Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Eric Smith: Toronto Mike'd #135

Episode Date: September 23, 2015

Mike chats with Rogers's Raptors guru Eric Smith about his two decades at The Fan 590, why he switched roles with Paul Jones, what he thought of Butch Carter's criticism, Canada getting screwed in Mexico, his relationship with Drake and much, much more.

Welcome to episode 135 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomic.com and joining me this week is Sportsnet's Raptors guru, Eric Smith. How you doing, Mike? Is guru the official title uh we can go with guru sure why not why not it makes me sound a little more important so why not in fact i was just listening to uh to portions of your chat with uh roger lejoie or at least the joy yeah the i used to call him lovejoy roger lovejoy and uh he had some posts today actually talking about how spiritual he's gotten over the last couple years years, which, you know, good for him and kind of finding, you know, that sort of Zen, I guess.

And he was talking about gurus and Buddhas and whatnot. Oh, like real gurus. I guess. I guess. I'm not quite at that level. We did actually got deep because he was mentioning Paul Henderson because he wrote a book with Paul Henderson. And Paul is like a born again Christian he's uh super religious and I was asking uh Roger the joy like do you need religion like we got so deep do you need religion to have morality essentially you didn't know this is what my podcast was about I did not think we would start there but uh if you're asking me I I mean I I'm

not a religious guy myself I was actually, I was a born and raised Catholic and haven't set foot in a church in at least 20 years other than for a wedding or a funeral. A hundred percent with you. Exactly. That's my story. And I kind of, but I'm fully respectful of anybody and everything. I mean, if religion is your thing, if God is your thing, if whatever denomination you are, whatever you practice, I'll tell you, again, I didn't think we'd even start here. We'll start here. Then we'll get to the fun stuff. But the crazy thing, too, is again, born and raised Catholic, went to Catholic grade school, went to Catholic high school, and I just kind of had one of those

moments where I sort of woke up and thought, you know, there's got to be more out there, and there's got to be something else to this. If there are so many other religions, what makes Catholics such a great one or a good one, a bad one or otherwise? And I tell you, as life's kind of gone on, I've kind of more lived by the, I think at least, I'm sure I have friends and enemies that would disagree and family members. I just kind of think, live a good life, try to be a decent person. And if there is pearly gates, you're probably going to get in. If there aren't pearly gates, then whatever, you don't need to worry about it no matter what your religion was. But the crazy thing is, as well as life has developed, and I've got, you know, family now and everything else, the extended family through my

in-laws, and I don't know if they're going to listen to this or not, but my in-laws split up almost 10 years ago. And my father-in-law ended up getting together with a Jewish woman. And they've been together now for six or seven years. And he hasn't done a full conversion. However, he has Jewish ancestry, you know, if you kind of follow his bloodline back far enough. So now my family's kind of been exposed to, you know, I've been to a couple of different, uh, um, uh, I've been to a couple of different family events over the years, whether it be celebrating Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Which is right now. Which, yeah. And it's kind of interesting just to expose my family to that now too,

into different, you know, different denominations, different walks of life and different viewpoints. So it's kind of, I think it makes you a better, well-rounded person, in a sense, to kind of get a taste of a bunch of different people's views and opinions and followings and religious beliefs and otherwise. Anyways, I didn't really didn't think we'd start there, but hey. Hey, you never know where Toronto Mike is going to start. I will say your story is very similar to mine. And then I went to a Catholic grade school, high school. I even went to St. Mike's College at U of T. Okay.

So that's even an extra step, really. And then one day you just step back and look, why do I believe this stuff? And you realize you believe it because it's been pounded into your brain as a kid. Right. You were told to believe it. You were told to believe it. And you don't question the people who are telling you because you trust them so much. And you step back and you look at all the parts.

And then I came to this conclusion, it's a hundred percent bullshit. That's basically my, my, and I don't know, we're going to, I want to ask you about, uh, you have a son. Yes. And I'm going to, there's a reason I'm asking, but I'll get to that very quickly. Except did you baptize this boy? No, no. And none of my kids have been baptized. I don't, I don't want, I don't want any religion in our lives. I would, I don't know if I'm as strongly against it as perhaps it sounds like you maybe are, but I'm, I'm definitely not for it. Do you know what I mean?

That's for sure. Or you're going to baptize that kid. Come on. No. Oh, absolutely. And your whole like idea, you said the,

you know, if there is a heaven, I'll probably get in or whatever. I, you know, that's fine because you can't prove a negative. Like I can't prove something doesn't exist. I can't prove that it does. You can't prove that it doesn't. because you can't prove a negative. Like I can't prove something doesn't exist. I can't prove that it does.

You can't prove that it doesn't. You definitely can't prove it does. And, you know, it's impossible to prove it doesn't. Except to say, you know, most likely with all logic and sense, most likely there is no pearly gates and there is no heaven. And when we die, it's lights out and you're unaware of anything. And make the most of life you have. Be good to others.

Treat people the way you want them to treat you. Be a decent amen you and i are in lockstep with that you know your son i mentioned your son because um a couple of father's days ago yeah two father's days ago roots came up to me i had a newborn at the time uh and they said hey we'd like to like photograph you and your son for this father's day campaign we're going to do with some, they said, locally famous people. And I was honored that they considered Toronto Mike a locally famous person. So this ad comes out, and it's cool.

Pictures of me and my boy. And I see there's another page to it. There's Eric Smith and his boy. So we share that bond. Yeah, you know, that was fun to do. And you probably legitimately got yours because of the fact that you are, you know, a famous person in Toronto and doing these weekly blogs and podcasts and everything else and people know who you are. Mine was, I don't even know if they knew who I was,

I just knew someone at Roots. One of my wife's good friends is in marketing of some sort or creative at Roots. And she said, we're looking for a sports dad, a lawyer dad, a doctor dad, a media dad, or whatever, all different dads' walks of life. Would you be willing to do this? I said, oh, sure, absolutely. And that was fun to do. Because the interesting thing with that, though, too,

is that I don't know if you get this much or not, but you just told me you've got, are we able to talk about you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I didn't want to be breaking news here. No, I disclosed it publicly already. So you've got three and four on the way i've just got the one but i generally try to leave my family life kind of alone like i try to separate family life and personal life from work life i don't like i on my twitter account even just that's maybe a bad example but it's you know twitter can often be a little glimpse into our lives and what we're doing

personally and professionally i'm not sure I've ever tweeted a picture of my wife or my son or whatever. I just kind of generally make that separation. So it was kind of weird at first. Yeah, this is a big thrill. I'm going to do this photo spread for Roots. And I thought, man, now everybody knows. That's what I was going to say.

If you're trying to separate, you did a shitty job, man. Yeah, I did a terrible job with that. You did a campaign. Yeah, it's like now people know whether I got a boy or a girl. know his name they know what he looks like whatever but it's it's it was a fantastic memory to have you know the pictures are up in the house my mom and dad have a big spread of you know their son and grandson in their house and everything and and and it was it was kind of neat i thought what was cool as well as um you're it was with your son that you did this yeah yeah yeah obviously as a as an, you couldn't do the interview portion,

but the fact that they actually did an interview with my son too and had some quotes from him, that to me was as cool as the pictures just to sort of allow him to talk for a minute and give his little, at the time, four-year-old impression of answers. That was kind of neat in a sense, so I like that. And you're enjoying fatherhood.

I love it, I love it. I don't want to give the stock cliche answer, but it's the mosthood. I love it. I love it. You know, I don't want to give like the stock cliche answer, but it's, you know, it's the most special thing I've done. I'm sure I would love a girl as much, if not more. But the fact that, you know, to have a son and to share so many different experiences with him as a man, it's been fantastic. And I couldn't be more proud of him

in terms of the things that he's already accomplished at a young age. just started grade one a few weeks ago and and you know he's doing french immersion which i'm oh my kids did that too i'm not a huge fan of that either that's so you don't have french right because i my uh my okay so my uh my two kids who are in school are in french immersion i don't speak i speak grade nine french which is barely i don't even i should i shouldn't i say I know a couple of expressions. Yeah, well, when he comes home, I say, you know, je m'appelle daddy. Comment tu appelles-tu? That's about the extent of my, and like, hey, how do you say dog?

It's chien. That's, I can count to 10, you know. S'il te plaît. Yeah, I know that one. That one I know. I couldn't ask you to tell me, how do you say, can you tell me where this bathroom is? Right, right. You can say bathroom.

It's kind of like when I was in Mexico a couple weeks ago for the FIBA Americas. Yeah, we're going to get to that for sure. Pick up a couple of words and just sort of get by and just sort of with body language and eye movements, you sort of can generally get by it. I just went to Italy and I think I picked up, I had five words and I just kept going back to my core. One's like, excuse me. You know, you got your core words and you just kind of rely on that.

Where'd you go in Italy? I went to Rome, Milan, Florence, Cinque Terre, which is the five towns on the Riviera. And what am I missing? Oh my God, Venice. I was going to say, did you get to Venice? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to go to Venice. You're going to Italy.

Yeah, we hit those spots. I've only been once, but that was seven, eight years ago. Oh, to see Andrea. No, no. This is personal, actually. I never went to see Andrea. And actually, when the Raptors did that one trip to Spain and Italy for training camp, I didn't go on that.

That's too much money we're not sending you. So I actually went with my wife. The only time I've actually been over to... No, I shouldn't say the only time because I did go once with the Raptors to the UK. But my wife and I went before my son was born. We started in Paris. I've been there. And then went to Geneva

because we had some friends there. And then went to Rome, Venice, and then back to Geneva, back to Paris. So we're gone just under three weeks or something. Did you go to the grave of Jim Morrison when you were in Paris? Yeah, me too. And who else is there? The Irish guy.

Oscar Wilde is in there. I didn't do that one. Yeah, because then I went, I did Dublin to see his birthplace, and then like next week I was in Paris to see his like grave. This was in a separate trip, not during this Italy trip. This is, yeah, a year trip not during this this is a yeah year before the italy trip yeah yeah hey we've got a long time without talking we did mention andrea though but um i gotta start by asking you uh how you got like why did you how did you end up

as covering basketball for the mainstream media like your first gig correct me if i'm wrong would be global was that the first big no no okay tell me how it all begins for so how long do we have because it's it's up to you man you know i i've i've told this story a couple times where and i think i think i think the best way to say it is right place right time and i'm a big believer in that in a lot of things in life right place right time and often as much as people don't want to admit it it is sometimes who you know but once you that foot in the door, you've got to be able to perform no matter what the job is. It doesn't matter who you know, what contacts you have. It doesn't matter if it was the right place, right time. If you can't do the job, you're eventually going to be found out or you'll be exposed. You will be exposed. So I'll be the first to admit right place, right time. So when I came

out of school, I took the journalism program at Humber and I turned down opportunities to go to Western and Carlton and some of the alleged bigger or, again, supposedly better journalism programs and media programs in the country. Because when I started going to a lot of these information sessions coming out of high school, I had the marks for university, but I was kind of like a low 80s, high 70s type student. I wasn't blowing the world away. But then I start going to these information sessions. I'm thinking, I like the sound of this 20 to 30 person class. I like the sound of these teachers that are in the industry that are just coming to teach you a class and then going to their jobs, not with due respect. Professors that, hey, they're smarter than me. They're smarter than a lot of people,

but they're professors, and they've been teaching the same thing maybe for X number of years. And I started thinking, man, this college route sort of seems like it's for me. Now, we're going back to 93, 94 is when I was coming out of high school. So at the time, and I still to some extent believe that this mentality exists to some extent, it was, and I hate to be so blunt about it smart kids go to university the not so smart kids go to college and that was kind

of hanging over my head at the time like am i actually making this right decision should i be going to university do i need to care about this degree like what's happening here and i i finally said screw it you know this this seems like it's better for me my parents supported it they were cool with it and the cool thing with humber was even though I grew up in Burlington, Humber was only 40 minutes away, not even, but they had a residence. They were one of the few colleges in Canada, let alone in the province that had residents. And I wanted that experience of moving away and being in a residence and kind of meet new friends and kind of just being away from home. So moved away at, at, at 18, of college. Did the two years of journalism.

And this is Rexdale, right? This is Rexdale, oh yeah. Before, I don't even know if it's better now, but it certainly wasn't as good 20 years ago, or roughly 20 years ago. You know, Humber has a, down the street, Humber's got a new... I would have preferred to have been

in this beautiful area on Lakeshore and along the water, not out in Rexdale. Have you walked Lakeshore? You gotta walk Lakeshore before you call it beautiful. And there's a little... There are beautiful pockets. Oh, no, beautiful pockets. Lakeshore? You've got to walk Lakeshore before you call it beautiful. There are beautiful pockets down here. Oh, no, beautiful pockets. Lakeshore itself,

it's still awfully sketchy. Well, South of Lakeshore. That Mimico, New Toronto, it's beautiful South of Lakeshore. I have a couple of good friends that live around here. I think, well, I don't want to give

your address away. South of Lakeshore. One person, one good friend of mine lives literally over the next block, like about 30 seconds from your house. And then I have another one that just moved in, uh, about maybe 25, 30 blocks down. And now you've got a new friend right here. There we go. This won't be our first

time. So anyways, how it all got started. So I finished journalism school, three years journalism school. I got an internship at the fan through the part of the, you know, it was ingrained in the program was you will get, they pretty much said guaranteed a internship somewhere. I wanted television so bad. And when I, cause the way the program was set up and I don't know if it's still the same at Humber, but the first two years, you kind of got a taste of everything. So I took a photography class and an editing class for radio and television, magazine layout newspaper i wrote for the school paper all this stuff but then in your last year you essentially had to to pick for all intents and purposes a major you had to either go the print route or the broadcast route went the broadcast

route i want a television bat i want to be on tv because you're handsome thanks thanks i was now i'm starting to lose my hair so i wish I had the full head of hair like you. You can have some of this. It's a pain in the ass. I need a haircut so bad, buddy. Take the gray. I've been gray since like 22. That's great. You know what?

Gray is better than bald, man. I say that every day. And it's distinguished. So I take the broadcast route. I'm trying to get into TSN at the time. I remember TSN was the big one that had the test. However many questions. Take the sports test just to become an intern. I didn't get the time. I remember TSN was the big one that had the test. You know, however many questions take the sports test and just to become an intern.

I didn't get the internship. I don't know if that's a testament of my sports knowledge or lack thereof or if there was a million people applying. To this day, I don't even know. But I had a teacher, Judy Martin. I'm trying to remember now if she was Judy Charles before or after Judy Charles, Judy Martin at Humber. And she said, what about radio? I was like, yeah, I mean, I like radio, but she's like, you've got the pipes, you've got a voice, you know, try the radio route, get in there. I'm like, but I really want a TV. She's like, I'm telling you radio, radio. Like, okay. So I go to the fan for an interview. Chris Clark, who's now he, Chris is back at Sportsnet now has kind of come full circle after a couple of different stops, most notably with Leafs TV.

And Clarkie sat me down, interviewed me, and hired me as an intern. Well, at the time I got hired, if you kind of look at the window in time, so this would have been my third year of college, so my last year. I started the internship during school. So that would have been then 96, 97. So it was year two of the Raptors. Now, I'm a weird Canadian that grew up playing street hockey every day, including in the summer.

Never played hockey at any significant level. Never wanted to play hockey at any significant level. I grew up playing predominantly baseball, basketball, football, tennis, like pretty much you name the sport. I played it at some level and loved it all, including hockey, but just never played ice hockey and was not really a hockey guy. Then I get into high school

and especially then into college, covering the Humber Hawks and the men's national team. And they were, you know, at the time and still to this day, one of those teams that maybe doesn't get talked as much about in the country, again, because they're college, not university, but they would probably kick a ton of the university teams butts back then and even now right national championship banners hanging up from the rafters

at humber and so i'm covering the team and i'm around the team and i'm sort of sunk into basketball and i'm writing about the team uh for the school paper and all this stuff then i get out and suddenly toronto's got this brand new team this nba team and there aren't as many basketball guys or people that are as interested or is this just kind of flash in the pan is it going to stick around do we really care about this raptor team or otherwise and i'm just this gung-ho intern 22 years old 23 years old like i'll do anything and everything i'll go get your coffee i'll go do get your sandwich i'll go edit this tape i'll do whatever it takes to kind of get my foot in the door well as all this is happening and the raptors are brand new and i'm brand new and i'm fresh

and not even out of school technically and i'm still in school headline sports starts so formally you know the score but headline their original name when they start up they all of a sudden pillage from the fan and from Sportsnet and from TSN producers and engineers and on air and reporters and hosts and everything. Friedman, right? He went over as a ton of guys. Elliot was one of the ones that left a whole bunch of people left,

but suddenly now I'd honestly don't know the number specifically, but let's say six, eight people total leave the fan. They replaced those six or eight with two maybe three i happen to be one of them not as an intern this is again i'm the internship is unpaid right the internship was unpaid right um i'm kind of jumping ahead a little bit spanning over the course of roughly let's say seven eight months okay uh all of this is happening you got a brand new basketball team only a couple years old you now you got a new network starting with headline sports, people leave and boom, I got hired full

time. So I'd been there less than a year, barely half a year. And I got a full time job. So I ended up actually calling it jobbing out of my program. So I technically did not finish Humber, but because the way the system was set up there, they said if you're good enough to get a job you graduate on the dean's list and here's your diploma here you go it's good so i technically left school early and was lucky enough to get the full-time job at the fan starting as a producer and then worked with uh gordon stelic on the big show back when it was one to four and i'm again i'm like 22 years old well i'm pounding on nelson's door every day nelson millman i saying, let me go down to the Raptor games. Let me go down and do something. Let me, I'll do anything. Like I'm working, you know, nine to five, essentially producing the show,

but I'll go down at five o'clock and head to the ACC or back then. Yeah. You know, I'll go down. Let me just hold a mic and a scrum, do something, whatever. So they told me you go down there and just learn the ropes. And when I first started going down was actually even as an intern, when Elliott was still there before Elliott had left for Headline Sports, when Strombo was even going down covering games, and Barry Davis was going down. Well, the next year, the next full season, so I'd been at the fan now, let's call it six months or so.

The next full season for the Raptors, this would have been year three of the Raptors, it turned out that ended up being the last year of their uh rights deal with CFRB so I was still going down to games and covering visitors locker room and just again 23 years old and I'm getting a chance to go down and do this I wasn't the main guy right but I'm down there in the in the locker rooms and doing the interviews and running tape and getting back to the station I'm still producing the daytime show like I mean I mean, I was working like crazy. Uh, not surprisingly, he didn't have a girlfriend at the time, just like fully in, you know, engulfed in work. Right. Um, and then CFRB lost the rights at the end of that season. Well, the next year the fan got the rights and that's when Nelson

hired Chuck Swirsky and Jack Armstrong and he needed pre half and post, uh, host and coverage. strong and he needed pre half and post host and coverage. Well, the first year he hired Barry Davis and I to basically do it together because, and I don't mean to make this sound bad or anything. I would hope if Barry was sitting right here, he would admit this or agree to this. Barry didn't know a ton about basketball, but he'd been around for a number of years and was a good sports reporter and just kind of knew what it took to report and cover a team in the ins

and outs. I knew basketball, but was still fresh to the business even though i'd you know been doing scrums and stuff for a year and a half in visitors locker room i wasn't like to the level that barry was at in terms of the experience reporting and and doing sportscasts and that type of thing so it was kind of like barry you show eric the ropes of this eric you show barry the ropes of that and you guys sort of team up and you'll be co-hosts in a sense. Well, after that first season, Barry opted to move on

and I think it was, if I have it right, it was 1050, the original incarnation, the team. Barry left to go to the team and when Barry left, I was now what, 24? And with Barry leaving, Nelson said, you've done enough, you've shown me enough.

You're taking over as the full-time solo host of the Pre-Half and Post. Really quick, Barry Davis, what kind of hairstyle was he rocking back then? Was this that, did he have the long hair or was this? I never knew Barry with the long hair. I've seen enough of the pictures over the years of the curly coif. I would say his hairstyle was probably similar to what it is right now. There might have been some frosted tips at some point. I'm not sure, but it was never the gigantic,

curly kind of rocker hair. Just wanted to check. So it sounds like a perfect storm, like opportunity knock, but like you said, the door will open. Timing is everything. The door opens,

but you got to put in your time and you got to be good to keep that gig. Yeah, but you gotta, you gotta put in your time and you gotta be good to keep that gig. Yeah. And, and I mean, it's, I don't want to sound like it's bragging or arrogant about it, but I, the fact that I was in that role at such a young age that Nelson took a chance on me and then, you know, year one became year two became year three. And if I'm doing the math correct in my head, it was six or seven years that I did that. And while that was happening and I was the host of the pre-F and post, I produced for Gordy for another year. I ended up being on the big show for about two and a half years, roughly.

And then I was phased out of that because Nelson said, you've got so much to do. You can't be burning at both ends. You've shown enough so far in terms of what you've done on air. And then that kind of rolled into, all right, you're already working evenings and weekends covering the raptors we're going to be having you doing evenings and weekends hosting talk shows and now we start you know getting into now that you've done some talk shows now you can start doing some daytime shows and fill in when we guys are on vacation in the summertime and and all that so it just kind of morphs as the years go on to the point where uh uh, it's just, you know, the more on air reps you get and the more hosting you do. And, and suddenly then Chuck and Jack leave for television. And

I've said this to Nelson, I've said this to, to, to Romanuk and to Jonesy, but when Chuck and Jack left for television, again, this was after I'd done pre pre-off and post for about six, seven years. Um, I got called in and I thought I was going to have a shot at maybe grabbing, you know, the play by play, the color gig, something like somehow involved in the broadcast. Right. And Nelson decided at the time that I wasn't ready or there were other people that were better and more experienced, which absolutely true is fine. He hired Paul Romanuk and he hired Paul Jones and Jones. He'd been working with me doing some post-game stuff. So Jonesy essentially took over for Jack. Romanuk took over for Swirsky.

Well, after that one year of those two together, Paul and Paul, Paul Romanuk's wife got offered a gig. I've never met her, actually, but she's fairly high up in Coca-Cola, or at least she was. I don't know if she still has that job. She got offered a job, a pretty substantial job, and a big role in Europe. Yes, in the UK. Paul Romanuk followed her over to the UK, which then opened the door on the broadcast.

And that's when Nelson decided that he was going to slide Jonesy over from analyst after one year to play by play and me into the analyst role. And I know at the time, a lot of people, I'd be lying if I didn't say myself included, were thinking, okay, Jonesy's the one that has played at a significant level. And for the national team, I didn't play collegiately or professionally. I didn't coach collegiately or professionally. And Nelson said to me, listen, what you've been doing for me for the last seven years on the pre-aff and post is analyzing you're telling me what did or didn't work why it did or didn't happen you're you're giving me the essence of what happened and on top of that jonesy actually has some play-by-play experience might have been 10 15 years ago or 20 years ago when he was in college

but he's called some games in the past you haven't really called as many games but you have analyzed and you have covered a team and you know why things did or didn't work and what's happening on the floor so i'm gonna go sort of non-traditional in a sense i'm gonna have this more of a you know a conversational almost baseball style broadcast where it's two guys together are my crew not this is my play-by-play guy this is is my color guy. You have two distinct roles. It's no, you guys, yeah, you're the color guy and you're the play-by-play guy, but this is, you are together.

And I think, you know, Jonesy and I made that work and hey, did we take some lumps at first? I'm sure we did, but did we get better as the years went on and did the broadcast grow? I think so. And I think the chemistry is what made us as good as we were for so long. So that's, I don't know if I've kind of wrapped it all up because you know in between of all that there's

no i got some questions but that was very i like that because that was very thorough and that's the that's the shit i'm interested in but what hopefully people listening are too they might be like shut up this guy rambles on a lot no listen they'd rather hear from you than me i promise it's hard it's hard to wrap up 15 plus years in in less than it's good but why do i have this note about global tv did is that there's no global tv and oh there is global tv so this so this is the thing there's so many other things in there that again as you're doing these things this is why somebody recently asked me i don't know if i'm taking one of your questions away somebody recently asked me like man you've you've like never left the fan like well i've

never had to leave the fan necessarily because and again i'm not saying this arrogantly by any means i've had other things come along the way because of my role at the fan and the work i've done at the fan so as i'm doing all this stuff again i'm kind of grabbing things no but i want to hear this because of course when rogers when does rogers buy the fan so rogers bought the fan i want to say 10 years ago roughly because i'm gonna guess that rogers wouldn't want you on the air at global tv that's my guess there are people and i know the first name that comes to my mind would be Strombolopoulos, but there are people that know far more about the, the exact history of the industry better than me in terms of who owned what,

when, who was actually connected through the various branches. But at the time, if I'm correct in saying this, yeah, go ahead. Global was sort of neutral. I don't think they were Shaw. I don't think... Wait, they were Shaw?

I don't think there was... I believe so, but I don't... And Shaw and Rogers had some kind of... Yeah, at the time that I was on Global, there was no direct affiliation with Bell or Rogers, to my knowledge. Because they hadn't bought City TV or whatever. They hadn't...

Because eventually they buy CTV. They were Pan West and they were like... Oh, yeah, it's all over. You're right. City TV is Rogers today. Yes, yes. So now there's a competitor. Like now Rogers would would be when that happens rogers has a direct competitor to global tv right so they don't want one of their guys which is understandable yeah sure

um it's always i actually ross weston was on this show okay and he works for a rogers station but he's on global tv every day see and he tells me he's got lawyers and he's got separate contracts of each where they they can't like fire him for doing the other if you will like it got very spaghetti but he's actually got that working so i think rogers and shaw if shaw's owning canwest global whatever i i get confused too but i think there is some unholy alliance there where uh rogers and shaw can play together in some respect see i i think the other thing as well is that without talking about too many other guys business i think there are a lot of guys in the industry that are contract and or freelance and so there becomes gray area good segue versus

versus whether you're a full-timer so some people in the business are considered full-time staff so you're locked in others it's like well there is this sort of gray area so you know they can kind of get around it through through stuff like that so to answer your global question yeah again over the course of doing various predominantly basketball obviously and doing other shows you know i talked about like doing the evening show at the fan and then for a couple years doing doing the afternoon show when Jack Armstrong and I were together with the game plan. Well, the global thing started just kind of on a chance meeting with Jim Taddy down at a Raptor game one night. Yes, guy. Yeah, there you go.

Have you had Jimmy on here? No, I've had Hebsey twice. No Jimmy yet. You've got to have Jim on. I'll put in a word for you. Do it, do it. So Jim said, I think at the time he was using Howard Berger for doing some hockey stuff. He was using Howard Berger uh for doing some

hockey stuff he was using Perry Lefkoe uh doing some CFL stuff and he was just looking to have a basketball guy he asked me would you be willing to come in one week and just talk some Raptors with us or talk some NBA so again one week became a couple of weeks became a few years and then he actually in in some senses kind of gave me a little bit of the start in TV by having me on for these little three to five minute segments once a week for three four years fulfilling your dream yeah getting on tv and then i started doing stuff at nba tv back at the time raptors tv hosting a couple of shows there and appearing as a host on one and analyst on another and so just all these little these extra gigs that come along the way spill into the the growth of the pre-f and post the color the play-by-play then like the stuff with sports net really even right now that's really only kind

of come up in the last two years i mean i've been with rogers for almost 10 years but because the raptors weren't doing well and weren't really a sexy team and and weren't really warranting the coverage sports that didn't use me a whole lot. I was constantly pounding on the door. Hey, I'm here. You guys want to use me? I've got a ton of experience too. Like use me, use me, use me.

And it's been in the, finally in the last couple of years now that the Raptors are relevant and they're playing well, Eric, can you do this? Can you do that? And then suddenly now, boom, they started doing more and more and more. Rogers owns half of MLSE. Like that's got to play in there too.

Like suddenly they have a ownership kind of incentive to promote the basketball team there there's that you can't deny that's got to change oh absolutely it's huge it's i think it's huge i mean look at even of course the coverage of the blue jays not just now but a couple years ago i had a chance to host a baseball show in the summertime because they they needed a a host for this this show i'd shown enough to them that they gave me an opportunity. So I'm hosting Blue Jays Express or, you know, when Rogers and Bell came together for the 2012 Olympics and I got a chance to do the boxing, like just all these little things that opportunities present themselves.

And it goes back to where I started with this answer 20 minutes ago. Yeah, yeah. Right place, right time opportunity. But then you got to take it and you got to do it. And I tell you, if I can give one piece of advice to anybody, any, anytime you get those, those phone calls from college university students or high school students that are doing papers and they say, what's the one piece of advice you'd give? I'd say, honestly, if, if it's possible, listen, you got to have a life. Yes. But at the same time, how bad do you want this? Don't say no to anything because you never know and i know again

this kind of sounds cliche but you never know when that chance might come i bugged gino retta to this day that he still owes me probably a couple hundred dollars for buying his harvey's hamburgers every week when he would come in and be flying through the door at the last second a minute before the junior hockey magazine radio show is starting, which I produced. I didn't know a damn thing about junior hockey. That's funny. But I was asked, can you produce the Junior Hockey Magazine?

Absolutely, I can produce the Junior Hockey Magazine. Sure, I'll come in and do that. And then Gino Reda driving in, hey, I'm not going to have time to grab my dinner. Can you run up and get me something? No problem, Gino. I'll get your Harveys for you. Hey, Eric, can you go get coffee? No problem.

I'll go on the coffee run. Anything you can do to meet people, to be around people. And then can you come in on Saturday? Oh, man, I had a barbecue. I was going out. I had a date. Yeah, I can come in Saturday because you never know if the boss might happen to be coming through on Saturday or if a story, especially in sports, a story breaks. There's a trade and all the bodies are scattered around at cottages or they're off. Shit, we need somebody to go down and hold a mic.

We need somebody to be there to represent us. Who's that? Eric, go. You cover that. You never know when your chance is going to come. But then you get that chance. You got to perform. So I always say to kids or to young people, young adults, do anything and everything and

nothing should be beneath you, whether it's pulling cables, whether it's editing tape, whether it's going on coffee runs, you do it with a smile. You don't think you're above anything else, and just do it and get as much experience as you can. And I think that makes you not only a better person overall, but a better professional and broadcaster because you've now had a taste of so many different levels of the industry that I think it makes you a better broadcaster in the long run. To summarize, be ready to work very hard for very little. Absolutely. Don't get into this to get rich.

So I'm sure now you're a wealthy man. I saw you pulled up in the Cadillac, so I know you're doing okay now. But back then, how do you live in the city? Is it just you eat ramen noodles or whatever? I was a big fan of Kraft Dinner. Yeah? Still empty to this day.

But that's gone up in price. I remember when it was three for a dollar when it was in the flyer. I worked at a grocery store for five years. And the flyer price was three for 99 cents at the Price Chopper at Dufferin and DuPont. Yeah, now it's what, like three for $3 or something? Now you need to take out a loan before you load up on your Kraft Dinner. You know what? When I first started at the fan as an intern, again, that was about a six, eight month stretch that I was interning before I got a single dime for it, which again,

to me, internship, I don't understand this concept of paid internship. You're either an intern or you have a part-time job. I understand this and I find it exploitive, but I've never been in this world. So I shouldn't, maybe it's because I went through it and I'm like, Hey, wait a second. I didn't get paid. So why are you? It's slave labor, but that's another episode. Well, at the time, so the fan before it was bought by Rogers, I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but the old studio is at 40 Hawley Street at Yonge and Eglinton.

That was, if I'm remembering correctly, roughly 10 bucks a day to park. I was in there almost every day of the week, but at the very least five days a week. I'm spending minimum 50 bucks a week. I'm not making any money because I can't hold down a part-time job or a full-time job anywhere because my full-time job is my internship, which is unpaid. So it was really a case of being very lucky to have been very good at saving money at it from starting from a young

age. I mean, I started working when I was 13 years old and I was extremely lucky in my first year of college, just when I was of legal age to get hired by the LCBO as a seasonal help at Christmas time. And again, we're talking 20 plus years ago. I was almost making 15 bucks an hour then. Yeah. If I never got into broadcasting, there's a good chance I could be working for the LCBO still to this day because there are people there. That's their career, period. They're making good money. So to be able to get

that kind of money at that age and be able to sock it away and just sort of milk and live off that over the course of X number of months, and then I can still remember. I won't tell you now what I'm making,

but I will tell you my first job when I was hired full-time at the fan, when I was, I told you, Gord's show and running around Raptors and doing anything and everything, my first full-time salary was $24,000. So, it's a little more than that right now, but it was $24,000 when I started. But I can relate because we're pretty much the same age.

And that was before tax, by the way. Yeah, of course. That is literally gross, right? But yeah, I can tell you what that was. And yeah, that's tough to make a go of it in Toronto. But you did it. And now you got the Cadillac. Is that correct?

Yes. Or did I make that up? You saw that beautiful Cadillac. My car starts with a C. Well, you saw my car in the driveway, right? Come on, 99 protege, 280,000 clicks on it. Hey, when you had to go from one car to two cars, which I did, you know,

you don't care what you drive anymore. As long as it's got four wheels and it's safe and it gets you from point A to point B. I've never been a car guy. No, no, come on, look what I drive. Do I look like a car guy? It's rusty now, But I do have a problem coming soon in that

the family will be six. There are five seatbelts in the car. So I do have a problem in 2016. What you need to do is have on some... Oh no. You need to have on somebody. There's got to be somebody listening right now. Or you have to know somebody

at... I'll give them all a shout out at ford at honda at at chrysler at somewhere that's either going to come on your podcast and and show their company for a bit and well they're either going to give you one or they're going to give you a really good deal because you're toronto mike and you need a minivan i'm all dude i'm way ahead of you i have good relationships particularly particularly with GM and Ford. And I will take week-long test drives of their cars every summer. I have good relationships and I'm on this.

And I think the best they do, I believe, would be employee pricing, they call it. But sometimes they actually, Ford, for example, will actually open that up to regular Joes. Couldn't this be Toronto Mike brought to you by Ford? Look, I'm working. I think you got to make some calls after you get tatty on this. You're make some calls i got a question about you you're

you are a permanent full-time employee of rogers right okay what is paul jones is he a contract guy uh i feel you know where i'm going with this we gotta go there we gotta go there because i got a question no i i i i understand that i hate talking about his own well you're not gonna tell me you're just gonna tell me whether he's a permanent he's not a full-time he's not a full-time play of rogers so that's i think where again we talked a few minutes ago but the the gray area that exists um i i've never sat in any of the conversations that he has had uh because that's that's his deal that's that's you know his contract his gig that's hiserogative. I've never sat in on any of those conversations. But I believe because of the fact that he is not a full-time employee of Rogers or a full-time employee of Bell, because he is an independent contractor,

he has thus been able to negotiate separate deals, which has enabled him to be able to appear on both TSN radio and the fan. That's my knowledge of the situation. I can't because of being a full-time... Right. So who is... Remind me, who's the Eric Smith in Bell? At Bell.

I don't know if there is one, to be honest with you. Honestly, I don't know if there is one. I just can't remember. Perhaps. Perhaps. honestly i don't know if there is one i i just uh can't remember perhaps perhaps uh and i don't i'm not saying this by any means in a in a in a in a negative context um i said perhaps maybe the closest thing might be um josh lewenberg like he's their raptors reporter okay um but in terms terms of being on the broadcast... I don't think there is. Maybe it's a guy like a Rod

Black. Rod's not the play-by-play guy with the Raptors, but he does sideline reporting and hosting. TSN stuff. Yeah, and he of course does the TSN CFL play-by-play, and he does studio hosting for basketball, and he's done some basketball play-by-play over the years. So perhaps Rod maybe is the closest thing

to being a Bell version of me. Rod hasn't been on Sportsnet since he was actually a Sportsnet employee. Right. Rod, has he got a mustache now or not? Rod does not have a mustache right now. Yeah, okay, so he doesn't. And Gino does not. That left, right, in 85 or something.

Yeah, that left. Because I or something that left because i only can picture gino of a mustache yeah i think it still exists in like coffee mugs and t-shirts i've seen the mug i would love to actually have one mug that's awesome so okay so forever you're the color guy and paul jones is doing play-by-play yeah then uh last season just last season switcheroo yeah what's i i don't want like the corporate likes what happened there like why the switch just was that because of your statuses god's honest truth this we already established we don't believe in god so i don't know if this has any weight that's a very fair point okay whomever god you you you uh adhere to and abide by truth wise. It came as much of a shock to me as it did to you and to many others.

When I got called in prior to last season, I was legitimately concerned that something might've been going on, like as far as my job. And the only reason I say that is, as you brought up earlier, Bell Rogers, their shared ownership, essentially 50 essentially 50 50 but you know 37 and a half percent each um when they took over maple sports and entertainment and had this this joint ownership we all knew that okay there's going to be some blurred lines and you know the the mortal enemies become friends and become partners but yet they're still mortal enemies on the television and radio side and in broadcasting and everything else so how's

this going to work and when i say moral enemies of course i'm saying that tongue-in-cheek is within the industry everybody likes everybody it's no kiprios did tweet those fuckers at tsn okay come on that is true that is true i can't stand for nick but hey you know I'm sure Nick will hold up his own weight on that. The broadcast side of things we were led to believe when all this went down would eventually be 50-50 straight down the middle. You're going to get 41 games Sportsnet. You're going to get 41 games TSN. You're going to get 41 games Fan 590. You're going to get 41 games TSN Radio. Well, that didn't

start until last season when it became a true 50-50 split, at least on the radio side. The season prior to that, it hadn't split yet. So when last summer rolled around and I got told, like, come in for a meeting, like, man, the season doesn't even start

for a couple of months. Sportsnet Rogers is going into this first year of this hockey deal. The Raptors had a solid season and all, but they bowed out early in the playoffs to Brooklyn. I'm thinking in my mind, I'm like, man, okay, is basketball going to kind of be pushing in the shadows a little bit here, even more so because of the fact that we're going to understandably focus so much on hockey because of the amount of money that's been spent.

And there's only going to be so focus so much on hockey because of the amount of money that's been spent. And, and, and there's not, there's only gonna be so much room for on television and on radio for basketball. And I'm predominantly the basketball guy. I don't do a lot of the hosting of other talk shows anymore. And I wasn't doing that baseball show anymore in the summertime. I'm thinking, man, am I like, I remember saying to my wife, like I've never in almost 20 years truly, truly thought I'm in jeopardy because I've done so many different things that I felt like I've earned my keep right. And I'm thinking, all right, so what's going to happen now?

We go into the fall and suddenly there's half the games, but I'm not doing a whole bunch of these other extra things anymore. I wonder if I might be getting let go or something happening. So I was walking into that meeting like with, I wouldn't say I was like sweating bullets, but there was a thought in my mind, like be prepared for, Hey,

you're great. And you've been great. And this is a folder to be handed to. Yeah. Like, you know, and, and I,

I, I had been down that path a few years earlier when, you know, when the fan made all those changes and i was lucky enough knock on wood to be one of those guys that me mccowan and i don't at the time barb de julio we were pretty much the only ones that seemed to keep their job that day when everybody that's the one where landry and stellick got it and landry and stelberger hogan and it was just yeah unfortunate and i mean that was a horrendous day. And like the fact that I, I survived through that was personally speaking, obviously a huge relief, but still personally and professionally, all those people were and still are my friends. And it was a very difficult day to get through.

man, could I be heading home with a, you know, hopefully pretty nice severance package and okay, I'll be all right. My wife said, listen, you've done enough in the industry. You'll be fine. I can't believe it'd be that though. But I was walking legitimately thinking what's happening. And I walked into that meeting and I was sitting there and within two minutes, it was congratulations. You're the new voice of the Raptors. And I just like literally was bug-eyed jaw dropped and i kind of sorry what we've decided to make a change and i remember saying why like paul and i

are good together like this and it was just we feel that you know this is a change that we want to make at this point it's not a reflection of Paul. It's not a reflection of you, good or bad, in terms of Paul's play-by-play or your analysis. We feel like this is just the change that we want to make. And going forward, this is the way it's going to be. And that was it. And I honestly remember not even having a moment to feel excited or to be happy in a sense of, hey, I'm suddenly the play-by-play voice of the Raptors, albeit for 41 games. But for our 41 games, I'm the play-by-play voice. I'm an NBA play-by-play guy because my instant reaction was, how's this going to go over with Paul? Because Paul and I are, were, are very good friends. And, you know, I've grown up with his

kids and bought them christmas presents and broken bread in his home and he's thrown my kid up in the air and he's uncle jonesy right how's this gonna go over and it it was difficult it was awkward uh understandably so for both of us because it's kind of adapting to new roles but i think the one conversation that we had very early on um and i'm sure it helped that paul um was able to get hired on by tsn so he's still getting play by play even though he's still getting analysis now too and that's i understand that that can be kind of strange i guess if for lack of a better word so he's kind of getting the best of both worlds to some extent in that he's now still able to do

all 82 i'm not right it's just he's splitting up his 82 with two separate roles. Um, but I remember saying to him early on that the one conversation we had that I hoped was kind of going to make things better. And I think we got through it. It'd be lying if I said there wasn't growing pains for both of us last year, but it was for almost a decade. We were a team. What'd I say to you 20 minutes ago when I talked about when Nelson first made the move? It was non-traditional. It was, I don't care about, you are an analyst and you are a play-by-play.

It's two guys having a conversation, talking basketball, transfer that and what you've been doing on the post-game show and on the pre-and-after show, transfer it into the broadcast. You've got to give me the play-by-play still. You've still got to create the picture and paint the picture for our listeners, but transfer what you guys had and the chemistry you had there onto the broadcast. You've got to give me the play by play still. You still got to create the picture and paint the picture for our listeners,

but transfer what you guys had in the chemistry you had there onto the broadcast. And I said to Paul, I don't see that changing. I never looked at you as above me because you were the play by play guy and me, you know, below you or subservient because I was simply just quote unquote,

the analyst. We are a team. So we are still a team period. So let's just take that. Yeah analyst, we are a team. So we are still a team period. So let's just take that. Yeah. The rules are different, but let's just take that and let's move forward in this, this sort of new era. And let's do that. And I think that as the season went on, it, it, it got to that point. I would, I would hazard to guess the hardcore fan. I'm sure in the first game, let alone the first month, probably said,

the heck's going on here? These guys, they're doing different things. That's the hardcore fan. I would say your casual fan or your average fan, and I'm not saying that in a negative way, probably didn't even notice. You know what I mean? Because I think there are times when, even in my play-by-play, I may have been sort of morphing into giving analysis.

It is true that you guys sort of, yeah. And there was times when Jonesy's analysis maybe went on too long to the point where the play's going on, and he kind of did some play-by-play. Because it's more of a conversational. Again, I kind of reference almost like a baseball broadcast where it's two guys talking, not necessarily such defined, distinct roles.

And you, okay, so you were surprised by this decision and uh you and jonesy if i may i call him jonesy can you i've got no problem with that i think jonesy would have no problem with that okay actually i hate smitty yeah i truly hate smitty motor city smitty is that better sure if you want to go with that i'm not a leaf guy but i see your big banner hanging up here so that's right uh unfortunately i'm a leaf guy um okay so how much of this decision though in your business in your sense uh is because of your status as the full-time rogers like that's got to be there's got to be a business reason i feel that i don't know i feel the business reason because of your statuses and he's not a rogers guy he's a freelance or a contract guy or

whatever i i would imagine it plays a part how How big of a part? I don't know. To your point, it could be the sole reason. It could be 5% of the reason. And the only reason I say that is nobody ever specifically told me that. But the other thing is, if that was so important, they could have done it at any point over the course of our nine years previous. We've been together now 10 years.

Nine years was... but they only started the split last season right like the 41 41 that's only last year was the first year of that is that right or am i wrong that uh last year was the first year of the true split of the radio side having the 41 40 the year before two years ago there was the split but TSN Radio was doing a simulcast at that point. Last year was the first year that TSN Radio opted to actually have a live broadcast. Which is a good idea. Agreed.

I mean, honestly, I'm not trying to be like Joe Company guy. I don't concern myself a lot with what TSN Radio is doing because I've got to focus on my own thing. Of course, yeah. But in terms of just being a purist as far as radio or television, yeah, I've never been a big fan of the simululcast for anything and in fact i lived through it myself um when chuck and jack did a simulcast uh one year or or chuck and leo depending on uh who was involved and i was at the time again i can't remember which year it was which season it was but i was the host pre-f and post and even just in that role trying to navigate through having your the tv truck in in one year and the radio broadcast in

the other year and trying to time it out to get through your commercial break or get your quick little sports update in or your score out of town scores whatever to make sure you got it back in time so you didn't miss the broadcast it was a nightmare i've never been a big fan of the of the uh of the simulcast so like yeah kudos that they actually started it but it's um i i don't know okay it might it might simply be because here's the other thing too and again i don't want to i don't want to speak for the other side because i'm again i haven't sat in those conversations to know right wrong or otherwise But if having a distinct Rodgers guy or a distinct Bell guy was the true concern for either side, depending on which side you look at it, well, I would gather that most people, most people would believe that Paul Jonesy is a Rodgers guy.

Even though they might not know the intricacies of the details, he's worked for so many years for the fan and worked for so many years and appeared on sportsnet.ca and on Sportsnet television that most people would probably just generally assume he's a Rogers guy. Well, he's now the play-by-play guy on Bell on TSN radio. So if each side was so concerned

to having their guy as the voice then i would imagine bell wouldn't have hired paul because he's not necessarily a bell guy per se so i again i don't know the answer because i haven't sat in those meetings yeah um i think it's fantastic again for him that he's i hey i wish i could work all 82 games but at the same time that will never happen for me uh as long as i'm a full-time employee and and and I think that the other interesting thing for me is as much as I don't do all 82 now on the radio what has happened for me and it's to me a silver lining is that I'm now able to do almost half of the television broadcast doing the sideline and I'm hosting everything else so that has you again, talking about all these doors that sort of open as you want.

It's like, it seems like one door is closed because now, oh, you're going from doing 82 radio games to only doing 41. Well, hold on a second. Now there's 25 odd television games that we need you to work. Can you do the sidelines? Can you do the hosting? Can you do our pre and half and all this stuff? Absolutely. Cool. And then I'm still, because of when you add it all up, I think last year I'd worked 66 or 67 of the 82. Yeah. But I still traveled for the entire season because, you know, it's like you go on a road trip, say there's a five-game road trip,

and it was radio tonight, TV tomorrow, radio the next game, neither the fourth game, because it's a TSN radio and a TSN TV, so you're not working. But then the fifth game is play-by-play again on the fan fan so you're just there for the whole trip and then every home game like if there happens to be a home game on a wednesday night that's uh uh tsn radio tsn tv i'm still there at that game i don't sit at home and go ah i'm not working i'm still there because i've been there for almost 20 years right it would feel weird to not be there. But then I'm also doing a pregame hit on Sportsnet Central

or this year now Tim and Sid or needing to help out postgame or whatever. And just being around to talk to the players and the coaches and just kind of being seen. So I'm still at every single game and working in some capacity. You know what I mean? Cool. Okay, so you're new to play-by-play.

Obviously, there's a learning curve but you get better each time you know you put in your reps you improve through the season so i got a question about uh a tweet from uh butch carter you ever heard of him i've heard of butch all right i gotta read the tweet and then i gotta ask you about it so his tweet this might come up coming in from airport tonight. Really disappointed in radio broadcast. Have more to say later. Wish I would have known earlier. So Butch, that's obviously about you

and Jonesy switching spots, right? Yep. Remind me when that was in the year too. I can't remember if that was like... Early though. It was January or was that like in November or something? Do you have that? I know I don't have that. You'd think I'd have this internet machine I could find out. But real quick, one more because he does another tweet. He said he'd have more. Here it comes. Tonight's radio not very good. Did not know Eric switched.

Not very good. He's repeating himself in these tweets. How do you put Eric in a position to fail? He has never done play by play. Come onby-play. Come on, Butch. Come on, Butch. That's not fair. How did you feel when you saw these tweets and what fell out of this Butch criticism? Honestly, not a lot fell out of it. But he got banned from...

Didn't he get banned from the fan after that or am I connecting stories that are not connected? He used to be on Primetime Sports a lot he was on then after those tweets he stopped doing that here's the interesting thing um again it'll be a very long answer as you can tell you it's a podcast there's no timelines here man i tend not to give short answers in anything my wife will tell you just sometimes i gotta learn to shut up um when i found out about that tweet it was uh i was i was still at the ACC and Jonesy and I were, if I have it correct, it was on a Wednesday night.

Cause we were pre-taping our hoop show, which airs on Thursdays. Right. And we were, we were, uh, pre-taping it after the Raptor game on the Wednesday night because we were taking a flight the next day somewhere. I can't remember exactly where. So we wouldn't have landed in time to do the Thursday show. So I'm, I'm literally sitting a foot away from Jonesy and we're, we're taping this,

this interview and my phone buzzes and Jonesy's in the middle of an answer. So I've got a second to check my phone and it was Andrew Walker. And I mean, Andrew and I are friendly. I get along with him, but I, we're not like, we don't hang out a ton socially away from the station,

whatever. I don't know if I'd ever had a text from Andrew Walker. And I have, by the way, just want to point that out you guys are big buddies yeah of course so he's been here once so he he texted basically like don't worry about it forget that it's you know one man's opinion and i'm like looking at my phone what the hell are you talking what the hell just happened so i write back pretty much the hell are you talking about? What the hell just happened? So I write back pretty much, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah. And he's like, oh shit, you didn't see? So then he's like, check Twitter. So I check Twitter.

Yeah. And I see the tweets. And I'll be honest with you, it was a punch in the gut because in my mind, and I'm, again, trying to be honest about it, when I go home and listen to broadcasts, and I listen to myself,

was game one as good as game five? No. No. Was game five as good as game 10? No. Like, I think you get better. Yeah. I'm not saying the first broadcast was horrendous

or the seventh broadcast was a train wreck. I think it was good. It got better. It's going to get better. This year is hopefully, you know, year two is better than year one. Year three is better than year two, et cetera. I think that's just natural in anything.

You get better with reps and with experience and everything else. But I think the problem I had with it, with the tweet is, hey, he's fully entitled. And part of our industry, our business is if we're going to be public is if we're going to be public figures and we're going to be covering public figures as well, you're going to be open and susceptible to praise and criticism as well. So he's fully entitled to that. I just feel like

there was a couple of things I didn't like about it. And one was the way, and you just read the tweets, is that first of all, he didn't know. He's acknowledging one of the tweets that he didn't know. So you didn't even know, but yet in the coming home from the airport. So you live somewhere in the GTA, so I'm going to guess it's a 30 to 60 minute ride. So in those 30 to 60 minutes in the car, having not even known that we had switched, you decided in that small brief amount of time that I am terrible.

That you failed because you were set up to fail. And that I'll never be good and I never have been good and that this is just a colossal mistake and failure and everything else. I also don't believe that at no point over the course of the month or two or three that the season had gone on, that he had never heard

a broadcast or never knew of this going on because it had been talked about quite a lot in terms of not only the switch that had been made but the tsn and the fan and the 4141 and whatever else i just i i kind of was perplexed as to how he had not even known that this had happened, not ever heard it before, but then also formulated such an opinion in such a brief amount of time that that was it. Let alone the fact that I tell you that day and listen to this to this day, even I'm not going to sit here and say I've got like an ax to grind with Butch on a personal level. Do I wish that I didn't get ripped publicly? Yeah, it would have been nice not to be ripped, but the man's entitled to his opinion. But that day, if you had said to me,

what's your opinion, which Carter, which is a decent guy I've done shows of Butch. In fact, I had done a NBA preview with Butch earlier in the season on Tim and Sid with Jonesy with Butch. I've, I always had a great professional working relationship with Butch.

You know, I had nothing bad to say about the guy. So from the fact that he was kind of a quasi-Rogers guy in a sense too, being an analyst and working with- And a friend of Bob, as we call him. A friend of Bob, friend of Tim and Sid, and doing some television work in the studio at Sportsnet and stuff. I think from that whole kind of concept of being a teammate type thing,

if he had that much of a problem with it, or if that was that much of an issue, or he felt so passionate about how apparently bad I was, you know what? Call me up. Yeah. Call me up and say, Hey man, I just found out about this. Can I give you some advice from a guy who's played in the league and coaching league? How about trying this? Or, you about trying this? And I think he referenced it in another tweet. He mentioned, I grew up on X number of broadcasters, and of course, one of them that he mentioned was Chick Hearn. Hey, if you don't think I'm Chick Hearn, I'll admit I'm not Chick Hearn.

Hopefully in 10, 20, 30 years. Yeah, that's like telling Wilner he's no Tom Cheek. It's like he'll be the first to tell you he's no Tom Cheek. Yeah, okay. I will fully admit right here, right now, I am not Chick Hearn. One day, could I be? I would love to be considered a Chick Hearn one day, but come on. So to me, again, it was one of those things where could you have called me up and just said,

hey, I just found out about this. Let me give you some advice. Try this. Try that. Or I've heard this guy. This might be something to consider or whatever else. To me, that was a better route. So I don't know what the motivation was.

If there was. I actually think it might have been less anti-Eric and more pro-Paul. I feel like maybe, I don't know the relationship between Paul Jones and Butch Carter, but I think maybe Butch has seen it as a demotion, an unwarranted demotion for Paul Jones, possibly. Maybe that's the root of this not that you were so bad but maybe that he preferred paul jones and maybe for all we know they're they're closer or something who knows what's coming from that i mean it's it's again i guess that's possible and it's not this is not racial right it's not because you're a white guy i highly highly highly doubt

it's a racial thing again i prior prior to that day, prior to the minutes, even before I even found out about that, I, to my knowledge, had absolutely never had a problem with Butch. Now, the other thing, too, is, and listen, I don't, again, I'm not trying to get into slinging mud here or whatever. I don't think Butch listens. The fact that, from what I recall, and maybe it's changed, I haven't looked at that tweet since probably the day of and the days after it came out, that tweet or those couple of tweets were not retweeted or favorited by more than three people, I think, or something. So either people didn't see it, and I'm not criticizing however many followers he does it, I don't even know, he could have 50,000 for all I know.

But either people didn't see the tweet, or people didn't agree with the tweet, because it wasn't like, oh my God, boom. People didn't want to endorse that, because I think it was unfair. Plus on top of that, it didn't really get out for maybe a day, day and a half, and I think it was toronto sports media that

finally who's been on this show that guy yeah yeah i've actually we've never actually met in person he just he emailed me a couple weeks ago looking for blue jays tickets only to find out he emailed the wrong eric oh that's funny i just got this email out of nowhere wait a minute he's got contacts who can hook him up with jay's tickets come on isn't he a lawyer or he works no he's not a lawyer well he works he works in law, doesn't he? I'm not allowed to speak on that. He's a very private guy. So anyways, the fact that it was picked up a day and a half or so later

means that, again, it wasn't even out there. So either people didn't agree or people didn't think it was fair or whatever. And then, again, I don't want to turn into a he said, she said, this and that, whatever. But I can tell you that a number of people, including many that you've had on this show, that night and the subsequent day or two afterwards, the folks that I heard from that not only said, it ain't true, I like your play-by-play, or you're doing a great job, or that was BS, or don't listen to that or whatever. I mean, the support I got from others. And I'll tell you the

other thing too, is, and I don't want to say anything. This guy says that I'm good. So I must be good. Cause Hey, again, it's opinion just because one person says you're great. Doesn't mean the guy that says you're bad. Isn't right. It's opinion. That's that's fine. People are entitled to that, but people that I consider, not even friends in the industry, just acquaintances or just, you know, co-work, not even co-workers. What's the word I'm looking for?

It's escaping me. Just, I guess, again, acquaintances may be the best word. People that aren't close, close friends of mine that I got emails or texts or phone calls from that I haven't talked to outside of work. Are these your contemporaries? Is that a word? That might be.

People that just kind of, that I would not ordinarily talk to on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, that would just out of the blue wrote and said, hey man, that was bogus. Yeah. Not just either the tweets were bogus or the actual context of those tweets and comments were bogus because I like your play by play or you sound good or stick at it or it wasn't fair or whatever. So the support that I got that that's where again, uh, and it's, it's, you put yourself out there. So if I can call out an athlete for having a rough night or, or not playing well for a month, a year or otherwise, then Hey, turnabout is fair play fair play so it's it's probably not fair for me to say um well 10 people told me i'm good so that one person

you know yeah he's not right again he's entitled to that i just wish that there was a way to um and maybe i'm doing it right now to some extent is uh i wish there was a way where the story can be as juicy in terms of the support. If I could show you a list of the emails and texts and phone calls that I got of the people that said, I actually like your play-by-play or I like the work you do or don't listen to that, it would far outweigh the one guy that kind of came out and did the slamming. So tell me this though. The juicier story is colleague, co-worker. And you know, Toronto Sports Media, he's got to go on that.

Absolutely. It's a story. That's the reason that blog exists. And I'm not saying that he did anything wrong. No, no, no. It's a story. It's a headline. And you cover things good and bad.

Tweets are public. That's not hacking into someone's email. No, I have no problem with what Toronto Sports Media did. Not at all. But I got to ask you. So has Butch Carter appeared on the fan 590 since that tweet because i don't remember it happening since but if if my suspicions are correct that is the biggest vote of confidence you can get that he's basically banned from the airwaves but now

you're going to tell me he's been on several times i honestly i don't believe he has i don't think so uh nobody i think he's he's not welcome on the fan airwaves because of what he did to Eric Smith. Nobody specifically has said to me, we got your back, which isn't coming on. Nobody has specifically said that. But I believe that there is a great, great possibility that the reason he hasn't appeared on Sports Network. Those facts are correlated. I would imagine there are dots to connect there. Nobody specifically said that to me.

Again, I'm not privy to what the bosses are doing behind the scenes. But they never say. And I bring up this Wilner example. I've done it before, but basically when he got the paid leave because he criticized Cito Gaston. You remember this? Yeah, I remember that, yeah. They never said to Wilner, because I had him on the show and I asked him to share it.

He was never told that his paid absence, his paid leave was related to his Cito comments. He was never told that. They don't say that. They just say, go home and enjoy and we'll tell you when you can come back kind of deal.

So I just, I think it's the unspoken stuff that speaks louder. And I would, I mean, and I appreciate that, the fact that, listen,

again, to the second, if I saw Butch Carton on the street right now. I actually have a surprise for you. Butch, come on down. This is your life.

You know, I, if I walk by the guy, like, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be like, oh. But I'd say hi, and I'd probably, you know, like, here's the other thing, too. Could I, should I have emailed or called in the last however many months it's been,

six, seven months, to say, hey, man, what's up? I guess I could have, but to me, it's not my place. No, right. It's up i guess i could have but to me it's not my place no right it's hey i think i'm doing a good job i think i will be the first to admit to you i want to get better because i want to improve period so i'm constantly working at the craft whether it be the work that i'm doing on television whether it be the work that i'm doing on radio play by play or otherwise you're trying to get better at what you do, period. I'm sure you want to be better at your show. You should hear episode one and compare it to this one. No comparison. You get better with

anything you do in life, right? With reps and experience and everything else. So I don't think it's my position to defend what I did because one guy didn't like it. If he ever wants to call me and chat and talk basketball, talk broadcasting, talk otherwise, again, I've never had a problem with the guy.

Never had an issue with the guy. It sort of hit me out of the blue. And at the end of the day, it's one guy. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there, listeners, that would say, damn right, which card? I agree. He's terrible. And there's just as many that are probably, what the hell?

I actually like it. This is great. I love his play by play. I like the work he does. It's I mean, again, it's par for the course it's i've probably said this what three or four times now over the course of our conversation i i i hate to sound cliche about it but it's the old adage from even when you were a kid and growing up you know like 50 of the world's gonna love you 50 of the world's gonna hate you just be a good person and do your thing and mom and dad you know like pick

you up and you know keep going little air keep going little mike do your thing just be good whatever you know you can't have everybody love you and just because one guy says it doesn't mean that everybody believes it or agrees with it that's for sure you mentioned you know when you criticize do you feel comfortable criticizing the team's management and direction when your employer owns whatever you said 37.5 percent of the team i just asked this of all the guys that were the rogers guys because i asked it of you know whether it's wilner or just you name it do you feel comfortable criticizing management decisions gm decision or coach decisions yeah i think so you don't you don't fear what wilner got for criticizing cito as long as and

i'm not saying mike didn't do this, so let me be clear about that. As long as the criticism is fair and or balanced, whichever word you want to use, then I don't see a major issue with it. I think the one problem or the one issue that I've had over the years with, whether it be with fellow broadcasters or colleagues

or fans or otherwise, is, again, my wife would disagree with this, and many is again, my wife would disagree with this. And many of my close friends would probably disagree with this. I don't think I'm a pessimist guy, pessimistic kind of guy. Again, they would all say, yes, you are. You're, you're a pessimist and a cynic. I prefer to say I'm a realist, right? Me too.

And I think that I see both sides and that for, for all the years that I did the post game show, the rap and taking the phone calls, I can count. Actually, I probably can't count the amount of times I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that I have been called, whether it be a Homer or, or being criticized for not being critical enough and, and, and whatever else. And I think the difference is, is that I see both sides. You can call in and say, and I'm just making up a, you know, you know, DeMar DeRozan needs to be better, and he's not good enough, and he's not deserving of this, that, or otherwise.

Okay, that's your opinion, but now let's look at this from a balanced perspective. You know, how much is he making? What are the numbers that he actually puts up? Does it impact on winning? Have his numbers gotten better over the years? Has he not improved as a player? Has the coaching staff not made him a better player? Yeah, you're a rational man.

So you kind of look at, all right, there's this, then there's that. And somewhere in the middle is the answer. It's never as bad as you think it is. It's never as good as that guy thinks it is. There's somewhere in the middle. And I think that's where I think a lot of fans, viewers, listeners,

perhaps, can look at a member of the media and say, just black and white, that guy's not criticizing because he works for Rodgers. That guy's not saying enough because he works for Bell. But that perception's going to exist. Whether it's true or not, that optic exists. I'm not saying it's going to go away. I'm just saying I don't always think it's accurate.

Because, and listen, I'm at the Bills game four or five days ago. I'm a fan of the Bills. I've been a fan. It's one of the few, maybe the only team that I can still, in my mind, still be a fan of because I have no direct affiliation or relation to the Buffalo Bills

or to the ownership of the Bills or otherwise. I can simply just be a fan. I've never covered that team in any capacity. You can just be a fan. You know, like I grew up a Laker fan. Magic Johnson was my guy, not Michael Jordan. But I can't necessarily be a fan of the Lakers as an NBA broadcaster. It's not like I'm cheering for the L.A. Lakers now.

You know, when I'm sitting at home in the privacy of my home and on the couch, would I say, yeah, I still watch the Lakers and kind of, you know, secretly kind of pull from them? Sure, but I'm not like, you know, wearing the hat and pumping the tires and going screaming and crazy. But my point about the Bills, I'm at the game and I am like every possible word

coming out of my mouth on Sunday when they're getting their butts handed to them by New England, play calling's terrible. Their defense is terrible. Their defense is terrible. Their offense is terrible. Tyra Taylor is a terrible quarterback. What is Rex Ryan doing? Like,

I mean, it's all, and I'm tweeting about it. I'm like, this is BS. I'm going crazy over this because I'm a fan. Right. And I'm not emotional.

Exactly. It's visceral response. I wasn't finding that common ground of, but they tried to do this or their game plan was to do that. Or this guy wasn't in position to do this. I'm just like, no, it's all bad.

You know, cause they're getting their butts whipped that day. And I think that's again, where you find that middle ground because you're privy to seeing so much and hearing so much and knowing so much that it's never as bad as you think it is. It's never as good as it is. The answer is somewhere in the middle. And I think that's where the quote unquote Homer angle

or the unwillingness to criticize because they're owned by Bella Rogers or otherwise, I don't find that true or factual. I think it's simply just because you are more privy to the information, which helps you formulate a more well-rounded opinion. I don't know if that makes sense. It does.

They should have, just on the Bill's note, they should have started Flutie in that Music City Miracle game. Do you believe that upset me so much? It basically started me divorcing the entire sport of football. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, I can remember specifically that day. Yeah.

I was at Mike Demurgis, who used to produce Primetime Sports. He's back in New York now. He's a native New Yorker. And we were at his place. And I was staunchly defending Rob Johnson that day, simply because as bad as that game was, as terrible as obviously the outcome was, Rob Johnson put them in position to win that game.

He didn't put up fantastic numbers that day. All Flutie did all season was win for that team. Rob Johnson put them in position to win that game. He didn't put up fantastic numbers that day. Sure, but all Flutie did all season was win for that team. Rob Johnson won that game. That game was lost on the last play by horrendous, horrendous special teams coverage, which of course the Bills have never made the playoffs. Anyway, I had a Flutie jersey. I was at my buddy Mark Carey's for that game and it was probably the last time

I really cared about football was that game. But that game, I was so upset that day. So you don't watch the NFL now? You know what, ready? It is a weaning process. It's not like the next year I stopped watching. I still watched that game, I was so upset. You don't watch the NFL now? I don't, you know what, ready? It is a weaning process. It's not like the next year I stopped watching. I still watched a lot. And I was a Bills guy too, because of course,

Irv Weinstein, do you know where your kids are? Do you know where your kids are? Commander Tom. Oh my God. Of course. That's all we had on Sunday mornings. Like there was no, you know,

and you had that, Ed Kilgore, and then you had Van Miller, and John Murphy, and Stu Boyer and that Steve Tasker show I mean everything okay

yeah so that was yeah so I have the same bringing you up and it was old Bills Bills Bills and yeah

four Super Bowls in a row it's not to like one thing not to like well you should win one one major thing yes right so

but today if there's a really exciting playoff matchup something I don't know Manning versus his old team, something draws me in, I'll watch a playoff game.

And I will watch the Super Bowl. That's it now. I'm not even following. We also have three kids and a fourth on the way, so I imagine you're not getting exactly. But I'm tuning in, and we're going to get to this real, I realize I'm going over time with you, but this is very interesting, so I hope you don't mind.

No. But Blue Jays, I have such Blue Jays fever right now. It's like 1993 again where I'm watching every inning and I'm clinging on every pitch. And I'm up and down. Yesterday, I'm up and down with this team. I'm so deep into Blue Jays.

So I'll make time for sports I give a shit about is what I'm saying. It's not just the kids. But no, I've given up. The one sport of the big four if you will that i actually have completely given up following is football see and for me i i honestly have not given it up but it's simply more a case of my time yeah i can't literally can't follow hockey right because to the extent that i used to well it's it's it's kind of two-part. Is that, obviously, in the summertime, once the playoffs are over,

there is no hockey to watch. So your life is dominated by either baseball or just doing other things and going out with friends and living your life in your offseason. At least for me, the offseason. But then by the time the fall hits, yeah, it's all not only Raptors, but it's all NBA. Because on the nights when you don't have a game or you're not traveling, you're often watching another game, which is going to help you

prepare for the next broadcast. Even if it's not an opponent that the Raptors are playing the next night or a couple of nights later, they will be playing them in a week or in a couple of weeks. So you're constantly watching basketball. And then on the weekends, I enjoy the National Football League still. So I'm watching football onays and watching basketball every other day and then in the brief moments when you actually have an hour or two to do something else oh by the way you have a child and that's right and you have friends and so you're doing other things and like like last night you're talking about the blue jay stuff yeah i agree with you like i'm you know i talked about being a fan of the bills i'd be lying if i didn't say that I wasn't a Blue Jay fan.

I mean, I grew up in the GTA with the Blue Jays. We grew up in the heyday, 83 to 93. Yeah, like I was born in 75. I just turned 40 in April. So when I'm in 92, 93, I'm 17, 18 years old. This is the perfect time. And I'm around in 85 as a 10-year-old and 87 and all that stuff, right? So I grew up on the Jays.

It's not like I can forget about being a jays fan my only other team was the padres because i was a huge tony guinn guy love tony guinn that guy could hit so um to watch them now the jays and this goes back almost to your other question about about um homerism or or pulling for management i'm actually these are the little things that that maybe the average fan doesn't see. I try to make a conscious effort to not even wear a Blue Jay hat because I don't want to be perceived as,

oh, look at this guy. He can't be critical or he can't, you know, because he's wearing a hat, which means he's supporting the team, which means he supports Rodgers. No, I can see that, yeah. You know, things like that.

Now, I got playoff tickets. I'm probably going to wear a Blue Jay hat to the playoffs. And you're going to hook me up with playoff tickets? Hey, if you want pay, you know, face value. Hey, I get it. I got four kids. I didn't get them for free, tickets? Hey, if you want to pay face value.

I got four kids, man. I didn't get them for free, man. I had to pay for those things face value. Tell you what, next year during the regular season, I'll take care of you. Tuesday night, sure, okay. Anyways, my point was last night. I finally have a night where I'm home, there's nothing to do, and my wife's like, what do you want to watch?

Well, my media aunts, and she actually likes sports. I'm like, the Jays game, they're playing the Yankees. Hey, whatever you want to watch? Well, I'm meeting ants. And she actually likes sports. I'm like, the Jays game. They're playing the Yankees. But hey, whatever you want, babe. Whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're watching Ray Donovan or something from Sunday night. So we're watching that.

And the whole time, I got the phone out. I'm like, Jays. You're a good husband, you know. Because my wife wouldn't even pay dear. At this team, that last year in the September, no problem. But this year in September, my wife knows what's on the TV. Like, she doesn't even question it. You're a better man than I am. We've got three TVs.

I could easily just go to another room, but it's like, I know we'll spend some time together. And I was gone on Sunday at the football game. So, all right. Yeah. But I'm checking the phone. I'm like, yeah, base is loaded in the seventh. A-Rod's up.

Can we just turn that off for a second? And of course, Ray Donovan ends up getting shut off. So we end up watching the game and she's right into it as well. So you get caught up in those moments, right? Oh my God, and my buddy does the audio for Sportsnet when they're at the Dome. So he tweeted a picture of the gauge that shows you the volume, basically. Oh, like the decibel level?

Yeah, whatever that's called. After the Navarro homer maxed out. He's never had this before, where meters are like all the way jammed to the right. They should have had him in Buffalo on Sunday. Cause there was the big thing in Buffalo on Sunday was they were trying to, they actually had somebody from the Guinness book of world records at the, at the stadium.

Cause they were hoping to break the world record noise or whatever. And of course it never ended up happening. Cause after the opening drive, the bill scored demolished after that. So anyways, I don't, I don up happening because after the opening drive, the Bills scored. They demolished after that. I don't even know what the question was after that. It's okay because I guess I've switched over to Blue Jays real quick

because I just want to say that I love this team. That's all I want to say. You know why I love this team? They win. They're a good team that wins. Winning is everything. Why can't Toronto have nice things? It's been so long since we've had nice things.

I don't count the Argos. They don't count. You're going to win by accident a couple of years, eight-team league. You're going to win by accident. I would agree with you. So we haven't won anything since 93. Come on.

I agree. We were teenagers. You think about when, and this was when the fan was starting too. This was before I was like a couple of years, even before I was at the fan. But you talk about that 92, 93. It's not just the Jays.

That's when you're in that little pocket, that little window of the Maple Leafs making it to the- Gilmore and Clark together, yeah. And they're in the conference championship and they're that close to making it. They won 10 in a row. Yeah.

So it was such a moment to be a sports fan. And of course, now you're starting to get over the last couple years the the wave that starts with the raptors and the we the north and yeah hey they completely bowed out way too early in both of the last two years and first round disappointments and everything else but yet you're still getting some positive vibes around the team the leafs okay they're still taking their lumps but hopefully you know the the whole babcock wave and the you know rejuvenation of this franchise potentially

that's coming but now you got the Jays and it's like okay finally we get to have nice things and and you can't help but get caught up because the other thing too is and this is where I think we all forget this sometimes whether it be fans whether it be people in the industry or otherwise is that guys that are generally working in sports, there's a reason. Because they were sports fans. Just because you're now there doesn't mean that you still aren't a fan. You have to have some impartiality.

Damien Cox being the exception. Hey, you know. Yeah, of course. You must love sports to gravitate to cover it. And even if it's not specific teams, it's sports themselves and the drama and the reality of sports. It's the one last true reality television.

You know, it's the it's the one last thing that we probably all want to and prefer to watch live. That's not on PVR. Fast forwarding through the commercials because we want to be there to experience it in the moment. You know, like sports sports to me is I, certainly not splitting the atom by saying this. It's, it's, it's, it's that one last true connection. I think that teaches so many different lessons to young boys or girls to young and old and otherwise that, that, you know, whether it be through hard work and teamwork and yada, yada, yada. It's just, it's the one last thing we still have. That's pure in many senses. And that's why Rodgers will spend $5 billion on hockey rights because to me, it's the one thing you watch live, which means you're going to see commercials. It's the only time I see commercials is when I watch Jay's games right now.

That's it. Those damn ads, you've seen them 100,000 times. But you're there because you're waiting for the next inning. So glad this is happening. I just hope this doesn't end the way so many Toronto, like, you know, there's been so many. Don't even jinx it.

Well, jinxes don't exist. Jinxes don't exist because I'm not a magician, so I cannot influence a game by my words. See, that goes back to our earlier conversation too. But do you believe jinxes exist? Because this is one of my hot button issues is people tell me I jinx the team. Whether they exist or not based on scientific fact,

I don't know, but there's too many examples of, of, of I'll tell you what, I'm, I'm, I'm twisting your question a little bit. All right.

I am one of those people that I still a child when it comes to magic, because I, there are certain tricks and things I watched that you can tell me until, until you're blue in the face that that's not actually magic. There is an illusion or there is an explanation as to how this happens. But then I sit and watch something and go, how the hell did that happen?

It's not possible for that to have just happened. Do you have an example? Because I don't believe in magic. I actually do not watch this show. But I watched this show a few times over the course of the summer because my wife was watching it with my son and I sit down and I'm watching it. So America's Got Talent.

One of these magicians is on there and if I'm giving the proper play by play of how it went down this guy comes out on stage and he's got like a jar of of like gumballs and he looks at the four

judges. Howard Stern. Howard Stern, Howie Mandel, that's the Spice, Scary Spice, whatever her name is. I forget her. Mel. Mel B. And not Giselle.

Heidi. Heidi Klum. A pretty German girl. Heidi Klum. Heidi Klum. So the four judges. And he says, I want you each to write down your answer.

How many gumballs in this jar? Write it down. Don't show me, write it down. So they all independently write down whatever. And then they flip their card and they show the guy and he's on stage 30 feet away from them. Howard and Mel have the same number written down. Howie Mandel and Heidi Klum have different numbers, but he says to Howard and to, to, to Mel, you both can't have the same answer. Like total fluke that they wrote the same thing. You both can't have the same answer. One of you has got to switch. I'm not going to tell you who, but one of you has to switch. So they both look

at each other and has like, okay, fine, I'll switch. And he just quickly changes a few numbers off. So the guy then says, earlier today, I did a video, which I put on Instagram, that gave a prediction of who would be the closest to the guess. So they fired up on the big screen behind him on stage. And it's this guy, whatever his name was. I predict that Mel, Mel B b that's her name mel i predict mel b will guess within two of how many gumballs are in here and she will be the closest one sure enough her guess was like 152 same guess that howard stern had and he changed his and the amount of gumballs that was in the thing was like 154 so his prediction of my good of, hold on a second, it gets better. Okay. Then he says to the host, Nick Cannon, he says, I want you to open up that jar,

reach in to the gumballs. And there's a piece of paper inside the gumballs that have just been sitting there on the stage, whatever the whole time. Reaches his hand and he rifles around and he finds this piece of paper. He pulls it out and he and he says nick can you tell me what that is he's like it looks like a receipt he says and they zoom in there's a receipt from like some candy store in new york city it's got the date and the time like you know printed on it whatever an x number of gumballs and whatever else and the price and how much he paid and everything else and the barcode on this piece of paper that's been in the gumball machine locked in whatever the whole time he's like can you read the numbers out and it was like you know whatever 148-122-152-099 the barcode numbers were the 12 numbers in order of the judges okay okay so i'm looking at that

i'm like how is that possible my mind is blown it's like i don't even want to go to sleep tonight because i'm freaking out like what is happening here it's stuff like that where i think eric eric and again i'm a grown man i know and i'm like what is happening here so explain that one to me okay please break it down because you don't believe magic i know i don't believe magic you do know that if you were to have a conversation of that magician and have him to be brutally honest he would explain to you what he did there is no he's magic he's like some there's no magic demigod or something there's a sleight of hand or i mean come on you know nobody want nobody wants to see how the sausage is made nobody but i'm telling you he there is some some trick maybe i can't tell you

where in that chain because he did a lot of cool stuff there but maybe the video maybe there's four videos where you know and then maybe there maybe there's a whole bunch of different spots. You give me a lot of maybes here. Yeah, of course, because I have no idea how he did that. Just because you don't believe. I don't believe.

I do not believe. I believe there's some sleight of hand or some, he manipulated something. There's no magic. Put it this way, if the Jays don't end up at least making the playoffs,

if not, let's hopefully say, winning the division, I am blaming you. Okay, but when they do win the division, then you'll know there's no such thing as a jinx. Okay, fine. If the Jays win, I'll come back and I'll say,

fine, you know what? Jinxes don't exist, Mike. I take it all back. Somebody, I got some really nasty Twitter follower. I'll tweet, and I think this is not when we were playing the Yankees. The Yankees were playing, I don't know. You just said we, so there you go. You are a real fan.

I'm in. I'm in. I'm all in. But I'll tweet something like, the Yankees are down 2-1 in the go. You are a real fan. I'm in. I'm in. I'm all in. But I'll tweet something like, the Yankees are down 2-1 in the ninth. That'll be the tweet. It won't be like,

this is in the bag. I think this is in the ninth. I'll just tweet a fact. Yankees are down 2-1 in the fact. That's it. And I'll get these nasty tweets. I just fucking jinxed them. Now, for sure,

Yankees are going to come back and win and all this nonsense. And my response is always the same, which is that jinxes do not exist. Because they do not exist. We'll move on. But the difference of jinxes do not exist because magic, there's no such thing. I can't manipulate a game because of a tweet.

All right. What's next? We got to do some quick hits here because right now, if Jeff Merrick is listening, I know he's getting very nervous because Jeff has the record for longest episode of Toronto Mike. And when Strombo was in, and I'm'm gonna ask you about that in a minute strombo came so close to the record like we got within i don't know five ten minutes or something and merrick was very happy

that he held on to the record and i'm just thinking i need to beat jeff then i'm just gonna give the longest answer all right real quick hits. Raptors real quick. So yeah, last season was super exciting. The regular season. Especially that start. And it was a team I could get behind. And the marketing seemed to jive well with the team, the performance. And I liked how they played together.

And it was an exciting regular season game. My daughter, who has a We The North hat, she jumped on board and fell in love with, she loves Lowry and she loves that team. And like, we were all set for the playoffs and it felt like, hey, we're going to do something we've only done once before. We're actually going to win a round. Right. Maybe two. We all know what happened next. So

what does next, does next season, next season, do we, do we win a playoff round? You don't know. Your crystal ball, you believe in magic, but the crystal ball is foggy.off round? You don't know. You're crystal ball. You believe in magic, but the crystal ball is foggy. No, jinxes don't happen. Jinxes don't happen.

Listen, I still think they're the best team in their division, which... World's tallest midget? Right now, though, in the new NBA rules, doesn't necessarily matter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They got rid of that. Because they got rid of the division winner automatically getting one of the top three or four seeds. Right.

They're a playoff team. It all is going to come down to their playoff matchup, period. And the reason I say that is I should probably get out of the business of making predictions. Because I firmly believed, and again, this is not said with any homerism. Many people, I think, would have agreed with me. When they got the Brooklyn Nets, to me, that was the better matchup for them two years ago. And that was still a good series that was neck know that was a good series and hey Brooklyn got the best of them last year going into the playoffs I would have said which is the more preferred

matchup probably Washington when you looked at you know the teams that you likely could have faced facing the Washington Wizards was probably the best option for Toronto yes they had size but they took care of that size and as much as a regular season doesn't matter, et cetera. You have to look at the body of work against a team, against an opponent. Washington, Toronto had Washington's number over the course of the regular season. Playoffs came around. Collectively, the Raptors laid an egg. They didn't play well at all.

Lowry was off. The size was a huge issue. Washington dominated them inside. So it really is going to come down to who's the first round matchup. I see Toronto being a 44-45 win team. They're going to be best in their division. They're going to be a team that's there in the playoffs. But who's that first round opponent, period?

And if you haven't learned from the last two years, then at some point, and it will have to be decided at some point anyways, because you're going to start looking at that core. Like there's going to be a decision next year at the end of the season regarding DeRozan. You've already now re-upped Lowry last year. Now you've re-upped Valanciunas.

So a lot of those core pieces are locked in. But hey, if you got a decision on DeRozan or you got to make trades of guys that actually are in these contracts, whether it be a JV or a Lowry or otherwise, you got to start saying if we're not moving to that next level with this core, then we got some decisions to make. Yeah, for sure. Now on paper, this is a better team going into next season than we were last season.

I mean, I'm not as knowledgeable as you, but just looking at some of the moves, the DeMar Carroll and Corey Joseph, to me, it feels like, at least on paper, we should be a better team next year than last year. I think it probably is more in line with, and I know Dwayne Casey hates this sometimes, because he's been labeled as a defensive-minded coach,

which then automatically implies that, well, then he can't coach offense. I think he proved last year he can coach offense. It's now finding that middle ground. A couple of years ago, you were a defensive team that struggled to score. Last year, you were an offensive team that struggled to stop.

You got to find that common ground. Bringing in a Damari Carroll, known for his defense. Bringing in a Corey Joseph. Damari. I'm calling Damar. That's all right. All right. Just, hey, you got Damar and Damari.

So it's, I'm sure that'll be... We're the only team. This is a new NBA record to have a Damar and a Damari. Never happened before. I don't believe so. I don't believe so. I think the greatest issue for them this year, though, is going to be, do they have enough offense coming off the bench?

Because as much as they've gotten better defenders and perhaps better depth, do they have enough offensive punch now to lift up a Lowry, a DeRozan, a Valanciunas? And then the other thing is, who's going to be the starting power forward? Is it going to be Luis Scola, who looked fabulous at the FIBAs? He's 35 years old, and is he better served

as a second-unit guy, or is Patrick Patterson ready to take that next step as being a reserve guy? He seems to be underutilized. I think he could play well, but statistically, analytically, if you look at a lot of that stuff, he and JV Valanciunas

weren't a great combo last year. So there are questions about the front court. That's going to be perhaps the biggest issue going into training camp and then into the season is do they have enough size there?

But overall, I would agree that top to bottom, one through eight, one through 10, I think they've probably got better talent because they've got a more balanced team, I think. Will the Raps add Anthony Bennett? I'm not sure. Because you know what?

I think I've always said I don't want a guy just because he's Canadian. I don't care where he's from. And we've already got the Canadian now. But to me, that doesn't even matter though. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, like here's the thing.

Does it help or, or more specifically, does it not hurt that Corey Joseph is Canadian from Toronto? Absolutely. But what did Toronto need? If you could say like, if you, if you asked me before Corey Joseph was signed or even into last year with no

knock on Vasquez or Lou Williams or otherwise, what do they need? Hey, Gravis Vasquez is a great scorer, and he's got big cojones. He's willing to take the big shot, and he's got a big, brash personality and everything else. But he's not a fantastic defender.

He's an okay passer, but I want somebody that's going to defend a little harder and maybe dive after the loose ball. I got enough offense from other guys. What do the Raptors do? They got a defensive-minded point guard who's got a little edge to him, who's got championship experience,

whose maybe offense isn't as good as his defense. They got exactly what they needed. And oh, by the way, he's Canadian and happens to be from Toronto. To me, that's just a subplot to the kind of guy they needed. So if Anthony Bennett can come to this team and help this team, well, Luis Scola, Patrick Patterson, Jonas Valanciunas, Bismack Biambo, you've

got bodies. Is he going to be the fifth or sixth big and actually get minutes and contribute to this team? Or is he just going to be a guy that, well, we're grabbing him because he's Canadian. Don't do it just because he's Canadian. If you think he can help your team, I think the biggest thing for Bennett is he needs to play. He needs to go somewhere where he's actually going to

get minutes because he needs to play. Do you ever get mistaken for Doug Smith? Is there anyone who ever confuses you guys because you both cover Raptors? No. No, not really. Not really.

And I read Smitty's piece the other day. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah. I don't think he's wrong. I didn't agree that the Raptors should stay clear of him. Right. Because he was really down on the idea. No, I think there's a legit possibility that,

hey, you need some frontcourt help. What did I say to you even before you brought up Bennett's name? Yeah. Is Skoll and Patterson the right you even before you brought up Bennett's name? Is Skoll and Patterson the right combo? Could you use a guy like that? Bennett played very well in the Pan Ams, played very well at the FIBAs. I'm surprised that Minnesota opted to do this and to buy him out. And the fact that there were no trade partners, I think has little to do with Bennett and his abilities as a player

and more to do with we don't want to pay a guy five to $6 million. We'd prefer to not make a trade to make Minnesota buy him out and then go get him via free agency where we can get him for a cheaper option at a million bucks at half a million dollars veteran minimum or, or NBA minimum or otherwise. I think there will be a lot of teams that look at him. And the biggest thing is he just needs to go somewhere and play. I mean, I read something this morning about the possibility of Phoenix, maybe kicking the tires. He he's, he's lost a lot of weight. He's trimmed himself down. He's athletic. He can, he can, you know, block shots. He can rebound. I think he just has to get on the floor and get those, you know, those, those,

those game miles again. What the, you were in Mexico for that tournament. We've alluded to it a couple of times. Yeah. Actually, actually really quickly. I got to ask this question real quick. Are you friendly with Drake? You're friendly with drake uh are you and drizzy friends like to say hi to each other no i mean the head nods okay you get a head nod from him yeah the odd time we get a head nod yeah i had to ask this question because he's uh i noticed he stopped coming out though he was there when they were riding high and when things started to sort of started though wasn't he on tour or something? I don't know. Yeah, they had a new album come out.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Put it this way. If Drake walked in here right now, would he recognize me and give me the head nod? Maybe. But if you actually said, Eric Smith, I'm not absolutely convincing you. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know. We're not buddies.

Okay. I just wondered if because he's at many games and maybe he knows you as a Raptor guy. No, that's Matt Devlin. That's Jack Armstrong. I'm sure, listen, I'm sure, again, he kind of, I'll tell you the first time, and I'll make this quick because I want to make sure

Jeff Merrick has his record in check. The very first time that I met Drake, and it was a very brief meeting, but 1,000% not name dropping here either, Alvin Williams and I. Yep. Alvin Williams and I. Alvin is the only guy, actually, I take that back.

Alvin and Matt Bonner are the only guys that I've formed a friendship, let's say, away from the game in their current and or now former playing careers. Alvin is just a guy I kept in touch with over the years. When he was in town for various things over the years,

he'd call me up, hey, do you want to grab dinner? Whatever. Never been to his home. Not like we're, but, and now suddenly he's working for Sportsnet and doing various things.

Doesn't he? Oh, Sportsnet, right, right. So, this was a couple years ago, though. We were at Soto Soto before, unfortunately, the fire and everything else. But, it was after

Blue Jays Express. One night I was in town and had done the baseball show, and Alvin was in town. He's like, meet me for dinner, a late dinner, drink, whatever. So we're going to, we're at Soto Soto, and this huge, I mean, behemoth of a guy comes walking in, and hey, what's up, Alvin, whatever.

So Alvin introduces me to this guy, and he's, I'm like, who is this guy? Like, I mean, I don't recognize him, but he's a massive dude. And then he's talking into his wrist and talking to his phone, and he's like, okay, it's clear. And all of a sudden, 20 guys come walking from the back of the restaurant. I don't recognize any of them until the last guy, and it was Drake. Drake with his entourage kind of eating soda-soda.

And he stopped and did the whole handshake man hug with Alvin and whatever. And then Alvin's like, hey, this is my guy Eric. And Drake's like, yeah, yeah, I know. And he, I don't know if he actually knows. And then he sat and talked with us for a couple minutes and that was it. Well then, two years later, he's now global ambassador and he's at various games and he's doing a whole bunch of things.

I remember the one question I asked Drake at one of his first press conferences is when the t-shirts were coming out that they were handed out first with the black and gold. The oval ones? Yeah. And I said, is this like a sign of what might be coming

with these potential jerseys, black and gold? And he kind of just looked at me. He's like, what do you think? I said, I don't know. What do you mean, what do I think? I think, is this a taste? And sure enough, it's one of their jerseys that is now black and gold.

They got like, what, five jerseys now? Yeah, I can't keep up. And he goes, no, no. What do you think? Does it look good? I was like, I mean, one of their jerseys is now black and gold. They got like, what, five jerseys now. Yeah, I can't keep up. And he goes, no, no. What do you think? Does it look good? I was like, I mean, I kind of like the colors. It looks all right. Yeah, I mean, I'm not dead set against it.

He's like, well, if you're happy, I'm happy. I said, okay. All right. Thanks a lot. It's just like one of those, like, it's almost like it was immediately standoffish. Like, is there a problem with this? Or are you like privy to these secrets of what's coming? Or I don't know.

But I don't know. Anyways, that's my involvement with Drake. That's your Jersey story. Yeah, Matt Devlin and Jack Armstrong have more Drake stories. I think he's been on the broadcast with them a few times. That's funny. That's good stuff. Hey, how come we're Raptors, man?

Don't you think we should rebrand as Huskies? I love the Huskies name. I love the throwback jerseys that they had a few seasons back with that old Huskies logo. I think that the organization has probably done it right by getting away from the purple dinosaur and more kind of going with the claw. I don't necessarily dislike the name because it's been 20 years. That's right, right wrong or otherwise oh yeah i know that's what you're known as yeah but i think like listen i've been in every other arena

in the league and i've heard them you know like it's all showmanship whenever else but you know when you when the home team's getting introduced and then when they introduce the opposing team i've been in the other arenas when they play the uh barney song i love yeah. Like, you don't want to be associated with that. And I'm sure it's still going to exist to some extent because your name is Raptors. But if you can do anything and everything to get away from the purple dinosaur outside of the mascot himself,

I think that's a good thing. So I don't necessarily hate the Raptor name. I think it's better, though, to go in this new logo direction. I have heard just, I don't know if you've read this or not, but I don't think it's this year. It's starting next year because I think this year is all about getting the new logo and the new have heard just, I don't know if you've read this or not, but I don't think it's this year starting next year. Cause I think this year is all about getting the new logo in the new

jerseys out. But next year, I believe they are going to have the Huskies throwbacks brought back in for a few games again. So you'll still get a little bit, you'll still get a taste of it, but I don't think you'll ever see the team fully switch and do that. That full on change.

That's too bad. I just think we were named after a Jurassic Park fad. I just, you know, and it's just no foresight or whatever. I'll tell you what, though. Back then, if I'm remembering correctly, it was Raptors and Towers, I think, were the two finalists. Yeah, that's awful.

That's worse. I wouldn't have liked that. I don't know why, because, I mean, at the time, I wasn't blogging back then, but I was vocal of my opinion to anyone who had listened to me that it should be Huskies. Like, it always seemed natural. Of course it should be Huskies. Like it always seemed natural. Of course it should be Huskies because there's a history there and everything.

Well, the one thing I would have liked to have seen as well as there's, there's definitely something to be said for making yourself more distinct and kind of getting away from the trend. But I also think it would be kind of cool to know that like your city is synonymous with blue and white or in some way, shape or form you get like between the Argos, whether you want to include them or not some way, shape, or form. You get like between the Argos, whether you want to include them or not,

the Jays, the Leafs, you know, it'd be like, could you have even kept the Raptors and with the new colors gone like blue and white and with silver and black and something of some sort of, you know, combination that to me would kind of be neat. Cause I think it's kind of cool when you've got cities that are like, it just pops in my mind right away, like Pittsburgh, whether it be the Pirates, the Penguins, the Steelers, yellow and black.

It's kind of like... Like a city color. I think that's kind of cool. It doesn't exist in every city, obviously, but I just think there's something to be said for that. Cool. Yeah, like when the Kings adopted the Raiders. Yeah. You were in Mexico for the...

So just to set the table here, this is Canada trying to get themselves into the Olympics in Brazil next year. Right, yeah, 2016, yeah. And we had a semifinal game against Venezuela. Yep. And if we had won that game, which we should have won

because on paper we're much better and we had beaten them handedly in the previous game. By 20 points. Right. So if we had won that game, we would have got ourselves into on paper we're much better and we had beaten them handedly in the previous game. By 20 points. Right. So if we had won that game, we would have got ourselves into the Olympics. Yes.

Which is the goal. Yes. All right. Now, this was a game I was kind of following and on Twitter. I saw some of your tweets. It was a Jays game, I guess.

But then at some point in the fourth quarter, I tuned in to TSN, whatever, to watch this game. And I was following your two. I think you were the guy basically providing me.

You were giving me all the info. Maybe you and Ed Kareen? Eric Kareen. Eric Kareen. Not Ed Kareen. That's another guy. Right. Anyway, you're a good tweeter, by the way.

I feel good for you. But long story short is a terrible... I mean, we should never have... You're the analyst. I'll let you do the talking. But it never should have been as close as it was. We seemed to play like shit this game. It was very close, and we lost on a very controversial call,

a foul call as time expired. Bullshit. What were your thoughts sitting there watching this unfold? That probably encapsulates how I was feeling and what I felt at the time. When I'm sitting there watching, so you're right. Canada, so Canada gets the one seed after going through almost the entire tournament wondering what's going to happen

with that first seed, second seed, or otherwise, who are they going to play? Because Argentina was the best team in that tournament up until the last couple of days when seeding shifted and a whole bunch of scenarios led to Canada actually grabbing that number one seed, which was the more preferred matchup because they're going to get the number four Venezuela. They don't have to play Mexico in Mexico City.

They don't have to deal with Argentina, the only team to beat them in this tournament. They get Venezuela. They beat Venezuela by 20 points. This is great. Then they come out, and anything that could go wrong did go wrong, and everybody not named Kelly Olenek

decided to play their worst game of the tournament. Right. Corey Joseph, Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, Nick Stauskas, who we later... Who was sick, right? Yeah, we later found out food poisoning. His cousin is my firstborn son's very close friend. Oh, okay.

And they play together in this Lithuanian basketball league. Really? Yeah. All right. But anyway. So the four guys of the five main ones with stauskas being the fifth all played terrible if i'm remembering if i'm remembering correctly it was only a couple weeks ago i think joseph had two points bennett had none stauskas again

food poisoning was was off might have had a bucket uh wiggins was four for something and just had a terrible game and yet canada takes a seven point lead with three minutes to go. Then, then Olenek who was fabulous all day slips on that sticker. This is what I'm tuned in at this point. Center court, right? This turns the ball over the,

the one of the Venezuelan plan. I'm forgetting his name. Now it's a three ball that literally scrapes the rafters. He, he, he, you know, puts the hail Mary on it.

So high, it literally touches the ceiling almost. And he falls back into his bench. It's like he's seven feet behind the three point line. He puts the Hail Mary on it so high, it literally touches the ceiling almost, and he falls back into his bench. It's like he's seven feet behind the three-point line. This shot has no hope of going in, and it goes in. Just all these little things that go wrong to the point where now you're tied. And that call that was the foul call

that was whistled against Aaron Dornenkamp, I was sitting on the baseline right behind that very basket where it happened. I'm about 30, 40 feet away from the play. was whistled against Aaron Dornicamp. I was sitting on the baseline right behind that very basket where it happened. I'm about 30, 40 feet away from the play. I had absolutely no clue what was going on because I saw the officials. The two officials definitely called nothing. And the one guy had his hand up in the air.

But in basketball, the signal for end of game is sort of forearm in the air with finger spread almost like you're prepared to give this sort of mini high five signal for a foul is hand in the air but with a fist right and it was kind of like fist finger fist kind of i'm not really sure i'm giving this half-assed signal so i didn't know what he actually called did he call end of game did he call a foul then the officials come together and they're chatting then they go to the scores table the official scores table has already put up the time for the overtime the extra session so it's going to overtime but now this is taking a little too long what's happening longer it takes the worse you feel right then they come back out and of course point three on the clock you don't see that in the NBA, in high school, in college. You don't allow an Olympic birth game

to be decided away from the ball, foul, that did or didn't actually occur. And then the worst part, too, is when you watch the replays, and you can clearly see the kind of half-hearted, non-committal, actual foul signal. And was it truly a foul signal, or was it an end signal but then on top of that just in front of aaron dornenkamp who's

called for the foul for extending the form and the venezuelan player flopping himself backwards you also see andrew wiggins getting tossed out of bounds yeah like right under the hoop right in front of this other foul so you actually had to sort of look through that foul to see the other foul right the phantom that wasn't was called but the wiggins one wasn't i thought it was completely bogus i think it was completely mishandled i thought canada was jobbed but at the end of the day they played terribly in that game and did not deserve to win and they did it to themselves yeah so now you're stuck with not advancing to the final uh They won the bronze medal, but that means absolutely nothing. Only the top two seeds qualify for the Olympics. And now they're stuck in a last ditch effort.

Next year, about two, three weeks before the Olympics, there will be three separate six team tournaments. So there will be 18 countries that will be vying for three spots and you have to win each of those tournaments. So the winners from each of those 16 tournaments gets into the Olympics. And Canada allegedly is, Canada basketball, I should say,

is putting together, or hoping to put together a pitch, a bid, to host one of the tournaments. Whether they'll be successful or not, I think their application has to be in by this coming Monday, the 28th or something. Do we have any sense of what other team, what countries we have?

No, not yet. We don't know yet. Oh, we know some of the countries that they'd be playing against, but we don't know ultimately if they'll be... Other than Canada, what's the best basketball country that has not yet qualified? Probably France,

I would think. Every time I hear France, I think of when Vince Carter dunked over that 10-foot French guy or whatever the hell he was. I mean, Puerto Rico could end up being a good team. Mexico could ultimately be... It's too bad, though, because

a lot of great... Maybe it's the Vince Carter effect, but there's a lot of great young... I think the talent in Canada has got an absolute ton to do with the Vince Carter effect, but there's a lot of great young... I think the talent in Canada has got an absolute ton to do with the Vince Carter effect, even more so than Steve Nash. And that's not a knock on Steve Nash. I think the impact of Vince Carter being on this team and the Raptors, and we talk about the Jays kind of being good now,

and this generation of young fans that will grow up hopefully with a good team, and that kind of reignites baseball. That's what happened to basketball. I mean, you're talking about a team that was less than 10 years old that had one of the top at the time, top five, 10 players in the league and one of the most dynamic poster boys. Most popular.

I mean, if you go by all-star votes, absolutely. And then that's who you're growing up with. And then suddenly it's more stupid than just having the team, even a bad team. Yeah. The fact that Toronto actually had an NBA team now.

So instead of growing up as a Laker fan, a Nick fan, a Celtic fan, whatever, you had your own team to sort of get behind and rally behind, good, bad, or otherwise. And then on top of that, they were good or they had a good player. And that just kind of helped bring that snowball. In episode 103, Strombo spoke very highly of you. I don't know if you have any time in your hands, but if you ever have a couple hours, go listen to, I think we branded it. No,

we have called, we called it episode 103. He wanted it to be called episode 102.1. Okay. But, uh, it is 103. So if you get a chance, listen to that.

I just wondered what's your relationship, relationship, what's your relationship like with, uh, Strombo? Uh, George, George is,

you know, he's been a, he's been a, I mean, he's been a good friend over the years, but, uh, we,? Uh, George, George is, you know, he's been a, he's been a, I mean, he's been a good friend over the years, but, uh, we, we see each other predominantly at sporting events when he shows up. Um, I haven't, uh, I haven't been out for a beer with him or had a dinner with him in a few years. Cause he literally said, you've got to get Eric Smith on the show. Like you're, you were one of, you know, you're one of his guys. I've got, I've got all the time in the

world for George. Um, we, we speak via text, uh, a few times over the course of the show. Like you were one of, you know, you're one of his guys. I've got, I've got all the time in the world for George. We, we speak via text a few times over the course of the season. I seem down at Raptor games frequently. I'll just get a text out of nowhere, like over your right shoulder. And I look back and there's George and I'll bring him on. I've brought him on post game before I brought him on halftime or even just

to be able to, to go, you know, shoot the shit with him for five or 10 minutes in the stands before the game or after the game. Again, the odd text here and there. Not to, again,

I think I've said this before, not to name drop. He's one of the guys that actually wrote me after the... He's one of the guys that wrote me after the Butch thing. He's like, listen, just whatever. I think George is ridiculously talented and I think as good of a person as he is

as a broadcaster. And I would, you know, he's one of those guys that I would, you know, there's, there's very little I wouldn't do for that guy. And,

and I'm sure he told the story or maybe told the story off Mike, uh, um, in some way, shape or form, but he is the first guy that I truly outside of, you know, the odd little appearance,

reading an email here, there with Gord Stelik way back in the day when I was producing, George was the first guy that I was ever on the air with hosting a show. And I remember just being, you know, 22, 23 and like, Holy shit, I get a chance to actually be on the air and host a show. And we were on from like 2 AM to 4 AM on a, on a Saturday night, technically Sunday morning. And it was, you know, I was,

I was in a wave after the game, obviously that he he had with Richards and with Merrick and with Mackowitz. But it was this sort of, you know, two young guys on the air. We did one show together, and he clearly was a far better broadcaster than me at the time and probably still is to this day. I mean, he's such a fabulous interviewer. Yeah, he's great. But we were on the air together, 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., and then we came back for the second week. And I remember that second week, he brought in his, I can't remember now if there was one or two pet snake so either snake or snakes i'm not a snake guy at all and he had this thing crawling on me and going down my

the sleeve of my shirt while we're on the air and i was like ready to lose it the snake crawling all over me and then in one of the commercial breaks uh this is show number two is when he said to me he's like uh good news bad news i said what's that and he goes this has been awesome these two weeks i'm like okay and he goes and i'm thinking like what are we going to be pulled off the air i'm finally getting a chance to be on the air and whatever and uh he's like i i got a job offer i'm and i've given my notice i'm i'm going to be heading to 102.1 i'm like wow and i you know it's outstanding for him but we literally did two shows together. That team you just described all ended up doing quite well.

What you're doing now with the Raptors and Jim Richards has been on 1010 forever with his own show. Macko is on TSN Radio and Merrick is on Hockey Den in Canada. That's quite a team. You think about whether it be Elliot Friedman and Dan Shulman.

The fact that Bob McCown is still there as the cornerstone. Although he's very cranky lately. Have you been reading these Schultz articles? I've read the articles. I literally... And they're happening every week. These articles are coming out about how cranky he is. This is a funny thing, though, too, is I don't...

I work there. I'm so not privy to a lot of the stuff that goes on there. Because the other thing, too, is that I'm rarely at the actual radio station or the television station. Because most of what I do is either on location, on the road, or you're just left to like, you know what your job is. You know where you need to be. So go do it. It's very rare for me to hear from a boss, good, bad, or otherwise, because it's just kind of like, you know what you're supposed to do. You know what your job is and go do it. And because I don't have a regular show on the fan anymore or a show on television, it's just I of like, you know what you're supposed to do. You know what your job is and go do it. And because I don't have a regular show on the fan anymore

or a show on television, it's just, I'm not around there. So I don't know a lot of the ins and outs of what happens on a daily basis. So yeah, Bob is Bob and Bob has been a fantastic mentor to me over the years as well, as much so as a guy like Astron Bilopoulos. So he's not as cranky as he pretends to be, this Bob McCallum. I don't think so. Maybe sometimes. Maybe he's cranky right now.

I don't know. I haven't talked to him. He's pissed at all the Tim and Sid attention. I know. I've read all the articles. A little jealous. I've read all that stuff. Come on, Bob.

Let the kids play, too. You've got to get Bob to come on this thing, then. I've been trying, man. If you can help out with that. I've been trying. I don't know if I've got that much juice. Now I've got to pull for Bob, and I've got to pull for Jim. Taddy. Taddy. Come on. That'll be an easy get. You're going to get Taddy, and you can help out with that. I've been trying. I don't know if I got that much juice. Now I've got to pull for Bob and I've got to pull for Jim. Taddy, Taddy, come on.

That'll be an easy get. You're going to get Taddy and you're going to bring in Bob McCowan. Jack Armstrong is another guy. Jack is one of my closest friends and he is one of the most genuine people you will ever meet. We'll compromise, right? Bring me Jack Armstrong and Bob McCowan and we'll call it even. Oh, wow. I think you got the record.

I'm not sure. I've got to go do some numbers. Oh, so we're done now? Well, we got... There were some quick hits, and we only got to like a couple. Well, we did that. It started with Drizzy like a half an hour ago.

Do you have anything you want to share with the... Just anything you want to get off your chest? I don't know. I think you hit it all. I mean, you started with religion, so I don't even know where I can go from there. Oh, I know how I want to close. I wanted to close with, It ain't over till it's over.

Yogi Berra passed away. Yeah, you know what? When I played, I told you I played a lot of baseball growing up. And through my four years of high school baseball, I could tell my Al Bundy poke high stories. But I'll save that for another podcast. But I had written on the inside of my hat, you can't think and hit at the same time.

And that was a yogi-ism. It was written on the inside of the bill of my cap for four years. You can't think and hit at the same time. There's so many, but I thought I'd hold the record until it was broken or something. He's just got to throw it all over the place. I saw that this morning. My grandfather-in-law is an 85-year-old staunch, diehard Yankee fan.

I'm sure he's fully, fully just heartbroken and crushed today at the passing of yogi. My grandfather-in-law is an 85-year-old staunch, diehard Yankee fan. I'm sure he's fully, fully just heartbroken and crushed today at the passing of Yogi. For sure. So on that note, it is over. But that brings us to the end of our 135th show. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike. And Eric is, okay, this is complicated, so pay attention. Double underscore.

Right, at Eric double underscore Smith is okay. This is complicated. So pay attention. Double underscore. Right. At Eric double underscore Smith. That was a desperate move on your part to go to double unders. No one goes to double. What do you want me to do? Like Eric Smith, six, two,

five, three. Cause like literally there's a million Eric Smiths in the world, which is my real name. By the way, this isn't some fake. Yeah. That's gotta be a common name. When Paul Jones and I show up together for things and it's Smith and Jones,

you're like, yeah, okay, whatever. That's, that's gotta be fake. A hundred percent real name. Eric double underscore Smith I show up together for things, and it's Smith and Jones, I'm like, okay, whatever. That's got to be fake. 100% real name. Eric, double-nose course. Hey, thanks for doing this,

because you were awesome. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I think you might have got the record, but it's well-deserved. I appreciate that. Thank you, man. Thanks for doing this,

and see you all next week. But I wonder who Yeah, I wonder who Maybe the one who doesn't realize There's a thousand shades of grey Cause I know that's true