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Hey everybody, welcome to the local hour. And I know what you're hoping for in the local hour. Don't worry, you're going to get it in the big city. Heat reaction, cocaine, mike heat homer ism. All that is coming your way. We'll see if the Governator makes an appearance with the Miami Heat are up to or against the best team in basketball. It's exciting times down here for South Florida sports fans in general. I three TVs working overtime last night and I'm so excited.

Inter Miami came away with a point on the road. David Samson, I know you were glued to Miami, Atlanta, United on FS one, a nil nil affair, a regional rival. Big time point for in Miami.

That was a huge moment. I couldn't decide whether I was more excited to get the one away point for Inter Miami or when Jimmy Butler, second free throw with no time left, went in.

That was just for good measure. I mean, insane game. I know this is going to sound like a knee jerk reaction and hyperbolic, but I can't remember a game in my lifetime in which more people were sent to the free throw line because they were fouled on a jump shot. It was insanity. Great game, exciting time zone here because you have the Marlins inexplicably in a playoff chase. Well, not inexplicably. The explanation is that the record is good enough to be in this chase because the playoff expansion and sixty games is just such a mutation of the sport that you have a handful of teams that over the course of a full regular season might prove to be bad.

In the thick of this, San Diego might have actually been legitimately good this year, but San Francisco is hanging around. Philadelphia is probably a team that I don't think many would have had in the thick of the playoff chase as they are right now. You look at I mean, even the Tigers are pretty good. David, what is your take on this season? Should I just enjoy it for what it is? Should a part of me be like, wow, this is such a mutation of the sport, I can't take this seriously?

It depends.

What kind of person are you in general when you look at your glass in the morning because you are acting pretty half empty right now. And that's disappointing because it's a South Florida fan. We got to take it the way we can get it, when we can get it, how we can it. If it's a phantom foul by Giannis you take it. The fact is I just would take umbrage with one thing you said to start this show. The Bucks are not the best team in basketball.

They may have the best record in basketball, but they are not playing like the best team in basketball by any stretch since this bubble started. The heats are a better team. It does remind me of the Marlins when when we won in those three. I hate to go back to it, but people said, oh, we shouldn't be favored against the Cubs or the Giants.

And I don't I really don't know that they were. I don't I really don't think you hate to go back to it now.

Well, listen, it's just the people that realize we are better than they were. The Heat are a great team. They've got shooters, they've got defenders, they've got playmakers. I just thought that the referees played a role that that the NBA's going to have to look at this and say, is this the game we want? Do we want the referees thinking about calls every time a jump shooter jumps up? Do we want the sort of touch fouls?

Do we want the inconsistency? When you watch Game seven of the Rockets Thunder last night, the referees let so much go. There was so much frenetic. I don't know if you stayed up late, and I'm sure you did, too. I did. It was insanity. I actually had a problem with Witzelsucht.

I actually had a problem with Scott Foser not teeing up Chris Paul at the end because Chris Paul was talking to him in a way that absolutely deserved a technical. I know you said Fantham fouled by Yanase. And I think if in a vacuum I show you that play and say, hey, this is going to be a call that's made with zero time on the clock without the context of the rest of the game, you're probably saying who makes that call in that spot?

I think immediately on the heels of that inexplicable call that Steve Jabe. I've had a problem with since he was officiating Knicks games and 20 years ago, Steve Jabe, to back that call up, you do not make that call in that spot. You will make that call in any spot. That was great defense by Goran Dragic. Credit to Doris Burke for calling him out because he's supposed to be the end all be all there. When you have Steve your rules expert you sort of defer to him.

Doris Burke was not having a David because it was outrageous. First of all, the fact that Middleton had to free the three free throws, that is not as relevant to me because that that's hard to do. Just FYI to hit three in a row. But that's not a foul at that point in the game of a conference semifinals, even a game to forget a game seven or a game one or whatever game you just don't call it. And the Yoni's foul.

If anyone who's saying right now that that wasn't a make up call doesn't understand how games go, that was a wake up call on Yoni's. And it was the right thing to do because the right team won that game. The Heat should have won that game, but they should have won it, not on Butler's free throws with no time left on the clock.

I think I agree with every single one of your takes. It was a wake up call. I don't think that without the context, like I said, without the context of the rest of the game, I think that's a bad call. But when you hold it in direct comparison to what immediately happened before it with that Dragic foul call the honest thing looks like a flagrant foul compared to what happened with Goran Dragic So better team one Miami Heat made us nervous at the end.

Jimmy Butler for the love of God call timeout but we will get to extreme heat reaction in the big city. Let's give some attention to these Miami Marlins And you're rooting for the Marlins, right? You're rooting for this season even though I mean I think a large chunk of you doesn't want Derek Jeter to have any success professionally. I don't know if you consider yourself a professional rival, you must be conflicted watching this team. You've spoken about it here with me on the on the local hour.

But are you getting sort of sucked in by this playoff? Chase has mutated as it is.

I'm rooting for Michael and I'm rooting for other people in your organization. I think there's seven of them left to Jeter hasn't fired. I'm not rooting for Jeter on the business side at all because I won. Obviously, by comparison, I want people and him to realize that, hey, maybe this is selfish of me to say, and I'm honest with you, I don't want him to all of a sudden be selling out and all of a sudden get a huge TV deal and all of a sudden get a naming rights deal, because even though it's three years later, it just makes me look less competent.

And the more that he can't do what he says, he could do better than I did, the better I feel.

But that's off the field. That is so honest.

I appreciate that. I appreciate the transparency because, look, many people might accuse you of that and you're, like, just wearing it. Yep, absolutely true.

I not. Who would accuse me of that? I mean, that's if you don't have some bit of schadenfreude in you, then you're just not looking deep enough. And so do what do I have happiness at his misfortunes every single time? Do I gloat about it every single time. However, you know, in a contract year for Michael, who is someone who I care about, I want and for the fans to South Florida. Listen, I wanted to win every year that I was there.

And they haven't won in so long. It's been seventeen years. That means the way I've always looked at it is generationally. And take my son, who was born in 03, in June of 03. So he never got to where he obviously didn't remember 03. I never was able to have him at an October game. I never was able to show him playoff games. And everybody born his year, they're now seniors in high school. And I can't stand the fact that there could be children who get born and then go to school and become adults and never saw their team make the playoffs.

So I want the Marlins to make the playoffs this year, not just for him, but for everybody in South Florida, whether it's a sixty game season or not. You if you're in it, you're in it. And no one remembers how many people in Los Angeles who are seniors in high school in nineteen eighty one say to themselves, man, that was a strike shortened season. That was not fun at all. That was split season. It wasn't real.

Forget it. You're the world champion.

You want to hear something pathetic and sad. In my lifetime, I have a memory of one Cleveland Browns playoff game one in your whole life.

Forget your school life. You tell me your whole life. My whole life. My whole life.

Because remember, they went away and became the Ravens. And it was a couple of years before they came back and the Ravens immediately became good and went on to win two Super Bowls. You can tell that stayed with me a little bit during that transitional time. I actually supported the Miami Dolphins and they made the playoffs. But in terms of like my absolute passion, my Cleveland Browns, they made the playoffs and believe it was two thousand and one. And it was a heartbreaking game, a loss.

Back victory by the Pittsburgh Steelers, the hated rival, and that is my one playoff memory of the team alongside Chelsea that I just support the most. So yeah, I feel terrible for your son.

Is our model the most hated owner or is it Jefferey in your career?

Oh, boy, it is art. It is art quite, quite easily. And I do not like Jeffery all respect to you, but I don't like Jeffrey at all. But Art art was way worse.

Art was when you remember for the for the listeners who don't know, art model under cover of night in theory, although of course it's not true. But there were moving trucks that were brought to Cleveland and you and there was video, as I recall, of those moving trucks in the dark, moving stuff out of Cleveland into Baltimore. Do you have any how old were you when that happened?

I was I want to say I was probably nine years old. I remember having the sports that I hung up the Sports Illustrated cover that was made a character, a caricature of Art Modell. I hated our model. I would throw darts at it and I legitimate. I had a dartboard in my room. I put it on the dart board. Yeah. I mean, he ripped away the football team that I loved, that I loved. I didn't really grab the scope of it.

And I do remember sort of instantaneously there was already talk about the NFL is going back to Cleveland. This will not stand because everybody agreed in the way that it went down in leveraging the stadium situation and the city Cleveland was willing to give a stadium. It seemed as though he just balked at the entire negotiation and wasn't at all serious about keeping that team in Cleveland. Much like you wore a cowboy hat to recruit other cities. He got swept up in it and his heart was set on Baltimore.

And look, it's worked out for that franchise and our model. Plenty of people say that he should be a Hall of Famer because of the contributions to the game. And if you look at it, it's hard to argue. But I think that that's in for me is too much to overcome. I will always forever hold a grudge, even though he's long gone. Now, that one's tough, Jeffrey. I didn't like because I felt like Jeffrey was just openly lying to me.

I just I, I know Deadspin had the whole thing. Well, let's talk about the Deadspin article that sort of they got their hands on some of your financials and that have been a nightmare.

Yeah, that was one of my worst days of my career. Can we talk about it? And for the uninitiated, can you explain exactly what happened there with the Deadspin story?

So we're we're a private company while people like you and fans think that it's a public company and you should know everything that goes on, the reality is that you don't because we have our own financials and it is completely private. How much money is spent on various things? How much money is one, how much money is lost? The every company has financial statements. Baseball is interesting in that we've got several auditors every year who audit the financial statements. The union gets to look at the financial statements.

The league gets to look at the financial statements. And of course, we as as a company get your financial statements. I had to sign every year the financial statements to say as president of the team that I have read them because they come not just with numbers, but there's also pros and financial statements where you explain different categories, explain different numbers, and you have to represent it is a legal document where you are representing that certain things are happening.

And here's why. The numbers are the numbers. But those financial statements are absolutely private. In a public company where you buy shares of stock, you can see a company's financial statements and audited financial statements. So one day I am doing whatever it is I do. And when you get a call from P.J. Loyola, who is the head of communications, generally the calls are because something's going on. It's not, hey, how are you doing? It's all right.

We had a player arrested or we have to deal with something that happened. Or did you hear what the owner said or did you hear what's going on in baseball? You're going to have to respond or you have an interview request. There's something going on. In my wildest dreams, it never occurred to me that I would get a phone call from P.J. saying we have a serious problem. What was going on is we were trying to get a ballpark and we had made statements and I had made statements that the Marlins were losing money.

And I had been very consistent about that. And I would never get into details about how much I would never get into details about my definition of losing money. I would say that I worked for an individual owner, and when the owner has to write a check at the end of the year, that to me is losing money when an owner gets money given to him at the end of the year, that's making money. That's the definition to me of making money or losing money, because that's how our owner defined it and that is what I would have to do at the end of the years.

Say, hey, could you wire in 17 million dollars or, hey, we need your wire instructions. We're sending you 17 million dollars.

So the call comes in and says, David, it looks as though Deadspin is about to print. Our financial statements, and I said that can't be true. Obviously, they're not real because there's no way that they would have them. It's impossible. We had never given them to the public and the public had asked for our financial statements during the negotiation for the stadium. And we were a hard no. And we had a lot of criticism from people like you and Dan and everyone in the media and all the fans because there's a voyeuristic quality to seeing someone else's financial statements.

It's like looking when someone buys you dinner and you want to look at the check to see how much it is, you can see how much the person's tipping. Everybody sort of does that look even though they claim they don't, but they do. So now multiply that by a thousand. That is how badly people want to see financials. How much does Sampson get paid or how much money are they making or losing? So Deadspin somehow got the financial statements of the Florida Marlins and they chose to write an article and go public.

And only show three years where the Marlins were making money. And they didn't show the entire financial statement, they only chose and cherry picked certain parts of it to write an article that the Marlins were liars and it was a firestorm. I had never been a part of anything like that, truthfully, to this day.

What were the consequences? I imagine you heard from a lot of politicians because you were negotiating a stadium deal and you were crying poor. So at that point, you're probably thinking, oh, no, this deal is on life support. I might not be able to get a stadium. So let me tell you what I did.

I think I can sit. We had to decide how we were going to handle this, and I made the decision over the objection of Jeffrey's supervisor, of PJ and of Jeffrey, I went behind everyone's back and I sat down with a writer for The Miami Herald with our actual financial statements year by year by year, because I wanted that writer who had been incredibly negative toward us, his name. He still writes for the Herald. His name is Doug Henkes.

We chose the Herald and we chose him as the business writer because we thought he had the best opportunity to look at financial statements, listen to me talk and then write an article disputing what Deadspin had written. We couldn't let it go. Normally when something bad happens, you put it away and you don't make it worse by bringing it up again. But this story became so big and it got in the way of us getting a ballpark because the public and the commissioners and the mayor, everyone lost their mind because they had cover, which was.

Yeah, they're not showing us our statements. So what can we say? We got to believe them. But now they saw these statements and said, wait a minute, you don't need public money. So it was bad.

Did you threaten to sue Deadspin now? We only threatened to sue Deadspin over that, over my racial comments that went public when I was taped incorrectly, that then we have to be lawyered up and threatened to sue for the end. It wasn't me. Yeah. Yeah, it was a new story. Yeah, it's a different story.

But we sat with the Herald. We went through the financials and dug Hanks' wrote a front page article because Deadspin missed. It did not properly explain our financial statements because in them it explained exactly where the money went, that where the profit went, the years the Marlins were profitable, it went to pay down debt, the debt that we needed to borrow in order to put money into the stadium.

You didn't show these financials to politicians. You just mentioned that. So obviously, my mind goes to the place. Well, one of these big teams I was paying the Marlins, all that rev share money like this.

You know, I didn't spend until this second one minute considering who leaked it, because I've never I've always been a consequentialist, so why would I spend a second worrying about who did something when I had to deal with the fact that it was done?

It's like when the genie is out of the bottle, am I going to spend time figuring out why someone rubbed the lamp? Now, I got to deal with the fact that I got to do my three wishes.

Now, I actually am jealous of that trait because you just deal with the task at hand. All your bandwidth is devoted to. All right. How do we fix this? Because a large part of me would be so pissed and I would not trust anybody in Major League Baseball because that's the obvious place. So now that you're thinking about it for the first time. Does that make sense, that theory? It could have been from agents, it could have been from the union, it could have been from an owner who didn't like us or who didn't want us to succeed.

It could have been from owners who were trying to get ballpark's and couldn't and were upset. It could have been from cities. It could have been from any myriad places. Do I think that someone would directly try to hurt our bid to get a stadium? You're damn right I do, because we did things that baseball was not necessarily comfortable with throughout the years. We did things that people were not comfortable with. We were involved in that transaction and to that upset a lot of people within baseball.

There were a lot of people who didn't want John Henry to get the Red Sox within baseball. I mean, there's there's a lot that went on over the years. So could someone have purposely tried to make it so we would either wouldn't get a ballpark or would have to put more money in? Yeah, but again, why spend a second on that, Mike? Because it's such a waste of energy when there's such a premium on hours in the day.

I want to stay here for a little bit because there were obviously political ramifications, ramifications internally. I'm sure there were people, high ranking officials within your own organization that were sort of caught off guard by exactly what was in some of these financials. But it seemed as though you guys were kind of punished by Major League Baseball because you mentioned the players association. You guys were forced to inject a little bit more money into that. Was that a residual effect of this scandal or was that something different?

David, that was yet another scandal. I got called by Rob Manfred, and this was before he was commissioner. And there was an issue. And unfortunately, here in Miami, you're very Miami centered. But in baseball, Miami's one of 30 teams, the union and the owners were fighting about revenue sharing proceeds. What what the rules say is all these teams who get revenue sharing, of which the Marlins are one, the Tampa Bay Rays are one, teams get a lot of money, tens of millions of dollars in revenue sharing, which is money coming from big market teams like the Yankees and going to small revenue teams like the Marlins.

But the rule is in the collective bargaining agreement that revenue sharing dollars must be used to improve your on the field product. And what the union believed is that there were teams taking money and pocketing that money and not using it for on the field product because using revenue for on the field product means giving money to players in the union. Yes.

So that's sort of the backdrop of the dispute between owners and the union.

Right. And it wasn't just a union that believe this. It was fans. Sure that this wasn't this was this wasn't just some kooky theory that the agents and the players said, hey, wait a second, Jeffrey is pocketing this money. No, we had eyes. We saw it was on the field. We understood a little bit about revenue sharing and we felt like, holy hell, Jeffrey Loria is lining his pockets with Yankees and Red Sox money.

So, of course you did. But it never actually ended up that way because what we had to do every year when you're a revenue sharing recipient. This is not talked about either Michy teams who get revenue sharing have to certify a letter to Major League Baseball and the union how those proceeds are being used. So I would write the letter and the letter would be Dear Bud and Tony or whoever was running the union down here or whoever was the Marlins got forty two million dollars in revenue sharing and we use it to one.

Pay our number one draft, pick three million dollars to to improve our minor league system because that counted as improving your on field product three, we did not non tender player X. So you go through a laundry list, it gets approved by the union, approved by the commissioner, and then you move on to the next year. It was just one of my annual jobs. I had to write this letter saying what we're using revenue sharing for at the time in a city that you're not talking about because it's not Cleveland and not Miami.

Pittsburgh was the team that was in trouble because Bob Nutting, the owner, was actually taking distribution's his real name.

Bob Nutting, that's his name, actually. And he still owns the team, actually acknowledging distributions being taken. Jeffrey never got distributions. We never gave him money.

Jeffrey never acknowledged getting it. I think that's Bob. Nothing's mistake.

No, there's not one time one year when Jeffrey got a distribution. Now he got a management fee like every general partner of every partnership, which is totally different. Right. But he owns ninety five percent of the team.

Can I seize on that? Because I just always thought you guys were doing creative bookkeeping. And look, he had to write a check at the end of the year. You're very careful with the words that you're choosing. But we saw some of the rev share dollars, and I just had to think like this management fee. That's a public record. We have no idea what Jeffrey Loria gets paid this. He can get paid anything. Can't you just sort of shift some funds around and take from this budget?

And at the end of the year, you say, well, Jeffrey Loria, in terms of an owner capacity, he had to write a check. But in terms of like a managing partner, oh, my God, he's paying himself quite the salary.

Yes. So that would be great because that would be like the Met say, they lose two hundred million dollars a year as the Mets, but they get three hundred million a year as owners of the SportsNet New York. So therefore, as a group, assuming you own the same percentage of each, you're actually net positive. I agree. That would be amazing. But in Jeffrey's case, his management fee was a tenth of the losses. All it would do if he brought his management fee to zero is reduce the losses.

Let me tell you that where that management fee came from when he bought into the Expos, he owned only. Eight, 12 percent of the team, but as the general partner of the team of a huge partnership with a lot of partners, which is very normal, the general partner gets a management fee. It's what Club Rescue, the general partner of the Expos, got before Jeffrey. So when Jeffrey did a partnership agreement, he got paid a management fee.

When he moved to Florida, it was the partnership that moved, not Jeffrey. So Jeffrey had partners in Florida and was running the partnership. But that management fee is several million dollars, three million dollars, two and a half million dollars, nothing compared to what the annual losses were.

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So you've always maintained Jeffrey was losing money every year and in reality, the only actual money he was gaining wasn't even real because it was just the franchise appreciating in value. The millionaires don't say millionaires and become billionaires by losing tens of millions of dollars every year. I just never believed that it's possible. Like the Miami Heat say, they don't make money that they broke even when the Big Three were here. And I just don't believe it. I just this is business.

People don't get into business to lose tens of millions of dollars. And I understand sports franchises are, for the most part, vanity investments anyways. But it just doesn't make any sense to me. I feel like I'm getting God. I feel like there's some big secret that all these owners know and they just say, yeah, man, I'm losing money. It's not in every form of life. Millionaire to use creative bookkeeping to game the system. Why one of the game it with professional sports franchises?

They do.

So there's several factors. If you really want to get technical and want, the first one is not at all. It's called the ego premium. That is what people will do when they own a franchise. It's sort of the price of joining a country club. And so you you have to pay money to be a part of that club. And whether it's the cost to the team or the annual operation of the team. But there's several things you get when you lose money as a professional franchise, when you're the partner of a partnership that loses money, those losses flow down to you personally.

So owners of teams get lost who lose money, get to take those losses and apply them to the games they have in their other lives, whether it's selling art. If you own a piece of art that you bought for a million and you sold it for two million, you have a million dollar tax to pay. But if you lost a million dollars on your baseball team, you can take that million dollar loss, apply it to the million dollar gain in art, and therefore you pay no tax on the gain in art.

If you sell four hundred million dollars worth of Yahoo! Stock and you have a gain of two hundred million dollars, but you've got losses in the mavericks of two hundred million dollars, that you do not have to pay the capital gain on your increase in Yahoo stock. So there are absolute benefits to losses that you can use where these owners would have huge tax liabilities and those tax liabilities get reduced by getting these losses on top of that. And now we're getting terrible.

But at early in the morning, there's something called depreciation. When you buy a franchise, you get to you get something called depreciation and amortization. And that is a tax concept where you look like you don't have losses, but you get losses and you can then use those losses.

Yeah, I mean, my knowledge of this and you're I'm punching well above my weight class right now. I'm trying to keep up. I have an LLC, so I do have a basic understanding. Well well, if I can see where you can sort of manipulate the system and we're losses are actually good for you, then I got to imagine in certain respects when you say good, let me just make sure you do the math.

It's not dollar for dollar. Right? Right. When you lose a dollar, the tax benefit you get from that dollar is not a full dollar. Right. It's just that the loss is not actually the full dollar.

Right. Is the way to say it. So if me, who was never good at math, I went to Miami Dade College and I did remedial courses, I hated that. So if I could figure out that the system could be manipulated, I got to imagine Jeffrey Loria is manipulating the system far better than I am. So I just on the surface, I understand you say, well, he he had to write a check at the end of the year.

But just common sense tells me Jeffrey Lurie is making money every year, whether it's he's got to be he can't be losing money year over year.

So so that's that's not true. Well, it's possible. So what happened was his investment in the team was such the reason why he kept working is that his initial investment in the team was low enough that with the money that he was losing each year, we would treat it like acquisition debt. We would say, all right, your basis. It's like you just bought the Marlins for eighty million of how it's ninety million. All right. Now it's one hundred and twenty.

Doing a great job of trying to explain this one acquisition as the mentality of it.

Yeah, but at some point, if you don't have enough cash, why are the Mets selling right now?

Well, I always thought because Bernie Madoff took the Wilpon said there was a divorce and they just don't have the operating cash flow.

But their team is worth more and more money every year. Although in the pandemic, why would you sell when your team is not as worth as much as you want it to be because you no longer have the cash to actually fund the app, the annual losses that you have been funding every year because you know, you're making more in asset appreciation. But even though you would be making more this year, if you're the Mets, the Weepies are like we don't have any more cash to wait for that asset appreciation.

That's when a team sells, but look at Gita's group, their level of investment to start with so significant that for them to keep adding annual losses year after year, it's it's a math equation that doesn't work because they don't think they'll get that out of the team if and when they sell in whatever number of years. That's why as teams trade now for these huge numbers, the appetite to lose money annually is going to decrease, whereas old owners who have smaller entry numbers have a higher appetite to lose money annually.

All right. Let's talk about we've talked about the business of baseball. I'm a little cross-eyed right now trying to follow a guy. I wasn't very good at math.

Let's talk about the actual team, the Miami Marlins. Five hundred now. I think they have more home wins on the road than they do at home. I think they only have two home wins at home. They lose to the Jays last night. So Sanchez is an exciting prospect. Lots of comparisons to Jose Fernandez. What do you make of that comp? I do not view him as Jose Fernandez, but I've been told he has three pitches where Jose had to.

You know, Sanchez has a chance to be atop the rotation guy. He has a different type of body than Jose. He has a different personality when you see him on the field. He smiles a bit. But Jose just had this love of baseball and love of life that just I have not compared any pitcher I've seen to Jose when he was alive. So, I mean, I just I wouldn't make that. He looks to me to be more like Josh Johnson, hopefully without the injuries where he is a workhorse, where he can have a sub three Eryr, we don't take give enough credit to Josh Johnson.

What a great pitcher he was. Just got hurt.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. In terms of he had one to say about maybe two and a half seasons there where if he got injured, he would come back after a couple of weeks and it wouldn't take too much away from them. But you don't have this epic list of great Marlins pitchers because they're not here long enough. Jose Fernandez, in terms of stuff and performance and what could have been, I think most people say, well, that's the greatest pitcher in Marlins franchise history.

But Josh Johnson, there's there's a real argument to be made.

I'm curious as to who you would pick, because right now and I'm probably missing somebody, I think I'd say Josh Schantz, Josh Johnson is a pretty good argument when you're trying to discover who the best pitcher Marlins franchise history is as a career or as a marlin as a marlin.

Dempster's in there to Brett Penni actually, Brad Penny might be the guy. Brad Penny was great back.

It was great. Kevin Brown was great, but short. I mean, he was great.

All these guys have short careers, so the Marlins are difficult to do. Yeah, this has the Marlins have a difficult franchise to sort of name who's the best pitcher.

I'm curious as to who Lasco had a great career with the Marlins. Was it Ricky Nolasco broke Brad Penneys record right for most wins or career for Marlins wins that Josh Johnson was the best.

He was so good and he was such a cerebral guy. He opened the new ballpark and he was the losing pitcher against the Cardinals in the first game in April 12. But his ball was so heavy, he had such great lower body. Tom Seaver just died last night. And people ask, who's your comp to Tom Seaver in terms of pitching? Josh Johnson for me would be the comp because of the power stuff, because of the great lower body and strength that Josh Johnson had.

That's what Tom Seaver was known for. If you've never watched Tom Seaver pitch because you're too young, he was incredible. Yeah.

Roy Halladay has one of the more memorable perfect games. Now, we live in an era where someone will throw a no hitter and it won't even make SportsCenter. Roy Halladay has one of those perfect games that people remember. I think it was because you guys sold the tickets. But entering that game, there was a feeling in the air that this was a legitimate possibility and it might be Halladay or it might be Josh Johnson. Both pitchers were at the top of their game.

We thought about the possibility of having double no hitters. When we had Jose pitch, when Josh Johnson would pitch, there were certain pitchers who we had. And when you're facing them, when Dontrelle Willis faced Randy Johnson, I remember talking to the clubhouse staff. I was at that game where you that that was exciting.

That was something that was on ESPN. That was really the national sort of signal to everybody. Dontrelle had arrived. That was when he became a national story. It was a local story. And you started seeing a bump in the crowds. But when Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks came into town, man, I could I remember that game so vividly. And you started believing in the team because you guys won that game. I think Alex enthrone put them ahead early on.

And it was a comeback. Victory, I think. I'm not exactly sure on the details, but I know I was at that game. I remember I was sitting in the fish tank. I was so excited about Dontrelle Willis. I'm hoping that you guys have some good Dontrelle Willis stories from your time over there as this is happening, because that was super exciting, actually made the All-Star Game.

So he moved the needle more than Jose did financially. And Jose would draw more people, but it was at a lower average ticket price, so financially, when Dontrelle started, more people bought higher priced tickets than when Jose started. That's a that's a bit of a revelation right there, because I always thought Jose was probably the guy, it was either it was a two man race in that respect. But Dontrelle, higher priced tickets. Yeah. Now that I think about it, Dan Charles, probably, although he wasn't that consistent.

And Don Sherwood go through these even in 03, even in 03, you guys weren't even playing them come the postseason because you couldn't really trust him.

He was not in the rotation. He wasn't put into the bullpen in the in the 03 postseason. Yeah.

And he couldn't really be trusted. He would go through these peaks and valleys. And then he had he put together that great season where he lost out to Carpenter, where I'm sure you guys felt like he showed one side.

He definitely showed that that bothered us, that that's when we felt that the Marlins we had won a World Series. Yes, we lost a few players, but then we signed a bunch of players and we felt as though that writers were just so upset with the Marlins, so upset that we had won the World Series, so upset that we were successful low payrolls, that they took it out on Dantrell. That was a season where we were furious, A, not to have made the playoffs.

But the fact that Dontrelle didn't get a Cy Young was a joke. He was unhittable. This is, after all, three. This is after the title. And we couldn't make the playoffs if he was the best pitcher in baseball that year.

The Marlins, unfortunately, for more and more or less fans know this. They have a lot of great players that have come through those doors, not a lot of players that were great for a very long time for that franchise. I'm curious, do you think that that you were a part of these Marlins teams who among that group of players under the Loria regime might actually get their jersey retired by the Miami Marlins? Because you look out there, there aren't a lot.

Well, there's zero is it's is sixteen honored.

What's what's the deal with number sixteen? Don't even get me started. I do want to get you started. This angers you, doesn't it?

I'm not going to get started on hos. I'm not going to talk about it. OK, I'm really not. It's a joke. And I'm not talking about the statue. I'm talking about that the absolute two things happened that should not have happened, period. One Jeffrey did and one Jeter did. And they're both equally wrong. No. One. Carl Barder was the first president of the Florida Marlins franchise. He passed away before the Marlins could even play against the Marlins, had retired number five in honor of Carl Barber.

That was the first retired number, Logan Morrison, who I love. I traveled with him to visit the troops. We thought he could be great for us and it just didn't work out. He wanted to wear number five and Jeffrey Unretired called Barber's number to give to Logan Morrison and it never got retired again. That's just wrong. You do not give a player retired. No, I don't care what the player begs you to do, how much he wants to honor his own father who had passed away.

Whatever the reason is, you don't unretire a number two when you've got someone like Jose who passed away and you are honoring him in the way that we were trying to honor him, whether it's with a statue that would be put in the East Plaza, which he is deserving of, or whether it is a retired number, whether it is some sort of plaque, whatever the case is, you don't screw around with that when you buy the team because you're so angry that you paid one point two billion.

You don't do it. It's petty, it's wrong. And it's a joke. So and so. This is not a.. Jeter there are two situations with the Marlins that can never be undone because they were wrong and they can't be fixed. So there are no retired numbers. Sorry, Mike.

No, it's it's it set me off. I hadn't thought about. No, it's all right. And I saw you get a little heated. And I know Jose's an emotional topic for you. And you sort of nudged me away from pushing on it. And I know you said you didn't want to get started and you kind of got stars. Carl Carter. Yeah, really?

I didn't know Carl Baatar, but I was I I ran a franchise as the team president for sixteen years. It is sickening for me to think that a future president or owner would do something to undo what I had done. And I'm watching it happen when I'm alive. I would not undo what Huizinga did or what Carl Bartter did or honor that is bestowed upon people through an organization that would like if someone buys the Yankees. From Steinbrenner eventually, and it's no longer in their family and they say, you know what, there's too many damn retire numbers.

If you want to wear number one, you know, just take number one.

It's a joke. I can see why it's also a personal thing for you, not just because of the Hosie connection that you had, but also when you put it in those terms, most people don't get to see themselves written away from history. That usually happens after they pass and it's happened sort of instantly to you. So I can't even imagine how that how difficult that must be for you to process. I think we should end the podcast on your review this week, because we had some really good stuff.

I had all sorts of questions about the meat sale, as now they're moving into an exclusive negotiation with Steve Cohen and wanted to get your thoughts there. But we'll save that for next week, as well as this very interesting proposition about an MLB cup with my soccer roots that made me perk up when I was preparing for today because the audience may not know this.

Your listeners, we don't talk about the show before it happens. I don't have the questions. I don't know which direction it's going to go. And you prod me to remember certain things that I don't think about. And that's sort of your genius and what you do. And then we have these funny conversations back and forth. As I was thinking about things, I would have guaranteed that you were going to bring up the baseball cap. So it's funny that you didn't because as a soccer guy, how could you not?

I love it.

And that's a good way to sort of make good with a lot of these minor league. It's a very sad story. What happened to minor league baseball? Obviously, a lot of enterprises have been affected by the global pandemic. These small towns for the most part. I know there's some larger markets affected by this, too. But minor league baseball, I just want to get with you probably next week on minor league baseball as a whole. This is a good idea to help maybe recoup some of the lost money in the lost revenue for these markets.

I see you holding up a little teeny tiny space.

You don't think ideally this is first of all, let's give a preview for next week. The chances of the baseball cup happening are about as likely as me dunking on a regulation hoop.

No, get in and get plyometrics going because I want to see I want to see that so bad because there is money to be made. This is an additional TV contract. You could sell it as a separate entity. And there's revenue sharing for smaller towns. I think it's a great idea.

And a major league owner, you're going to want your best pitchers pitching in a meaningless game against minor league teams. I will.

To the tune of maybe fifty million dollars in my pocket. OK, I changed my mind. Is that the number that you think could come to each team? This is not Europe.

OK, what about twenty million dollars? Yes. Yes, I could be twenty million dollars. Fifteen million dollars you see fifteen million dollars on the ground. You're not going to pick it up. Can I pitch like my number five starter? Yeah, it'll be really funny when when teams are having to play their own minor league affiliate and call up the minor league affiliates best player to pitch against that minor league affiliate, you're going to have a bunch of upsets because baseball is random.

You get a lot of upsets in soccer. Hell, even when some of the top flight players are playing some lower division players, I think it's a great idea. It's an additional television contract to sell three million dollars. You don't see you see three million dollars on the floor. You're not going to pick it up.

Yeah, but not for the baseball cap. No, it's going to have to be more than three million per team.

All right. We didn't get your review last week. There wasn't one hopes of nothing personal. David Samson, go out and check out that podcast. It is great. What is your review for the week?

I want to do a documentary, and it's called Mad Man, The Steve Madden Story. It's on Netflix. So Steve Madden is the person who I only knew from that he was a shoe guy because my kids liked Steve Madden shoes. And I didn't know that. Steve Madden, this whole time before I watched this, I didn't know he was a person.

You watch Wolf of Wall Street, though, right?

But I thought it was I did not know that was real.

You thought that they just feels like a real person to play. Stewart Madden.

They used an actor to play Steve Madden Wolf of Wall Street. And I assumed that it was sort of part of the dramatic story that they took this kid and made him public. And he was a little kid because he was played by a really young actor who I had seen in some other shows. I thought it was Jason Reitman, but I think it's his last name is Gool. That could be or something. He's not Jason Reitman. But in any case, it did not occur to me that the person Steve Madden, I knew the company had gone public, but I thought they made up that it was Steve Madden.

So this documentary taught me a bit. Steve Madden is a guy I had no idea that it was real that the real guy went to prison. I had no idea he had become a prison, a convicted felon advocate, and that he hired people he met in prison. It reminded me of what Albert Brooks would have done if he could have to. Don Cheadle in out of sight in a different world. Albert Brooks would have hired Don Cheadle outside of prison and had him working with him.

If you haven't watched out of sight and you're listening to this, watch it immediately with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez and Albert Brooks and Don Cheadle and Ving Rhames. But Steve Madden in real life hired these men. And it is such an interesting story about a driven man who's obsessed with shoes and now has a convicted felon operating a huge part of his huge shoe business. And it was phenomenal. I enjoyed it. It's not very long. It was very informative.

And it made me want to buy Steve Madden shoes. Other than the fact that I realize that I can't buy Steve Madden shoes.

They don't make male Steve Madden shoes anymore because they did back in 03. I remember going a lot of Gettys were rocking my see matted uncomfortable shoes, looked like clogs.

So they're very he's into platforms. Right. But now he's doing sort of open toed shoes. He walks around, look, staring down at women's feet. I was not aware that. I don't think again, maybe this is part two, the documentary. I don't think Steve Madden makes men's shoes. At least there was not one pair of men's shoes in the entire show.

Well, I definitely had to perceive Madden shoes that I saw some Marlen's playoff games and going over to a friend's house watching the road. You know, he was a real guy. Yeah, I Nuzzi Madden was a real guy. I knew Steve Martin was a real guy. I know there are some companies that have like a real name that you just assume, oh, that's named after somebody and it's just totally fabricated. But after Wolf of Wall Street, because I knew that was sort of based on a true story, I didn't assume they made the this Madden part up.

So my take away from Wall Street had nothing to do with the Steve Madden part. By the way, I'm focused on Margot Robbie and trying to figure out how that would all work, because I was on Wall Street and I never saw Margot Robbie. I never had any sort of midget tossing. I never had any of that. So that was disappointing. But in any case, I can only tell you that it's worth it to learn about his story, and especially now with what's going on in Florida with voting rights for convicted felons and how how the impact that has and how you can actually get a second chance.

And it really is worth watching.

All right. And next week, after your compliance video on what to call little people, we will circle back.

But it was called in, Wolf, of Wall Street.

I know. I know you had your help by the context, but I just have to call you out on very much Mickey. David Samson knows nothing personal. We'll talk next week about this MLB cup and any chance that I mean, if you listen to the local hours outside of the ones with you have always been arguing for the NBA to do that. So I got super excited because MLB, you're absolutely going to have a situation where the Fort Wayne Ten Cavs can win the whole thing.

David Sampson Hosein, nothing personal. Thank you so much for the. Time he talk and heat reaction coming up next on the Big Sur with a whole cast of characters. We'll see you soon. Geico knows there are many reasons why you ride from the thrill of the revving engine and pure adrenaline of flying down the highway to the confidence of knowing that Geico always has your back with 24/7 access to claim service. But Ari Snider has one reason in particular that I had extremely large upper arms.

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