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Welcome everybody to the local hour. We switch some things up. Big Suey landed on your streaming platform of choice first today, and David Samson joins me on the local our hour. Normal Thursday deal. Happy football season, David. The Hurricanes played today and I haven't once been cocky. Keen's fan. I'm going to wait till we actually have the result in hand because I've been down that road before. I was kind of worried about now David Samson and the David Samson show here on the day that football kicks off, because I was worried, like the normal default with David Samson is, you know, sports business and then baseball Marlins are playing well, which we can talk about that.

And then last night happened. And the Marlins are actually one of the top national news stories. And I got to imagine the Detroit Tigers are counting their lucky stars that the Miami Marlins exists.

David, the score? Twenty nine to nine. I mean, hell of a performance by the Marlins offense. Nine runs.

You don't get that every day, but twenty nine runs. The Atlanta Braves scored twenty nine runs. That's right.

The Miami Marlins lost a Major League Baseball game by twenty runs. A Major League Baseball team lost that game by nineteen runs, and that wasn't the worst run differential.

David Samson, your thoughts? Well, there's a pitcher named Jordan Yamamoto.

And often what we have to do in a game that's a blowout when our bullpen, let's say we're playing a lot of games in a row in the Marlins, have no days off to the ref for the rest of the season.

So there's a circumstance where a pitcher just has to wear it. And that's what happened with Yamamoto yesterday. And if you watch actually game, you saw Mel Stottlemyre, that pitching coach go out there and he gave up, I think twelve runs or thirteen runs. And he didn't go out there to say, hey, listen, you're tipping your pitches or hey, I think you should use the curveball more. He went out and said the following. There's no one in the bullpen.

You're not coming out of the game. You got to get outs for us and it is going to be what it's going to be. And he left the game with an eighteen dhara. He's definitely going backwards. At the end of last year, there was a thought that he could be in the rotation this season and he's definitely gone backwards. But every once in a while you count down one of your arms just to take it for you. And that's what Yamura did.

But it's it was something that Adam Duval, we have to point out, set a record first time ever, three straight home runs in order a to run shot, a three run shot and then a grand slam. And that had not been done before.

He was one solo homer away from the awesome home run cycle.

You guys have had plenty of seasons during your tenure with the Miami Marlins, and there were plenty of defeats along that ten year. Not to poke fun. I mean, you were world champions, but there were plenty of bad defeats to what is the worst single performance you can remember from a Marlins team? And does it compare to last night's twenty nine to nine? It does.

Let me let me just go backwards one second and tell you that when you're in the front office and you lose a game twenty nine to nine, I should tell you that for fans it's fodder on on for media and sports talk. But when you're in the front office, everyone will tell you who runs a team. You'd rather lose twenty nine to nine than a blown safe. Because you just wake up the next morning, it's done and you move on, blown saves tend to stay with you and they hurt more.

It doesn't last night's game, it doesn't hurt the Marlins. They're still in eighth position in the playoffs right now. They have a playoff spot there. Five hundred team. So there's no loss of confidence by players, by a team. You just sort of chalk it up. We had a bunch of those. We had one actually a rescheduled game from 9/11. And 9/11 is on my mind because 9/11 is tomorrow. I cannot believe it's been 19 years.

But we lost a game, I think. Twenty one to three or something in October of twenty one. That was a rescheduled game. And I remember thinking we weren't even supposed to be playing that day, but for 9/11 and it was just a nightmare game, just wanted the season to be done with. And and then that was the Marlins I was game it was that the exposure the Marlins thousand and one.

Were you with the Expos? Marlins lose that. No. Two, you know, one of the worst things or the best things about being in the game for so long as the years get so mixed up. I remember certain things about certain years. So I remember the 03 Boston game, which we've covered on this show, or I'm nothing personal, where we lost I think twenty five to three or something like that. And then we won the next day on a Mike Lowell home run.

So there's, there's just there's losses that happen. But the most memorable losses for me are not the blow outs at all. Most memorable losses by far are the ones where you blow a save or you have a man on third with no outs down or running. You can't get the run in things like that. So the Marlins are going to be good. What a great offense. Great pick up with Starlee Martey. Great young players I can't believe mean so positive about the Marlins, but I'm just watching them and realizing that what Mike Hill's done is pretty impressive.

I saw one of your observations on Twitter and I so wholeheartedly agree. I've watched more Marlins games in the shortened season than I have in the last few years. And these black jerseys are a tire fire because I don't know these players names. Right. I'm just I'm new to the game. You're trying to get me to know who these players are, right? Are you crazy? I can't. I read I can barely read the numbers, David, on the black jerseys because black jerseys with black numbers, the outlines don't pick up on TV.

I have a pretty good TV. Spend a lot of money on this TV recently and I still can't make it out. And when it was Jackie Robinson Day, forget it. I was lost.

Can you tell me how that passes? Now, listen, this is not sour grapes for changing the uniforms that I loved when we switched to the Miami Marlins.

I want to talk to you about Rainbow Jersey. I hated those uniforms to me. I loved them. To me, that's the worst uniform in South Florida sports history.

Wet. Oh, come on. Some of the heat jerseys from back in the day with a heat jerseys.

The Heat jerseys have never really disappointed. Ever, ever. So the Miami Marlins number one. All right. We can talk about the black jerseys later. Let's talk about your decision, because I remember the whole there was a hullabaloo about the the logo reveal. You guys had a big party. I remember you on the show. And every week I would take a stab at trying to guess the color scheme a little. Did I know I should have just guessed all the colors pick a color.

Now, it was reputed that Jeffrey Lurie, art dealer, he was heavily invested in this process and the overall aesthetic of the team. And what happened? He like like three designs and he decided to combine all of them. David?

No, actually, he was very heavily involved and he hired baseball has to approve all uniforms, by the way, on a side note. So he worked with Major League Baseball and an outside company and there were tons of different designs, tons of different logos. And the one he fell in love with was the final one. And it was described it was the Marlins own blue color that had never been on a jersey. It was a color like the sun.

It reminded him of Florida and it was colorful. He likes color, doesn't like drab. If you look at the ballpark before Jeter changed it, the ballpark was very colorful. And that's sort of the art side of him. I never minded. I remember when it got leaked, we were pissed, but it was a big seller in twenty twelve, so people really did buy and wear it. And we see when when I've been traveling around the country, I got to tell you, I see more people in that em than I do in the current one or in the former because it just has this feeling of color.

I love the jersey. Some of the players did not. I love the black jerseys. I love the orange jerseys. We had orange hats at one point as well and it just didn't last. And when Jeter changed the uniforms, which, of course you knew he was going to do, because that's what he does. When I saw those black jerseys, I said, how did that get approved? I don't know how MLB approved those jerseys because they're so bad.

All right. So I want to talk to you about designs that you were partial to because I'm sure you saw some of the specs for all the logos. And I'm sure there was a tough decision along the way that had been made. And maybe there's a good story there also, I don't think. You see the old Florida Marlins up because that had at this point is about 20 years old. How many people have 20 year old hats? I to rock my Florida Marlins.

And I want to talk to you about the decision to rename the the the Florida Marlins, the Miami Marlins, which I was led to believe was a part of the stadium deal, was it not? Yeah.

You were led to believe. That's exactly true. That was a time I think I've told you this, that the county of Miami, when we were negotiating with and getting public money from in the city of Miami, who was a smaller partner in the deal, they were they gave the land was the biggest part of their contribution. They wanted the team to be named Miami. Remember back then that the Marlins had a big Miami Broward issue back when Jeffrey bought the team from John Henry, when John bought it from Wayne Huizenga, when I think it did not like Miami, he didn't want to be a part of Miami Dade.

He didn't think that Miami was a good market, which is why he built his hockey arena up in Broward. He was very much a Broward guy. So Miami as a community and as a political community, they were sort of raw about that. And they made it a huge deal point before giving any public money. They wanted to make sure the team was renamed the Miami Marlins. And we were in know from the beginning and we said, no, we're the Florida Marlins, we've won a World Series is the Florida Marlins, we won two.

World Series is the Florida Marlins were staying as the Florida Marlins were known. We want to appeal to all of Florida. At that time. There was a question whether the Rays would stay in Tampa. So we had dreams that we would own the entire state of Florida. So for us, it was a non starter, wink, wink. We didn't care less. We ended up trading that for a great it was a great trade in the negotiation where we agreed to rename the team Miami and they agreed to contribute a million dollars a year to a capital reserve fund to help the stadium.

So for us, it was a very simple, easy trade we held out in any negotiation. It's like page one. You pretend you don't want to give something up, even though, you know, you're willing to have to stick to that plan. You just have to stick to it no matter what. There can't be a leak in your ship. And then at the proper moment, you give in in order to get something back. I've always we became the Miami Marlins.

Amazing. And that's exactly how I thought that might have happened. And I've also held this long private theory that you guys were probably going to change your name to Miami anyways. Yes, of course you are, because it was an opportunity to rebrand, right? It was a chance to have brand New Jersey's brand new name, brand new start. We wanted a new start. We thought the new ballpark would provide that start, absent Castro, absent the terrible signings and the terrible trades and apps and all the lack of performance.

We thought this was our moment in a pretty young franchise to just start over. And it lasted like a day and a half.

I can hear Billy Corbin tweeting about this already. He is he is going to be made so furious by that revelation. But it seemed pretty common sense, if you know anything about our local government and your negotiation tactics is you make it.

You said that in such a pejorative way, there was nothing unethical about what we did. There was nothing illegal about what we did when I was just good negotiation.

But it's just good negotiating, I guess. Business, right? It's just there's nothing personal.

It's there you go. It's nothing personal. It was nothing about Billy Corben didn't even know him at the time. It was nothing about anything other than we had to get a deal done. Now, funny enough, the capital reserve fund. Is only funded for 10 years and the building is almost 10 years old, so there is going to be a public fight for money. Get ready. Billy Corben. Derek Jeter is going to have to go to the county for money for the capital reserve fund.

All right, talk to me like I'm an idiot. What is this capital reserve fund to pay for? It's a fund that I guess you can just borrow money from at any time to pay any expense. Are the rules around this?

Yes, there are very significant rules. So that's a fund when you have let's say you own a house by chance. If you just bought a new house and you want a secret, some money away because shit happens, stuff breaks. Right. So let's pretend that you have to replace your roof. And that happens every 10 years. There's two ways to do it. You can self-insured. And when the time comes for a new roof, you have to go into your checking account or take a second mortgage and fix a roof.

Or you can put away a thousand dollars a year for 10 years or two, five thousand dollars a year or whatever the cost of the new roof is going to be. And in 10 years, you will have a fund of money in a separate bank account. Oh, I need a new roof. I'm going to take it from that. Or you have to replace your driveway. You can either do it from your own money that year of your income or you've saved each year because you know how long a driveway will last.

We have a list of everything in the ballpark. Seats need to be replaced every 15 years. The scoreboard every 12 years. You have to do painting every five years. So you literally go event by event that costs money. Then you present value it. Meaning if I have to spend 10 million in ten years, what do I have to save today? To have ten million in ten years? And that's the capital reserve fund. It's not used to sign players.

It's not used to do fix the grass, which is something that happens every year. It's for big literally capital projects. And the Capital Reserve Fund for Miami is funded by the city, the county and the team. The city and county, the city puts in two hundred and fifty grand a year and the counting the team put in seven hundred and fifty grand a year every year for the first 10 years. But that deal now runs out because in the first 10 years, the last.

This is funny, Billy, the last issue on the table, you address Billy Urban Stadium negotiation.

Was what happens if the capital reserve fund is not sufficient to pay for a capital expenditure? So what happens if you have to do a new roof and there's not enough money in the capital reserve fund? You can't have a leaky roof. You have to fix your roof. The Marlins agreed they wanted the Marlins to pay for any overage for the length of the lease, which is thirty eight years, and we said no chance, even though I knew I'd be dead in thirty eight years.

There was no way that I was going to make the next owner have to pay for any overage because a million dollars a year in the cap of reserve funds, one point seventy five is not enough to keep a baseball stadium going because we can have other events and all the things that are necessary to have a roof and you have to update your stadium, etc.. So the Marlins agreed at the end that the Marlins would pay for any extra costs only in the first 10 years.

But we had done a calculation and we knew that if we put 750 in the county, put seven, 50 and the city put to 50, that there would be enough money in the cap, a reserve fund for every project that would need to happen. And it would run out in year 10. So we knew that there would be a new negotiation, but we figured there'd be a new mayor, there'd be there'd be something different would be happening, and we just kicked the can and the city and county agreed to it.

But we all knew what it meant, that there be more public money that would have to be paid because picture, right now, he's in a county owned building. Let's say they need to have a new scoreboard. There's no way he's going to pay for a new scoreboard by himself. It's just not financially doesn't make sense. And these fights go on in different communities. It's happening in Phoenix right now where they Phoenix, Arizona Diamondbacks are threatening to leave Arizona because of a fight over the capital reserve fund with the local government.

So that is coming in Florida. Get ready.

And it is a terrible time for that to come up right now because local governments are and there's really no money to be going to a professional sports team at the moment. It's going to be a really difficult negotiation.

Even you would have the odds stacked against you, there's no question, because that money comes from tourists and conventions and that money is dried up and that money is used. That money, by the way, that money helps the heat. That money helps the dolphins. There is money you can save. The dolphins don't get public money, but they do. You can say the heat don't get public money. But I think, you know, they do.

So this is not uncommon. But, yeah, there is a much smaller revenue stream. So the sports teams who sometimes work together in these public funding issues are really going to be at each other's necks because there aren't enough dollars to go around.

And the person with the owner with the best relationship with local government will probably win out, although it's it's difficult to even find a winner during this time. And only one team is up right now, it would appear. And that's Moreland's, to your knowledge anyways.

Yeah, but he did the he did there recently. Remember, they had that whole I don't know if that got attention around here, but the Heat did a new negotiation with the county.

How jealous are you of Mickey Harrison's local reputation? Because he had two arenas sort of built for him, even though he wasn't the original owner of the Miami Heat. So was he a part of the group that originally owned and then he just took a majority stake? I'm not exactly sure how that worked, but when people would always complain about your stadium, they wouldn't complain about the heat. Did you always have an issue with that now? Because I didn't focus on on it.

You're right. And I could have felt sorry for myself saying, how come everyone loves Mickey and everyone loves the heat so much?

But what the heat have done, something that we couldn't do and they've had sustained. Well, I want to say sustained winning may not be accurate because there was a time post Shaq pre LeBron when they closed the upper deck and they didn't get a lot of attention for that. But when we closed the upper deck, it's like the end of the world.

Yeah, they they did make the playoffs some of those years. I was one really bad year. Well, yeah, there was one really bad year post Shaq and they turn that into a number two pick, which was a bust, but they eventually got the flexibility to get LeBron. They were a national story every night for several years. And you guys, even though you guys won one World Series title, this is now multiple generations where the Miami Heat have been relevant.

Now there's a new crop of kids that are coming up in the heat of relevant once again. So they did something that you guys weren't able to do, what other franchises haven't been able to do down here since the 70s, and that to have sustained success, it's hard.

The worst day of my Marlins career, believe it or not, the single worst day. And this is crazy to admit because it has nothing to do with the decision. I can tell you exactly where I was. I because I had heard rumors and I tried to get information from either Pat or Eric, who runs the business side, because I don't I would always have to pretend that I rooting for the heat and rooting for the dolphins, but I rooted against them every day because I wanted them to be off the front page.

I didn't want them to get column inches. That's an old word. I feel like a boomer. I didn't want them to get any attention on sports talk radio. I wanted them if they were going to get attention for it to be negative attention. And when I saw LeBron was when he when he said, I'm taking my talents to I didn't think that I didn't hear South Beach.

I didn't think that would follow in that sentence you just heard not the Marlins I'm taking my talents to not the Marlins is unreal because I knew that that was it.

Right. I mean, LeBron James had just made the biggest decision. I didn't agree with the whole TV show and all of the craziness that went along with it. And then they did that opening rally where he was promising championships. And I just kept thinking, oh, my God, they're going to be playing through June every single year. The Marlins are only going to get July because August starts Dolphins training camp. So that be one month and by July, for chrissake, we're normally out of it already.

Yeah. So you mentioned that I actually have a pretty good memory of that, like first heat season or I think it was the first season you guys moved into the new stadium. The heat were thing already, and you guys had been playing pretty well while the Heat were making a deep playoff run, and as soon as a finals ended, South Florida Sport's attention turns to the Miami Marlins, who are kind of hot there in this stadium. Things are finally happening for David Samson and Jeffrey Loria.

And then, boom, right in the shitter. Do the Marlins go off to training camp after thought again? Is that how you remember it? Yeah, I know. I remember that almost perfectly.

And frankly, it feels like that happened every season.

So it's just that throwing just he he was just like, you're more you're saddled with more debt. Every time he would take the mound, it's just more debt. No chance of capturing the hearts and minds of the South Florida sports fan, the three to even that year.

Right. There were years that people don't remember that we had good years, that we were in it late, including 09, including five, including four. And we had a good year in 06, believe it or not, even though it was we didn't make the playoffs. But Girardi had a good season. So it wasn't it wasn't a complete loss and they were good players that came through here. So a lot of what the heat did. So I look at the Heat's team this year a little bit like I look at the Marlins sixteen, even though that came after a lot of trades when we couldn't win it in 05, when we got rid of Delgado, et cetera.

But when you've got Uggla and Ramirez and you still have Cabrera and you've got Dontrelle and you've got a team that's good, you really is good. And young players that he just I was watching the Heat play the Bucs and I was looking I was saying, you know, Pat Riley did it again. There's no big three.

They don't have in my mind all respect to Jimmy Butler. For me, he's not a superstar. He's not park. He would be maybe a third of the big three. But the combination of players they have and the way they play for Coach Spoelstra and the way they play defense like a real team of the old days where they move their feet and they've got each other's backs. That's basketball. And I was watching the game last night, the Toronto game.

And the NBA is so full of Chuck and Duck now where you just dribble the ball and then shoot threes, but the heat play good basketball. And it shows that Pat Riley, he really to me over my career, both as a fan and in sports, he's got to be the number one guy in history. Wow.

In terms of league executive, you you agree with the Magic Johnson heartache that he's the best executive in sports. Did Magic say that? Yeah, well, we were actually debating. Wow. I think Pat Riley might actually be a better executive than he was head coach. And he's one of the greatest coaches of all time. Well, he here in Mexico won a title with the Knicks.

Yeah. Your next guy. Forget if he had won the title with us with the Knicks in ninety four and then won with the Lakers and then the Heat, he would have been the greatest of all time. I think not getting over the hump with Ewing, I think takes away from him being the best coach ever. I think you've got to give it to Phil Jackson. I don't. I mean, I think you just have to.

I want to get back to this capital reserve fund. You've spoken in the past about the difficulties that sort of popped up that maybe you weren't fully prepared for in picking an all white stadium. And I would drive I drive by that stadium all the time. And a couple of weeks into your first season, you would start seeing the infield dirt start to take on the top of the roof. And what was a pristine looking stadium started looking a hell of a lot older than it should have really early on.

And then a storm happened and it knocked part of the tarp off the stadium. And I think this was around the time that you agreed to sell the team. And I was always wondering who's on the hook to repair this this roof. David, I see you making faces. Tell me the story.

Well, that was a bad story. So you've asked two separate things. The first one is about the color white. And we had extra. We had budgeted to clean the stadium once a year to clean the outside. It's a big deal. You need these lifts because it's it's high. It's a very tall building. We did not think. And the architect and the builder, they didn't mislead us, but we should have known better. We did not think it would look as dirty.

It's like when you buy a white car, you don't dream that it's going to look like crap as quickly as it does. And if you don't stay on top of it, having a white car is bad. And that's what happened, because when we had to cut things from the budget, when the team was not doing what we thought it would do from a revenue standpoint, what's the first thing you don't do? You don't wash your car as often as you normally would.

Wow.

So that's what happened. There ultimately was the same look dirty because you guys weren't good.

That's funny because we did not we did not have the revenue. We thought so we definitely cut in that area. The second issue, and that's why we closed the upper deck. We closed it not to make it look more crowded because that's silly. We closed it because you save operational money and you save air conditioning money by not having anybody in the upper deck. There's no concessions up there. Then you don't need any people to work up there, etc.

But what you're bringing up now is what happens when you're selling something. So, again, I bring you back to your house if you're selling your house. Someone has an agreement on a price to buy your house and then a hurricane comes and the roof blows off.

Why would the buyer think that they're going to replace the roof? They would never do that. Yeah, you're on the hook for it.

So I had to call Jeffrey after the hurricane, and that was in 17 as the team. This was like September of 17. We had we were down the road with Sherman and Jeter. We were trying to close on October 1st. And all of a sudden maybe it was August, it was very late, had already been announced that they are going to be the owners.

You just have to close the deal. I think they've already had the introductory press conference and Major League Baseball sort of announced that this was the plan, but there hadn't been included.

I think they would have done the press conference because you can't do that until you actually buy the team. And so they would have done that upon being approved by Major League Baseball.

It was common knowledge that they were going to be the owners. Well, it had been leaked. I wonder who would leak that.

And so. I say I call Jeffrey because he wasn't in Florida, and the first thing after the storm passed, my first call is to Claude Delorme, who runs the ballpark operations. I said, are we good? And he said, everything's OK. There may be something with the roof. I'll get back to you. I didn't think anything of it. I didn't call Jeffrey. I didn't call Derek. Nothing. I get a call, David.

We got a problem. We got up there and part of the roof is gone. And I said, well, that can't be. What do you mean? Well, there's a roof. There's a there's a canvas covering up there. And it snapped off. And all of a sudden I was getting pictures sent to me of it flailing. And then I went on the news and there were helicopters. And it became the symbol of that storm was the Marlins Park Roof, because, you know, that Weather Channel loves that stuff.

And it was a nightmare because everyone saw it and I wasn't going to wait for Jeter to call me. So I did the preemptive call and I said, Derek, I called him and I called Bruce Sherman separately. I said, there's been a storm. We are figuring out what the damage is, but we're sure that it's covered by insurance. So you have nothing to worry about. But they did not accept that as an answer. Oh, really?

Yeah, we had to that was a a purchase price to Justman because there was no way they were going to pay for that. And there is still an ongoing issue, by the way, years later about that.

There's an ongoing issue years. I remember it took a really long time to fix and I never quite understood what it was I was like after a couple of months of driving past.

And I'm like, is this an insurance thing? What's going on here? Why isn't this been taken care of? It looks like shit.

It's always an insurance issue. And it was a fight with the junior group issue because, again, I knew we were going to lose this, but I was holding out as long as possible because I was trying to get them so excited. I wanted them to be approved and I wanted them to meet the other owners and have brusher and be in the room where it happens. And I wanted them to be all excited. They're like, oh, three million to fix that out.

Who cares? Because they they were sure that everything was going to be great. They were going to sell out and they were going to win and they were going to fire everyone and everything was going to be great. I wanted them to think everything was going to be great before it turned to crap.

All right. So you guys took the loss on that, but most sellers in that spot eventually have to have to eat it. Let's get back to the the logo decision. What was second place in retrospect? You would still land on that bright, colorful logo that I know you feel good about because you said you loved it. And even in this interview, I hated it. I think there were just so many colors. It was a mess. What was second place?

I would have preferred fewer colors.

And I was also concerned about Maroon five. We had our lawyers commission.

It looks just like the Maroon five logo. So we had to get a lot of lawyers to approve that. And there was a question at the time is, do we have to contact Adam and say, hey, listen, just why? Here's our M and I'd already had a fight with a guy in Pensacola about the logo who claimed that we were taking his logo and and sent us a lawyer letter saying, if this is your logo, you're not allowed to use it.

And I had to go to Pensacola and take care of that, which I did. But it was I was concerned about Maroon five. I was concerned about the number of colors. I was concerned about licensed apparel makers ability to actually get it right because it was such a particular color that was not normally on a pallet. And then when you have to do try color printing or multiple color printing, it also costs more. So I was annoyed about that.

Our margins on retail, we're not going to be as great as they could have been, but I lost every single one of those arguments.

I know this is an audio format, but if you could sort of describe if you had your choice, what would have been the logo? What did it look like?

No, would have been that I love that am and I love the fish over it. I just would have made it a two color logo.

Well, what would have been the I loved the yellow and I also love the red. The the the orange. I would have I would have gotten rid of the blue.

All right. So it's been just orange and yellow. The blue reminded me of the teal. I wanted to get away from teal.

Why would you guys want to get away from the deal? The deal is so cool. Embrace it till you guys won two championships in the teal.

I, I understand. But I also know that when you are trying to sell a new wardrobe to someone. It's got to be totally different and they're going to be people like you who refuse to buy because they hate it, but most people will say, listen, I've got the till now, I'm going to get and it worked because people did buy the Marlins jerseys. We did. For a terribly small market with no fans. Our numbers with the Marlins logos were middle of the pack and MLB, and that's after 2012, 2012, we were in the top five, which you better be when you release something really stayed in the middle of the pack.

Yeah, I mean that it's expected that you would see a big boom. I love the orange hats actually, because what I like so much about the teal is this stuck out. Now you have all these drab oh, the Red Sox are there in the pinstripes and these are boring. And here come the fresh young Marlins with their two World Series wearing this ridiculous color. So at least Orange was in homage to wear unique wear, vibrant wear ourselves. And you guys did away with the orange hats.

Why? Because a player who I still don't know who said to Jeffrey went over my head, over Larry's head, over Michael's head and said, we don't like those were the sun hats, as you may recall, we wore them on Sundays and there was a player. And this is what players used to do when they wanted something. And I would say no or the baseball people would say no. They just go to Jeffrey because that's that's what you do if you have access to an owner.

And, you know, the owner is going to say yes to you because the owner wants the players to be happy. Believe it or not, he was not anti player in any way. He was so pro player, no pun intended, with where he used to play that we had to be extra anti player just to make it level because they would go we bought more crap from players going to Jefferey.

We had guys we had that hyperbaric chamber in the clubhouse because there was a player went over our head and said, oh, I need this to recover. It may have been Mike Morse. Remember him?

I do with Mike Morris is calling shots. This is ridiculous.

I can't even tell you the number of times that players would say, we need this, we want it. We we want a different road, hotels. We want to do something different in terms of our travel. We want something different in terms of our uniforms. We had players choosing what uniforms? It used to be a set schedule. We would wear the home whites on Friday, the black jerseys on Saturdays and the orange jerseys on Sundays or whatever combination.

There was a set schedule, but then some of the pictures went to and said, we want to pitch in the uniforms, we want to pitch in, we want to choose. So, Jeffrey, change the rules that pitchers got to decide every day what uniforms they wanted to wear and then the team would have to wear those uniforms. It just became too much.

But you guys killed the orange hat. You didn't just say, OK, player, who's probably going to be here a season and a half more, killed it.

Why would you kill it? Who is this player that ruined the cool orange hat thing?

And even the answer is, I don't know. I'd have to go back and ask because I never knew and I never knew purposefully, because for sometimes with owners, when you get told to do something, you can talk him out of it and you can wait for emotion to pass. But there's other times when you know that you have to give and when you're managing up, you do. By the way, you do do this when you manage, you have to you have to give people their victories.

But I don't know who's this? You're the you're the Miami Marlins. Nobody sticks around for more than two seasons. I don't understand this.

That's not actually true. I mean, if you look OK, Gordon stuck around for three seasons.

I'm sorry, but if you look at the players, we had No. Six, right. The core of those those players lasted.

But anyway, when we lose out on arbitration, then you're no longer a marlin. So until as long as we have your arbitration years, you can call the shots on the that.

That's not right either. Are you trying to be like force angry right now?

Because because I'm just that's not having any single player. Like, if it was Giancarlo Stanton that went to Jeffrey Loria and said, hey, I don't like the orange hats, I understand. But you would remember John Carlos Santana. It was it was not John Carlos. The fact that you can't remember the player means that this person was so forgettable. You can't even remember this about them. And they took away something that fans actually really dug the orange hats are we still saw them.

We still sold them. And I'm sure someone else. I'm sure this is all very well.

And I went to Jeffrey with some stats on that, but it just didn't work. I mean, there was no talking him out of it, so there's nothing I could do. OK, the point is this, why fight the fights that you can't win?

Do you believe in the orange hats? I love the orange.

You believed in my favorite hat sniper. What to believe in just saying. I'm sure you did, because maybe you fought for other things that you believed in and you gave on the orange hats. And they're always you're always negotiating.

So it's everything's negotiation. And this is going to come off wrong. And I don't want to be this guy. You can't fight for everything you believe in because you to me, fighting the fights that you can't win means that you're going to lose other fights that you need to win. And that's how I would look at it. There were certain financial fights with Jeffrey that we had to win in terms of clean a place. He wanted to call up young players all the time.

He didn't care about service time. He didn't care about the future. He wanted to sign deals, signed this guy trade for that guy, do this, do that. He that's the irony about Jeffrey is everyone hated him because they thought he didn't want to win and didn't like baseball. That's all he cared about. We just didn't have money. But we so we had to fight for him.

No, we can not do that, Jeffrey, because in three years it was I don't give a crap about three years from now. I want to win now. But Jeffrey, we're five games out. We have to climb over five teams. It's not going to happen. We are only four back in the loss column. That means we're four games out. These are real conversations that we would have.

A player would give up a brand. Braiden Luper would blow a safe, get rid of them. Right. A starting pitcher would give up runs, get rid of them. Right. That was that's how owners are, those are the fights I've got to fight if he comes to me and says, David, we got to spend 20 grand than a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

What am I going to do if that happened with Karl Barga and his retired? No, what bothered me last year, the last week that we talked about, how much am I going to fight on that when I know it's not a money issue? It's what's right. And what's wrong is. I'm embarrassed to say it in real life, you want to do what's right. But when you're running a business, you have to you have to take financial care of the business.

I never really know what we're going to talk about, and I think we got into a really good episode here with ground that we hadn't covered yet about the orange hats, the logo, the name change. So I really like this episode.

Look at us. We've we found ourselves into another good episode here. As far as luck would find it. Sometimes you're in the dark searching for the light switch. And I think we got a good one here. David Samson, host of Nothing Personal, check out his podcast, check out his social media platforms, always post some videos there. If you don't have the time for the entire podcast, at least follow him on Twitter so you can see some of the videos from his show.

Nothing personal. David, what are you reviewing this week? So I got to tell you what I did yesterday that will make you laugh because, you know, I watch your movie every single day and I'm having a hard time sleeping, you know, that's happening, too.

So I watched a 40 minute documentary called Speed Cubers on Netflix. Have you ever heard of it? I have not. OK, I'm about to change your life. There are competitions around the world for people who solve Rubik's Cube in a speedy manner, like in five seconds and not just the three by three cube, like a four by four or five by five, six by six or seven by seven. These are kids whose hands were up so fast that I have never solved a Rubik's Cube.

I can't solve a Rubik's Cube. I hate the Rubik's Cube.

And then considering the palette that you picked for the Miami Marlins, that's by the way, Rubik's Cube was was our was our spiritual guide. This is a show about the world championship Speed Cube.

And like trophies, it's a real competition. People traveled the world and you've got to watch it, it's only 40 minutes.

Yeah, I mean, it seems just sort of empty. Your jaws just left a gate because you're watching how quickly people are solving Rubik's Cube, Rubik's cubes.

It's insane. So I've never seen anything like it. Its speed in a way, like when I watch Speed Chess, I recognize that. I get that like that's fun to watch. But speed chess holds nothing to this. So speed cubers, it's only 40 minutes.

And I promise you, you will not be sorry. One of the kids, there's like a competition and a best friendship between the two best speed cubers in the world, and they go at each other all over, but yet their friends off the court. And it is fascinating what it takes to do the way they practice. They have cubes in their hands at all times. At all times. There is a competition. They can do it magic with one hand.

They can solve a Rubik's cube, which I can't because my hands are so small. They can do a Rubik's Cube solving like an eight seconds with one hand.

I'm going to check this out. I'm finally getting back into watching movies. I don't have a sofa in my home, so I can't I can only watch live sports. I'm watching everything from an office chair. Last night was the first night that I'm like, I'm going to try to lay in bed and watch a movie start to finish. I succeeded.

I watch. I watch. Primal. Oh, OK. Yeah. Primal Classic B movie starring Nicolas Cage. You know how much I love Nicolas Cage. This film delivers David. Is that what John Cusack as well? No, no.

John Cusack. Although Nicolas Cage is starting to look like John Cusack, who's who's who's in it with.

So Michael Imperioli and Famke Jensen are the co-stars in this film. Oddly enough, this is actually an understated performance from one Nicolas Cage when you consider what he's done in the past. The best Nicolas Cage performance in this movie is actually by someone who's not Nicolas Cage. The person who plays a villain kind of looks like Nicolas Cage and is just doing a Nicolas Cage impression the entire time. However, the dialogue is awful, which means it's great. The CGI is worse, which means it's great.

I mean, there isn't a likable character. I don't understand why we're supposed to like the hero other than he's Nicolas Cage. They tell us he's a hero, but he seems like a second rate black market, big game hunter that skirts all the rules. But he's our hero. Is this a money grab for Nick?

Everything's a money grab for my kid. I feel terribly about that. His career got off to such a great start with so many great movies. And what happens when you run out of money is you have to say yes a lot.

Yeah.

The capital reserve fund has been long been extinguished for the islands and homes and cars and weird artifacts like dinosaur skulls and just crazy stuff, I think any amount of money, please watch speed cubers. It's only forty minutes. This is not like a major investments, like a half hour sitcom plus ten minutes. It's hard. It's it's hard.

I put three TVs in my, in my living room, my home theater and last night I didn't have enough TVs for all the sports. I just it's in part I hate all the sports going on at the same time. I really don't like it. It's it's cool for this one year, I guess. But the fact that I have to worry about Heat playoff games and a Brown Thursday, Cleveland Browns Thursday night and the start of the Premier League season.

And there's Marlins' baseball. That's interesting. And the Stanley Cup finals are going on. It's just it's a disaster. I don't like it. Oh, the hurricanes start today, but I have Xfinity now and I can't watch it because they're on the ACSI network. I mean what is that all about. Padbury Jackson is having an aneurysm on Twitter every day about the network. They want too much money and expensive, they said, forget it because you have to call Xfinity and you have to say I am canceling Xfinity because I want the network and then your friend has to do it and then two hundred thousand of your friends have to do it and then maybe Xfinity will buy the ABC network.

But other than that it's not worth it because not enough people even Xfinity Xfinity I demand my network.

I'd like you to make that call. Make the call.

I have an I have a tech coming over on Friday. Don't don't even get me started on this whole talk about a fight not worth fighting.

That's it. Trying to get a network on Xfinity.

I think I'd rather have the network on Xfinity than even the Orange Marlins had. So we'll see. David Chase Cubers Mikey.

I'm going to check it out. Foxcroft next week. I'm his kingdom for you and that was a lot more than forty minutes. Yes it was a big investment by the way, worth every penny but forty minutes. Speed cubers. Let's see if your listeners will listen. We'll watch it because I couldn't believe it. I could not believe what I was watching.

What were your thoughts on the final season of Kingdome? Because I felt it was rushed and I felt like there was so much meat on the bone, so much story still to tell. I don't feel like all the issues between one of the sons and the dad was resolved. I left. I was left wanting more, which sometimes is a good thing, but not one. I feel like the main storyline of that season felt rushed.

So I haven't read this. So I'm asking you, you may know, did they know that was three and done before they wrote three or was it done after three and they ended it at the end of three?

So I don't know this answer, but I watched the season and to me it's written like they were made aware that it would be the final season as production was either starting or already underway. It didn't seem to me like that was the plan. It felt like the slow burn of season one and season two was building to something more than what we saw in season three. And they just had to make the best of a bad situation because they were funded by DirecTV and DirecTV was being sold AT&T.

And they're now pulling out of the original content game. And I don't even know if you've seen they're no longer putting DirecTV satellites in the sky. They are phasing DirecTV out. So that was one year. Look, when you're not performing on the field, you have to start cutting some budgets. And sometimes what is analogous to the white stadium getting power cleaned is you don't get a season four of Kingdome on DirecTV.

Did you know that in real life that the father and his lawyer were married? In real life, in real life, and I can remember Frank Grillo is married to his is the woman who played the lawyer. Wow. His lawyer. And they're now divorced recently. But while they were filming, that was his wife.

How good looking is that? Frank Grillo?

My God, he's now he's the guy who is in billions before it got stopped by covid is in the last season. Is the artist in billions?

Yeah. I mean, handsome devil, that guy, he's been on our show before and Dan didn't even know it. Dan's also since fallen in love with that Kingdome show and I had to tell him, yeah, we had Frank Grillo on the show. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah, Billy got into a fight with him saying that he kept dying as Aaron Frank Grillo didn't want to hear it.

It's Grillo. Have any actual tattoos? I don't think so.

I follow him on Instagram. The guy lays thirst traps after thirst straps. Hang on one second.

I can tell you right now this guy is so put together, I could never read an entire article about the tattoos of Kingdom and how each actor got to have a say in what his tattoos would be like. I got here he was shirtless.

No real tattoos. There are no. So he's got no tattoos. There you go.

No, but he is because he looks badass with those tattoo. He looks so badass. He's got the greatest hair. He's just awesome. And the fake the fake ears to you because like Jonathan Tucker had like the torn up cauliflower ears. No, nobody has those ears. And Hollywood man. Look at that now. Now I'm down the rabbit hole just staring at Frank Grillo. Third strap's on Instagram. Thanks a lot.

By the way. That's just a Thursday for you, Mike. Speaking of we'll talk to you next Thursday, David.