Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

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Hey, what's going on there, pal? We saw you at the hockey game on. Do I know you guys?

I'm Ryan Whitney. I got a drink named after me.

Not a big deal.

Pink Whitney?

That's what I thought.

See you, fellows.

I invented the thing, you pigeon. Pink Whitney for legendary moments. On today's part of my take, we listen to the people, and we have a baseball preview, a real baseball preview. We wanted to get Jeff passing on for a very long time, and it did not disappoint. Awesome dude. Great interview. Tells us all about the game, some teams we should be looking out for. We're also going to talk some women's final four. We had Kaitlyn Clarke versus Angel Reece on Monday night. We also have a update to the Oakland Athletics and Fuck John Fisher. We are joining the cause even more We're going to do Hot Seat, Cool Throne. We're going to do FAQs. We're going to have a great show. It's all brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. Rewind it back to the days of chalaxing on the beach and all day fun with spring break on DraftKings Casino. Play exclusive games like FanFaive, Rocket. The excitement is endless. The vibes are right, and the cash prizes could be huge. New players start playing with just five bucks, get 100 back instantly in Casino credits. Download the app, use code TAKE to book your one-way ticket to fun with DraftKings Casino.

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Restrictions apply. Okay. Let's go. Now in the street, there is violence, and then a lot of work to be done. No place to hang a lot of washing, and then I can't lay all on the sun. Oh, no. We're going to rock down to... Electric Avenue. And then we'll take It's Part of My Take, presented by Marcia Sports. Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by DraftKings and DraftKings Casino. New players start playing with just five bucks. Get 100 back instantly in Casino credits. Download the app. Use code take to book your one-way ticket to fun with DraftKings Casino. The Crown is yours. Today is Wednesday, April third, and Kaitlyn Clarke is Her.

Her. Hermathy.

Hermathy Clarke. That was an awesome two games. I'm going to say it right now. That was an awesome two games because I feel like people were just focused on Kaitlyn Clarke, Angel Reese. We love women so much. I watched the second game, Juju Watkins versus Paige Becker's, and that was awesome. Paige Beckers might be my goat.

Yeah, we love women more than any other podcast in America. We love women. I love women. Love all of them.

Hank, did you watch? Do you love women?

I do love women. I did watch.

What was your thought, Hank? What was your big takeaway?

Great play by both sides. She's her.

Which one's her? They're all her. They're all her. Yeah. It was honestly a great game. Even Van Lith? No.

She might not be her. Well, I don't-Oh, you all-She's her. Hervert by take.

No, she's her. One bad game doesn't define a career.

I blame Kim Moki. Yeah. Because Kim Moki just refused to make an adjustment. Then at the end of the game, when she put Johnson on her, that was like, why hasn't she been defending Kaitlyn Clarke the entire game?

Well, she did have a few fouls, but yeah, Johnson was... I think she had three fouls in the first half, but she was awesome. She's the one to watch.

Also her.

Also big time her. Future. Yeah, Kim Moki, it felt like She was like, there was some grudge, maybe like a Malcolm Butler thing going on where she was like, I'm going to punish Van Lith and just make her guard, Caitlin Clarke, one on one. I think one of our colleagues, and I'm sorry that I didn't... I think it might have been Riegs, but I probably got this wrong, but he said that Kim Moki is perfect because it's like if Bob Knight dressed up in the bird cage. Yeah.

That's really what it is. It's a good point. It was a very bad job coaching by her to not make an adjustment on that. I knew that something was off with Kim from the second she stepped out on the court and she was wearing the most understated thing that she could possibly... I want Kim Moki to be full on Kim Malky wearing the Technicolor Dream coat. Instead, she looked like Leslie Nope celebrating St. Patrick's Day.

But we can't be hypocrites because we've always said, When Cam Newton used to dress in his crazy hats and then lose a game, I didn't Kim Moki knew that they were in trouble, and that's why she dressed down. Because she didn't- That was her ass whooping. That was her get my ass whooped suit.

She didn't want to wear a magic eye dress to the podium afterwards.

She wanted to wear a full tiger skin.

Now, to be fair, I thought that LSU was just pounding this shit out of Iowa in the first half. Also, it was a great sporting event because we were very excited to watch it. We had talked about it for a few It was highly anticipated, and then it lived up to the expectation, which is rare.

Well, let's wait to see if it's a great sporting event because we don't have the ratings yet.

Okay, yeah, we'll wait to see that. It was only on the SPN. We think it was. If it had been on ABC, then maybe it would have been better than it was.

We have to argue the ratings no matter what. Whichever way they go, we have to find a way to argue about it constantly because as everyone knows, we watch sports only that other people want to, a lot of other people want to watch. If a lot of other people aren't watching it, then that sport means nothing.

It's funny because the ratings, when they are on network as opposed to on cable, there's always a massive difference. If you look at the men's side of the bracket, when they show the highest rated games of the season so far or of this tournament, they're all the CBS games and the other ones, which I understand that it is a thing, but still to this day, I don't understand who has CBS and doesn't have the ESPN or who has ABC and does not also have ESPN. Hospitals. Hospitals, yeah. Maybe. Old people.

Maybe. Maybe some hotels.

You know what I realized watching this game?

Who doesn't have ESPN? Because I got it 20 years ago. You understood. Remember when ESPN got Monday Night Football and people were like, This is bullshit. How could you do this? Or even when they had Sunday Night Football, I was like, This is bullshit. No one can watch. Can you even get a cable package that doesn't have ESPN? I would like to. Yeah, there's a 10-channel basic package. It's like, CBS, Fox, ABC, ABC. I just thought of our next punishment. Yeah.

God, that was stuff. Oh, my God. Maybe dorm rooms. Dorm rooms might not have ESPN.

That would be torture. No, because when I was in dorms- Kids in dorms are not using cable. Oh, shit. We just got to age James.

That's a fair point. Okay, I realized that Hank is right.

No, but I had ESPN when I was in college. I remember PTI, the first episode of PTI. That's right.

Yeah.

Again, aged us. God damn it. Hank just said a trap, and we just walked further into it. They're just using YouTube TV?

Damn it. They don't have the women's college basketball game for my SEGA Saturn. It sucks.

We got to get off this topic because I've been having a couple of days where yesterday I thought that Draymond Green actually bought a bedazzled testicle necklace.

Oh, the Nutsack. Yeah.

It was NBA Central.

Yeah, that was going by.

They get you sometimes. But yeah, the games were awesome. Kim Moki, no I had no idea what she was doing, but Kaitlyn Clarke, that was something about great athletes and rising the occasion and being like, you could tell it was very personal for her, even though she was saying it wasn't. But it was very personal, getting the revenge, dropping 40, Hitting shots out of nowhere. It was awesome. It was a great watch.

It was a great game.

I think Yukon is going to beat him, though, because I think Gino... If you watched the second game, Gino had a game plan for Juju Watkins that Kim Mulky just didn't have for Kaitlyn Clarke.

Kim Mulky's game plan one-on-one and then have all your bigs drop back. She was just getting open look after open look. You might be right because I think it's going to be Yukon and South Carolina in the finals, but it would be awesome if we had dueling NC State, Yukon finals. That would be great. Both brackets. But I think I like the format of the women's game better.

What do you mean, the quarters?

The quarters. I like the quarters.

I was thinking about this as well because quarters makes more sense. Fouls reset. But I like that the college basketball is the only basketball that does haves. They're the only basketball that does haves. Also, I like one-on-ones. Women's doesn't do one-on-ones.

They do five fouls per quarter as a double bonus.

One-on-ones are fun because you can just be like, Well, this guy sucks. He's the other chance.

Yeah. But my one knock against the NCAA tournament on the men's side is that down the stretch, if there's two minutes left in the game, it just turns into a foul fest where the game stopped every five seconds. You don't get that in the women's game.

Well, you get it Sometimes. Remember Kaitlyn Clarke versus who was it? Oh, yeah. At the very end of that game.

West Virginia.

When she hit her over. She shot 17 free throws.

Yeah, but I think it minimizes it. It lessens it, whereas sometimes at the end of men's games, it becomes like, okay, there's really no action going on. Yeah.

Either way, it was a great night of basketball. I was glued to my TV. I think a women's basketball already arrived, but arrived even more.

Yeah, I think it's here.

It's here. It's now. They're her.

It's very now.

Until we see the ratings.

We're going to have to wait to see the ratings. The one group of people that did not like the game last night, the city of Albany. Rebecca Lobo just took a wild shot at the city of Albany.

They got a straight shot.

When she's like, Yeah, there's really nothing to do in this city. Albany is just sitting there watching. It's so proud that they're hosting a game. All eyes are on the city. Then Rebecca Lobeau just taking a big steaming dump all over it.

But did they have any arguments against? Yeah.

So McKenzie works here at Barstool. She's from Albany. She was quick to respond We actually have the biggest Walmart in the world.

Also state capital.

Yeah, so up yours.

State capital has got to count. Something like pizza. How many people do you think? Here's something nice to say about Albany. I would say out of any state in the United States of America, people get what's the state capital wrong more with New York. Yeah, maybe- Then it's like the fun like, no, actually, it's Albany.

Yeah, Albany is the capital.

I don't know if that was a compliment.

It might be the most corrupt city in the world. Really? I think most people that serve at the head of the New York state government end up getting arrested after the head of office. I think it's like 90% of them. Chicago's got to run for it. Chicago's pretty good, too. Baltimore. Baltimore. What do you call somebody?

Are they- Are you just basing that off the wire?

I've been rewatching The Wire. It's such a good show.

Yeah, I remember Hamsterdam.

But don't you think that if you asked a hundred people what's the capital of New York, they'd be like, New York?

I think most people would say New York. What about New Mexico? That's another one.

Santa Fe.

Damn, Hank.

Nice, Hank.

Florida. Tallahassee.

Hank, Mr. Geography. What about- Pennsylvania.

Oh, this one's tough. I know this one.

Pennsylvania, Montpelier.

What about the state you reside in?

Chicago?

Yeah.

Oh, fuck. Wait, Chicago is not a- No, you live in Illinois. Not the state capital. No, you live in Illinois. I live in Illinois. This capital of Illinois is Montpelier.

Yeah, correct.

You keep saying Hot Pillier. You got to get it right.

Springfield.

Yeah, you nailed it.

I think there's a Springfield in all 50 states.

I read that like 10 years ago. I might be wrong. That's why everyone can claim the Simpsons.

Is somebody from Albany called an Albanian?

Yeah, definitely do.

Tough night for the Albanians. You'll rise up.

Or a New Yorker. You got it. They probably have good pizza and a lot of snow.

Someone brought a pizza. A pizza shop brought a pizza to Dave, and they gave it to him on the way out. It looked amazing. Yeah.

And there's a Sune there.

There's a Sune in there. That's where Billy and I got it. That's where Billy dragged me to TGI Fridays.

Yeah.

Drag you to TGI. Jake, you should be so lucky. Tgi Fridays is fantastic. Drag you there.

All right. Whether you're searching for a home to buy or you're just obsessed with looking at homes for sale, Red Fin got you covered. Red Fin updates their listings every two minutes so you can find the home that's just right for you. You can favorite homes, share listings with others, and even schedule tours with a local Red Fin agent all in the app. When you're ready to buy, an experienced local Redfin agent can guide you through the whole process. Download the Redfin app today to get started. Other things we got to talk about. We got to talk about the Oakland A's. So PFT and I have unveiled gambling strategy this year. We're betting against the A's minus one and a half every single game. So far, we're four and one. We have a long history of John Fisher. Fuck John Fisher. Piece of shit. We'll never buy anything from the Gap. I think that's where his money's from. The A's are a joke. The A's have great fans. The A's are moving to Vegas. The fans are losing yet another team. We feel really bad. There's this website called The Last Dive Bar that is supporting the fan movement.

For opening day, they did a big tailgate thing outside of the stadium. I think it was like 20,000 people basically showing, Hey, we have fans. You just don't put out a product and you're moving the team, you piece of shit. The Last Dive Bar has a bunch of merch, which is great. They have these bracelets, and a couple of A's players were wearing the bracelets and mysteriously got benched and sent down.

I think there are four players that they've spotted, but the biggest names, Ruiz, Estuary Ruiz. He was your hit by pitch guy. He was my hit by pitch guy. I think he led the majors in stolen bases last year. He was very fast. He started out, I think he went three for five. Then they I sent him down to Triple A.

He was wearing a last die bar bracelet.

He was wearing a last die bar bracelet. There was the other guy, their All-Star from last year. He got benched. It seems to be that they're punishing the guys that are wearing these bracelets. Right. That I'm basically saying we like the Oakland Coliseum.

And we like the fans who support us. We want to support them.

So they're punishing their own players, allegedly, for going up against the ownership. And it's sad, man. I'm going to get a little bit serious, but there's nothing more evil than an owner of a sports team that treats their fans like shit. And this guy is the king of it. It should be illegal what he's doing. He's taking away joy from an entire city. He's taking away families growing up and becoming fans of the team and memories that you're going to have with your family going to these games. He's taking away the community because he wants to make a little bit more money, even though this guy, he's a fail son. His parents own the gap. He inherited all of his money, and he wants to be like, Oh, I want to make a for myself. I want to make my own money. I'm going to steal a team away from a city that loves it, and we're going to move it to a city that does not give a fuck about it.

Yes, and they're cowards because he never faces the music. He never answers to what he's been doing. He's been putting out a terrible product and basically saying, Look, no one's here. When we know when the A's are rocking, that place is awesome. The Coliseum is one of the coolest places when they've had these runs, the 20-game winning streak back in the Billy Beane days, the playoffs where they had guys dressed up and all this fun stuff. They're passionate fans. This fuckhead, John Fisher, has basically robbed them, not only of their team, But of their dignity because the way they're going out is so sad, and what he's putting on the field is so sad that he's like, Oh, well, no one's showing up. No, you did this. You created all of this, and you're a piece of shit. We stand with the city of Oakland and the fans of the A's, and it's so petty that he's... We don't know for fact that he made these roster moves because of the last die bar bracelets. But a coward like him would make that type of move.

Well, if you listen to the way that the manager had to justify the moves, you could tell he did not believe what he was saying. Correct. It sounds like he had to say something that was not the owner told me to do this. So he came up with something with Ruiz where it's like, Yeah, last year, he needed some that he had to work on and did not address at all what he's... He's obviously one of the best players on your team, and we're trying not to lose. It's a big double middle finger to your fans. And credit to A's fans because they have organized boycottts, they've organized reverse boycottts, they've organized protests, US. They're doing everything that they can. Normally, when a team gets moved, it's usually people are upset about it, but you don't have this big uprising against it like you saw in European soccer for the Super League, where people flip their shit. The A's fans are actually going out there and making their voices heard, and it just stinks having a guy that just is outwardly hostile to your fan base.

I don't know if you know this- And they turn their replies off on their tweets. Yeah, they turn their replies off.

That's the most cowardly shit you can get.

They're cowards. Here's another thing that is crazy in the cowardly nature of the A's front office and ownership. Last night, we were talking via text, and we were talking about how we won again because the A's stink. Again, this is not a we're betting against the players. We're betting against John Fisher because he's a piece of shit.

He's actually going to do everything in his power to make sure that we keep winning our bets. Correct. This is crazy.

Correct. We were talking about it, and we were talking about the last die bar and how cool it was that these guys are so passionate about the A's and trying to get the fans being like, Hey, we're still here. I was like, Let's go buy some of these bracelets. Support them. I went on the last die bar website. Their merch is awesome. I got a little crazy because I was going to buy merch for all of us. I ended up buying a lot of merch. I hit submit on the merch. Brian, who runs the Last Die Bar, emailed me two seconds later and was like, This is his email. Whoa, what an order. Just want to make sure you intended to buy all those items. It wasn't a slip of the thumb, mind blown. I was like, Shit, he probably thinks that I mess up. I replied to him and I was like, I'm Dan. We have part of my take. We support you guys. He sent me a couple of links in the story with the Last Die Bar and the A's specifically just shows how cowardly these people are. The Last Die Bar has been doing this for a while where they've been making incredible merch and being a part of the community and helping the community.

The A's actually commissioned a bunch of the Last Die Bar's work. Mlb sent a letter to them and was like, Hey, you're in copyright infringement. Brian was basically like, But you don't understand all of these designs? The A's commissioned this from us. Essentially, the A's, once it was clear that they were going to move, they ghosted the last die bar completely. Never thanked them for anything they had done for them. Never said, Hey, these guys made a lot of cool. Shirts and promos and all this stuff. Brian was saying that they did Bingo Night that he ran. They basically pretended they didn't exist and won't even looked them in the face. This passionate fan group that has been doing a great job for the A's. The A's used them. The minute they were going to move, we're like, Oh, we don't know those guys, and have ignored them. If you're looking to support the A's, they have a couple of other groups. The last I bar, we're going to be... I bought a lot of stuff, so we'll be wearing it. We'll be wearing their bracelets. We want to support the city of Oakland because owners like this are pieces of shit.

They should not just sell the fucking team. Sell the team to someone who wants to keep it in Oakland. We're at a point now where fans are smarter than they've ever been. We know what's going on. It's happening actually right now, low-key with Jerry Reinsdorff. He's pulling the same shit right now. If he tries to move the White Sox to Nashville, we will absolutely be like, Fuck you and do the same thing. We're at a point now where fans can figure out we're not stupid. We know What's going on? And we stand with City of Oakland and fuck John Fisher.

We do. And nothing would make me happier than if every single player on the A's wore that bracelet. You can't fire all of us. Yeah. And that's a little unfair because they have jobs.

Yeah, they want to get paid.

They want to get paid. They're families. They want to in the big league. I get that. They're in a bad spot. I'm not saying that they're bad people if they don't do it at all. It would just be funny to see what the A's would do if everybody on that roster also wore this bracelet.

Just sell the fucking team, man. Just do it and go fuck off.

And you can make a lot of money.

You can make a lot of money. You can fuck off.

Sell it to that Oracle guy. Yeah. There's a lot of money in the Bay Area. Find another... Just one billionaire. That's who we should be putting pressure on. Any of these weird Silicon Valley type people. As we've said on the show before, if you're a You're a billionaire, and you don't own a sports team. You're a fucking weirdo. One of those people needs to step up to the plate and just offer them a big, big offer. Buy the A's, keep them in Oakland. I have thought.

The thought crossed my mind because our betting strategy is that we're betting the same amount against the A's every single game. The thought crossed my mind that what if we just won a game, doubled it, won a game, doubled it, until we had a billion dollars, we'd buy the A's.

That would be an awesome story, wouldn't it? Also, maybe Major League Base, you're currently imbroiled in a gambling scandal right now. Do you think it's the best optics to move a team to Las Vegas? If Rob Manfred is serious about the gambling issue, I think the first thing he should do would be to not let a team move to the city of sin. I agree.

But either way, the last die bar, guys, and like I said, I wish I had a list of the other ones. I'm sorry that I don't have all of them, but there's other A's groups that are doing great, great work. We are in preliminary talks, depending on where our travel takes us this summer to potentially come out and support last die bar. We should do a live podcast in the... Maybe we can trick John Fisher to come on. How could we do that?

I don't know. He doesn't talk to anybody.

We just put a big box and a string and a pair of khakis underneath. With a big- With a striped polo.

In regard to everything that we've said, we are the biggest John Fisher fans in the world. Love to talk to him, pick his brain about how to be a successful businessman.

Hey, you know what, John Fisher, you're probably misunderstood. Want to come on part of my take and explain your side of things?

Because we're just getting one side right now. Softballs only. It seems like in today's culture, billionaires are the easiest targets for people, and they don't get to stand up for themselves. So we would like to be your mouthpiece.

Oh, man, how great would that be if we could trick him to come on and then he walked off?

Yeah, it'd be great.

He's a piece of shit, man. Oakland 68 was the other one. Oakland 68 is the other fan group that I think does great stuff. They've worked in conjunction with Last Die Bar.

Say something nice about the A's as well. Their outfield grass is awesome.

Dude, the Coliseum rocks.

I love the grass. In Oakland. I know.

I even bought, I'll say it, I bought a couple of art prints.

Oh, of the Coliseum?

Yeah, from Last Ibar. We're going to put it up in the studio. We're going to stand with Oakland.

If you've seen the artist's rendition of the stadium that they're planning on moving to or the one that Fisher just threw out there, it looks like the Sydney Opera House. It's just ridiculous. They're not going to move into that stadium.

It has me juiced up, too, because it's like we have an awesome platform that we're very lucky to have. It's like, if we can use it to stand up for the regular fans, like, Fuck John Fisher. This is a Fuck John Fisher podcast unless he wants to come on, and then we'll have him on. Again, softballs only, John. Yeah. It'll be so nice. We'll ask you, Oh, hey, what's your favorite type of jean cut?

Yeah, that's good. That's a fair question.

First question, John. Hard question. Tech Vests.

Are they back? Yeah.

When you thought of making polos with vertical stripes, were you like, Ka-ching?

You remember those swing commercials that you used to have with the all-white background people jumping over each other? That was brilliant. You're an advertising genius, John Fisher.

You're not a fail, son.

I would like to just put this out there. I will fight John Fisher. I would, too. In Rough and Routy. I will fight him with one hand tied behind my back.

I will fight him with both hands tied behind my back. So you fight him with one hand, I'll fight him with none.

Just headbutts only from Big Cat. Fight us, John Fisher, you bitch.

Fight us. You won't. He's probably just sitting in his little mansion. I'm like, Oh, Vegas They don't like you. That's the other thing.

Yeah, you're going to go out there. They've already got their billionaire, Mark Davis. Yeah.

And he rocks.

He's not going to fight.

He would never move a team. Never.

He's not going to invite you to P. F. Shanks. Shit.

Damn it. We got ourselves in that one. Hank, call us Old again.

You're old. Okay.

Hockey is on. And no matter the city, no matter the team, no matter the game, whether it's face-off or penalty shots, regular season or playoffs, win or lose, no matter what happens, no matter where it happens, New Amsterdam Vodka is There. Can I talk real quick about a fan base, since we're on fan base talk that I wanted to give a quick shout out to? And that is the Providence Basketball Twitter fan base, because I don't know if you guys have seen this, but they're basically gaslighting Ed Cooley into resigning. I think it was an April Fool's joke with a fake account, Blue Checkmark account, being like, Ed Cooley is about to resign. Story coming soon. They've taken that. The hashtag theresignation is trending. I actually think if there's one fan base that could get someone to be like, Wait, am I resigning? It's the Providence Basketball fan base.

They're an army.

They're crazy. I love them so much.

They are a weapon. I do not ever want to be on the wrong side of practice.

They got John. I mean, once John Fanta did the windmill dunk, they're like, Our powers are unlimited. Yeah. They're going to get Ed Cooley to wake up and be like, Am I resigning?

There's probably somebody in the Georgetown in the university that has that and been like, Wait, is Coach leaving?

Listen, I know that he's probably not resigning, but it was 0% chance on Sunday, and it's at least a 5% chance today. All because enough people are tweeting the resignation. Max, you agree, right? Yeah, no, I just love that you said it, probably, because you don't know for certain whether he's resigning or not. Exactly. The thought has been put out there, and now he has to do a press conference saying he's not resigning. That at least has to happen.

You think he's going to do it? He has to address it. I think he might issue a statement.

He has to do something.

No, zap it.

The world is talking, and he has been weirdly silent throughout all of this.

It is weird. It's a very funny situation. Shout out to Providence Twitter. I saw the video Rico did with them.

They're psychos. Oh, yeah. They're psychos. But it's a great... They're just passionate about Providence basketball, and they have time on their hands. By the way, Breaking Moos. Breaking Moos. Zack Eats has been named National Player of the Year, back to back.

Great. Brilliant day for basketball. My theory was that Ace Smith from Texas. Everyone's like, Why does he pronounce his name like that? It dawned on me when we were watching the games. I was watching him with Titus, and I was like, remember Joe Thiesman? His name used to be Theisman, and he changed his name to Theisman so that he would help a marketing campaign for winning the Heisman Trophy, which, by the way, he did not win. I think Asmis changed the pronunciation of his name to rhyme with Naesmith. Think about it. Yeah, I am. Makes sense. I am thinking about it. But yeah, Zack Eady won. Congrats, Zack.

So that wasn't enough for Asmis.

That wasn't enough for him. Not nearly.

He got close, but not enough. Yeah, Zack Eady is National Player of the Year, back to back. We'll see if he can close. Did you guys see the clip of Zack Eady playing baseball? Yeah. Very funny. Gas. I would have fucking taken that 300, 350 easy. Respectfully. Respectfully, knock it out of the park.

He threw what? 75?

74, I think, yeah. Yeah. He just looked so...

I bet it'd be hard to hit, though.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to look at on the mount. What are you going to say, Jake?

Asmis's father said the B was originally a Scharff's S.

No, he changed it to win the Naismith Award.

It's a German letter that resembles B, but it's actually pronounced. Respectfully, you're wrong, dude, whose name it is. You are wrong.

We're too smart for you. Yeah.

Okay, let's do Hot Sea Cool Throne, and then we will get to Jeff Pass in great interview. We touch on the A's with him. Pft, are you ready for your redemption?

No.

The Chill Calendar. Hot Sea Cool Throne is presented by CorzLight from David.

There was a pandemic.

Yeah, you got it. Dude, he's a hot face.

You can do this, buddy.

For people who are watching, you got this squirt. You have to be like, there was a lump in his throat when he realized that he had to go back to the calendar. Come Come on. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Slow cap.

That was a much easier door. That was a much easier door.

Light work.

We got a glass. Dominated That glass slipper in this one, boys. Definitely not Oakland. Dominated that. All right, so Hot Sea Cool Throne is brought to you by Coors Light. From day to day annoyances to the big stuff, life throws your way. It's easy to get work done, but there's a better way, a chiller way. Turn that canceled concert into a parking lot dance party. Too cold for the ocean swim. Play volleyball and light a bonfire instead. That's choosing chill. When you choose chill, reach for a Coors Light. When the mountains turn blue, it's as cold as the Rockies. When you choose chill, rise above it all. Choose chill, choose Coors Light. Get Coors Light delivered straight to your door with the Insta card by going to corsalight. Com/take. Celebrate responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. Hank.

My host is fanatics. We've talked about it a few times, but it's starting to bother me now that I'm watching a little more baseball, just not being able to read the pitcher's jersey. It seems like every single night, there's a new example of-Got those old eyes.the jersey's just being pieces of shit.

Seeing it in person, I was like, Those are really small ones.

The Nationals, they have the first base coach had different colored gray top and bottom. The Yankees pitcher who was sweating, he just sweat through his jersey completely.

The sweat seems to be an It's an issue for the road uniforms.

I just feel bad for the fans because if you order, it used to be like if you order the most expensive jersey, it comes stitched, it comes everything. The ones that the fans are getting are also shitty.

It's reached a point where-I don't know what...

They're on the hot seat. They have to solve this.

Now, if you want to get a good jersey, you have to order a knockoff jersey on. It comes and you're like, Wow, this looks awesome.

You have to order an old jersey.

Tom Lahr, one of our great producers here at Barcell, had a perfect tweet when the Mets and brewers were bralling, and there was a screenshot of McNeill, Jeff McNeill going crazy, and he was just like, It's so hard to look tough in these jerseys because look.

Yeah, I saw you have size 8 font.

It's so small. You can't be a tough guy in that.

Cannot. The side-by-side with Jason, Kelsey, and Fletcher Cox throwing out the first pitch was tough because Kelsey was rocking the old uniform. Cox was rocking the new one.

Yeah, and you saw it.

You're like, Wow, Kelsey looks way stronger.

The Cubs had The Cubs logo, the secondary logo patch on some players had on their right, some players had on their left.

That's bad.

It's crazy. Crazy.

Crazy. Hot seat. Then my cool throw is Big Al.

Dinger.

Yeah, he's back.

The kid from Jersey, Little League World Series a few years ago said, My name's Big Al. I hit Dinger's.

Okay, I don't want to Bosco you, but he never made it to... He was the regional's.

Little League World Series coverage.

He He never made it to-William Sport. William Sport. Yeah, you're right. He gets very upset when people say that because they're like, he never- He made it on TV. That's- We celebrate this kid and he never made it to William Sport.

No, it's hard. Were you on TV?

Yes, I was.

Okay, so that's impressive.

We got to get those highlights.

I have, yeah.

You have highlights?

We need those. One for three with a ribby.

Did you do a camera thing?

What do you mean?

Like my name is Max Delente. I love to cover second place.

I can send this to you right now. I'm Big Max, and I drink sodies. My name is Max Salente.

My favorite Your favorite player is Shane Victorino. Wait, just pull it up.

Your favorite player is Shane Victorino?

Send it to yourself so we can watch it. I haven't seen this? He's not to talk. Pull it up. You've never told us that. My name is Max Delente. I like two sodas and getting angry. All right.

My name is Max Delente. I like second place.

My name is Max Delente.

I'm never cutting my hair after this video.

I'm going to grow into some big meaty klappers. Yeah, Big Al is skinny now.

Yeah, he looks like he's skinnier than he was in that video, and he hit a home run in his high school game. Yeah. He was jacked up.

I think he's just Lil Al now.

Yeah, he is Lil Al. Oh, I remember watching this.Weird Al.I'll play it again. You were cute.

Big I remember playing Shane Victorino.

All my name is Max Delaney.

Delaney? Yeah.

Were you saying your name wrong? I thought it was Delaney. I swear to God, I used to say that because I thought it sounded more Italian. Delaney? It sounds Irish. All my name is Max Delaney.

You had that eye. I look like I'm going to cry. No, any? I look like I'm going to cry face back then, too. Yeah, you do.

He has rest and cry face.

Yeah. All right. Max shared something interesting with me the other week. We're talking about soups. Did you know that in Philadelphia, they eat turtle soup?

Like actual turtles?

Like turtles. They eat turtles in soup. Snapers soup. Max's dad eats turtle soup three times a week.

Red snapper?

Yeah, I actually have an update on that. I talked to my dad about that this weekend, and he couldn't fathom that other parts of the country don't eat snapper soup. Here's the thing. It is funny because you would think we eat all types of meat, but I think it's because turtles, it's probably Tortoise and the Hair. Probably did enough good PR for them.

Yeah, Franklin.

Yeah, they're all in children's books, little bunny rabbits, little turtles that they've skirted our appetites. Yeah.

Yeah, but if you were in the wilderness, bunny, you think it's fair game. I would never think, If we get a turtle, we can eat this.

No, they swim around the mud.

Although, but think about it- But if it's like a bunny, I'd be like, Let's get a bunny. We can catch a bunny, and then we can cook this. You can't catch a bunny. No, probably not. No. You could catch a turtle. I would go for the river and just catch a bunny.

But that's the thing is you could catch turtle. With my bare hands.

Easy to catch a turtle. Not easy to eat a turtle, though.

It's like a lobster.

No, just crack it over a rock.

Like a, yeah.

But yeah, turtles. Giant gusher. Turtles and bunnies, they've gotten great. Whoever did the PR on turtles and bunnies.

Chickens, though, got great PR, and we can't stop eating chicken. Do they have great PR? They do. They're Little Red Hen.

I don't think that's good PR. Yeah.

Did she say the sky is Falling?

No, that's not good PR because They're not cute. Turtles and bunnies are cute.

Turtles are just so slow that it seems unfair to eat. Right.

They're just like, I'm going to get there eventually. Yeah.

There's a bunch of guys in the 1600s in Pennsylvania. Let's go hunting. They just walk outside die, and they walk slowly after a turtle and got it. Yeah.

It actually is the easiest thing to catch, I would imagine. Yeah. Turtle.

My other cool throw was Rajon Wando.

Oh, yeah. Retired. Didn't know he was not retired.

At least I thought he had been retired for three years. Yeah.

I thought that was NBA essential when I saw that.

That rules, though, to just be a drop of retirement when everyone was like, What? You were retired.

Yeah. But yeah, shout out to Raza Rwanda. Great career. All-time great.

Yeah, we actually had a funny... Were you with me, PFT, when we were in Indianapolis and we saw Blake Portals' agent and we were joking, we're like, Yeah, remember when he retired just accidentally on the show? He's like, Yeah, that caused a lot of problems. We got a ton of people hitting us up for a comment and interviewing He was in Blake. Blake just said, No, I'm only talking the part of my take.

That's awesome. He rocks. Good for him.

Okay, your hot seat, Cool Throne.

My hot seat is USPS, the Postal Service, because they're seeing a big, big uptick in traffic via Cooper Degene.

Oh, yeah.

Cooper Degene, cornerback at Iowa, gritty guy, hard worker, coach's son, coach on the field, plays the game the right way, smart, ham and eggs, Shifty. Gritty guy. Sneaky athletic guy. Yep. Tough. He's a tough guy.

First one in, last one out. Yep.

He's recovering from a leg injury. He had a broken leg, and he has sent a letter to every NFL team in informing them that after suffering the broken fibula in November, he has now been cleared to return to all football activities. He's going to do his own workout April eighth at Iowa. He's going to do on field testing and position work without any restrictions. He sent a letter to every team in the NFL. I need to know, was this letter written? Was it mailed? Was this an email? If so, Adam Schefter reporting it as a letter, not the correct story. Whatever it is, one NFL franchise is going to absolutely love this guy. Everyone else is going to be like, Fuck this Yeah, I saw that.

It's a try-hard move, but you got to try hard.

Yeah. If you're applying for a job, you have to stand out somehow. How many other defensive backs sent a letter? None. To every GM? None. My cool throne is women's college basketball because it finally made it. As we talked about at the top of the show, big matchups, but it didn't officially make it until Bob Ryan waded in about it.

Oh, yes.

Bob Ryan had this following tweet after the Iowa LSU game, I applaud the greatness of Kaitlyn Clarke, Paige Buchers, Angel Reese, and Juju Watkins, et cetera. But in fairness to their predecessors, I don't see a better point guard than Dawn Staley or a better post player than Lisa Leslie. Great women's basketball skillset is not new. You have not officially made it as a sport until Bob Ryan hits you with a back in my day, the players are better. This is the highest compliment that Bob Ryan can give the game of women's college basketball by saying it's actually not as good as when he was watching.

And just flexing on everyone. I I've been watching for a long time.

Also, the back in my day here isn't even back in Bob Ryan's. Bob Ryan was old when Lisa Leslie- He was like 50 years old. Older, I think. Dawn Saylor were playing.

It was a one, two combo because it was Bob Ryan and then it was Ravel saying I still believe Kaitlyn Clarke could have gotten a better deal for herself and a better deal for us sports fans if she returned to Iowa versus going to the WMBA. She's got a shot to change WMBA, but it's still a long shot. Just the perfect, We watched an awesome game. We celebrate it. Well, actually, fuck you, dude.

Then people were replying to him, basically calling him a clown, which Ravel has to be used to that by now. That's the default.

He probably has the clown emoji muted on Twitter.

Definitely. People were calling him out, and then he said, It's not a great deal for us sports fans, even in the replies. I don't know what Ravel means by that. Us sports. Us sports fans. We deserve better.

We do. We demand better. All right, my hot seat is, we didn't talk about it on Monday, but it happened late Sunday night. Russell Russell Westbrook getting into an argument with a Charlotte Hornets fan wearing a balloon hat, a grown man wearing a balloon hat. Now, Russell Westbrook has been very clear that if anyone calls him Westbrook, he will confront them, and I respect that. But Russell Westbrook also has to realize that you are in an argument with a Charlotte Hornets fan, grown ass man in a balloon hat, never getting to fight with someone who has nothing to lose. That guy has zero to lose in life. Yeah. He's a diehard Hornets fan in a balloon hat. He has nothing.

There's a great quote that is completely proven by this video. Never get into an argument with a fool because from a distance, no one can tell the difference.

Yeah. And then you watch this video and you're like, He's two foules.

Excuse me, I almost said the B-R-I-C-K word. Russell Westbrook looks like a much bigger fool than the balloon hat guy because he's arguing with the balloon hat guy.

And I don't want people to antagonize NBA players. But it would be funny if we could just see how ridiculous of a costume someone could get in an argument with Russell Westbrook wearing. Yeah. Just keep upping it. A guy in a literal balloon.

I feel like if you wore a balloon hat, the malice at the palace doesn't happen.

Yeah, the guy that throws down. Yeah, he's like, Oh. A little bigger target.

It was this guy. Also seeing the balloon fly off with a punch would have been awesome. Awesome. It just floats up into the stands.

Yeah, but can we get Can we get Russell Westbrook arguing with a furry?

Yeah, we could probably do that.

My Little Brony, the My Little Pony Bros.

Yeah, that could definitely also happen.

Maybe someone who's just actually naked.

I don't know if you'd want to fight a naked guy. That's also a great way to get out of a fight. Just take all your clothes off and try to fight.

But it would be funny to see how far... Because he will argue with anyone, including Balloon Hat Man, who's a Hornets. The Hornets fan is definitely the saddest part of this. Do you think he would get- The Balloon Hat is like, whatever. He saw Balloon Hat, he put it on. Being that diehard of a Hornets fan, you got a problem.

Do you think he would get into a fight with somebody wearing a Russell Westbrook jersey?

Yeah.

That'd be great. I think there's no limits.

Then my Cool Throne is Adam Schefter, because Scheftee finally got his revenge for the whole Aaron Rodgers saga, Lose My Number, Adam, all that stuff. Schefter, I didn't even know this was a thing, but Schefter treated, JetsQB, Aaron Rodgers earned $81.14 through the NFL's performance-based pay system, the lowest amount among all NFL players last season. I didn't even know this was a thing. It's cool that it is, but the system rewards all NFL players based on their play time and base salary. If a player has a low base salary but plays a significant number of snaps, he earns more through the system, with Rodgers having the opposite, a high salary and playing just 30.33% of snaps due to his torn Achilles. His total amount came to $81.14. That rocks. Shefter. That was Shefter getting it back, and he did it with facts.

There's a reason why he did it to Aaron Rodgers and not to DeMar Hamlin. I want to see the DeMar facts. How much did DeMar get paid last year?

This is a cool system, though. If you're on a shitty contract and you play a shitload of snaps, you should get more. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, but good job, Chef, sir. I know he was smiling when he sent that off. Jake, your hot seat cool thrown. My hot seat is studying. A student at NC State emailed a professor saying he's I'm lit AF right now and ask if he could move the test to Wednesday, and he did. Smart. The professor was like, This is awesome. This is possibly my favorite email of the year. You've convinced me. Yeah, I like it.

That's really strong work. Usually, those don't work. And great job. You not only helped yourself, but the rest of the class that was too cowardly to send that exact same email.Lit AF.Lit AF. I always hate the stories this time here from professors that are like, We're still in school to go to school. You have to come to class every single day, 9:00 AM. I don't care if there's a parade.

Although I do I think this is very specific. If it was Duke or Kentucky or Kansas, I feel like the professor has an ability to be like, We expect to be here. You know what I mean? Nc State, you have to let them take the test the day later because no one expected this run. Whereas a Blueblood, you're like, Listen, we don't celebrate Final Four. We celebrate Championship.

Kansas, I could see it happening because it's the biggest thing there. Duke, definitely not.

Also, if I was a professor, I just wouldn't schedule an for the three weeks of the tournament because you never know.

But if you're NC State-Yeah, you didn't even think you're going to be in the tournament.

Yeah.

My cool thrown is no hitters.

The Astros did it again. Yeah. This time, it was one person. Again. They did it again.

They've thrown a lot of big no hitters. Yeah.

I'm so over no hitters. Remember when no hitters used to be like they'd even go to bonus coverage?

I'm over no hitters, but I can pinpoint exactly when it started. I think it was the start of last season.

I think I've been over.

Oh, yeah, you're right. I became over no hitters. It was right at this opening day last year.Opening day, 2023, I was like, no more no hitters.

This is pretty crazy. Since June 2022, via Jason Sark, Astros, four no hitters, the rest of the league, three.

Oh, so that's a big one extra one.Including.

Postseason.including postseason.Yeah.

That's important.

Yeah. Okay, let's talk some more baseball. We got Jeff Passan on. Awesome interview with him, PFT. You got a quick word from our sponsors before we get to Jeff.

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Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It's Jeff Passon from ESPN Talkin' Baseball. Jeff, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to have you on the show. We're light on baseball coverage, so this is something that we wanted to do and have you on. So thank you for joining us. We want to do a little baseball preview with you, talk about a bunch of different things. But I think we need to start where everyone is thinking right now. Can you tell us when we're going to get an answer to Shoheya O'Tani's situation?

I I think it's going to be a long time. And here's why. This is such a tiny little speck of a much larger investigation that's going on right now into this alleged illegal gambling ring in Southern California. And there are ties to Las Vegas, and there are ties to casinos, and there are ties to all sorts of other things involved here. And because it's such a small thing, I understand it's a big headline because it's a big name, and Shoheya Tani, international man of mystery, and we don't know a whole lot about him to begin with. And now our insight into him is that from his account, $500,000 wire transfers, at least nine of them being sent to this bookie. And maybe it was his translator and the money got stolen from. It's a patently ridiculous story. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just a tiny part of the bigger one. And because Because Major League Base doesn't want to step on the toes of federal investigators, its investigation is more or less going to be going parallel but waiting until the end of the federal investigation. And because of that, it could be a while until there's any I guess, resolution is maybe the right word, but more than that, clarity.

Because this thing is still so opaque and so odd, and there are so many unanswered questions at this point. And I think that's the issue that everyone has with it. Like, what's the fucking truth?

Right. Yeah. That's smart by Major League Base, by the way, to wait for the federal investigation to happen. They get to play it as slowly as possible. But you're right. So it's a tiny speck in that investigation. But also Shoheys saying that there's been a big crime committed against him personally. So that's another investigation that could happen. But to my knowledge, there haven't been any charges pressed against him for the crime against Shoheys. Is that true?

You are correct, PMT. And that's the part of this that's really confusing to us as reporters right now trying to figure this out. If a crime is committed, generally authorities are involved, and they get looped in, and they get told what the alleged crime was, and they start investigating it. Now, Ohtani's camp has said that they've referred these allegations to authorities. They just don't say which authorities they've referred them to. And until we get a sense that there's an actual investigation going on into this alleged massive theft, why should we believe that there was a massive theft? Because Shoheya Ohtani says so, because there's incentive for him not to lie? Sure. If you go out in public and say, I got stolen from. There's no reason not to believe you, but we'd like to at least verify that. We haven't been able to figure out at this point which agency is investigating, if any, Ipeme Tuhara, the translator. And that, to me, is the confusing part. That, to me, would answer a lot of the questions. If we know who's looking into the alleged theft, then all of a sudden we realize, Okay, yeah, this isn't This is not just Shoheya Tani's word.

This isn't just his lawyer or his people going out and saying he got stolen from. The cops are actually looking into this, which don't know which cops, if any at this point, are looking into it and what they found.

Right. It's interesting. The whole story, and I mean, add in the fact that he is the face of baseball, I would assume that it would be dealt with a little bit differently if it was a journeyman player and this had happened. No doubt. They have to obviously be very careful with this. Okay, so I'm waiting for the forensic accounting. That's what I'm banking on. I didn't even know that- Big forensic accounting guy. Yeah, I didn't even know that existed until this story happened. I was like, Oh, shit, that's a job? Okay.

Isn't that what Ben Affleck did?

When he was just killing people?

Yeah, the movie The Accountant.

He had autism, and he was just killing people.

A forensic accountant is an accountant that has a gun.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Okay, got it. It's a higher hitman. All right, so in terms of this season, in a little preview, I read your story about the fact that this is a weird spot for baseball right now because the playoffs have expanded, but also the collective bargaining agreement has changed. Now, I'm not very smart. I understand the playoffs part. Yes, thank you. I am not, because I read it and I was like, I just couldn't understand it. Can you explain it to me, like I'm five, how the collective bargaining agreement has now made it so that more teams feel like they have a chance to compete and get into the playoffs?

So let's look back at the last three octobers. The team with the worst record in the league three consecutive years among playoff teams, has made it to the World Series. And so what that suggests to teams is October baseball is a complete crapshoot. This isn't like the NBA or the NFL that quite often it's pretty chalk in the playoffs. You know if you have Patrick Mahomes, you are probably going to be making it to at least the AFC Championship game unless you just have a complete garbage roster surrounding you. And even if you don't have a wide receiver room that's worth a damn, you still can go and win a Super Bowl. In Major League Baseball, your regular season record, the Baltimore Orials won 101 games last year, got bounced early. Atlanta, two years in a row, 100 plus wins, bounced by the Philly's. Dodgers, bounced by the 84-win Diamondbacks who finished 16 games back of them. What that says to teams is, as long as I got a lottery ticket, as long as I got a chance in the postseason, that's all that really matters. And so instead of playing for those 100 wins, teams are content to go out there and spend enough money to go and play for 85 or 86 or 87 wins and hope that they catch a heater.

And so what has happened, even though there's immense payroll disparity in baseball, you've got the Mets, the Yankees, and the Dodgers, all with payrolls over $300 million. And you've got nine teams above the luxury tax threshold. And then you've got nine other teams that are $100 million plus below that luxury tax threshold. You've got this enormous payroll disparity, but you only have four teams, really. And in the Rockies, the White Sox, the Nationals, and the A's that don't really have much of a chance to share. Let's look at the Pirates. The Pirates have a low payroll. They have a young team, and they have started 5-0 this year. And I understand a 5-0 start in baseball. It's like 2 or 3 % of the season, but at least it shows they have the opportunity to be competitive. And in Major League Base in 2024, guys, You don't have to be great. You just have to be competitive and get to October. And then once October comes, anything really can happen.

I'm upset a little bit with the Nationals. I can't be too upset with them because we did win a World Series just a few years ago. So that buys me 10 years of good will for them. But the other teams that you mentioned, particularly the A's, we've stumbled across a market inefficiency in baseball. We have a betting algorithm that we figured out, which is just bet against the athletics every single day. It seems to be pretty profitable thus far. But on behalf of A's fans, what the fuck are they even doing with their team? They're trying to move the team. The owner is not trying to be competitive at all. In fact, he's trying not to be competitive. They sent Ruiz back to Triple A. They benched their All-Star from last year. Word on the street is they did it because they were wearing protest bracelets, which we stand with those players, and they were, in fact, wearing the last five bar bracelets. If you're the Oakland Athletics, how is this not a crime to just not even try to be competitive in the sport? What's the motivation for the other owners to be okay with certain teams not even trying to put forth a competent product?

Because the second that there are constraints that are put on one team, all the other owners worry that it's going to be put on them if at some point they try to move a team, they try to lose games to get higher draft picks, et cetera. Think about it. Billionaires don't like regulations. And that's essentially what you're asking for here. And it's a really reasonable thing because I'm sorry, but as somebody who grew up in Cleveland and who worshiped the movie Major League, I never thought I would see it in real life. That's exactly what's going on here. They are sucking as bad as they could possibly suck in order to facilitate a move that shouldn't have necessarily been made in in the first place. And I think the saddest part of this whole thing beyond Oakland getting its last professional franchise ripped away from the city is poor Las Vegas inherits the A's of John Fisher. There is, Oh, I can't wait for all of the excitement when a complete horseshit franchise with an owner who has proven for five years going on once they get there that he does not care. That's what we want have as Las Vegas fans.

That's what's going to draw us out to the ballpark. It's just backward. And it shows you when there are poor incentives in place, this is the consequence of that. This is the upshot of there being incentives to stink and be rewarded for it. And in the last collective bargaining agreement, I think MLB did a better job of disincentivizing tanking. They put a draft lottery in place. If you have a player who is a top hundred prospect who comes and wins Rookey of the Year, you get an additional first-round draft pick. There are things there now. It's not perfect, but it's better than it used to be. The A's are just like, I don't care. Our draft pick is going to get moved down because we've sucked for so long. Okay. It's unfortunate that owners didn't take a stand on this and that their self-interest got in the way of the greater good of the sport.

Is there any hope that the A's don't move? Because it does feel like Vegas, so it's dead.

It's not dead. There's a group of teachers for example, who are trying to say, Hey, the hundreds of millions of dollars that you are spending on this stadium, that you are gifting to a billionaire, that should go to kids. That should go to education. But it's a last-ditch effort. In all likelihood, it's probably not going to work, and this is going to happen. But here's the thing, guys. As badly as the A's have screwed up their on-field product, they have screwed up in many other ways business-wise, too. They have been trying to get a stadium deal done in Oakland for upward of 20 years now and haven't been able to. So the notion that they're going to be able to land the plane here and move things to Vegas, it's not a done deal. It's just that all the momentum is going in that direction.

So we're rooting against, obviously, John Fisher. We hate him.

I'm pro-teacher and pro-kids. This is a pro-child podcast. Yes.

Okay, so other question about the disparity, and maybe you can tell me this is crazy to think, but I have the feeling that if the Dodgers keep losing in the playoffs the way they have, they're going to try to change the playoffs so that it's Because we've heard the rumblings where they play a five-game series and they're like, This isn't fair. We should be in the playoffs still. Is that a real fear of mind that they're going to try to tinker with it because they're going to basically say these teams, like you You mentioned the last place team to make the playoff has made it to the World Series. Is that going to happen?

It's certainly possible after the 2026 season when they get into new collective bargaining discussions. Because remember, it used to be just a one-game wild card. Now they've expanded it to a three-game wild card series. It's like to make your league baseball more playoffs is never a bad thing. When you have a sport whose national audience has dwindled to the point that MLBs has, where it's become a completely regional sport that has a postseason that some people watch, but a fraction of what used to. Still, more eyes are on those playoff games, and more playoff games equals more TV money, and more TV money is a good thing when the TV money that you have right now isn't necessarily going in the right direction. So I absolutely could see that. Now, you can make the argument, Big Cat. You want your postseason to closer represent the regular season, right? And the easiest way to do that is to have longer series because over longer series, it's not quite as small as a sample. And the weird shit that happens in baseball may not happen quite as much as you would have in a three-game series. So if that first round were to expand to five, it wouldn't surprise me.

I don't know if it's for the sake of the Dodgers, though. I think it's for the sake of when you have people saying, Hey, what's the point of the regular season if you win 100 games? And then like that, you can get bounced in the playoffs. It's a reasonable argument. It's just that if the Dodgers weren't choking things away in October, the Braves were choking things away in October, then the discussion wouldn't quite focus on them the same.

Yeah. What about the Yankees? Because it feels like this entire postseason discussion is all for not because the Yankees are just going to win everything for the next five years.

Definitely not.

No. We say hard no on that. Juan Soto does look... Here's my problem with Juan Soto being on the Yankees. He's too fun of a player to be on the Yankees. I want somebody I can hate on the Yankees, just It's ruining everybody's dreams. Juan Soto is a very difficult player to root against, but does seem- Do you hate Aaron Judge? Yeah, I hate Aaron Judge. Yeah.

Is it because he's very large and intimidating?

If I was that big, I would be an All-Star, too. I would hit 70 home run. I didn't like when they celebrated that home run ball that he hit, like it was the Major League record.

Yeah, which was the dumbest thing ever.

Yeah. I guess I don't really... Yes, I hate Aaron Judge, but the Yankees aren't as hateable overall as I would like them to But it seems like they're built to be just a powerhouse. I feel like we did our season preview, not our preview, but our pics, and I wish I could go back and change them and just say it's going to be the Dodgers and the Yankees. You can. It's going to be the Dodgers and the Yankees in the World Series. But what would be the- I would be okay with the Dodgers-Yankees World Series.

It's been a long time since we've had one of those. And the Yankees, let's just remember, their last World Series win was in 2009. Yankees fans, I understand they've had 27 championships, right? So they can rest on that, and there's no complaining about that. But 15 years for a fan base that every year comes into the season thinking we need to win the World Series. It's totally World Series or bust. Yankees fans right now are salty. They wanted to get rid of the general manager in the offseason. They wanted to get rid of the manager. This was a seminal year. And then, Garrett Cole gets hurt, the best pitcher in baseball for at least two months. And I wasn't quite as bullish, frankly, coming into the season on the Yankees. I worried that they were too old. I worried that their pitching wasn't deep enough. But these first five games, they've looked awesome. And the fact that they have come back, especially in sweeping Houston, which the day after they play the Yankees, they go out and throw no hitter. It shows you this Yankees team means business right now. I just want to see it continue.

And And not on a personal level, but on a... I'm still not fully in that the Yankees are a juggernaut. I think the Dodgers are a better team. I think the Braves are a better team. And I picked the Orioles in the American League East, and honestly, I still think the Orioles are a better team than the Yankees.

Yeah, they're a very fun team, too.

Jeff, what's the next money ball? What's the next thing that front offices are doing that is different, that might be at the head of the tip of the spear here where it's like in 10 years, we're going to be like, Oh, what they did was genius, and they won titles, and they had such success. What's the next market inefficiency in baseball that teams are now going after?

Cheap plug here. Back in 2016, I wrote a book called The Arm, and it was about the idea that Major League Base every year wastes about a billion dollars on pitchers who are injured. It's not quite that. It's a lot of money money that they spend on guys who get hurt. And when you see the number of pitching injuries that there have been this year, the number of big name guys who are out because of arm injuries, figuring out how to keep pitchers healthy is the Holy Grail of Major League Baseball. And the first team that can truly figure out how to do it is going to win championships because of it. Now, the problem is, I don't know if that's an achievable goal, right? Because all of this starts in youth baseball. All of this starts when you're 12 and 13 and 14, and you have some dickhead coach who's going and throwing you out there much more than he should. So this is a problem that Frankly, a lot like concussions. It's not the same thing because concussions, it's a life or death thing, but it's similar to concussions in the fact that it starts at a really early age and then manifestsates itself when guys get to college and when they get to Pro Bowl and when their bodies get bigger and they're throwing harder.

Figuring out how to save arms, it's not just individual teams. Major League Base as a whole is taking this on because I think they realize just how big of a problem this has become.

So is there one front office that you know of that feels like they're being very proactive or one front office that you're like, this group of people, they're doing something that could eventually lead them to the right path of figuring this problem out?

I mean, in terms... It's interesting. When you look for something like that, you're looking for the teams that do process the best, right? Because this is going to be a very process-oriented thing if they can figure it out. There's not going to be like some mad scientist who's just sitting back there and goes, Aha, I figured out how to do this. I was looking at spreadsheets and this tells me, No, this is a combination of doctors, of trainers, of performance folks, analytics. Everyone is trying to get together to solve this. And when you look at the teams that have understood and developed good pitchers, you think that they would be able to apply those same principles to pitching injuries as well. And that's the Dodgers, the guardians, the Rays, teams that are not just analytically inclined, but understand that when you're approaching a problem, you have to do it in a very uniform warm way to try and get the best solution.

Yeah. What about this, Jeff? What if some teams just started doing preemptive Tommy John surgeries on every pitcher that they drafted?

Well, PFT, to quote from my own book, The greatest predictor of a future arm injury is a past arm injury. And if you have surgery, you are far likelier to have a surgery in the future because of it. So I love the preemptive Tommy John surgery idea, but you're a moron.

Okay. Listen, there are no wrong answers except for that one. None, of course. Jeff Passon is brought to you by Proper 12. Pick up a bottle, try it for yourself. Original, rich and smooth, Proper 12 Irish whiskey, or Try crisp and fresh Irish apple. It's smooth to the core. Crack open a bottle today, Proper number 12 Irish Whisky, or Try the Fresh Irish apple. And now, here's more Jeff Passon.

Okay, similar to the question about what's the next money ball. I love thinking about the teams that are on the rise that have the young rosters that people don't know about yet. Obviously, the Orioles people know about, but that was a couple of years ago. They started to put it all together. That evolution is one of my favorite parts of baseball, the year before they become real good teams. I've always said that the 2015 Cubs were one of my favorite teams because they completely overachieved. But what teams should we be looking at this season that they might be a year or two away, but they're going to play some really fun baseball, and they're going to have some guys that people are going to want to watch?

I love the Cincinnati Reds, and we saw a little of it last year in Big Cat, like you see it with the Cubs. This is a dangerous team. They hit a lot of home runs, and whether it's Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnacio, Strand, Ellie De La Cruz, Matt McClane is going to be an all-star. He's out for the year with shoulder surgery, Noel Vimarte out with the PED suspension. But someone like Will Benson. He was with Cleveland for a long time, never got a crack there, goes to Cincinnati, and is playing a pretty damn good center field for a really big guy right now because T. J. Friedel is on the shelf. So that's three good bats that are out. And Cincinnati is still winning because of their hitting, and they just have a lot of pitching depth, too. And when it comes to pitching, I almost look at it like the Royals once upon a time before their Championship had five really good left handed arms. And pitching is such a crapshoot that if out of five guys, you can get a good starter and a good reliever, then that's a pretty good outcome. Some of these other organizations have done better at developing pitching, frankly.

But I look at Cincinnati, and they've got seven, eight big league rotation arms right now. If they can get three good pitchers there, they're going to be a problem in that National League Central division for a And while that division right now doesn't look the greatest, Cubs are going to be good soon because I think they're going to start spending some money this winter, and they have one of the three best farm systems in baseball. So they're going to be good. I just can't imagine the Cardinals continuing to be as mid as they have been for a long time. I don't think the fans are going to stand for it, honestly. Pittsburgh is on the come up. It's not just a five and a start. Paul Skine is coming soon, soon, and he's going to be probably... As long as he stays healthy, he's going to be one of the 10 best pitchers in baseball for a while. Milwaukee is just constantly solid. They're a process team that does the process well. And so the NL Central has a chance in the coming years to be really, really good.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it was not too long ago that we had, I think that 2015 year where it was the Pirates won 98 games, the Cubs won 97, the Cardinals won 100. Yeah, and the Cubs also, they saved all their money on the pirate techniques for opening day, so they're going to be able to spend it on free agency. So that was good.

How can you do that? How can you just... Is Is there any explanation for how it can be so bad?

I don't know the explanation. Here's my only take when I saw it because it was at the game yesterday. I got there a little bit after they had this incredible... I don't know if you saw it, PFT.

I'm looking it up right now.

It was one of the craziest pyrotechnics projects I've ever seen. All I said to myself when I saw that video was, Thank God the Cubs won a World Series, because that was old cubs that would have been a front-page story. I don't know if you remember, But it was 10 years ago when Ron Santo passed away, and they had a bunch of kids sign a card, and then a reporter found the card thrown out in the trash in the dumpster outside Wrigley immediately after. So they used to do all this shit. It was one of the worst pirate techniques ever, but thank God they won a World Series. I think you can get away with it when you win a World Series recently.

You can't stop laughing.

They keep coming out of the dugout, and then they only have two of the sparklers working, and then one of them doesn't even really work that well. It was so pathetic.

It's not good. At that point, you just got to not have sparklers at all.

I like it, though. It's just like we had to do something to make it feel different.

It is different. Yeah, I'll give you that.

It's quite something.

It's definitely different. Speaking of young arms, Yamamoto out in LA, he stunk in his first appearance. He was really bad. Second appearance, pretty good. So where are we at? If you're a Dodgers fan, if you're in the Dodgers front office, are you not concerned at all With Yamamoto, you just chalk that first startup to nerves and you think, Okay, this guy's as promised, he's going to be great for a number of years.

Yeah. They're not going to give $325 million to a guy who they're going to be out on after one start. But them giving $325 million to a 6-foot-tall righthander, there's a lot of risk involved in this contract, especially because he doesn't do things the way that pitchers do now. If you're a pitcher in 2024, the goal is to get as strong as you possibly can and to throw harder than everyone else. And the way you do that is in the weight room. It's in training your arm. Yoshinobu Yamamoto does things completely completely differently. Have you seen the javelins that he throws? No.

I actually have. Yeah, it's crazy.

So he goes into the outfield and he throws. They're not like real stab you in the head javelins. It's almost like a combination between a real javelin and a Nerf one. And he goes and throws these things, and he does stretching and yoga poses and handstands. And he just has this extremely family functional strength that reminded people in the Dodgers organization of Tim Lentzka. That's the comp that they're making on this guy, because when you look at him, he's not a big guy. He's not like a traditionally strong guy, he just makes his body move better than anybody else out there. And that's what they're banking on. And it's the thing that, listen, we're all older now. We may not be professional athletes, but we realize that your body creaks a little bit when you get into your 30s, and your muscles don't work quite the same. And to sign them to a 12-year contract, they did that because he's only 25, right? And they're spreading out the risk for multiple years. But man, when you get into your 30s, that regimen, I will be very curious to see how that plays as he ages because it works now and it works really well now, and I think he's going to be really good now.

But But long term, you do wonder how his body is going to react to that.

Do you think Major League Baseball, from a front office perspective, has figured out Japanese baseball and the fact that they feel a little more confident getting these guys? Because there was a time when it was Daiske, Rabu, Kazmetsui, some of these guys, Fukudome. They were good, but they were not what everyone thought they would be. Then you have Shohe, and even the Cubs yesterday, starting with Imanaga, who was great. Have That's awesome. Are teams more confident when they bring a guy from Japan in their translation to MLB?

A hundred %, and that is strictly because of the data that we have now. You're able to take every characteristic of a pitch that a guy throws and compare it to people around MLB and see the effectiveness and translate it accordingly. In the past, you were just going on eyeballs. You were just going on the word of scouts who said that, Hey, I think this guy is going to be this, and we're going to go out and bet on it. Now, they bet on the numbers. And in the case of Imanaga, I think his health and the long term viability of the shoulder and elbow was the only reason that he got $53 million. There was an expectation that he was going to be a nine-figure type guy because the stuff, even though we just look at on screen when a game is going on at a fastball, that's top it out. That last pitch he threw was '93. And And it was down the middle. But the characteristics of his fastball, even if the velocity is not there, play really well. He gets a lot of induced vertical break, which in a non-nerd term, essentially means the ball has carry to it.

So a normal fastball, as a hitter, your eyes are trained to expect a fastball to drop a particular amount before it goes to the plate. When you have a really high vert number, the ball stays up on a higher plane for a longer amount of time. And that's why you see swings underneath those fastballs. And so because the pitch characteristics of Imanaga were so successful and because the metrics say that this guy's stuff is going to play, teams are a lot more confident that what they think they're going to be getting in terms of performance, they're actually going to be getting translated to MLD.

That's interesting. Yeah, interesting. I like that. So with the World Series last year, Diamondbacks, Rangers. It felt like the Diamondbacks came out of nowhere. We are Seamheads. We understand that Dan Haren turned that nursing staff around. By the way, can we talk about Dan Haren for a second?

Yes.

He is the best. The best. He is the best. The best. The best.

He is one of my favorite human beings in baseball. And getting to see him in the World Series last year, it brought joy to me because nobody deserves it more than that guy.

Yeah, he deserves all the credit. So now this is a Hall of Famer.

Hall of Famer. We're still working on his case.

He had what the best postseason? Yeah, ERA.

Era of all time. Six ratings or less or something in the World Series. We got a bunch of stats, Dan Heron stats. We're going to get them compiled, and we'll get you voting for him.

He should be in the Hall of Fame, yes. So this year, are the expectations for the Diamondbacks, are they a legit contender again? Because it seems like they came out of nowhere last year. Nobody expected them to reach the World Series. Is that now the expectation for the Diamondbacks?

It should be. They just happen to play in a division with a team that spent a billion dollars this offseason. And so any headline that the Diamondbacks were going to generate, the Dodgers, they just wash over everything. They're like an unstoppable juggernaut who also, by the way, got swept by the Diamondbacks in the postseason last year. And the Diamondbacks, by the way, they're a better team this year than they were last year. They go out and trade for Eugenio Suarez. They resign Lourdescoyal. They sign Eduardo Rodriguez. They get Jordan Montgomery on an absolute steal. We saw Jordan Montgomery carved in the postseason last year. He's a guy who's got big balls and wants to pitch when it matters and to get him for a one year, $25 million contract and to pair him with Aaron and Brent Strom, guys who both pitched in the big league, both were really good pitchers in the big league, but also have embraced numbers in a way that Montgomery has, too. It's a perfect pairing, I think. So this is a better Diamondbacks team than last year. That division is just nasty. The Giants spent a lot of money this offseason.

Got Jong-Hu Lee from Korea. He's been really good to start. Got Jorge Soler. Got Blake Snell toward the end of spring training, and Matt Chapman as well. They're a much improved team. San Diego sucked last year. I think they're going to be better this season. There are four potentially excellent teams in the National League West, and I don't anticipate all the wild cards coming out of there, but it wouldn't surprise me if two of the wild card teams in the National League came from the West.

Yeah.

And the other side of that World Series, the Rangers, had the opportunity. I guess every team has this opportunity after they win a World Series. But when was the last time we had a repeat? Was it 1999?

'98, '99, 2000, when the Yankees went back to back to back. There has not been one this century.

Yes. So do the Rangers, do they have a chance? Are they well positioned? Would you expect big things out of them this year?

I'm going to be able to answer that question better, I think, in August. And here's why. Right now, what the Rangers have is a devastating offense. Marcus Simeon at the top of the order. Cory Seager, who's just as clutch as it gets after that. Wyatt Lankford, who at this time last year was playing for the University of Florida, is near the top of the lineup right now. And the Rangers stole him in the draft with the fourth overall pick. He is really good. The comparisons from scouts have been to Mike Trout. He's not as good as Mike Trout, but he has that linebacker build, 6'1, 225 pounds, just like a ball of muscle, and he can hit the ball really, really far. They got a full year of Evan Carter, and I can go on and on about their lineup. The reason I want to wait until August, though, is because they have three pitchers right now who are on the injured list who are expected to be back by them. Degrom. Max Scherzer, Tyler Mollet, and Jacob DeGrom. Degrom is... Scherzer, he's going to be effective. He will be fine. It's him and Verlander, Just freaks who pitch into their 40s and still find a way to be power pitchers then.

Molly is coming off Tommy John surgery and has been solid, like an innings-eating type guy. But DeGrom, when he's healthy guys, is the best pitcher on the planet. And having him back in that rotation down the stretch and knowing that you're not going to have too big of an innings limit on him because he doesn't have to pitch the entire season. The fact that you can crank them up in August and September and send them out there in October. If Jacob DeGrom is all well and good this year, the Rangers, I'm not sure that they become favorites again, but I'm not sure either that there's a better team in the American League. Yeah.

By the way, I looked up a preemptive Tommy John surgery. You call me a moron? Yeah. There are a lot of people that have thought about this and discussed it, so it's an actual conversation.

There's more morons. Well, absolutely.

They're morons, too.

They're all on message boards, but a lot of people are talking about it.

Yeah, you got more on is backing you up. You mentioned a name there, Jeff, that I wanted to bring up. I was thinking about it yesterday when I was at the Cubs game and I saw Chris Bryant, and it made me sad that Chris Bryant was... It does. It's fallen off, and he also went to an organization that has not had success, and he's almost lost. But Mike Trout, will we ever get to see Mike Trout play in the playoffs? Will Mike Trout ever be either freed from Los Angeles or maybe they put a team around him? Because it's crazy that we're this deep into Mike Trout's career, and he is such a surefire Hall of Famer, and we still don't have that seminal Mike Trout playoff run.

Yeah, because Mike Trout's one playoff series that he's had over a career that is now in its 14th season. That's a ridiculous thing to think that you can have a guy who is a first ballot, inner circle Hall of Famer. When you talk about the greatest players of all time, Mike Trout is going to be in that conversation. He's had one playoff series. It was against the Royals, and they got swept in three games.

It's It's as ugly as it can possibly get.

And it just shows you how baseball is different. And I think that it's one of the things I love about the game that you can have the two best players in the sport, and you can make a pretty damn good argument that Shoheya Tani and Mike Trout were the two best players on the same team, and that team is still garbage and has been garbage for a while now. Building around him, I don't see And here's why I don't see it, because the Angels are a fundamentally broken organization starting at the top. I don't know if this is the same in capped sports. When you have a terrible owner, in football, can you still win?

No.

Yeah, you can.

I think if you have a great quarterback, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible owner, no.

Bad owner, yes, definitely.

Okay. All right. That's fair. Arti Moreno, last year had the opportunity to do something that would have changed the trajectory of this franchise. He could have traded Shoheya Tani near the trade deadline. In fact, the Angels front office was going around soliciting trade offers for O'Tani in hopes that there was one moment of weakness from Marty Moreno where he said, You know what? Fuck it. Go do it. Trade him. And And they wanted to have offers ready because if given that opportunity, they knew that 10 minutes later, he might change his mind and that the window was that minuscule to go out and get this deal done, which would have brought back... I mean, I'm not exaggerating here. Top 10 prospects, a huge, huge return that would have allowed this team to weather this transition better. Instead, what Arti Moreno chose to do was to build around Shoheya Tani and to add Lucas Gialito and to go out and trade for guys, to add to a team that was fundamentally flawed in that anyone out there who knows baseball knew was never going to make a run, was never going to amount to anything. And what happened in the process is that an already mediocre farm system got gutded completely.

And now they're in a position where they don't have I mean, don't have really any good prospects. I think they're the 30th ranked team in terms of farm systems by Kyla McDaniel at ESPN. Their Major League roster has a few guys. They have some interesting eyes on it. But in a division like the AL West that has the Rangers, the Astros, and the Mariners, the Angels aren't competing there. And they're also not willing to go over the luxury tax threshold. So when you don't have prospects, you don't have a reason reasonable big league roster and you're not willing to spend money, explain to me how you're going to be any good. The answer is they're not. And so because of that, Mike Trout has been enormously patient, and he desperately wants to win in Los Angeles. He so badly wants to have a good team in Orange County that allows him to complete his story. His story, he wants it to be the guy who stayed with the franchise for his his whole career. He's somebody who that matters to. But the intersection of that desire to remain with the team, with the desire to be able to walk around with a big fat ring on his finger, those two things are buttoned up head to head right now because the man's not getting any younger.

Time is wasting away. And at some point, you would have to think that his desire for a championship is going to overwhelm that desire to stick around with the angel.

So free Mike Trout. Free him. I just want to see him play playoff baseball. I want to see him hit balls a million miles. That home run he hit the other night was incredible. Max, our producer, wants him in the Phillies because he's obviously a Philadelphia guy. So maybe we get that. Speaking, by the way, of that home run, Are they juicing the balls again? I hope so. I think they are because the overs are 66% in the first week of the season, which obviously is small sample size, but you also got some really bad weather games where they're not conducive to to runs. I'm hoping they're juicing the balls again. Why wouldn't they?

I mean, pitchers would complain. I remember talking with Justin Verlander at an All-Star game a few years ago, when the balls were really flying, and he just went off. And the problem with juicing balls is Major League Base, we're always on the edge of an integrity problem with the sport after the Astros. Is that not the lingering consequence of what Houston did? It's that we always are going to wonder, are things on the up and up with Major League Base? So in the wake of the trash cans with your biggest star by far enmeshed in a gambling scandal. Do you want to be Juice and Balls? Do you want that to be the storyline there?

I'm okay with it, too.

Maybe Shohe just needs to bet overs and he gets out of the debt.

Yeah.

There we go. We solved all the problems.

Maybe Shohe being on a a team where it's profitable for him to win if he bets on his own team. Maybe that's good for the sport, too. Maybe he was $4.5 million in debt because he bet on the Angels every day. Yeah.

I want the ball's juice. I want to see the balls. I want to see dingers. People like dingers.

With baseball, it's like the most important thing to the old timers, to the custodians of the game, are the numbers. You wouldn't see this. You wouldn't see anything in basketball if points are up in basketball, but nobody's complaining about it. Everyone's like, Okay, more points, good for the In baseball, it's like, Well, you can't make the balls easier to hit because Babe Ruth. What do all those numbers that I grew up loving mean if the new numbers are way bigger? I think baseball needs to just embrace or they need to reject that and say, You know what? Screw it. If the balls are juiced, the balls are juiced. These are the new balls now. Yeah.

I think, honestly, I do think a new generation of baseball fan is looking at it from that perspective more than the numbers or everything, because the numbers have just been so skewed. And beyond that, we need to look at numbers by generation, not like baseball is this one enormous continuum that you have to judge on. I'm sorry, but Babe Ruth wasn't playing against Black players, Dominican players, Venezuelan players. The 60 home runs, the 61 home runs that were hit back in the '30s with Ruth or the '20s with Ruth in in the '60s with Garig, completely different. It was just a different game entirely. Babe Ruth was going against guys who worked day jobs in the offseason who threw '85. If you had Babe Ruth playing baseball today, right now, he would stink. No, it's true. You could give him a year to train. And I think you could give him new equipment so he's not swinging a three-pound bat up there. I think if you gave Babe Ruth this guy with immense physical talent, the ability to adjust, then he would be a really good baseball player. But if you took 1927 Babe Ruth and dropped him into the big league today, he'd be down in Triple A.

Yeah. He was eating 14 hot dogs a day and drinking a pint of whiskey every night.

A real man's man.

I was going to say, it sounds like an awesome life.

Yeah. Wait, so off of that, Jeff, I was curious because you're our generation. We're all similar age, and you have entered... Your career has been incredible entering into this game and the way it's covered by older guys and some people who are a little cramogeny. You had a You boycotted your Hall of Fame vote one year. Is that correct? I did.

I still have not voted for the Hall of Fame. It's been five or six years now.

I love that. So what is the pushback, Ben, by guys that you see in the press box and some of these older guys who are adamant that steroids, we should just pretend it didn't happen. It's like, we're with you in that, no, it happened. It actually saved baseball. Let's stop pretending that it didn't happen. Has it been weird or awkward for you in those moments where it's like you're a new generation and speaking for a new fan base, guys our age, going against some guys who are like, no, we have to keep baseball sacred, which is so stupid.

I think I was really lucky because I started doing this when I was 23 years old. I got hired at the Kansas City Star to be the national baseball writer because another guy turned the job down because he wanted an extra week of vacation that they wouldn't give to him. And I was single, and I didn't make much money. And my editor at the time knew that he could kick my ass and make me work all the time, and I wouldn't say anything. So that's how I got started. And I think because Because I've been doing this for 21 seasons now, the older guys in the press box, it's like, I'm a veteran at this point. I've been doing this for a while. So there's not a whole lot of pushback. I think there's mutual respect. When you do anything for 20 years, it's tough to stick around in any job for that long at this point. So I think they respect my opinion because not just the tenure, But because there's logic behind it, I found the way that the Hall of Fame handled steroid users to be appalling. And I found it that way because it was rooted in this halcyon notion of what baseball is.

Baseball is green grass, and baseball is a hot dog at the ballpark, and sitting there with your arm around your kid going, Hey, old pal, we're going to have a good day at the ballpark. No, baseball and the Hall of Fame, especially, is not that. The Hall of Fame is a museum that should celebrate the good, bad, and ugly of the sport. And if you're going to honor the best players in the game, you can honor them while still acknowledging their misdeeds and the issues that they had. Barry Bonds is the best hitter I have ever seen. Honestly, it's not not even close. Barry Bonds, on account of the accomplishments that he had even before he started using performance-enhancing drugs, is a Hall of Famer. So are you telling me years at the end of a career are going to essentially nullify and erase the incredible things that he did before that. It didn't make any sense to me. And the moment where I decided to stop voting, and I'll just say this, it makes me sad that I don't vote because there are some cool things in this job. And when I filled out my first Hall of Fame vote, I was so proud.

I was like, I've done this long enough to earn the privilege to do this and to be part of something that it's an important thing in baseball history. If you're a Hall of Famer, that still means something. So to not vote, it made me sad. But Joe Morgan sent out a letter through the Hall of Fame, and it was an email. It was like a thousand 1,000 words, if I recall correctly, essentially saying why players who have used performance-enhancing drugs don't belong in the Hall of Fame. And you want to talk about the epitome of moralizing and excluding people who don't align with what your thoughts are on what something should be. That, to me, is antithetical to a history museum. A history museum is a place that should welcome all even if it is ugly as it gets, because we learn from history. And that's how, as human beings, we understand the world by looking back and seeing what things were like so we can understand how to place them in the present context.

Yeah. Very well said. The short version of what you just said very eloquently is, I think I speak for PFT, the steroid era rocked.

It was fun. It did.

It was fucking awesome. It was hidden move shots.

It was fantastic. It was the last time that baseball was nationally relevant. Yeah.

The Maguire's Sosa Chase. That was appointment television across America.

Absolutely. Jeff, I had one last question. This has been awesome. We're definitely going to have you back on later on in the season. My last question is, Roback question, robackk question, rhobackk. Com. Promo code, take 20% off your first purchase, Q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, all at robackk. Com. Promo code, take. My last question, a personal question. You got your back blown out by a tree?

I sure did.

For people who don't know, who don't follow baseball, Jeff works constantly. He's always present. There was a time, was it last summer, where you were absent for a little bit, and then you pop back up and you're like, Hey, guys, just a heads up. A tree fell on me. I'm working through this, but I broke my back. How and what? And are you okay?

I am okay, so thank you for asking that. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so I'm living in suburban Kansas City, and our neighborhood, it's a town called Prairie Village, and it looks exactly like it sounds. There are giant oak trees everywhere, a very buccolic place. And in our front yard, there's a probably 7,500-foot-tall oak tree. And a huge storm just blows through town. And off of the oak tree, all of a sudden, you hear a snap, and this huge branch goes down. Now, I'm not that big of an idiot to be outside during a storm. So I'm looking through my front window like, holy shit. Thank God, I wasn't out there. But a piece of this branch, which was really the size of a normal tree, landed on my neighbor's truck. And so... God, I'm going to sell my wife out here. I feel terrible. It's a little bit... Our power is out. My first instinct is not to go and help the neighbor. It's to go and find an internet connection so I can book a hotel that night because I didn't want to sleep in the middle of the middle of summer in Kansas City when it's hot as shit in my house.

So my next door neighbor somehow still has an Internet connection. I go over there and my wife says to me, she's like, Hey, lazy shit. Come out and help with the neighbors. I'm like, Fine, fine, fine, fine. So I go outside and my next door neighbor has a chainsaw. And let me tell you, there's been this axiom that I've heard throughout my entire life, and it's that Jews don't do yard work. And there's a reason that we shouldn't do yard work. It's because we don't understand what happens when chainsaws are being used, right? My neighbor cuts a branch, and all of a sudden, When this limb that is about 25 feet up in the air, it starts to roll. I didn't know what a rolling tree meant because I don't do yard work. But by the time I realized that this tree was falling and it was about to hit me, I turned around and tried to run. But again, 43, Jewish, not the most athletic guy in the world. I could not get out of the way in time. And by the time it was all said and done, I was pinned to the ground underneath this enormous tree and had broken the L1 vertebrae in my back.

I stood up and it was pure adrenaline. I didn't realize at the time that I was a foot away from being paralyzed. I was 18 inches away from it hitting my head and killing me. I got very, very lucky and had really good medical care. And that night, I got to thank the doctor because he introduced me to ketamine. And let me tell you, my medical grade ketamine, it was that night that I broke my back. I was sitting in the hospital. The doctor gave me ketamine. I ordered a taco Bell to be delivered to the hospital at 3:00 AM, and I watched wrestling, and it was one of the best nights of my life.

It sounds incredible. Oh, my God. That's incredible. Oh my God, that's a wild story.

I'm glad that you're okay now. At the time when it's like, Oh, a tree fell on Jeff. Everybody was like, What?

Yeah, huh?

That doesn't make any sense at all. But Jeff, I have one last question for you. I did a little research on you. I want to give you the opportunity to explain this. I heard a story that you had a really excellent senior prank when you were in high school.

Yo, how did you hear about that one?

I got I got dirt on you, Jeff. I got dirt on you, dog.

Really? This is like some Nardwar stuff right here. Have you seen it, by the way?

Have I seen the senior prank?

Oh, yeah. It's on the internet.

No, I haven't seen it. It most certainly is out there if you find it.

This is going to tie together a couple of stories. Where does it start? Somebody in my journalism class senior year, I don't remember if it was me or a friend, but we thought, Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious to bring a stripper to school? The answer is actually yes, it would be. As senior year is winding down, the beauty of journalism class is that we were allowed to go down to the teacher's lounge and use the phone there to make calls for stories. I went down to the teacher's lounge and used the phone to call up local establishment and see if there was a a lady who might be willing to come to a school. And in fact, there was. And I had arranged... So it was our principal. He was a new principal that year. And I had arranged for him to sit in the senior commons area where all the seniors eat at the school. The nerdy kids that said, Mr. Stier, it's your first year here. We just want to have a good time and sit around with you and celebrate your first year. And so it was like everyone was involved in this, from the nerds to the football players, everyone in between.

And the plan was for the stripper to come in, dress like a teacher, and go up to him and say, Mr. Stier, I'm looking for the anatomy room. And he would say, We don't have an anatomy room. And then she would say, Well, I'm the anatomy substitute. And he would say, We don't have an anatomy class. And then she'd say, Well, I guess I should give you one then. And then I would hit the music and the whole thing would start. So go to the back of the school, sneak her in. The problem was this was before Venmo or anything like that, and before I had any money. So I had to go around soliciting donations from people. People were given a dollar or two at the time to get the to pay for this to go on. Well, when you tell a lot of people that a stripper might be coming to school, they tend to tell other people. And so word had circulated around. And the whole, this is like a 1,500 kids school in suburban Cleveland. I would say almost half the school was in the area just looking for it. And a bunch of teachers were around, too, and they were trying to nullify this as best they could.

Thankfully, Some football players, I think, started a fight as a diversion. It wasn't a real fight, but it was to get all the teachers off the sent. And I was able to sneak her back into the commons. Well, she walks up to the principal immediately Immediately, he knows. Immediately, he knows exactly who it is, grabs her by the wrist, takes her over toward the weight room and into the gym, and a mass of people start rushing over. I'm not I'm not going to say it's a riot because it's suburban Cleveland, a bunch of white kids going over there. But it was like a Woodstock '99 riot. Yeah, yeah. And so they end up going over. They bring her out three cop cars pull up. Yeah, this was a deal. Were they strippers, too?

I ran to the bathroom. That would be great.

I ran to the bathroom. I had a list of everybody who had given me money, and so I I needed to get rid of the evidence. So I burned the list in the bathroom. And that day, I'm worried because we're supposed to pick up our caps and gowns after. And I'm wondering if word is going to get back to the principle by the point at which I'm supposed to pick up my cap and gown that I was the instigator behind the stripper kerfuffle. And I grabbed my cap and gown after I tell him my name. And I Usain bolted out to my car because I knew if I had that cap and gown. And as I'm like the coup de grout of this whole thing, I'm walking across the stage and I go up, and I shake the principal's hand, and he leans in and says, I owe you one. And you can see on the video that my parents have, I have this big smile on my face, and I feel really good about that. Yeah, that's great. Do not regret it one bit. You know who deserves credit? My mom. And here's why.

That morning, she comes down and is going to work and sees this enormous stash of cash just sitting on the table. And she's like, What's that for? I was like, Well, we're doing a prank and we're going to bring a stripper to school. And she says, Are you sure that's a good idea? And the answer, of course, is yes. And you know what? She let me do it.

Yeah, that rocks.

She let me do it rather than... If my kid tried to pull that these days, I'd be like, No fucking way, you moron. But my mom was willing to let me do completely stupid things. And all of this is memorialized in a camcorder video that was taken and uploaded onto YouTube. Have you seen those videos on TikToks, like school back in the '90s was so cool? It's that video, actually. Oh, wow. And that also includes the aftermath of the stripper being taken away and all the kids It's getting pissed off about it.

I'm going to have to watch this video. That sounds awesome. It also sounds like your principal recognized the stripper. Yeah. It was like, not you. And that's why you didn't get in trouble.

His name. Like, Oh, man, I didn't know this was your job. That's great.

Crystal, why are you here?

Oh, man. Well, Jeff, this has been awesome, man. Like I said, we wanted to have you on for a while, and I'm happy we did it. And we'll definitely have you back. Talk more baseball.

I look forward to it. And I apologize for my rambling stories there. No, no.

Listen, we interviewed Bill Walton. No one rambles. So when you have that, it's the bar, we can hit it all. Thanks so much, Jeff.

Appreciate you guys having me. Thanks. Thanks, man.

Have a good one.

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Okay, let's wrap up. We've We got some FAQs. By the way, I had a question that just popped in my head. How much money do you think Leverking is spending on Twitter ads?

A ton. Infinite. Everywhere.

It's crazy, man.Pussy.

In bio.

It's nuts. I just can't get away from him.

It's either that or he's the only person that actually is paying money to advertise on Twitter.

That also could be it. Yeah. He's everywhere now.

Yeah. Well, he admitted to using steroids, said that he would stop using steroids, and now he's definitely not using steroids, right?

Definitely not.

That was the funniest apology ever when he was like, I've let my fans down. I've let the primals down.

There's a ton of people who still follow what he's doing, right?

I'm sure. Yeah.

There's, I mean, the world needs a lot of Billy.Future congressman. Billy footballs, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Hey, PMT. Since the news studio is completed in Chicago, are we going to see the return of Larry, the gambling goldfish? I would love to see this tradition brought back to honor the legendary fish that came before. I would. There's one legendary fish.

Yeah. What do you mean?

Six were duds.

Yeah, the one that you have on your thigh.

Ish.

I still can't get over the fact that you got the dead goldfish's body tattooed on your thigh. Yeah.

I can't believe you kept it for a while.

You would have brought it up every show. Oh, yeah. Yes. Actually, if anyone knows any tattoo removal places in Chicago, I got to finish it out before the summer.

Yeah, we might bring Larry back. Larry was a legend. I The reason why we haven't done him recently is because it's hard to recreate the magic that we had with that one special fish.

Also keeping a goldfish alive is very difficult for us. People were getting mad whenever a goldfish died. But yeah, if we could have someone. Someone has to be in charge of Larry, and we have to have him living in a place that we could easily put a camera up to, and PFT and I could just stand there and be like, Here's this week's pics. I'm in. What?

No. What? It's dumb. What are you going to say? It's animal abuse. It wouldn't make sense. What are you going to say? It's not even realistic. What are you going to say? What if we could put him in the lottery ball machine somehow?

Fill the machine up with water?

But then every day, he would just get Yeah, I feel like he wouldn't survive one of those.

That thing goes in hot.

No, but imagine if he got selected.

Yeah, you know what? You're right. It is sick.

I know. I didn't say it.

But yeah, I was just looking at it and I was like, imagine.

His guts would splatter all over the thing.

Yeah, they would rock.

Here's Here's what I'm going to say to the AWLs. My pledge to you is I am going to ask Paige, who runs our office, who's incredible, if she could get a goldfish and keep it alive. If she says yes, then maybe we'll bring it back.

Memes.

What do you got, memes? What about a gambling turtle? Oh, I would be in for a gambling turtle. But that also would take forever for them to do the pick.

That would be very funny. Has ever done a turtle race? It's sick. Yeah, turtle races.

How I became a gambler. Wasn't it a rubber duck? No, it was turtle race in Key West, Florida, 100 bucks when I was 12 years old. But if a goldfish dies, it's like, okay, it's a goldfish. If a turtle died on our watch, turtles never- Dude, this predates you, Max. People were very mad about the goldfish dying. But could you imagine? Because we had a lot of goldfish.

People forget my sister, the only time she ever visited the office, she found dead Larry.

Then they got mad that I flushed down the toilet. That's what you're supposed to do with the goldfish.

Yeah, that's exactly it. If you flush a turtle down a toilet, it's going to turn into a Ninja.

We kept the second one in the freezer for six months.

We should get a turtle. I like the way that you're thinking, Mims. I think this is a good idea because his pics would be very funny. We would just set up a camera and go live with it and be like, Okay, we'll just wait till he makes his pick.

He could actually... Wow.

It just never worked in the third off. We got one and we had Billy take care of it. It was just... No, but a turtle. It was a gut.

What if we got a turtle and when we take the Thursday shows, we just have for 20 minutes or whatever it is, a picture and a picture of him just doing the pick right here. Yeah. While we're doing the picks, he's just doing his pick.

I like that a lot. I like that a lot. If he dips five games below 500, we eat him. I think tournament into soup.

We crack his shell. I think turtles are so much more difficult to keep alive than gold. All right, so what we need is we need someone who has a turtle. I'll take care of the turtle. Okay, Mims, take care of the turtle. All right. Memes taking care of the turtle. Memes is taking care of the turtle. So, Memes, what we really should do is the turtle shouldn't live in the office. It should just come in on Thursdays for his pit.

What? This is Memes. This is great.

All right, so I like this. If we could set up How funny would it be if we're doing our pics and then people who are... Because shout out to everyone who watches the show now. I love that we have so many people watching the show. But if you had a turtle just slowly in the picture in a picture while we're talking about the games, the turtle's making Yeah.

What about a mini horse?

No. Down. It's too much. Is that a pony? It's too much work. We've not talked about this before?

What? Me and you. I feel like our kid just asked us if we get a mini horse. I said, Down. And you said, No. Ask your father. Yeah, we're down. Anything that I don't have to worry about. I have too many things. I have three kids, a dog, a Jerry, a Rico, a fucking Brandon. I have a lot of things.

What if we get a snake, a poisonous snake?

I hate snakes. I hate snakes. Actually, if we got a snake, I'd kill you. That means your brain's gone.

Like the most poisonous snake possible.

Okay, maybe that. Yeah. No.

Speaking of animals.

Turtles in, though. Memes? Yeah. Get your turtle. What are we going to name it? This I meant for forcing me to get a turtle. What should we name the turtle? Football?

Football is a good name.

Football the turtle. I feel like if it's going to be Memes as turtle, it's something with an M. So it's like Memes in.

Oh, yeah. Do we want to limit it to Jess football picks?

Max? Yeah, we Well, we could test them out in other pics.

In other sports.

Memes of Max. Yeah, name him Max. No, football. Name him Max. Football. Max? No, name him Max because then we'll have to always be like, Max, or are we talking about Max the turtle? No, because you're going to... Like, Max shit his pants. You're just going to be mean to this turtle if he's bad at pics, and it's just going to-Exactly. Max pooped himself. Are we talking about Max the turtle or Max the human?

Oh, we just got the ratings.

Tell me, did I like the game?

Schefter tweeted it.

That's what he did. The most watched NCAA women's basketball game ever, 12.3. Okay.

Didn't beat the men's.

What was the men's?

15 for NC State Duke.Decent question.That doesn't matter, though.

That was on CBS.

Yeah, that's true. That's huge. Last year was like nine million. So yeah, that's a huge jump. Shout out to the women. Now I feel comfortable saying that was a great watch.

I liked it. Do you feel comfortable? I thought it was good, but I liked it 8% less than the NC State Duke game.

I would have liked it a little more.

Yeah, if other people had watched it. Yeah.

What's the deal with the thing in front of Hank?

Oh, yeah.

You should know.

You should know. We actually had a sponsor come in. A salesperson was walking them, giving them a tour of the office, and he saw that thing and was like, What the fuck is that? I had to explain to him what it was. That's the octopus that we had when we did one episode of Barstool Van Talk. It's an octopus. It's Dead Octopus inside formaldehyde.

It's funny when you don't even explain it because we had Alex Caruso came into the office today. He's going to be great interview with him coming Friday. He was like, What is that? I said, It's an octopus. He just looked at me like, Was you going to say anything else? No, it's an octopus.

Yeah, we can probably move it somewhere else. We found it in a box, and I was like, Oh, the octopus. We'll put it in the studio. But we just haven't really found a better place.

We should drink it.

I thought about that earlier. That's formaldehyde, though. So? Probably die. Probably? We're old.

Probably die or would die?

I think you would die. If you drank all that, you would die.

What about that? Like, Ed Cooley is probably going to resign or he is going to resign?

No, I'd say you would die. Okay. A sip would be fine.

How much formaldehyde can you drink?

Hey, PMT Gang. Serious question. Is Pug okay? He's read the vet for what seems like the weeks, and our AWLs are genuinely concerned about his well-being. If you guys have to make the decision to put him down, we understand. We, as award-winning listeners, have to know right now if he's going to pull through or not.Thank you.It's too early.

By the way, two tablespoons of formaldehyde will kill you.

Yeah, that would kill all of us.

So we have to have one.

Yeah, you just get a wicked buzz. Pug's fine. He was dealing with an internal. He's here.

Yeah.

Oh, he is?

Yeah, I just got another garbage I'm doing.

Okay. He ate a chicken bone. Did you eat a chicken bone or was it icebreaker's gum? Both. Yeah, both.

Yeah, Pug lost a lot of weight, though, from his ailment. He's looking good. He's looking lean.

We just put a bench press right behind his desk.

Do we know what's wrong with you, Pug?

Oh, yeah, it's garbage.

The vet gave me medicine, doing better. Pug. Do you have all your shots? I did not. Now I do. Okay. Pug.

How are you feeling Today.

Doing good. We're doing better. Pug.

All right, last one. Fun one. Hey, PMT Gang, was there ever a point where one of you, Big Cat and PFT, mostly thought about quitting/living the show?

No, not Really?

No.

I don't think it's ever happened. Closest is no. We were upset after Barstool Van Talk, but I don't think we... It was never anything that was imminent to happen. With contract stuff, it's just something that you have to go through every couple of years, and then you just come back because you didn't want to leave.

Yeah, I don't think... I'm trying to think. I don't think I've even been close to being a free agent at Barstool, so that part has never been an issue. But yeah, after Barcels VanTox, we were upset, but I don't think we ever...

I think after the JMU Wisconsin game-Well, no, that was I wanted to kick Hank. Yeah, Big Cat wanted to just get away from Hank.

Yeah, that's all. No, I don't. Hank, how many times have you wanted to quit the show?

I once I adjusted taking myself off the show back in the day. Yeah, you did.

And we said, No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

That was crazy. That was a long time ago. Because you wanted to be corporate, Hank.

No, no, no, no. I was just like, I was editing the show and I hated listening to myself. This is before Billy, before Max, before anyone. So I was the one that was catching all of the, If you're not Big Cat or PFT, we fucking hate you. So it was getting in my head. I was like, If you guys want to... I won't take offense. I think that's what I said. I was like, I get it. You could probably put someone in that's more entertaining, that people like better. I won't take offense.

We said, Fuck no. It was the fastest fuck no ever.

Aren't you glad that we did that? Very glad. Are you? You're welcome.

Yeah. Sure? Yeah. Okay. We basically, PFT and I actually met about it and we were like, We got to wait till the Patriots are bad. We got to wait this out. Just a few. I think that was after the fifth.

This was like 2017.

Yeah, it was before the sixth Super Bowl, so we had to wait it out a little bit.

Hank, are you a little bit nervous about the Celtic?

For the Super Bowl.

No, it was after the fifth, before the sixth.

Right.

We were like, We got to wait it out. They're going to be bad. Then they want another one.

You should be nervous about the Celtics. I'm not.

I'm excited. No. Brooke's Kepka always said, If there's nerves, To me, I think that's excitement. I am nervous, but I'm excited, if that makes sense.

Pressure is a privilege. Yes.

But-i'm not nervous. I'm excited.

You're not thinking about what happens if the Celtics lose in the playoffs.

No, you can't. That's the loser mentality. You're a fucking loser, so that's why you're doing that. But I'm not thinking like that. I'm excited. We've worked so hard to get to this point, and now it's our time to shine.

Hank, I have more Stanley Cups and World Series than you since we started doing this show. I think we're tied in World Series.

Yeah, you're tied in World Series.

Yeah, but more Stanley Cups than you.

Okay, sick.

You root for the Cowboys.

Not anymore.

You don't have Max to pick on, though. Well, maybe you will.

One of you guys. Yeah.

And beats back this year. This year? This week. So that will... Max, are you going to get your hopes up? Oh, what if you beat them, though? 8-1. Hank, you'd have to shave your beard. You'd have to shave your beard. Say yes. Right now. Yes. If the Sixers or the Bulls beat 8-1. I don't think the Bulls beat. In a series. In a series. Yeah.

And if we sweep-No.

Yes.

No, I'm not doing it without a six. You already said yes.

You already said yes.

I didn't say yes to the Bulls. I didn't say yes to the Bulls.

I'm fine. The Bulls are probably not going to make it. I'm all tangled up over here. All right, numbers.

40. If I get this, you have to shave your beard. Eight.

Fine.

If I get this, you have to shave yours.

No. Eighteen. Not so tough now, buddy.

No, you're the one that just does these bets on those stakes.

Well. 99, poof. I mean, 20. There's no way that this is-You guys didn't do a fucking bet for Jamie, Wisconsin.

Shut up. I should actually say that every time we ever do a bet ever when you're like, Do a bet, do a bet, do a bet. You guys, both of your alums, played a game. You're like, We don't care. The game already means so much.

Did you come up?

I had a fucking meltdown. It did mean so much. Did you come up with a bet?

We tried to. You guys were like, No, we're not doing a bet.

I don't think you came up with a bet.

I'm so fucking tangled over here. God damn it. Let's name the turtle, Tony. God damn it, these wires. All right, what? Let's name the turtle, Tony.

Tony the turtle? No.

What about Max?

What about football? Football is not a bad name.

Football is a pretty good one.

Sports. What about just sports?

What about What about sport? Sports the turtle?

Sport.

What about Mr. Per?

I like it. Done. Mr. Per. Mr. Per. Mr.

Per. Mr.

Per. Mr. Per. Yeah, we'll feed him pears. He'll have to go get the Per for the pick.

What about Mr.

Yes, Mr. Per. Mr. Per. Mr.

Cream?

No, it's Mr. Per. Mr. Per. I bet you we can get someone... I bet you we can get the Food coloring stamps, and we can stamp the slices of pears with the different logos. Yeah. That will be how he picks his games. Which pair? Mr. Per.

We should never discipline him.

Never. Or we should really discipline him. Mr. Mr. Perk. Whoa, that sounded like torture.

No, just be strict parents.

No, that sounds like you want to eat them. That's the Philly coming out.

Memes. I'm not saying don't do this, memes, because turtles, I guess their shell is like their skin. It can be hurt if you pierce their skin, but it would be cool if you put a handle on them.

Yeah.

You just pick them up.

I won't do that.

Don't do that, though. Or if you sew laces into the back of them like a football.

Mr. Perk. No, Mr. Per deserves better. I fucking love Mr. Per. When Mr. Per dies, I'm going to be very sad.

When Mr. Per misbehaves, I'm just going to be like, Mr. Per.

Mr. Per. Mr. Per. Tummy tax.

Mr. Per, you need to fix the door on the spaceship before you get to the launch of it.

We're all going to kiss Mr. Per and get weird turtle diseases. All right, numbers. Mr. Per is going to rock. We're going to sell some shirts. You got to get this turtle ASAP. Mr. Per. Can you get this turtle soon so we can have him start picking shit? Yeah.

Just go to Tin Lizzie.

Yeah, I got to hit up my turtle guy.

Yeah, any turtle guys out there, let us know.

Let us know. I also need to find a dentist in Chicago. I've been meeting this day. What is this?

This is a fucking Craigslist right now? Come on, Max, figure it out. If you do temporary tattoo removes, let me know.

If you have an El Camino, there you are.

All right, numbers.

40.

3.

77. 8. Actually, you say something. 20. 21. That's the first time. I went off the rails. 91. See you everyone on Friday. Alex Caruso in studio. I love you guys. I don't know what to say, I'll say it anyway. Today is a modern day to find you. Shine away. I'll be coming for your love of faith. Shine away. I'll be coming for your love of faith. Needless to say. I'm understanding. It's about being stone-living, southern by things I've been. Dream on me, dream on me, dream on me. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.