade of news stories. First, you had Trump allies, David, saying, we demand that Merrick Garland unsealed a warrant. This is an FBI fishing expedition. He needs to unseal it right now. Then Merrick Garland went on television on Thursday, got himself on television and said, okay, okay, we will unseal the warrant. We would like to do that.

Merrick Garland, I mean, I think this is, this occurs a couple of times in the story, but Merrick Garland definitely went on TV and probably did the best impression of the adult in the room that anybody's done in, you know, the past six or seven years. But also it was like, I don't know what it. It seemed like everybody was prepared for him to be the adult in the room.

It seemed like there was a little bit of a called shot by the media before Merritt Garland ever even came out. Maybe that was just experience with Garland, who knows. But the other weird thing about that, about the calls for Garland to, well, you actually, you go back to the timeline because I wouldn't jump in when it matters. Well, I just wanted to say that as elusive as the scandal that will bring down Donald Trump has been the adult in the room who will emerge and put the nation right has also been elusive. Very elusive. Remember when that was Robert Mueller?

Yeah, it seemed like there was a lot of desire for for that, for this to be that. I'm not sure if it was. But at least there wasn't any like, you know, compared to a lot of the previous wannabe adults. there was no, this was not a whiff. This was not a mistake. This was not a, you know, there was no error in this. It was at a minimum. It was minimal, you know, I think that's what you need.

I think it was just a very straightforward minimal expression of fact. Joe Biden and his aides also had an adult in the room run. Yeah. And then the presidency went sideways and he was dottering, okay, not the adult in the room. We must look elsewhere. Yeah. I mean, I think the camp, it was the adult. in the room campaign for president.

And then the first, you know, I think you could probably put the adult in the room, you know, designation on the first three months or four months of the administration. And then it just went, like you said, then it went left until, well, the past couple of weeks. And then that's been one of the great, one of my favorite things about this Trump news cycle is how much of the news cycle is being said out loud. Like the, you know, the editorial meetings are just being discussed live on television. and one of the things you keep hearing is, listen, the Biden administration would have loved for this who have not happened because they have other things

they wanted us to cover this week, right? And that's a really, it's sort of obvious, but it's also sort of inside baseball, right? The other like inside baseball thing is, so when you mentioned that the people around Trump demanded that Merrick Garland released the search warrant, whatever, that thing happened. Then there was the defund the FBI, you know,

That was a whole new cycle. And then it sort of pivoted to, let's be a little bit cautious about this. But the caution was much less, there seemed to be much less caution than there was attention given to the news stories about how people were pivoting from defund the FBI to caution. Do you know, does that make sense? Yes. Like, it's weird that there was a news cycle that was people around Trump are telling everybody, let's not be so virulent about this.

they might find something bad, right? Like that itself, the pivot in messaging was the news cycle. The messaging itself, I mean, it kind of, obviously it follows along behind. That pivot's on the front page of the New York Times today. The Republicans restrained new tone. Yeah. After initial defund the FBI stuff. And by the way, defund the FBI contained its own sub-news cycle.

Because you remember some people on the left came out and said, wait, defund the FBI. Yes. Yes, that is also one of my goals. Let us seize this moment to join with the Republicans to defund the FBI. And people had to step forward. You know, they're not serious. Yeah. You know, they're not serious, right? You don't really want to defund the FBI. They're just mad that the FBI did this one thing. And there's not much to say on the subject, but let's not fail to acknowledge Chris Ray as just the, you know, sleeper, agent de jure of this whole narrative. Like if you're on the right and you need a target, there's no better target than someone that the man himself put into power. You know,

I don't think we're going to have any any lefty turncoat Supreme Court justices, John Roberts aside, John Roberts equivocations aside. But, but it certainly seems like the head of the FBI is going to fit that bill for some people for right now. Back to our timeline. So Merrick Garland was Thursday. Thursday evening, Shane Harris of the Washington Post had the scoop

that the FBI was looking for what he called classified documents relating to nuclear weapons. When you heard the story broke, if I had said classified documents about nuclear weapons versus the field, or I guess that's the reverse of what I want. I mean, would you, is there any way you would have believed that there was classified documents about nuclear weapons in that cache of papers, even if I told you was 20 boxes worth. No, because it seems too on the nose.

Yeah, it just seems like super villainy. And also it seems like not that there needs to be any rationale to this, as I've said before, but it seems like what would be the purpose of having that at Marlago to begin with? Why would it be the purpose of having those papers out to begin with? Yeah, maybe so. I used to be able to look at papers like this back when I was president of the United States. I'm not really kidding. I know.

If you think of like, why would Trump want that? That's true. It's absolutely, I think that makes more sense than anything else. I mean, I'm sort of like absentmindedly hewing to the idea that a lot of this stuff was either already at Marilago or was just literally in the Oval Office as he was packing up to leave. But maybe, I mean, maybe these are things he specifically sought out as mementos. Could you, we're going to have, Trump's going to open his own like, like, like, theme

restaurant. So his own like, like, planet Hollywood. And it's just nuclear codes in frames on the wall. Instead of the signed jersey we see in a sports bar or the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator Jacket. Here are some of the classified documents I handled and mishandled as president. How crazy. There was that one news story that said there were documents about Roger Stone.

Yeah. That is Trump henchman, Roger Stone. And also documents about French president Emmanuel Macron. Now, that struck me as more. likely a document that Trump would take with. I wish I could come to this podcast equipped to have this conversation, but this is a rabbit hole too deep even for me, even on a relatively bored weekend. Suffice it to say that there is a lot of, that Macron has popped up in a lot of weird

ways in Trump conspiracy theories over the past five years, right? Like, he's not just in his public, not just as a public figure, not just when they've appeared in the same stage. Macron has a weird relevance to a bunch of the more bizarre Putin-y conspiracy theories. And it really does just sort of read a whole new life back into some of those. But again, go on Twitter, go on Reddit, you can find it yourself. I'm not going to go any deeper than that. to step backwards to the Roger Stone thing,

that one I'm really interested in because there does seem to be a lot of question about the declassification, everything else. There's a lot of questions about which of this stuff is actually feasible. What can the president or an ex-president actually do? There does seem to be some question about whether or not he granted some level

of bonus clemency to Roger Stone, but then just left it under, left it like in a sealed envelope. That's what I've heard some people say. I haven't. I'm a little bit blurry as to whether or not that's a thing you can do. I mean, it does seem like... Is there a bonus clemency?

I've never heard of that one. Well, I don't know. I mean, it does seem like it's something that's that is over and above whatever he was granted up to this point. It seems like it seems like an incredible parlor trick to pull. If you're as president, if you could just write down, just grant a full pardon to everybody, seal them in a bunch of envelopes and then just hand them out at Christmas time or whatever, you know? I mean, like, you don't announce them when you're president. No, no, no, no, no.

They're enacted. But they're dated and sealed. So, you know, with like the presidential wax. So they're legitimate. If you can do that, wow. The Donald Trump news cycle, David, has reminded us that Donald Trump has a particular way that he reacts to a scandal. The New York Times put it like this.

First, Trump said he was working and cooperating with government agents who he claimed had inappropriately entered his home. I was working with the feds. Then when the government revealed that the FBI during its search had recovered nearly a dozen set of documents that were marked classified, he suggested the agents had planted evidence. Finally, his aides claimed he had a, quote, standing order to declassified documents that left the Oval Office for his residence and that some of the material was protected by attorney-client and executive privilege.

I will also add to that list, he had an Obama did it to. moment during the scandal that the National Archives had to come out and say, no, Obama did not do it. You feel like people are taking the authority of government institutions more seriously than they have than they had during, than they did during Trump's presidency? Or do you think that I mean, the Obama did it too is actually a pretty effective thing, right? And something that's fake? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if he just kept saying it, then that would, then half the country would believe it, right? And so it's weird that this sort of happened and it dropped.

It does seem like this is everyone's sort of taking this whole incident more seriously than previous things and maybe justifiably so. Obviously, the real overplay or the thing he really wishes he could take back is everything he said about Hillary Clinton. Well, that's the overlay here. Hillary Clinton is disqualified for being president for mishandling classified documents. Oh, I have also mishandled classified documents, at least allegedly. Yeah, but you see him, I mean, in the Trump diage, or the Trump dialysis, hearts don't believe he did. They believe the blanket declassification. They believe that these things were handled deliberately. I'm sure there's some that believe that he's, you know, the second coming of

JFK Jr. and, well, it needs them for something and that makes it okay. It doesn't. It's all, it's all very bizarre. But the blaming Obama boomlet was not unexpected. What was shocking was how quickly he set it aside. We also saw a lot of Republican attention paid to Judge Bruce Reinhardt, who signed off on the FBI's warrant. Fox News is Brian Kilmead was sitting in for Tucker Carlson the other night. Now think about that statement. Yeah. Tucker Carlson

was out, so they got Brian Kilmead to fill in. This is Brian Kilmead showing a picture that is a purported picture of Judge Bruce Reinhardt. So a picture of Bruce Reinhart, this is the judge

in charge of the of the, as you know, of the warrant. And we'll see if he's going to release it next. He likes Oreos and Whiskey. The picture has someone sitting on an airplane, holding a bottle of whiskey, eating Oreos and having their feet massage by Jeffrey Epstein, Associate,

Gislein Maxwell. Needless to say, this was not a real image. No, it was not. Of all, I mean, it was ridiculous for that to have ever been on television. But of all of the, of all of the presumed lies that have been told throughout this entire Trump raid narrative. I actually believe Brian Kilmead's apology that it was a joke. And it was, he was intended to be read as a joke. You could tell he just, I don't think he quite knew it was a joke in real time, but certainly like Tucker's writer has intended that to be a joke.

Maybe they were just, maybe the joke was on Brian Kilmead. but it doesn't seem like they were really trying to put that over as true. Regardless. You would like to think so. And it's funny, when they showed the picture on Fox News, you know how they did the little photo credit at the top. It was credited to at what I meme to say. Right.

Which is certainly enough of a, in Fox, according to Fox's journalistic standards, that's certainly enough indication that this is just me. and not reality. Yahoo had a story that Brian Kilmead was not going to apologize for putting that photo up in a potentially confusing way the next night because he wasn't hosting Tucker Carlson the next night. Tulsi Gabbard was hosting Tucker Carlson the next night. You know what the dumbest thing I've thought over the last two years is, David,

is that the Trump news cycle will go away. Yeah. That we're somewhere near the end of it. I remember seeing the other day that Maggie Haberman has her long-awaited Trump book Confidence Man coming out in October. And I thought, wow, October 2022, that seems like a long way off. Are people really going to still be hungering for the definitive Trump White House book? And look, here we are.

It's one, two months until that book comes out. Yeah. Well, I mean, to take the, to take the, I mean, to take your, the, the specific point, at Haberman's book. I mean, I think Haberman on Trump is different than any other presidential book that, I mean, of its kind that we've ever seen. I mean, this is

basically like, this is basically like the presidential autobiography, right? That it's a, like, you remember, I mean, when somebody leaves office and you, and you hear that they're delivering their memoir in eight years, you're like, that's kind of a long time or whatever, but it's a president, so will wait. I mean, this is Maggie Haberman on Trump, so will wait.

It's kind of, it's very different. It's a one of one. But you're right in the sense that our national Trump news cycle will never end. And definitely like Matt Haberman's book is going to break news when it comes out and there will be, you know, all that will have its own news cycle that will have the reactive news cycle of like, why wasn't this news broken in real time in the New York Times? There'll be lots and lots of stuff that comes out of confidence, man, for sure. So, I mean, your point is right. It kind of feels like some combination of lack of presidential platform, lack of Twitter and lack of, I mean, and just kind of lack of energy.

I don't mean to get Trumpy in talking about Trump, but just like general, just like retirement energy has made this news cycle a little bit less antic than it would have been a couple years ago. Just because Trump is less involved and engaged in the news cycle than he has been in the past, truth social. My favorite thing is when he puts out something on truth social,

like you're going on your Twitter timeline and there's a truth social rant by Donald Trump. And then like two tweets later, there's the version of it that's on the official Donald Trump letterhead that someone is calling a press release from the office of Donald Trump. I just like to have the different design aesthetics are really pleasing. But yeah, I think that it's never going to stop.

It's never going to stop. I think that if you want, I mean, all political, I mean, all criminal liability aside, I do think that there's an interesting question. question about Trump running for president again. Well, one, because, I mean, I, you know, just in pure chest terms, like the move would have been to announce for the presidency before people started accusing you of crimes, right? And then it would have been really easy to say, they're only doing this because I'm already

running for president. Mm-hmm. But it doesn't seem like Trump was really that energized to do it, you know? I mean, as much as he wanted to do it for just sort of for the reasons, he didn't want to do it like in a practical way or at least he didn't do it already and and be seeing as how they were already in like month eight of negotiations with the with the records department over over some of this stuff um it seems like that would have been the appropriate time to jump out and be like hey just to give yourself cover so i don't know maybe this maybe this says more about the the end of the

Trump moment, if not the end of the end of the Trump news cycle. David, I want to talk to you about undead Harry Carey and an interviewer sacking Carson Wentz. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Today's entry comes from Jake Christie. It's about the Trump Mar-a-Lago search.

In fact, the moment when we found out the feds were seeking nuclear documents. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, the FBI search was nothing but a fission expedition. Fission expedition. The first person I saw make that joke, Paul Krugman. Yeah, Paul Krugman. If you were Paul Krugman, congrugman, congrats. You made the overword Twitter.

joke of the week. Do you feel like the higher your platform is, the more prominent you are, the more number of followers you have, the more acceptable it is for you to make the most just based dad joke on Twitter, because I feel like it is.

I feel we're going to grant Paul Krugman more latitude in that department than you would. Somebody's really good at Twitter. Yeah. Or just some regular, some generic user, you know, if someone just pops off with a real basic dad joke,

then I think people are going to respond like, you know, sad trombone. But if it's Paul Krugman or someone more famous, we're all about those dad jokes. In the notebook dump, I want to play some audio for you. Washington Commander's quarterback Carson Wince was interviewed last week by Scott Abraham of Seven News,

the ABC affiliate in Washington. First of all, I love the aesthetics of this interview, which is if you've been watching training camp interview since you were a kid like I have, you will recognize the quarter. correspondent is wearing a golf shirt and shorts. Both he and the correspondent are sitting in the director's chairs, which are set up next to the football field.

Very on the scene, local news kind of feel there. Here is one of Scott Abraham's questions to Carson Wins. There's been kind of a narrative out there here in training camp that you've been a little inaccurate on your throws. Consistently inconsistent has been a kind of a terminology. How would you assess your personal? performance in training camp and is that characterization uh fair yeah i mean for one it's camp you know i think uh i didn't know that so thank you yeah i know because i know you told me you don't read that

stuff at the same time uh i'm my biggest critic um man that was bad the delivery i think the delivery was the real sin to see because it felt like nervous yeah man you want to cut him some slack but it did feel like he was he he was shy about asking a question if that had been just like booming 80 year old sportscaster or legendary sports writer i don't think we'd be as it we'd be dissecting the words to the same degree but yeah you can't we get dale hanson in here to ask some questions on local news that need to be asked so i'm glad you had that reaction because that's the reaction i head. There was, as we're going to see in a second, a little bit of rearing up that a mean question had been asked. But I almost thought, if there's any criticism there, it's that

you're putting those words in other people's mouths. People have been saying that you're inconsistent. This is Carson Wentz. I think there's a way to ask that question where you put those words in your own mouth. Right. And you're not shy about it. asking it. Yeah, it wasn't, it's not a narrative, right? I mean, it's not a, it, this is a thing that either actually is happening or it's not. Has he been in, like, inconsistent is maybe not the, maybe not like a percentage based term, but it's a word that's either, that I mean, that has, that's verifiable, right? So it seems like you could say it a little bit more definitively than that. You don't have to put it, put everything on, you know, on Twitter eggs or

whatever. You could just say it yourself. It's okay. Did you like Carson Wentz saying he wasn't aware of the quote-unquote narrative that's out there about him? He has no idea that approximately zero people think he's going to have a good year for Washington? Yeah, well, who knows? Maybe that's on the commander's PR team for not keeping and posted. That was not the most pointed question that Carson Wentz faced. Here is Scott Abraham of seven news taking one more run at him. Real talk here, Carson. It's been well documented.

Philly didn't want you. Indy didn't want you. Do you think this is your last chance to prove that you can be a starting quarterback in the NFL? Yeah, you know, I don't really think about all that stuff. For me, I'm playing the game that I love. That's what I call confidence. Fail Hanson would have been proud of that one.

goodos of Carson wins for not giving a better answer to a much better question once again does Carson wins not realize that this is probably his last chance to be handed a starting quarterback position in the NFL after he's been a very high profile not a great quarterback in two different cities it was funny Mike Floreo made this point on Twitter about how with team media these days and I mean the team websites, team broadcasters, that what is a tough question has really been defined down? Oh, yeah.

And I'll tell you the evidence for that, which is that Jason Wright, who was the president of the Washington New Manors, got on Twitter after the interview and said this. Thankfully, Carson demonstrated grace in class in response to this pompous, unprofessional mess. I recognize you have made a living on childlike provocation, but it needs to be called out.

Don't expect special access and good luck building rapport with the guys at Scott 7 News. Wow. So he's upset about it. With these things I always think, just think about the level of conversation on Twitter, on a ringer NFL podcast

about Carson Wins right now. Even among beat writers if they were to appear on a radio show and not just be writing for the newspaper or the athletic. If that is the level of conversation, conversation that is happening. Surely you can also ask Carson Wins about this.

Yeah. Was it a tone issue? Is it that he was, that he sounded a little bit smarmy as he was delivering it? I think it's, I think it's a little shocking because people don't hear questions like that all that much. Among reporters, and I didn't see anybody from the Washington Press Corps saying this,

but among reporters, sometimes they get mad when somebody just pulls out the flamethrower like that, because then that messes up a lot of future interviews and Carson Wednesday's like, you know, I'm kind of cool with one-on-ones for a while. Yeah. I didn't see anybody saying that, but I know that's happened with various press packs before.

Because it's not the, it really isn't the question, right? No. I think it's mostly, it's just the Philly didn't want you, Indy didn't want you. You could have, if he had just said, we've been to Philly, you've been to Indy, now you're in Washington, and just asked the same question,

and it probably would have had a little bit of, of a reaction. Could have taken five miles off the fastball there. But it's true. Philly didn't want him. Indy didn't want him. So anyway.

And also actually, actually, you know what? If you want to go after this, I would go after it from just like, like this is training camp. Obviously we're writing

our big think pieces at this point, but I think, yeah, maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think you can skip the meta conversation when you get one-on-one

access of players during training camp. Do you with that in the off season or later on, you know? Isn't this the time to be, I mean, if you want to know, if you want to compare his previous starting jobs with other teams to what's going on now, let's talk about numbers, you know, let's talk about

on-field performance, not just like the emotional baggage or whatever that he's carrying in with him. And in fairness to Scott Abraham, at the end of that first clip, he does come out and say, I've told people to tap the brakes here. Well, it's just training came. Make sure you get your, make sure you get your important qualifications in there right in the meat of the meme before it gets taken. everywhere. Let's talk about Harry Carey, David. Last week was the Field of Dreams MLB game on Fox.

They've done it twice now. Play it in Iowa. It's cool like me if you're part of the dad want to have a catch generation. But Fox did one very weird thing during this game. They brought back Harry Carey. Carrie has been dead since 1998. Or so they say. Or so they say. But thanks to what Fox called augmented augmented reality. Carrie reappeared during the seventh inning stretch complete with the

famous Coke bottle glasses and shock of white hair and he sang this. What do you make of undead Harry Care? What do you make of undead Harry Carey? I think if there were a 3D imaging, like, photo booth, if you or I or particularly a celebrity could go get themselves physically scanned

in exactly the outfit, exactly the weight, exactly the maybe the age if you're on the cusp of getting older that you want, I think people would pay a lot of money for that. So that when they die and come back as digitally augmented reality, they look exactly like they want to look. Because now the thing with the Harry Carey thing is it feels sort of inevitable, right? I know there's this uncanny valley, but I feel like, I feel like a lot of people are making jokes about it, justifiably so.

A lot of people were expressing sheer terror, understandable. As somebody who doesn't watch a lot of baseball or have a particular place in my heart for Harry Carey, I played the clip and I was just like, yeah, okay. Seems normal. Seems inevitable. Seems like something Fox would try. Yeah. To juice up a baseball broadcast that, by the way,

involved with Chicago Cubs. Yeah. If I didn't say that in the open. Also, Field of Dreams is about zombie people from baseball coming back to life. To do their thing one more time. Yeah. So we're very much keeping with the Field of Dreams theme here.

I thought the Harry Carrey thing was really weird. I don't necessarily. need to see my favorite announcers brought back to life in any form. I did find it funny. I was interested in the reaction to this because Timothy Burke got wind of this thing before it happened. And he tweeted that someone who has seen the footage says it is, quote, unconvincing and quote, possibly offensive.

So it felt like everybody was watching this ready to be offended on behalf of on behalf of Harry Carey. And then they watched it. It was just kind of weird. So we got a lot of those fake Harry Carey sets Twitter ablaze stories where you, the writer, are not personally offended. So you turn to Twitter to see if everybody else is offended. Yeah.

Or just see if people are making good jokes so you can rerun the jokes as a kind of weird crowdsourcing way to write a story. Yeah. I find those stories so weird. And they almost remind me of the bad optics, bad look story. Yeah, exactly. You just don't have an opinion. So you take the way it looks to somebody else as your opinion?

Yeah. No, I think that's right. And I think that, listen, this was a tribute, right? It was for a specific game. But, you know, yeah, I think it worked a little bit, I think it worked a little bit too well. I mean, I think all the nays saying, you're right, was just like sort of this preconception that way. I mean, would you really be,

are you going to tell me that if Fox was like, that Harry Carey thing works so well, we have commissioned a new season of married with children with none of the actors actually playing their roles? You would check that out, right? You'd be like, this might actually work. Augment's reality, Ed O'Neill and everybody else? Yeah, Katie Segal.

Yeah. And they're alive, right? Just not available? Well, but they're just older. I'm saying, instead of doing the bring everybody back gimmick, we're just going to do, like this was,

like everybody's the same age. I would absolutely check that out. I would watch that television show. I got a journalism job listing of the day for you, David. Go. This is from the Associated Press. The AP is hiring for several jobs, including news director for Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq,

and Las Vegas sports reporter. Now, if you had to pick just one job to apply for. News Director for Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, or Las Vegas Sports Report. Have you, you probably haven't because I know most of your career history, but you know what happened is a very, you know,

it's a thing that happens pretty commonly where you apply for a job and someone's just, and the HR person or the recruiter, the boss, whatever, is just like, you know what, I actually have somebody else I like for this job or your resume is not quite what we're looking over for this job, but I have another position you'd be perfect for. Imagine if you just like sin in all your,

real and your resume and your clips and everything because you're just like, I want to cover whatever the NBA's expansion franchise in Las Vegas is. And they're just like, you know what, Brian? We were thinking helmet and flackjackjacket. We see something a little different for you. Thanks to Aaron J. Galloni for that one. We got a great lead here, David. We no longer do the only in journalism word segment here at the press box. That's been canceled. It's been totally canceled. But when we get them, we like to say them. This one came in from listener Alex Kaplan, listened to this lead in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Embattled Mayor Chris Swanson, who is facing an aggressive recall campaign, is breaking his silence. Because that's what the

embattled people do. They break their silence. And then I saw this one when I was reading all the new Game of Thrones TV show pieces House of the Dragon opens next Sunday. I think that's going to be a big subject here at the ringer.com. I believe so. Do you think every single piece about

House of the Dragon will use the words long awaited or much anticipated? To describe that television show. Yes, I think they all will. I think they probably all have so far. So as long as we, it is long awaited in a sense.

It would have been more long awaited if it, if, you know, Game of Thrones had ended with it to be continued, like back to the future one. Would you accept long gestating? I mean, that's, I think that's my problem. Is it maybe I'm just too much in the pop culture, you know, hamster wheel over here at the ringer. But it actually seemed, when I saw it on the calendar, I was just like, oh shit, it's already here. It seems like just yesterday I was doing art for Game of Thrones final season. And now I'm just putting all those dudes back in Photoshop once again. Speaking of beloved franchises, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline.

Wednesday's Strained Pun podcast title, which sat atop a pot about all things Philadelphia Eagles, was Birds with Friends. Today's headline comes from Mike Weiser. it's from the Chicago Sun-Times. Story is the Chicago Bears kicker Cairo Santos is upset at the crappy conditions at Soldier Field, where the Bears play. Week one, our first game of the season,

I've seen better, Santos said. It's just what we have to deal with. According to the Sun-Times, Santos said it's so uniquely bad that he has to find poorly maintained public parks in Florida to simulate it in the offseason. The NFL field is so bad. What was the Chicago Sun Times

as strained pun headline? Oh, God. Cairo Santos. There's too much going on here. Cairo Santos, Soldier Field, Chicago Bears. Cairo is not involved in the headline here. This isn't going to...

Chicago... It's not one of these, like, Chicago Nope things. It's like a... No. Does anybody remember Chicago Hope? Sure. Just for the sake of the pun, it's like one of those crossword puzzle answers. It only lives on in crossword. Okay. Kick in the headline. Kick in the grass. A kick in the grass. There we go. Soldier Field gets its grass kicked. Oh, yeah. Gets its grass kicked. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes. I'm back later in the week. And then David and I are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.