Stuck out here, when you talk to Dell technology adviser, they are focused on you, ready to give advice on everything from laptops to the cloud and offer tailored solutions powered by Intel. Vibro platform to keep your small business ready for what's next. Call Dell Technologies adviser today and 877 Ask Dell. That's 877 Eskdale. Hey, it's a local hour, no, it's been a while since one of these showed up in your feed, but I'm joined now by David Samson.

David, thank you so much for taking the time out to join us. Make sure to check out his podcast, Nothing Personal with David Samson. Earlier this week, it was announced on Madingley Wins Manager of the Year. You obviously have a history with Don Mattingly. Your initial thoughts in reaction to him winning what appears to be a well deserved award.

He definitely deserved the award. It's just great that he's still the manager of the Marlins. There's so few pieces of the team left from three years ago. And Derek took over for better, for worse, and ultimately made a big decision this past offseason when he agreed to come back, remember, his contract was up and he took a pay cut to come back. He agreed he wanted to see it through and he felt like the team had a chance, especially in a truncated system.

And it's great he's been so successful with the Dodgers, so successful now with the Marlins. I would say that I'm proud of him. I really hope and I said this on Twitter, I really hope that Cooperstown lets him in, because if not for his back injury, he is a certain Hall of Famer, one of the best hitters I watched, you know, growing up in the 80s. And he just injury stopped him. And once I got to the game, I realized the back injuries can really just end a career.

I never really occurred to me as a fan. I'm just saying, Donnie, why aren't you playing like yell at your back hurts, c'mon play. But then you get a back injury yourself and you say, wow, now I get it, now I get it. But Don Mattingly had a great season. How he follows it up and how the Marlins follow it up.

It's going to be very interesting in twenty twenty one special treat to our audience. Dan is actually sitting in on this episode of the David Samson Show. David, before I bring Dan in the conversation, this actually seemed like the one time Jeffrey Lurie is a Yankee fan. Tom worked out for the club.

Oh, I think there were a couple of times. Come on, Mickey, let's not have revisionist history that mostly that the trades were lopsided. But he got a lot of interesting people and players from the Yankees and ideas from the Yankees, you know, the no beard policy that's from the Yankees. And that worked out well. It kept everyone clean shaven and looking good.

But you're being sarcastic there. You have to.

Well, what's the biggest pushback that you've got on there's no beard policy, which even the Yankees, they still kind of have. But I also remember they had no tattoos showing policy and that's been sort of whittled down over the years.

I'm sure you had pushback on this policy, pushback from players all the time. And players would go to Jeffrey, they'd step on my head so much that I became five five. I started you know, I started my baseball career at six four. And when you get your head stepped on so often by various people, you just end up being shorter. And what happened is that the players who had beards, a couple of famous examples. One was Andrew Kasztner.

When we traded for him, he wanted to keep his beard and we told him no chance. He went to Jeffrey. Jeffrey didn't know him. And that was the end of that. He had to shave his beard. But then there were some players where they wanted to keep their beard. Stan was an example. He kept a if you go back at Marlen's years with Stanton, he had a soul patch and he would keep it every year because our policies would keep changing because we'd say no beards, but then there'd be exceptions and then there'd be exceptions would be taken away if we lost five games in a row.

It was just that sort of thing. So Stan sort of said, forget it, I'm just going to keep my soul patch.

Why don't you tell the people a little bit about what you guys did amid the Yankee monuments when you won the World Series? They're like, how many different kinds of disrespect did you hugely unprofessional in your petty, petty joy, like tell the people what you did amid the haunted and legendary monuments in the outfield.

I you know, you're baiting me by saying petty. There's nothing petty. I didn't piss on them. I didn't go and drop bird crap on them. I'm just saying that the Yankees tried so hard in 03 to overwhelm us with their history and they're winning. And they thought that that makes their team better by trying to intimidate. And we just were so young and Jack McKeon couldn't care less. And so when we won the World Series, before we got there, before we played, I went up to Monument Park after the final game six went to Monument Park and just realized that we had done something.

At that time. We didn't know that we'd be the last World Series winner in old Yankee Stadium, which we were. And we just felt like the Yankees did things throughout that World Series talk about petty, non-professional. It's really what they did, not what we did. We didn't turn out the lights in the clubhouse in Florida. They turn out the lights on us. We didn't play ridiculous videos while while they were doing BP showing great Marlen's highlights, we played music.

They did videos of their great history trying to hurt us. I just found it. All right.

What did you do in the park? What did you do? You were drinking. You were smoking. What else what else was happening there? You were making sure you were seen out there drinking and smoking. No, first of all, that's not true.

We don't make sure we're seen. It just so happens that we get seen. It's not like we sent out a press release saying, hey, we're now going to Monument Park. That's not how things work, you just do your thing, it's like when I wear the cowboy hat in Texas, you don't tell people you're doing it. You just assume that, hey, we may get noticed. And if we do, it's OK. That's what it was like.

Come on, Dan, do better.

Tell me. Well, I'm going to leave out the fact that you pooped on Babe Ruth's monument, that you bent over and pooped on it. I'm going to I guess I just want to share that story with.

So don't put it on. Don't don't put it on Twitter. Don't put it on. Edit this out of the podcast. Leave it it.

I have taken a lot of poops on the street and in various places because I run and I have a bad stomach. But I can tell you this is confirmed. I have never done it in Monument Park.

Let's say their strangest place. You've had to take a poo.

I can't believe, given how you're built in terms of sort of being a germophobia and being, you know, private, sort of private for a public figure. I can't imagine the idea of somebody driving down the street and saying, hey, is that Dave Samson shitting? Well, that's happened many times, actually, I try to hide it, but it's actually hard, I've done it next to a I've done it next to some homeless people down in Fort Lauderdale.

When I've had an emergency in the middle of a long run, I've done it in the front porch of a house that was not occupied. I did it on an anthill I was running. I'll tell you my kill story. That's pretty good. Which shows you who might kill. As we were training for a marathon together, we were running and I said, Tim, I have to I have a problem. I have an emergency. And so I said, keep going.

I'll catch you. And I didn't catch him for about a half hour. And he thought I was dead. And the problem was, is that I didn't realize I had bent over on an ant hill and I got absolutely submerged in ants. It was incredible. I was in the middle of like a twenty five mile run. And I was sick from the night before because back in those days, even in these days, I didn't necessarily respect the long run by going to bed early and trying to eat well.

And that was scary. Mike actually thought I was dead, but it's not like he turned around. He went to the end of our loop and came back and I was basically still there with red ass. It was something.

OK, I have a couple of questions about this, and I have about a thousand. Yeah.

So obviously this is a tall joke or a short joke, but how tall was this and how were they jumping up onto your ass or do you just dip it that low so you have to dip it that low?

Because if not and you've seen other runners do this, I mean, is this really good content? But here we go. You end up shitting on your shoes. And if you can sort of picture the physics of it, you've been burned by that before.

And also, I imagine there's a splash zone.

So I love your head's at, but I accommodate all of that. And it's really hard when you're deep into a run to do it because your quads are sore. But you have to do what I assume women do all the time when they they sort of squat and have great thigh muscles. But when you're in late in a run, it's hard. And so I go down as far as I can go, but I can't fall. So the key is there's like this inflection point I've ever done this when you're bending down and you say, oh my God, and you fall, you can't do that when you're in the middle of a run trying to take a crap.

Did you fall on the anthill now? So what happened was that I was so close because I didn't want to splash zone because I wanted to save my shoes in my legs because I was in the middle of this long run. So I knew I had hours to go, that I tried too hard to get too close to the ground.

And it was the one time that it was a red a.l that I didn't see. It's not like it was a mound. It was just I thought it would be dirt. I thought it was dirt. But it turns out OK.

I'm so I'm so fascinated about the physics of this. So your butt didn't actually scrape the anthill? I've seen that. I actually have a pretty amazing leaping ability. They can sometimes climb over other ants to get to your ass.

I'm just trying to figure out how exactly. OK, so, I mean, if you're if I wish this were video so you could see. But you have to picture when you're squatting down.

No, you're you're the visuals here are plenty vivid without the help of video. I'm trying to explain where your feet are.

And what the ants do is they were able to attach to my ankles and then up my calves down the back of my thighs to my.

And you don't necessarily feel them because you're feeling the shame of I'm shitting in public, so you're not exactly a bitch. You nailed it. So that's exactly what's going on. Not focused on any of that, except making sure that I'm staying clean and not being seen. And I know that I can't do it quickly because I'm too sick. And by the time I'm like, something really hurts what's going on? I look down and I'm covered with red ants and I freak out.

I have two water bottles with me. I'm trying to swat them and pour water over everything but that you have to be careful because water is how you clean yourself after. So you have to be very good with your water because you needed to drink because the run is going to continue. So all of this is going on in my head. Meanwhile, I was covered with ant bites.

All right. So you led me to my next question, David. The cleanup process, you're pro you mentioned the water, but are you going barehanded? Has this happened to you enough times that you learn to take some wipes with you? I imagine that running with a Swampers that's also covered in shit and now and has got to be like super untenable.

It's super uncomfortable. What you do is you take the water bottle and you pour it starting at the top of the crevice of your tushy and you let it sort of flow down. And I've had to use leaves from time to time and one time and this is when I was going good and I was in the middle of a long term contract. I had no financial worries whatsoever. I actually had double shirt on and I took a shirt, my shirt off, and I had to use it because I had such a problem that I had to tell you having a bad stomach.

I feel sorry for people who have bad stomachs because it's again, if you don't have it, you don't get it.

And I get it. Yeah.

So I have insight now into the consistency of what we're talking about. All right. So the water pressure has got to be an issue when you're trying to clean your ass, which is. Why you're starting you're using gravity to your advantage. Have you ever thought about bringing a seltzer water that way you could shake it up and then spray it and have some actual additional water pressure to disperse some of the shit?

Oh, my God, I love you, man. That's the greatest idea ever. It never occurred to me to do the spray and wash. What a brilliant move. And as for wipes, when you're running, you're trying to carry as few things as possible. So, no, I do not carry wipes.

I do believe that we have the title to David Sampson's tell all book when he decides to finally write it, trying to stay clean, trying not to be seen, trying not to shit on my shoes. The David Samson story and Mike Kills could be always around.

Marlon's shit is. Not anymore.

Not anymore. You actually mentioned that there was going to be a market for Mike Hill. This is a weird transition from Chicago covered shoes. Is there any developments on that? He's going to be a prime candidate for some of these openings or is he going to have to do what Larry Bindeez couldn't and let's take a lower position and build himself back up?

It's going to be interesting to see what happens. I know the angels are down to purportedly three finalists. I don't know whether Mike is one of them. It's hard to know what Steve Cohen, did. You watch that press conference the other day?

It's on it's on my list of things I want to discuss with you.

It's going to be, as people might know, if they had if they've listened already to yesterday's show, it's going to be a huge part of it was a huge part of nothing personal. That press conference was one for the ages. It was literally meant for nothing personal. It's as though Steve Cohen and Sandy Alderson said, let's give Sampson contents.

Well, I want to talk to you about that, because Mets fans were super excited about this press conference because you've Cohen said all the right. He won the press. He's a he's a Mets fan. The Mets have won many, many years. He knows exactly what they want to hear. He had the audacity to say, if we don't win a World Series in the next three to five years is a major disappointment and a failing on his part.

So your impressions of what Steve Cohen did with the rah rah speech, press conference? It seemed a little ridiculous.

Now, listen, he met his PR people and he had several talking points and he hit them all. And the problem is he's got one of the greatest cases of new owner ideas I've ever seen. And he's got the wrong team president. And this is not a for me saying that I want the job. I'm saying that when you've got Sandy Alderson, who's saying things to the fan base, like, hey, how great is that? We don't have to worry about money anymore.

It's just you are building up the expectations so much. And when you have an owner who says, hey, I've got a day job and the guy and the president says this, I'm glad my owner has a day job so he can spend whatever he wants. And the owners saying, yes, of course, I'm expected to lose money. What remember when John Henry came to Florida? Billionaire John Henry came to Florida in nineteen ninety nine, buying the team from another billionaire.

And there was some press conference where he talked about building a stadium. And if I can't get it done with public money, I'm going to do it myself.

Anyone remember that where you have to relive it in Florida then? Yeah. Did that happen?

No. He had the money to buy the Red Sox. So what happened was that people who are billionaires, they get so excited when they first get into a market. I get it right. They want to be loved. That's the whole thing about the ego. He loves being on Twitter and growing the following. And I get it. I feel the same way. And he says things that he knows will resonate with the fans, but he also knows he can't deliver on them.

So you can't say that we want to win a World Series in three to five years because either you're going to win it or you're not. Let your actions speak for you. Don't come out and say that I'm a fan and that's what I am. And I understand what it is to be a fan, because the worst thing you want in your owner is to be a fan because it feels good during the press conference. But if he's an involved fan as an owner, the winner, then he's Jeffrey Loria, by the way, and he's twenty seven other owners.

And so we tried to differentiate himself and he didn't. The only thing is that his net worth is public. And so the view of the fans think about this. If the Mets ever get outbid for any free agent ever, they will be looked at as a failure. Hey, it's your homey sorry, it's your home. I know you don't like it when I call myself your old man, so I have some favors to ask you. Could you get rid of a few chairs in the living room?

My floorboards are tired.

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Can you explain to us, do you have any details from baseball sources they were going up against Jaylo and A-Rod, have you heard any good details about that sale, being a New York guy and a baseball guy? Yeah, it was never the team was never going to be sold to A-Rod and Jaylo, so and the Marlins really are to blame for that. So I guess that I guess I get blamed for the fact that Jaylo is not an owner and it's just another reason for her to not like me.

So A-Rod is group consisted of many, many, many people. And they were koblin the money together. And I say that with all due respect, because there's wealth in many of the people who are in the group, but they were putting it together, you know, brick by brick. And when the Marlins were sold to Sherman and Jeter, that's what Sherman Jeter had to do to get to the one point two. They have a million limited partners from Michael Jordan all the way up to Bruce Sherman, putting in anywhere from five million to 25 friends and family.

They did a friends and family around on a Major League Baseball team, except it was friends of friends and then family of the friends, of the friends of a guy who I may know. But let's meet and pretend that we're simulcasts guests and baseball is despondent with the Marlins ownership situation. They're losing money hand over fist. They're doing capital calls. They're not happy with the way the team is being run. Despite Mattingly winning manager of the year, despite the Marlins making the playoffs, there's no increase in revenue whatsoever.

There's no one running the business side whatsoever, and there's too many people involved. And the approval process was just complicated and terrible. Baseball wanted clean. And when you get an owner like Steve Cohen, it's like the other Steve in the NBA with the Clippers. Ballmer, it's one guy right in a full check from his checking account. Approve him and you're done. And so that's why Steve Cohen was always going to win. It was really never a close bid.

And A-Rod, all that he did after by saying it wasn't fair, he acts a little like Trump is acting now. Right. Saying it wasn't a fair process. We have to count all the money. They have to come back to us because if they did, we'd overbid by a dollar. But then Steve Cohen made just over by dollar, was just a lot of whining and noise signifying nothing. So to people inside baseball, A-Rod and Jaylo were never really a factor.

So A-Rod just keeps getting used. It's perfect. That's exactly right. By the way, isn't that the ultimate revenge? So to the reclamation story that everyone's so happy with, they A-Rod that he's on the networks and he's doing all these these calling games and how he's so in with the commissioner now and so in with the owners now, that's not reality. That is just part of the PR picture painted by A-Rod and his representatives.

Can you explain to us why it is that the manager in baseball getting back to Manny Mattingly is not treated like a middle manager? You guys made them pretty disposable. You guys didn't have very much regard for the manager in terms of how often you switched managers. Can you explain to me why it is that more people don't simply treat the manager as if he's a middle manager, less important than the general manager? I'm sorry, I think you mean the opposite question, why does everybody treat managers like middle managers?

Is that what you mean?

No, I think that managers are regarded as leaders and they often get paid more than the general managers because they're the public face of a team. You guys you guys didn't regard them that way?

No, that switch, that's not the case. Actually, it's the opposite. If you want to make money now, you want to be a president, a base of operations, you want to be a general manager. Andrew Friedman, Theo Epstein, these guys are making ten plus million dollars a year. Billy being I could go down the list. Michael was making more than Don Mattingly there. I'm trying to think of a manager who makes more than his general manager.

And the answer is, even with the new Ivy League young general managers, let's say they're at six, seven hundred thousand dollars. The manager in most cases is often below that at four or five hundred thousand dollars. So it's actually totally changed. The manager is simply someone who is asked to be the babysitter of the clubhouse and he was asked to implement exactly what the front office wants him to do.

What was the tipping point where we were ahead of our time, Dan, not behind?

Where was the paradigm behind? Clearly, I'm behind in terms of how I remember the paradigm. I would also say, though, that the way that you guys regard managers versus how the public regards managers tends to be a little bit different. I think that started to change with Billy Beane and Moneyball and Art.

Now know what? It's actually that we were Jeffrey and I were both more comfortable with the president's baseball operations. So they were the people we least like to fire. So it's easier to fire managers, right. Because you can keep moving in the manager in and out. But to keep changing the game or present base of operations, that's a much harder thing to do.

You mentioned capital calls that the Marlins are making capital calls looking for more money. Who's making these calls?

Well, the partnership has to make it when you own a partnership in the partnership. Let's say that Bruce Sherman, for purposes of this discussion, owns fifty percent of the Marlins and then there's fifty people who own one percent. Those numbers are right. But let's just pretend they are. And the partnership loses a dollar. The company needs a dollar. Where do you get it? The partnership makes a capital call. That means Bruce Sherman has to put in fifty cents in order to keep his fifty percent.

And the other fifty partners have to put in one sense to keep their one percent. This is the way that Jeffrey became the majority owner of the Expos. He did a capital call as an 18 percent owner and no one else responded. So he was able to grab more shares and therefore have enough to move the team. How is it that if you're saying what you're saying about managers in baseball, why would the Red Sox, with a really funny news dump right after the election, go back to Kaura like if they're all middle managers and you can just go grab anybody you want?

Why would the Red Sox even bother going back to the guy associated with cheating? Because they didn't want to fire them in the first place, the same reason they hired back the video guy, remember the video guy who got suspended for a year, the poor video guy who got thrown under the bus in Boston for doing the Apple Watch.

He just got rehired to be a pro scout with the Red Sox. And what it shows you is that this wasn't about Alex Cora. This wasn't about a video guy. This was something that came from the top and went bled all the way down to the bottom. And the players. That's the case with every team. Same with the Marlins. There's no way that I would blame our video coordinator for stealing signs when I knew that it was coming from me that, hey, do whatever you have to do to get an advantage.

So I don't agree with you, with your premise in that the Red Sox were acknowledging that Alex was great in the clubhouse. He works very well with the ownership. He does exactly what he's supposed to do. And he is a diverse presence and a calming presence. And they he served his time. He did the crime, and now he's back working.

Jeffrey Lurie is one of the most unlikely success stories from a business standpoint in sports, because it's often said that sports franchises are not a very good investment. But he went from someone that had 18 percent of the Expos, which even back then, even if you judge him by the financials of the time, wasn't that much to get in the game. And he kept ascending and then he turned it into the sale of the Miami Marlins. How unlikely is his story?

Because there's really no modern day comp. There's comps from people that predated these inflated sports franchise prices. But Jeffrey Loria success is super unlikely.

So there's a lesson there. And the lesson was not learned by people in Miami. And I've spoken to business leaders in Miami about it. Remember back when the franchise swap was going on and go to Bud Selig was looking for anyone to buy the Marlins from John Henry. He wanted any local leader to step up anybody with money. And I spoke to them after the fact, especially after we won the World Series in 03. And they just didn't see the value of the investment.

And what Jeffrey was able to do because he was a fan and because he wanted to be an owner in baseball, he said it's perfect. It's like with art. If you see what Jeffrey was able to do in art, he can look at a painting by Leisa and he can know that that is worth ten million dollars. And the person who owns it doesn't realize it thinks it's worth seven. He buys it for seven. He sells it for ten, makes three million dollars, let's say over forty percent profit in a day and a half.

And that's not easy because he has an eye and knowledge when it comes to business. The reason people get rich in business is they recognize value, they buy low and sell high, whereas the rest of us, normal people invest in the stock market. We watch CNBC and we say, oh my God, let's invest in Carnival. We end up buying high and selling low because we panic. And it's the same way casinos make money. They make money from people who bring in a hundred dollars at a time.

They don't have enough bank to get through any sort of rough patch and they lose the hundred dollars. They say that was fun and they walk out. That's why casinos make money. If you've got enough bank and enough guts and enough eyes to get to recognize value, you're going to be successful.

You guys always had a fair amount of resentment when you walked into these team meetings because you were sort of at the bottom taking the revenue sharing money and the big clubs always look down on you. But how much of that was also Jeffrey Loria? He's sitting at a table that usually his money shouldn't really buy him into this club in in a room full of billionaires. He's probably the poor guy comparably. So was that always held against him in these meetings that people look down on their nose on them?

No people.

There is a definitely a have and have not. But some of the. But there was an owner of the twins.

His name was Carl Pohlad, and he's passed away now and his son runs the team. Now, Carl Pohlad was a multi billionaire owner who owned the Minnesota Twins and they received tens of millions of dollars of revenue sharing. He would not invest in the team because he ran it like a business and he would be looked at the same way Jeffrey would be looked at. So it was not about net worth it was about are you taking our money? And that's how big market, large revenue teams looked at all the small market, small revenue teams.

The fight over revenue sharing in baseball happens every year. It happens publicly, it happens privately. It happens in big meetings and in small meetings. Teams like the Yankees do not like giving money to teams like the Marlins and then having teams like the Marlins beat them. It's a nightmare when you ask Fred Wilpon what his biggest nightmare was owning the Mets, he'll go back and tell you about 07 and 08 when the Marlins knocked the Mets out of the playoffs.

Two straight years at the end of the season. Well, we had nothing to play for watching a team beat you who you subsidize. It's like a nightmare.

Is there something higher than that on the list of reasons baseball people hated you and the Marlins? Like what goes up there with creating a bad feeling about you guys that would rank with that or be higher than that? So I think you have to separate it, I think I only talk about me, I think that I there's a lot of father son duos in baseball. If you go through the teams, it is a family business and a lot of ways and there's always the assumption and this is something I fought against.

And, you know, Jeff Wilpon did the same thing in in in New York with his father, Fred, owning the team. There is always the perception that that it's nepotism. There's always the perception that you're not good at what you do, that you only got the job because of who your family is. And there is that type of concern that you have outward looking. But when you're in baseball meetings, it's all fathers and sons, you know, half the teams.

That's who's in that room. So you don't actually feel that. So that wasn't a reason. I was very forward.

I was their view of the Marlins, other teams is that if you're taking our money, just stay quiet, don't make issues, vote the way we want you to vote. And I never stayed quiet.

Justin Turner. And he apparently just got a slap on the wrist, which is just publicly apologize. What to make of this? Has there been any fallout? If there are positives in that Dodger locker room, chances are we're never going to find out about it. Right. Yeah, well, can you imagine that statement by Rob and Stan cast in the presence of the Dodgers and by Justin Turner? They basically here's what here's the real story behind that.

The reason why MLB did not find Justin Turner is you have to pick your battles with the union and they're going into an off season now where there's going to be a lot of battles to be fought. There's a new collective bargaining agreement to be negotiated after 2021, but those negotiations start now. covid is not going to disappear by the time spring training starts in the middle of February. There's no way to know if there's going to be a full 162 game season.

So the whole fight about pro-rated salaries is about to happen again. And you can only fight on so many fronts. And fighting about Justin Turner taking the field after a World Series, no mention of the fact that more Dodgers tested positive. No mention of the fact that more members of the traveling party tested positive after the World Series was done, because you just sweep it under and you live to fight another day that is actually out there, 100 percent true.

Other Dodgers tested positive following that. That is a lesson.

I don't have the names that's reported that five members of the Dodgers and four extra members of the traveling party. All right. Do not listen. Who really knows? But that and by the way, who knows if it came from Justin Turner. Maybe Justin Turner got it from one of them. Maybe they all got it from someone else. So I don't like blaming when people test positive. It's like there's no way to prove even when you're in a super spreader party, maybe you could prove that it happened because you were there.

But then to pinpoint it to the exact person or the exact moment, it's just too difficult with covid.

It's pretty irrefutable that bubbles in sports have worked. And the it was an insult to all bubbles to call that World Series a bubble.

It was it wasn't a bubble. It was not only a neutral site game. Did you call it a bubble? We wouldn't call it a bubble. Nothing personal.

The media did call it it was more of a bubble than the than the previous incarnation. Not as much of a bubble as the real bubble.

It was just a bubble that for optics, they just like bubble. It went hold on.

There was nothing different during the World Series than what they did in the regular season. After all the outbreaks where you couldn't leave your hotel, you went right to the game and back. There were security guards in the lobby, security guards in the hallway. There was no escape ever. That's what they were doing, regular road trips. There was no difference. It was a neutral site game. That's. This is the story of a disgraced Olympian, a man accused of sexually abusing dozens of boys and young men for over 40 years.

I remember thinking, if I scream, nobody can hear me. And the perfect storm that brought his accusers together. I'm not the only one, you know, the only one who was no longer. I'm I'm not alone. And brought him out of the shadows. How do you get these boys to believe in you so much? Listen to ESPN investigates season two, The Running Man, wherever you listen to podcasts available now. David, it is time for your weekly review.

What do you have for our audience this week?

I did it because I hadn't done it and you made me do it and I couldn't be happier. I watch collateral. Yes.

So, you know, you've been so good about this. So he's a faker. He's he's a he's got he's got discerning taste when it comes to things that are decent. To what, David?

It's the subtleties. They could so overplay a film with just basically two people on the screen the entire time. But it's so understated and just pitch perfect. Well, I have to tell you that I had not seen it, I thought I had seen it, and I was watching the movie wondering how could I have forgotten Javier Bardem? There's no way. Right. Because he is he's just so perfect. And I love Penelope Cruz. So did I miss something here?

Did I miss Will Smith's wife like. And then I realized I'd never seen it. I was thinking collateral damage with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yes. That was the conclusion I had.

You hold on. You thought that I spent two weeks on this podcast touting the cinematic bona fides of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called Collateral Damage.

This is where my head was because I'm only half listening. So I realize that it's the Tom Cruise vehicle and I love Tom Cruise. And I said I haven't seen it, so I watched it through ten minutes into it, I realized I hadn't seen it. First of all, Tom Cruise, can we just admit on this show he's the number one. Number one, he can do action movies, he can do serious movies, he can do comedic movies from Tropic Thunder, etc.

. Wait a minute. He may be the greatest of our generation.

He's already gotten his range is actually underrated. Dan always shits on his range because he's always a cocky variation of something.

He's got like three exceptions of being not a cocky guy. It's Tropic Thunder. It's for Fourth of July, whatever that born on the Fourth of July. And I don't even remember. He's always like a cocky vampire, cocky billiards player, cocky bartender. He's a cocky fighter pilot. He's a cocky racecar driver. Was he a cocky white samurai? He was.

Here is I don't think The Last Samurai was tremendous. What about Eyes Wide Shut? What about cocky, sexual deviant, cocky, deformed face? Spoiler alert on the cocky, deformed face. That's not really you can spoiler alert on a movie that's a decade old.

Well, let's do proper well, let's spoil collateral, because that's about the range that you guys imagine him having such a depth of range.

He wasn't too cocky for an assassin, for an unnamed us.

And although he went by Vince, the only thing I didn't like, Dan, is that every movie he does, they have to show him running. He does these fast runs through places and collateral had to scenes like that where he and he's running after Jamie Fox. And remember, I'm not a Jamie Fox guy at all, but I found Jamie Fox to be decent. I didn't even realize he was nominated for an Academy Award for that performance.

Yeah, Jamie Fox was incredible in this movie. And you see, like, they're both on ascending paths to go the other way. They sort of meet in the middle and they're characters. You could see the vivid character change. It also makes the Katie Holmes thing very interesting because Jamie Fox went on to, I believe, either become partners with Katie Holmes or full on mereta. And that's a little uncomfortable considering all the screen time that he and Tom Cruise share in this film, huh?

Well, Tom Cruise and Javier Bardem are close friends, and Tom Cruise used today Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem is now married to Penelope Cruz.

Penelope Cruz wouldn't have to change her last name if she married Tom Cruise.

That's a trailer when Nelson Cruz. Neither would Ted Cruz. How come how come you guys are getting that out place? No, I'm leaving.

Then why wouldn't we just because Ted Cruz is not a dirty word here, although maybe some would argue no, I mean anything.

I'm saying that we say Ted Cruz marrying Tom Cruise and there may be people who are thinking that. We are implying that Tom Cruise with all the rumors out there.

I thought it was on Ted Cruz. None of us made that you make that leap by yourself. Now, I may have to edit it because I was I was pure of heart there. David, let's talk about this amazing film that I argued is Michael Mann's best.

So it's better than he. I don't. Too bad. I can't I can't believe I'm saying it because I love heat so much that I didn't think it was possible. But I kept an open mind. And I'm watching this movie develop the character development of Tom Cruise and Jamie Fox was actually better than Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Now the supporting cast. I love seeing Mark Ruffalo and Peter Berg. Peter Bergen turns out to be a great director.

Peter Berg was in one of the most important movies of my childhood, a movie called Hot Dog. The movie, which is a movie that when you're 13 years old, you watch again and again because it's got Shannon Tweed in it.

I acted opposite him in ballers.

That's right. What's the end game, Spence? You shared a scene with Peter. He was right there. He was the nicest man there. Actually, the rock was the nicest, but he was nice. Very nice. You tell my Peterburg.

Yeah, yeah. The guy the guy that was in the Great White Hope on the set of Damon Wayans.

Yeah. So he's the real deal. So the supporting cast, though, of Heat, don't forget Amy Brenneman and Val Kilmer was pretty good, too.

But Kramer was nominated as well, wasn't he? I think he might have been at least four Golden Globe. I was just very pleased with the entire story of the movie, I bought the whole thing, I thought it was, you know, it's I I literally bought into the story and it took me on a great ride. It's a two hour movie, and I rate my movies by the number of times I go to the phone, to the number of times I hit pause and I got through collateral with nary a stop.

And that is very rare.

How can you be someone who who's not big on Jamie Fox, though, like Jamie Fox has range.

Jamie Fox played Ray like I can't imagine Tom Cruise doing that for a number of reasons, including not being black, although he nailed the sunglasses part.

So I just had a I had a personal thing with Jamie Fox, that's all, but I think his his his range of acting, he's a great actor. I don't deny him that. But it's hard for me not to look past sort of the way he was in person. That's what happened. He just attacked me in a Vegas casino one time he physically went after me, wait, OK, let's say here was a true story. Why did you hit on the night?

You know? You know what good content is? Why are you slithering? Why didn't you volunteer the hit on the 90 like 90?

Why did he almost attack you? And I didn't believe that we're going to get a better story than David Simpson almost shitting on his shoes. Go ahead. This is this is absolutely true in every way. I was at a casino and in walks Jamie Fox and he's with Benicio Del Toro and Benicio Del Toro sits down to play blackjack. And I am standing talking to three girls I know in Vegas. And Jamie Fox knows one of the girls. And they introduce me.

They say, come here, Jamie. I want you to meet David Sampson. He is the president of the Marlins. And Jamie Fox went crazy. He was on drugs for sure, and he got violent because he is a not a fan of the Marlins. He's a fan of maybe the Indians or another team. And he said, you are the biggest piece of shit. You're the worst team president ever. What is wrong with you? When he got in my face and the security came toward us because it was this loud thing in a very quiet area of a casino where there not a lot of people and he just was going crazy.

And he's by the way, side note, he's my size in terms of height, but he's much he's wider than I am. And Benicio Del Toro is only a couple of inches taller than that. And he stayed away because he was he's exactly the way he is in the movies. He's just sort of a muttering guy. And he was more interested in smoking and gambling. So Fox is coming after me. The girl who introduced us is saying, Jamie, Jamie, he's fine.

Jamie, stop this. And he wouldn't stop and I wouldn't back down. I just said, you don't even know me. Why don't you get to know me and ask me questions about what I did as president? Team, I'm trying to be rational, and I didn't realize being rational with a crazy person can happen. So basically we get separated. And I and I got apologized to by his handler, who then he left. The handler comes back, Del Toro stays and gambles.

His handler comes back and says, hey, I'm just so sorry about that. Are we good? Like, they were worried that I was going to make an issue of it, which of course, I was. And I couldn't care less. I was intimidated. I didn't care.

I didn't I literally I was moving on with my night so cut to two months later, I'm sitting in my office at at Marlins Park and there is a buzzer that comes to my assistant. And it is someone who's there to see me without an appointment. And I don't take appointments that are not scheduled. So I said no. Well, someone who wants to drop something off for you, I said, leave it at the front desk. Well, it's someone with Jamie Fox.

I said, what do you. I said, What? So, all right, send him up. Send the guy up. He is Jamie Fox, business partner, who brings me some backpack with speakers in it that Jamie Fox had invested in. And it came with a note that said, hey, man, we cool sorry, Jamie.

And so I have this backpack that I think I gave to Goodwill because I never understood, like schlepping around speakers doesn't seem to me something I wanted to do. That's my Jamie Fox.

What a dismount, right? What a dismount. Oh, my God. The title of this has to be David Samson Fights Jamie Foxx.

And it was going to be David Samson shits on both ways.

David Samson almost shits on his shoes and David Samson almost fights Jamie Foxx.

Maybe the title should be David We Cool Dash and Jamie Fox.

That is a those are those are actual stories. Everything we talk about. The best part about this segment that we do, guys, is that it's so ridiculous to think of that. But there's not one thing.

That's why I also love, by the way, just an underrated part of the story is the brooding Benicio Del Toro, like the usual muttering, muttering under his breath, things that are unintelligible.

Jamie unreasonably tried, who knew the Jamie Fox cared more about the Marlins than anyone in America?