The Ringer NFL Show - Coaches vs. Agents, the Keys to Negotiating, and Baseball’s Return With Sports Agent Scott Boras | Flying Coach With Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Steve and Pete are joined by Pete’s former college housemate and baseball super agent Scott Boras to chat about helping players overcome fear, the similarities and differences between coaches and agents, and understanding how to negotiate for a player. Next they get into the necessary measures being taken to begin the process of bringing sports back amid the COVID-19 outbreak.  Hosts: Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll Guest: Scott Boras  This show is raising money for COVID-19 relief. You can help! Donate here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of Flying Coach on the Ringer podcast network brought to you by World Central Kitchen, help the heroes in hospitals and clinics who are fighting for us and help keep your local restaurants alive. Go to the ringer.com slash WCK to donate, please. If you have the means, it's an unbelievably great and useful cause that helps our hospital heroes, emergency workers, and local restaurants. Give whatever you can. The money goes directly to World Central Kitchen. It's a charitable donation. Once again, that is the ringer.com slash WCK. We started flying coach to raise money for the Warriors Community Foundation and the Seahawks Charitable Foundation. But as a thank you to all the frontline workers for COVID-19, Pete Carroll and his company Compete

to Create are offering a free online course and a high-performance mindset, coincidentally called Warriors Edge. You can find it by going to his website at compete to create.net backslash Warriors Edge. It will be available for free for anyone working with COVID-19. Through the end of 2020 in general, the course is an incredible insider look into Pete's philosophy, culture and leadership. A lot of the stuff we talk about on this podcast. Coming up, Steve Kerr, Pete Carroll, flying coach podcast. There we go. We've got a great guest today, baseball super agent, but much more importantly, Pete Carroll's college roommate, Scott Boris, is here. Scott, thanks for coming on the show. It's a pleasure. It's really neat to be here with you, Steve, and it's nice to make sure that Pete's

civil in this whole conversation. All right, no doubt. I will be. Hey, Scott, good to have you, man. Thanks for joining us. This is great fun. Always a pleasure, brother, no doubt. Pete, did I get that, did I get that right? Were you actually roommates or fraternity brothers? Across the hall. Yeah, across the hall fraternity brothers. Yeah. Back in the day, at University of the Pacific, UOP, in case anybody forgot. Tigers. Go Tigers. Go Tigers. There's not many of us left. Yeah. And I know that you played football. there, Pete. And Scott, were you a baseball player at you OPE? Heck, yeah.

Yeah, I played baseball there and then played professional baseball for the Cardinals and Cubs out once I signed out of there. Yep. He's pretty good, pretty good ball player now. I mean, you know, he came up the hard way. I had to earn it. Pretty good for Rick and hit her hit over 300 and, you know, all that good stuff. Did you guys used to go to each other's games? Oh, heck, yeah. I went to all the football games and, and Pete Zera, they had winning teams and they had a great

coach and and it was exciting it was uh about 40,000 fans of the stadium in central California and they were beaten I think we're the PC2A then I think beat yeah yeah back in the day that's right we had we had a little we had a little quick little run there that was quick and that was over and then football died out so yeah we're kind of the last last hope of it all so but it was we had a really fun time so a really good time to be at it's at school there and real small school and everybody knew everybody and we had a blast you guys got 40,000 fans hands at your games? No, not really, Scott. I'm glad you said that, but it's not really, it wasn't quite that many. I think one time you played somebody for the championship,

you got a really big audience of that one game. We had a couple good crowds, but not always. It was like friends and family, you know. Wasn't that where the 12th man was invented? I'm not sure. I don't know, I don't know. A lot of beer drinking back in the day. I said, yeah. Hey, Scott, everybody who's a football fan knows Pete Carroll. They know him as the coach. You're one of the few people who really knew him as a player. So give us the thumbnail scouting report on Pete Carroll football player for the Pacific Tigers. You know, when you don't play the same sports and you kind of, because, you know, we're all like high school quarterbacks. And I tell Pete every day I got a better arm than him, of course. But the idea of it is, for me what as the intensity. This dude would come back to the room and he'd have this football shape on his forehead because he hit with his head all the time.

He's a defensive back. And I'm going, hey, you know, can we talk about angular functionality so that you can reduce the, you know, it's like hitting a baseball. You know, you hit the guy, but don't do it with your head. And he goes, no, no, no, it's got a sound right. It's got a sound right. And so it's not that you tackle the guy. It's got to sound and feel right.

You know, you got to have that. But monstrous intensity, perfection and detail. I think the one thing Pete and I shared where we always were anxious to find out the latest information and what we could do to get better as players. We both had great passion about our sport. And you kind of resonated that most of the athletes were there and enjoyed the game and played.

But what I liked was is that not being in the science of college football, but Pete could explain it to me. He could talk to me about the intricacies, the details, how you get the edge on things. And I love that. I love learning about all the things that he would notice and how the coach would jump him about certain things and do things. And yet in coaching moments, he loved the detail and almost liked the critique to where he knew

it was going to make him better. Those are my observations. And he also liked tall women. I remember that about Pete. Absolutely. Okay. Well, at least you finally got something right there. Let's flip it around.

Pete. Yeah, okay, good. I'm glad to have this shot right here. Yeah, scout support. What you don't know is the background, the academic background. This guy was a pharmacy student. He was a guy wearing the little white coats around campus, you know. And in pharmacy school, they were like a whole kind of faction that we didn't understand.

It was all the chemistry stuff. And it's all the way back to back to then in the day that he was all into the details. And he liked the science. And he liked all the crazy stuff that I didn't have a clue about. But it turned out, we wind up going. going to law school as well and all that. But back in the day, when you went to UOP, you had to love ball now. If you're a baseball player, you're a football player. I mean, I was like the last guy that got on scholarship there. You had to work your way through it too, you know, walking into it and all that

and showing them who you were. It was really a time when guys had to, all of our guys, our buddies that we hung out with, everybody was there to prove something. And Scott was one of those guys, man. He had a chip on his shoulder about competing and battling and was a fantastic, detailed athlete, and he carried it all the way into his study. I mean, he loves the science of hitting the baseball and the whole game and all of that, and he's taking it to so many depths. It's not a surprise. Really, Scott, if you think about it, we were a little bit wacky about our sport, man.

It meant more to us than some other guys, and that we just, we needed to know more. We wanted to know, why is it happening? What can we do to get better? You know, why is it like to, why is this coachy happening at me in this way or that way? And so it was really a good kind of a, you know, ground laying of where we wound up going. Nobody would have ever expected it though. Look where you are, man. Look where you are.

Yeah, geez. Look where you are. Oh, I don't know, man. I don't know. You know, we... Shots in baseball is pretty good. You know, Steve, the one thing that you always want to be around, I think, when you're an athlete, that there's a rhythm of competitiveness. You know, when you hit a guy up, you're going to get, you're going to feel, you're going to feel it.

and you're going to leave in the room and you're going to want to compete, and you're going to want to get better. And to me, there are a few guys like that because guys played, but the answer is you can play the game, but do you always want to get better of the game and you want to understand the game better? And for me, being around those types of people, Pete was certainly one of them. And it brought an energy to you that, you know, you kind of went back and said, look, I got to do more.

I got to do more. And that's an instinctive feel that he has. I think it's interesting that we have both chased it for so long. I mean, baseball has been your love, your entire life. Football has been my love in sports, but my entire life. And we've fortunate enough, we got to build a career around it and keep digging in and be the wackos that we are, you know, to just keep trying to figure out a way to get better and try to beat people and win games and championships and all that stuff.

So it's been pretty awesome. Obviously, the competitive juice that you guys are talking about and that curiosity carried carried you forward into your next career. So I'm interested, Scott, you finish school, you get drafted, you go play. How many years did you play professionally? I played about five years. I had three knee operations and I finished my doctor, pharmacy and pharmacology, and then I went back to law school. And while I was in law school, my teammates kept reaching out to me. talking to me and I went to work for a major law firm in Chicago and kept calling and I finally realized that I did some pro bono work and the baseball draft was like the players had gotten

the same bonuses for 17 years in a row and the revenues of the game had quadrupled. I said, I'm going to help these kids and so I picked two players that I picked the first and second player is chosen in the draft. And I'm going like, you know what? I think the Cardinal organization taught me how to evaluate talent. And so we kind of got into that way. And then my teammates called and did a contract for a player. They took our picture in Sports Illustrated.

And the phone started ringing. And that's how my career started. Yeah. So there weren't really any grand plans to become an agent. It just sort of, you just almost fell into it after law school. You know, the one thing you kept hearing from, your teammates was that they didn't care about the legal side. What they cared more about was that we would have talks and we played together about how to comfort them, how to make them better,

how to how you could listen to what they have to say and then give them an approach to go to the next day. And I think that's why a lot of them kept in contact because, you know, these guys had, I played, we played in the minor leagues, which is kind of, we had like seven or eight major league. on one team. And they were phenomenal players and went on to have great careers. And you kept talking to them along the way and you really realized what they enjoyed most was how do I manage myself? How do I get better? How do I enjoy this? And it's what I want. I want it so bad, but it bears such a burden on me. And I want to be around people that can really help me deal with my skill and enjoy this more and get me to that zone of success, if you will.

And, you know, it's kind of that being a performance optimal at the optimal times kind of thing, you know. And so we, you kind of realized that you had a skill in this and talking to players. And believe me, it was a lot better than representing pharmaceutical corporations and dealing with Reyes Monkey Studies and litigation, believe me. Well, it sounds a lot like coaching, really. I mean, because it's the same thing, right? You're just trying to help an athlete get better and help somebody improve.

And were you guys, Pete, were you guys staying in touch throughout your respective career paths? We kind of have over the years, well, when he started popping up all over the place in baseball, you know, I was following his career and just seeing out where it was going. And it was such an extraordinary ascent, you know, to the point where, you know, he's everybody's bad boy, you know, and then baseball and all that. Holy cow. And it's just Scotty Borsch, you know. So I was thinking, what the heck, man. So we did stay in touch a little bit all the way through the years and it's been fun to stay connected and all that.

You know, Steve, Pete is the worst at a baseball game because he's going, man, that guy could be a DB. That guy could be a live backer. I'm going like, all right, does he have bat speed, you know? way too much frenetic energy to be a baseball guy. Pizza in the right sport, for sure. No doubt. No doubt. I love it.

The thing that we really do share is, Scott is, I don't know other guys in baseball, how they handle their business and all, but I know that you have really, and I think you said it, Steve, he has taken under his wing coaching these guys up and coaching them to find the best in their careers.

And it's so much more than just bat speed and good glove. a good arm and stuff. It's handling and is dealing with it. And like you're saying, Scott, you know, the issues that guys deal with as they're maturing and they're growing up into their careers. And there's so many things going on around these guys. And they want to play baseball and they want the other stuff to not be the problem. Well, they don't have all the answers all the time. Our guys don't either. You know, we have to help them through stuff. And you've done exactly that. Pro sports, the great thing is about, and it's fortunate because it's few people

get to be involved in it, is that you're around, greatness. And greatness is a very special thing to manage and to deal with. And because usually they know it, they feel it, they have expectations, and then they have a dedication to it, and they have a want about it. But managing greatness to me is the most intriguing thing because great players often have the edge. And that edge causes really a lot of issues in their lives. It causes a dimension about them that is so, so difficult to equate a normalcy to them. And when you carry greatness with you, you have to have a normalcy pattern for them that is their own. And I don't need to tell you guys because you've been around greatness and, you know, your whole lives.

But it is something I've found that it takes a very unique process. It takes something where you have to take it individually with the athlete. And basically getting into that fear, that every greatness has the greatest fear. And that is that I have got to be what I should be. And I got to be that guy that I should be. and it wears them out. Because once they have the great season,

the most difficult season is always the next season because the expectation of the ease of their performance that the fans see, the brilliance they see, it's like they should be able to give it and give it every day. And I know you, you gentlemen, in your careers, you know exactly what I'm talking about because there is almost an internal anger about what they have to go through to repeat that greatness. I would think that it's even more pronounced in baseball because it's such a difficult sport to repeat in terms of production.

Like basketball, if a guy is in his prime and he's getting 20 a night, you can kind of count on the fact that he's going to get 20 a night the next year or two. whereas baseball, you know, somebody finds a hole in his swing, whatever it is, all of a sudden guy gets in a little bit of a slump. You know, he goes four or five games without getting a hit. You're supposed to be the best player in the big leagues. There's got to be such incredible, intense pressure. And when you have that edge and you have that talent, and yet you're playing in a sport where you fail more often than you succeed,

I would think that's something you have to deal with as an agent with some of your clients. Yeah, I got a call one day and I hear the car on and it's got a bit of an echoey. And I said, where are you at? He goes, I'm in my garage. And I said, you're in your garage. And I said, is the door open? I wanted to ask the quag. Yeah.

And he goes, I can't go to the ballpark today. He goes, I'm in a horrible funk. I'm miserable. I just can't do it. And I go, you know, kind of who you are and you kind of have to go to the ballpark and you because people will be wondering and I go, you notice you're having this conversation in your car, you're not having it in the house where your wife is. Is there a particular reason for that? And the answer to that always is,

yeah, I just wanted to call it because you don't want your wife to hear what you're talking about. And so I said, you know, what is it? And he goes, I'm just, I can't. I can't. I, I can't. I can't face this guy tonight. He owns me and I'm, I'm in a miserable slump. I just can't go out and embarrass myself any further. And I go, you know, you're multiple All-Star, you're a highly compensated player, you're all these things. You have amazing ability. What makes you think you can't do something to benefit your team? And he goes, no, I just, I can't see it. I just, I can't visualize the baseball right now. I said, okay, fair enough. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to go to the ballpark. We're going to show up and we're going to arrive and you're going to do something

defensively. You're going to not swing. You don't have to swing the whole night. Just take every pitch and you're going to work on getting your vision back. You're going to see 20 or so pitches, work on getting your vision back. I go, but you're going to show up because you're a member of the team. You're going to do it. And I said, you can imagine people would be, you're going to cause a big stir if you don't, oh, okay, you're right, you're right. So he drives the ballpark, calls me about three hours before the game. He goes, you know, should I just not take BP? I said, do what you want to do. I think your goal today is you're going to prepare just to see the baseball. That's your, that's your goal. You know, you've got a great batting average. You're actually having a great season.

You're in this horrible funk, but just see the baseball. So he calls me about 15 minutes before the game and he goes, I'm supposed to go out to the game and not swing tonight. I didn't say that. I said, you don't have to. Just go out there. Your goal is to see the baseball. You're going to come home and say, I saw these pitches. You don't have to swing. Don't worry about it. Just go there and look at the baseball. That's what you want to accomplish tonight. And run the base as well if you get on. Make a great defensive play. You know, encourage your teammates. Be a leader. do something functional for your team. That's your goal today.

You don't have to worry about hitting. Don't worry about it. Oh, man, I can't go out there. What have I ever gone to a game and not got into a game without thinking about swinging? I go, you've earned this. Your greatness, you've earned this. You can go and be in a major league game and you get to just look. You get to be that guy.

I go, we would all want to be that person. lucky you go do that so goes in the game and of course he's facing a pitcher that he hits about 150 lifetime off of course you know but the reality of it is i think he went two or three for four drove in five runs it's a bomb his second at bat calls me after the game he's driving home and he goes unbelievable the ball was like a beach ball. It was unbelievable. I was just unreal. And I said, now you've learned the powers of expectation. Now you've learned the powers of what you need to do to manage the monster of fear. I said, when you step into this, you're not there to talk about what you're not. You're there to

talk about what you can really bring from yourself that day. day and it comes in so many ways when you're a teammate and what you do. That's a cool story. But the main reason of it was, you know, he goes like, it's just unreal. So he hangs up the phone. He calls me back about 15 seconds later. He goes, hey, I've been in this funk for like two weeks. Why in the hell didn't you call me 10 days ago?

That's great. But I want you guys to know that all of this is, is not original to me. It's taught to me. It was taught to me by a great, great man named Harvey Dorman, who is a remarkable sports psychologist. He wrote the mental game of baseball, and it could be the metal game of accounting. It's about how you approach and what you do, but he was a brilliant, brilliant man at teaching me about how to help athletes. brings to mind an interesting dynamic as it relates to coaches and agents. I don't know if you felt this way, Pete, or if any of your players had felt this way.

But I know when I played, there were times, just like Scott, you said, the player didn't want to say anything in front of his wife. You know, he didn't, I assume he didn't want his wife hearing him speak so unconfidently, right? I didn't really want to tell my coaches when I lost confidence. So I would call my agent. Mark Bartlestein in Chicago represented me for years. And he's a great friend, great basketball fan, watches everything on league pass. So sometimes I'd be struggling. I'd just give him a call because the last thing I want to do is go tell the guy who controls my playing time.

Hey, man, the ball, the rim looks like a thimble right now. So I'm interested in that dynamic. You know, as an agent, you're known as the guy who negotiates the contract. But you're really a coach, too. But you then have to navigate the dynamic of, are you stepping on the coach's toes, the GM's toes? Like, that's a tricky one to dance around. Yeah, I have a rule, I think.

You know, you don't, I don't ever talk about physicality about the coaching of the game. Like, you know, I tell players, I'm not a hitting. coach, I'm not a pitching coach. You know, you know a lot about the games. I can tell you how to repeat your greatness. I'll send you a film. But you use that film with your coaching staff that's on hand and in there. The main thing for me is like, you know, we have psychologists on our staff that are really, really expert and brilliant at this. But 70% of my time is built around giving the player a very narrow boundary of himself and getting him to optimize and say, your focus every day is here.

You have your relationship, your family, your children, you've got your teammates, you've got this, you've got to do this. You know, and I talk to him about fame. I'll give you one rule of fame. I'll give you one rule, is that you were never born with it,

and it'll never be there with you at your gravesite. I promise you. Is that people will know you, but when you're in it and you're in the current, that's when fame is most at it. You're kind of a known person, But you're not a famous person, but the game brings that and the game takes it away. So stop trying to be something that is not something that's real.

And don't respond to fame. Stay away from it. You know, greatness is a very difficult dynamic because it prevents you in many ways from performing. And you can say, how can that be? I said, it gives you an opportunity to perform, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to execute the performance. You know, Scott, it's always been so important to me that, and I know that you're all over this, is that to help people realize what they're capable of doing and make it clear to them how they can believe in themselves and why they should, and here's all the reason.

So that when things start to get rocky, you know, we have a place to return to. You get to go back to home base, you know, and find your swing in baseball, find your stride in football, you know, find your shot in hoops. and it's so important for us to help guys be comfortable with who they are and be really clear about that and then optimize that, like you're saying, and maximize that ability to keep bringing it to the ballpark, man. And it's such an interesting part of the game. And who tells you that when you're growing up, you know, and who gives you that kind of mechanism to figure that out? Some guys have the confidence that takes them for a long time, but they all have to find it.

They all have to return to themselves as they continue to hold on to their careers and also a fascinating part of the game. I don't know, Pete, have you had any agents call you to discuss a player's playing time or would that go to John Schneider, the GM? Has that dynamic ever entered into your picture? In football, basically, John Snyder handles all that stuff in general. Now, there's relationships that you establish over years, you know, with guys, and there might be a time. here and there we'll make contact, but pretty much try to separate from that. And it's a little bit of a sacred ground, you know, that the guys hold off. And when they do get into that kind of conversation, they usually don't sound very sharp. And, you know, they're not really, it's,

they're not at their best. And so there, but there's times, you know, when I do try to help John, you know, with a relationship that we're dealing with or maybe there's a particular situation. But for the most part, it's separate from us. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm struck by the fact that, you know, three of us in our respective positions, we're really trying to just help people get better. And yet, you know, Pete, you and I work for an organization. And, you know, there's always going to be money issues and salary disputes. And obviously, you know, Scott, your jobs to get your client in the best spot possible, the best team possible for his talents and the most money possible.

So is that a tricky place for you to navigate? I mean, there's got to be times where, you know, there's a lot of acrimony between you and the organizations you're dealing with. I actually don't allow that to happen much, to be honest with it. I'll tell you why I'm not about money. I'm about value. And the idea of it is value helps an owner. And your job is to make sure that organization knows about the value of the athlete you're

working for. And in doing that, you talk about their needs and what it really does and how it fits. And you usually, by taking that process, you're going to learn that people believe that negotiations are something where someone wants something that someone doesn't want to give. Okay. And my point is, is that that is not how you ever look at a negotiation. What you look at is that someone must know what they need and someone must know what they have. And so consequently, when you go through that and you build the bridges of saying life with, life without, you're talking about the symmetry of your goals compared to those. You usually find that when you're doing all this, that you create an understanding,

and understanding because the last thing people ever want to be in a negotiation, no one wants to be misunderstood and no one wants to be someone that is not knowledgeable about everything that's going on in the process. And by creating knowledge and by supplying information and letting the examination of the information go, you understand that if the information is understood, you can really relate to someone having a reason for or not for doing something. And my job is, how much information can you get and what can you bring to a negotiation? That's the burden of it. And the idea is that you're not there to persuade.

You're there to create an understanding. And I think if you have that philosophy, you look at this process very, very differently. and you, sometimes I've gained information where I'm going, you know what, my perception of the player's value in this context is, should be redesigned and probably has a lesser value because he wants to be with this team and he wants to be in this setting. Well, with another team, he may have other things that bring more value to them, but where he wants to be and what he wants to do, I'll recommend the player, you should, you should, if, this is what you mostly want, then this is your value here. Your value may be different there, but to get the player to understand his value and the owner to understand his value, that to me is what your real task is to bring an understanding and a final agreement. Yeah, that's cool. Information is huge and, huh? Information is powerful in that regard. I would think, Scott,

because you need the stuff, you need the stuff to make sense of it. So somebody who may not want to see it, you know, that way for other reasons, you know, you have to put it in, front of them every creative way you can to give yourself your best shot with your client. That's really interesting. It's kind of nice, though, isn't it, Pete, being on the coaching side, so we don't have to deal with all that stuff. You don't want to deal with this guy now. You don't want to deal with this guy. I don't want any part of him. He's too tough now. He's too tough. He's proven that. Well, Scott, let me ask you a quick question about the current state of where we are with baseball. And I'm more interested in when we might play, when we might see games, what they

would look like. Pete and I, obviously, dealing with the same situations in the NFL, the NBA. We're all trying to figure out what sports are going to look like. You're in the middle of all this with baseball trying to resume. What can you share with us in terms of how you think this might look once they're up and running or if they even are going to be up and running? The opening of the sports, obviously, are conditioned upon the evolution of our understanding of the medical science of the virus. And we have got our country so blessed because we have got amazing medical minds, institutions, really our world, too. And where we've gone in 10 weeks with really the COVID antigen hitting in the world, it's been remarkable.

We have immunologists in England that the genome of the COVID-19 is a single-strain virus versus like a Spanish flu, which is a triple strain. And so that RNA is we had the SARS virus back in the early 2000s. That virus, they had, this COVID-19 is 96% similar in the genome. So the scientists had a great advantage in determining how to get to a vaccine. And we've had now two clinical trials. I think there's as many as 10 companies now that have entered into clinical trials for a vaccine. And when you read the medical journals and such where they are, what they're doing, I'm very encouraged about us having a vaccine long before the normal year and a half weight that we normally see for,

vaccines to arrive. The therapeutics are are also taking major steps. We have convalescent plasma where you actually have the antibodies through merely transfusion and you give it to you can give it to athletes or workers or patients and it's like again these IgG antibodies basically block the cellular membranes so that the COVID virus can't attack

and they are tremendous therapeutic providing immunity. That is evolving. And we've also basically been able to understand the parameters of the virus from the standpoint of age. And for those of us in the athletic community, you know, you're talking about that 18 to 45 group that don't have underlying medical conditions are monitored every day.

we have it's proven to be a very very you know the six the really the mortality rate is well less than one percent we've got now soccer leagues and we've got baseball leagues in korea and Taiwan operating and they've been operating for well over a hundred days and we've gotten uh no deaths we've had no hospitalizations we've had a few cases but these players that had gone in and they've been quarantined and they've been basically returned to play without incidents. So, um, but we still have to take great caution for grandparents, for parents, uh, for coaches who are in that elderly category, if you will, uh, that 70 and plus group. And yeah, there you go. That's it. That's a good cut off. That's a good cut off.

You notice I cut that. I cut that light off. I was counting on that. Yeah, those, those are, I was counting on that. Those are things where you've got to be a little bit cautious about what you do because the numbers and the probabilities of mortality are greatly different for that age group. But then again, underlying medical conditions have a lot to do. But having the health care systems where we're at and everything, I'm really encouraged about the idea that we can adopt many of the protocols that we've used in Korea and Taiwan, bring that to baseball here.

and hopefully get us going soon. Scott, what have you done to uncover your understanding of this? What have you had to, what extent have you gone? Well, it was very fearful for me. And I got buddies who work for drug corporations in Europe. And I flew to Russia to have a meeting with them and sit down and understand this thing. And then we got together. I called doctors in Taiwan and Korea to really understand what they were doing well in

advance of us, really studying the Chinese community. And, you know, when you're kind of brought up with medical journals, it's, I don't want to sound really boring, but you kind of read these things when you come home because I've always been interested in science and adaptive things. So there's been so much driven. And then, you know, the amazing thing, too, is that the doctors that are in sport, we have great orthopedists who cover all sports. And, and, and, and, you know, talking to, we have 87 doctors in our profile for every different type medical injury that you have. And I haven't found a doctor for your forehead yet, Pete, but I'm working on that. But the answer to that is that we're, all these doctors are doing, and they all have,

they're like octopuses of information. And I've literally generated, you know, just hundreds of pages and files to put this together. And then for our clients, we've gotten the cooperation of the medical community has been extraordinary. We've had doctors from all over, get on the Zoom with us, educate our players, talk with them, go through it, talk about their safety of their families, their parents, their children, the ability to play, what to do, how to do it, shared it with the union, shared it with owners. So it's really been a, for me, it was almost like returning to medical school for the last, you know, 120 days to get our hands on this to share the information with our players and the people in our sport.

Has there been, is there much opportunity for you to share that with the other leagues, like with, with NBA coming around the corner and the NFL coming around the corner? Have you gotten there yet or not yet? You know, we've had, obviously in the sport industry, you grow and things, but you get a few people that have called. And the hardest part about this,

you're very hesitant about sharing information about decision-making with an athlete. And I know all of our athletes, because we have the medical files for years. And if an athlete had an unknown medical condition and you're advising him to do something, and who knows, he might have some sort of hormonal defect that is not yet diagnosed, you're just very cautious

about giving information to someone when you really don't know their medical history. So for that reason, I've stayed very narrow in the processes, but talking to, you know, league officials and other sports, I know a few general managers and other sports and things. I've shared the base information with them so they can, you know, and give them some contact numbers so they could advance it. This is the first ever sports slash epidemiology podcast.

We have, yeah, we're setting us. standard. It's impressive. I don't know where we go from here, Steve. I think we're in deep trouble. Our next broadcast, we can talk about salpingo oophorectomies if you guys like. I don't know. There you go. I was wondering about those. Yeah. Yeah. Well, having said all that, it sounds like you are relatively confident that we're going to be able to see sports coming up before too long, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. Well, I think the one thing, I go by the medical community every week,

and it keeps getting better, better, more defined. And unless we have an interruption with that information, we're fortunate in baseball because we're a social distancing sport. You know, we don't really have the contact level or anything like that, the, that certainly you have in basketball or football. And so the idea of getting the testing,

which I think is going to be really important in context sports. Where you can come to the ballpark every day and our stadiums, I think you guys call them in those games. But you can come there and you can say, hey, I can get a sputum test daily. I can get it in 15 minutes. We're going to have the technology to get about a 96% accuracy rate for that where it can be something your medical professionals

can look at. And also these testing might be able to tell you if someone did have it, where they're at in the virus in that period of time with it and what they need and how they go through it. I think that's going to give everyone a lot of comfort to know we're playing in a league and around people that are, we're assured, are good to go and that they're not going to be any way impaired by playing the game themselves and also the players they play with. Well, I know we're all aching to get back out there, but whether it's coaching.

going for you. Come on, Scott. Yeah, you got to get this done. Yeah, good. That's great. Help us out. No, but we want to say thank you for coming on today. This has been great and fun to hear a little bit about Pete's playing career, too. I mean, I got to get one more story. You got one more story about Pete?

You got no more stories. No, no more. He told enough. He told enough. He told about all of the woes. and the concerns of bodily. But, you know, the interesting thing is, with all the hitting with our heads we used to do in the day,

I'm trying to be the best in the world at coaching shoulder tackling and getting head out of football. So it was a long, hard road for me to get to the point where I would agree that ball could be played without sticking your head right in the middle of it all. But we have learned. And I, you know, so I'm proud of that. I've been able to know, knowing where you know, Scott,

know what you know where I came from. It's been a long haul. but the game has really changed and we're fortunate to be part of it and I'm glad we are. I can vouch for Pete because when I visited you guys up there, Pete in Seattle, you had a whole seminar for your players for your defensive players on tackling without the head. And you showed rugby highlights. Because obviously rugby, you don't have pads, you don't have helmets. And you were teaching basically rugby technique, right?

Yes, yeah, exactly. Getting ahead out of football. It's been a really exciting kind of shift because it's been an evolutionary moment for the game somewhat as we move forward, and we all have to go this way. And there's a great way to play the game. This doesn't have to affect the game at all. We just didn't know that for a long time. We kind of took the easy way out. The equipment allowed us to just keep getting more ferocious and more aggressive with their heads. And fortunately, we've taken a good turn, and we're going to help the players for the long haul. And really, the game has really made a great positive turn. because of it. I'm excited about that. One more story about Pete. Yes. Oh, I tried to talk my way through that. Yes, let's go. There was this track coach, and this guy really taught a lot of sprinters. And I always say I could run when I was in college, and then I went to spring training,

and I found out, oh, my God, no, they can run. But the coach gives me this technique, and all of a sudden I realize I'm, I'm, better. I'm doing it. So I'm in the gym on campus one day, and I'm doing, it was raining, so I was running inside doing sprints. Pete walks up to me and goes, you're running different. What is it? And so I said, you know, I went to this track coach and he taught me this and that and whatever. And so I go in the next day and I'm walking the gym and he's got this technique down. and I said, damn it, he's doing it better than I am because he's got the perfect rhythm.

He got it down in a day. It took me about a month to figure it out. So that's how adaptive he is. It wasn't enough. The last coach that I talked to about playing the game, he said, you can play the game, you got some good stuff, but if you get hitting the thigh one time, you ain't going to be fast enough to tackle anybody.

So you're out. That was my last shot. I was cut forever. I'm still pissed. I love it. I appreciate it, Scotty. Yeah, Scott, thanks for coming on. It was great. Good luck getting everything rolling again. And appreciate you coming on.

It's really a pleasure. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. All right. Take care, Scott. Take care, Pete. See, Steve. All right, Pete.