PBD - Patrick Bet-David - Curt Schilling Untold Stories | PBD Podcast

Oct. 20, 2022 - PBD - Patrick Bet-David

01:55:26

Curt Schilling Untold Stories | PBD Podcast | Ep. 195

FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/ Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/ PBD Podcast Episode 195. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Curt Schilling, Tom Ellsworth, & Adam Sosnick. Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

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	Did you ever think you would make it?
	I know this life meant for me.
	Yeah.
	Why would you pat on Goliath when we got pet tape?
	Value payment, giving values contagious.
	This world of entrepreneurs, we can't know value to haters.
	How do you run, homie?
	Look what I become.
	I'm the one.
	All right, we got a special podcast here for you today with Mandemyth, the legend, Kurt Schilling.
	If you don't know who this man is, let me kind of share with you his resume and then what else, you know, some other things we can talk about him.
	But first things first, 2001 World Series MVP with the Diamondbacks.
	He won the World Series again in 2004 with the Red Sox, the big one where they came back and they beat the Yankees, which if you've seen the captain, you're in the captain twice, by the way, one with the Diamondbacks, one with the Red Sox.
	Then again, 2007 World Series.
	When you look at his resume, there's only two players in the history of baseball who have 3,000 strikeouts not in the Hall of Fame.
	It's himself and Roger Clements is the other one.
	One of them is obviously not in it for steroids.
	This one, it's because of other reasons, which we'll definitely get into today.
	What else can I tell you?
	Record for most strikeouts in a single season as a right-handed pitcher for the National League.
	The record that he's had three seasons with 20-plus wins.
	He's in the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.
	He's in the Phillies Hall of Fame.
	He's just not in the Hall of Fame because out of the, what, 399 writers that get to vote, whatever the number is, just like most professors in America that for every one conservative professor, 13 are liberals.
	Most of these writers are on a side that don't agree with his political leanings.
	And this is being said by a lot of different players.
	Even Bob Costas, who doesn't agree with Kurt Schilling's politics, said you belong in the Hall of Fame because of what you did when you played in the field.
	So having said that, with that being said, Kurt, thank you so much for being a guest on the box.
	It's an honor.
	It's a privilege.
	It really is.
	I'm a fan.
	I've become a fan.
	In my life, doing the things that I did, I always sought the best.
	To look for study, research, advice.
	And, you know, you're somebody.
	First of all, your story is amazing.
	Thank you for your service.
	And you're 101st airborne.
	My dad was 101st airborne, so I felt an imperative to show up and be on this one.
	It's crazy.
	Thank you for that.
	And thank you for your dad's service.
	You were talking about how your dream was to go in the military.
	Well, 13 years old, living in Arizona.
	My dad had recently retired.
	And I went out to our garage in Arizona and his rucksack was there.
	And I opened it up and his jump boots were in it and they were freshly polished.
	And this was five years after he had left the service.
	And my first thought was, I want to do something that instills that much pride in what you do.
	My dad was still polishing his jump boot five years after he was out.
	And that resonated with me and stuck with me forever.
	And I don't know.
	Fortunately, I guess I learned how to throw a round ball kind of hard and accurately.
	Kind of pays well.
	It's okay.
	It did all right.
	You know how to throw a pitch.
	I saw career earnings.
	Today, you'd be one of those $300 million pitcher type of guys.
	But still, career earnings, even when you pitch, you made $110,000, $150 million.
	You make a good amount of money.
	I made a lot of money.
	Unfortunately, 38 Studios happened.
	The software company.
	And I was, I don't know, I was at the helm of that one, and I put a lot of my money into that and lost a lot of my money there.
	But we're doing all right.
	I don't have to work.
	I'm retired.
	My Mondays and Saturdays are the same.
	So that's not a bad thing.
	But yeah, I mean, it pays.
	And I promised myself I'd never be that guy.
	Like, gosh, if I made what they made today, you know, but I look at it now and I'm thinking to myself, I see these one-year $30 million deals and I'm thinking to myself, wow.
	Charles Barkley talks about that a lot.
	Basically, how these Cupcakes are making $100 million in the NBA.
	They're no namers.
	You know who was the first one that got a weird contract where I'm like, wait, are you serious?
	Remember when sports basketball?
	Basketball.
	Basketball was the guy from Seattle Seahawks, the one guy that got a six-year sonic.
	Seattle supersonic.
	Sean Kemp.
	Not Sean Kemp.
	No, Sean Kemp was a player.
	Are you talking about Deadlift Shrimp?
	No, it was another guy that was a 2000.
	He had a good shot.
	He averaged 19 points a game.
	He got $120 million.
	Ben Connolly, Mike Connolly.
	Mike Connolly from Memphis or something got $150 million, $140 million.
	I'm like, no choice.
	That's pretty crazy.
	Now you don't even need to be an all-star in the NBA to get $100 million.
	You don't have to be anything.
	You can be an everyday player.
	The backup.
	Pool, exactly.
	That's what I'm thinking of.
	It just guy got punched out by Draymond Green.
	Your button.
	Three years ago.
	From Miami.
	Duncan Robinson?
	Not Duncan Robinson.
	Kelly Olene?
	Hero.
	Hero got home.
	Oh, Tylen Hero.
	He got humble.
	He got making $30 million a year for five years.
	Happened in baseball for six men in the year at least.
	You only need one general manager to cross the line.
	It's like, was it the Rangers gave Chan Hill Park?
	Everyone, then there's always that one.
	The Chan Hill Park contract.
	After the Chan Hill Park contract, I looked at that and I said, he should be forced actually, based on his performance, to pay a tax to actually play baseball.
	I remember I was a player.
	That was a crazy man.
	The lockout in 94.
	I remember all the owners talking about trying to keep each other reined in.
	And you're talking about 30 billionaires.
	You know it's not going to happen.
	And they're talking about fiscal sanity.
	And I keep trying to explain to the fans, you understand the owners are trying to tell us to tell them how much they can spend on us.
	There's no logic to this.
	And sure enough, during the lockout, when they're talking about salaries and contracts, Jerry Meinstroff goes out and signs Albert Bell to some monster contract.
	And Jerry can't sit in the room and look across the table.
	This is Albert Bell like Joey Bell Cleveland?
	Yeah.
	Albert Bell was a beast.
	He had 51 home runs in the season.
	It was ridiculous.
	Didn't he one time, something happened?
	He threw the ball at the fans or he did something he got suspended for.
	He got suspended a couple times.
	Yeah, he was a second baseman.
	He ran through.
	For Pennsylvania.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, a lot of times people, you know, the conversation comes up and why certain people are not in the Hall of Fame.
	You've been asked this many times.
	You've been on the Cornan O'Brien, I think it was Corner O'Brien show where he asked you about, hey, do these guys belong, et cetera, et cetera.
	And it always comes up with bonds.
	Do you put the aster?
	Do you put all this stuff?
	I saw this picture.
	I want to share with you.
	How much of this picture hurts you getting into the Hall of Fame?
	Well, I mean, if you look at it, it's a 10-year cycle.
	You go on five years after you retire and you're on the ballot for 10 years.
	And for me, I've always been asked, if I was the Hall of Fame, I wouldn't be in my Hall of Fame because to me, the Hall of Fame is I say a name and you say yes.
	Or if you pause, then it's a no.
	You know, so I'm a guarantee.
	You know, if I say Mario Novera, you say yes.
	Greatest closer of all time.
	Right.
	And if I say somebody like Andy Pettit, you're going to sit and think for a minute.
	Right.
	Anybody you have to think about to me shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame.
	So I'm not in mine and I'm okay with that.
	But when you look at the vote totals over 10 years, I never won a game or struck out a hitter after I retired.
	My vote totals change yearly.
	And to me, that was always, you know, one and done for me would have been fine.
	And after about five years, the process became so painful at home that I just dreaded the time of the year coming around because of the things that were said.
	And, you know, I think it goes back what I know it started the day we won in 04, the day after we won in 04, 86-year curse and all the stuff that goes with that.
	I was on Good Morning America.
	With the Red Sox or something.
	Yeah.
	And I was one of the Disney guys.
	You know, after the game, I said, hey, we're going.
	Pedro and David and I were the Disney guys.
	Meaning, hey, you just won the World Series.
	Where are you going?
	We're going to Disney.
	Thanks, Kurt Schilling.
	So we flew back from St. Louis, and it was just an unbelievable morning.
	And I was doing Good Morning America with Charles Gibson at the end of the year.
	It was right around the election in 2004.
	And I said, hey, at the end of the election, at the end of the show, I said to Charles Gibson, I said, hey, make sure you tell everybody to go out and vote and vote Bush.
	Well, I didn't think, right?
	I'm in New England.
	John Kerry grew up five minutes from Charles Gibson's looking at me and there's like a 10-second pregnant pause of sudden.
	Nobody said anything.
	And I'm like, this is awkward.
	And he's like, yeah, okay.
	And after that, it just went nuts.
	I got a call from President Bush like 20 minutes later, hey, I want you to come campaign with me and blah.
	And the Red Sox went nuts.
	They were like, we don't want you to do this and we don't want you to get involved.
	And then they started flying John Kerry around on the owner's private jet when I was so it started then.
	And our charities suffered.
	We lost tens of millions of dollars.
	We've worked with ALS for almost 30 years.
	And my wife's Melanoma Foundation lost sponsorships and all the things that go with that.
	And it just steamrolled.
	And that was the beginning.
	The beginning of the end for me was, and I think if you, and I've researched this, so I'm comfortable saying this.
	I believe that I was kind of ground zero of the cancel movement.
	I was the first guy to really get canceled for doing nothing.
	I compared Islamic extremists to Nazis, which historically is factually perfectly correct.
	I said men should use the men's room, then women should use the women's room.
	I said Hillary Clinton shouldn't just be in jail.
	She should be under a jail somewhere, which she still should be.
	And then I commented on a picture of trans bathroom law.
	And that was the one that ended up being the one that ESPN fired me for.
	Out of all of those, that's the one that got ESPN.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I would like to think it was because I was really, really good at what I did that they kind of held back and held back.
	But it was the weirdest working environment.
	I mean, I can't tell you how many hundreds of, hundreds, and I see, I mean hundreds of people at the ESPN would come up and say, it was like, hey, I'm with you politically.
	I can't say anything, but I'm with you.
	And it was just really awkward and uncomfortable.
	You know what's crazy?
	When I was there interviewing Stephen A. Smith, okay, and I was with Ray Dalio, and then afterwards we contacted him and said, hey, come on by, let's do it in New York.
	So I go sit down.
	I'm getting ready to talk to Stephen A, and we want to talk politics and sports, right?
	And you see one of his guys, Handlers, comes up and says, hey, Pat, look, we follow your content.
	We know what you're doing.
	Just please don't talk politics.
	I said, dude, that's what he wants to talk about.
	You can't talk politics.
	I said, that's what he wants to talk about.
	You can't talk politics.
	You can't talk politics.
	He says, if you talk politics, producers are saying you can't do the interview.
	Anyways, long story short, what do we talk about?
	Sports, right?
	So they're standing right there while I'm doing the interview.
	And every time you get close to, they would come behind the camera and signal.
	And then just recently, Stephen A launched a podcast.
	I don't know if you saw that or not.
	And the first guest he had on was Chris Cuomo.
	You know who his second guess was?
	Sean Hannity was a second guest.
	And it was on Fox being interviewed by Waters.
	And Waters said, Am I your favorite host on Fox?
	He says, no, my good friend Sean Hannity.
	So I kind of like where he's going.
	Obviously, he's still going to play to the ESPN, but the fact that he's even talking about it, that's some progress.
	I think we're starting to see that with a lot of hard left.
	I went out on Stephen A. Smith when Washington, Robert Griffin, was in Washington, and he was benched because he sucked.
	And Stephen A. tried to make it a debate about color, and it wasn't.
	And he did that.
	He did it.
	I've heard nothing but great things of people that have met Stephen.
	I don't really know him.
	I didn't really get to know him.
	But now imagine me at ESPN.
	And I'm very comfortable being who I am and saying the things I say.
	Can you imagine what the producers were like every night for baseball tonight, worried about a comment?
	Because, you know, and we used to have fun in the green room.
	I would talk to the guys, and once the Trump announced he was running, I said, listen, guys, take the under.
	And they're like, what are you talking about?
	I said, the over-under on me being fired by March of next year is, I would take the under because if Trump's running, there's going to be problems.
	And I'm not going to be, I'm not going to have an issue talking and saying how I feel about things and people are going to have a big problem.
	When you started saying stuff about Trump, did that cause anything at first or they were okay with that?
	Well, I was never, I mean, I was never blatant.
	Well, and you know this as well as anybody, the things that are said and done are very, there's a chasm between those things and what people report was said and done, right?
	I mean, well, for example, I'll give you a great example.
	I have been in the World War, the board of directors of the World War II Museum in New Orleans.
	I helped put the Richard Winners statue over in Bearcourt Manor in France.
	And World War II, military history has always been a passion of mine.
	Clearly grew up a flag-waving patriot.
	My dad was, my whole family served in all different branches.
	And I have a very large collection of World War II memorabilia.
	And I'm dumb and I'm naive in the sense that I believe in the inherent good in people.
	And I had a young lady from the Boston Globe asked to come out and do a story about my collection.
	I was like, great, that's awesome.
	I have General Bernard Montgomery's Beret, the one you see him in pictures.
	I have that.
	Yeah, the iconic front wall.
	Wow.
	Yes.
	And I have all the correspondence.
	I have all these things.
	I have stuff from Patton, everything.
	And she came out and she left and did this story.
	And the story came out and it was a picture of some German uniforms.
	And it said Kurt Schilling's Nazi Memorabilia Collection.
	That's what the title is.
	That was the story.
	The entire story was about that.
	And I was just flabbergasted.
	I was crushed.
	Again, I'm.
	What year is this?
	This was probably less than 10 years ago.
	This was during the Hall of Fame stuff.
	And so, you know, and I got to see it firsthand.
	86% of the sports media is reportedly liberal, hard-leaning left.
	I would tell you that probably the same majority of athletes are right, center-right, because as an athlete, you don't get handed anything.
	You have to, I mean, as much as people like to think you've been given, athletes are some of the hardest working human beings.
	There's no question about it.
	And especially if you have to.
	Well, it's also the opposite of what I thought.
	I came to the big leagues and Cal Ripken was my first shortstop in the big leagues.
	And I just assumed, you know, this guy's just gifted.
	Well, Cal Ripken worked harder than any shortstop I ever played with from that day forward.
	He kind of spoiled me on shortstops and ruined my image because everyone I played with after that, I'm thinking to myself, you're not Cal Ripkin.
	Why are you not working harder?
	And Barry Bond, same way, work ethic.
	Manny Ramirez was one of the hardest working players I ever played.
	Manny Ramirez.
	Unbelievably.
	So you have to understand the life.
	When we travel, you know, it's a tough travel.
	And I say tough in the context of playing sports.
	Every morning at 10 a.m. on the road, Manny was in the hotel lobby with the weight coach, went to lift, and then went to the park and hit at noon every single day.
	That takes an immense amount of work ethic, but discipline.
	And I found that to be a common thing.
	And I'm sure that you'll relate to this.
	Every great player and every person, and I studied, Dr. Ben Carson, one of the best brain surgeons in the world, and tennis players and baseball players and any profession, I was always looking for the best because I wanted to find out.
	I didn't want to reinvent the wheel.
	I wanted to see if I could find shortcuts.
	And the one thing I found was everybody that's great at everything, there was an insane attention to detail, the minutiae.
	That's what.
	Well, and you start thinking about it.
	You have two and a half hours of game time every night, which is equal amongst all of your peers.
	There's 21 and a half hours a day left.
	What do you do with those?
	That's where the separation comes.
	Because at some point in your life, you step on a stage or you step on a field where everybody's as good or better than you.
	For most of the population, it happens in high school or junior college or college.
	For a minute percentage, it happens in professional sports.
	And when you step on that field for the first time and everybody's as good or better than you, how do you react?
	And that to me was watching how they reacted and talking.
	Every guy that was living in the Hall of Fame, Seaver, Gibson, Feller, Koufax, Ryan, Drysdale, Tony Gwynn, all of them.
	I spoke to all of them.
	I talked.
	I dug because I wanted to know what makes them tick.
	And I learned as much from Tony Gwynn and Manny Ramirez about pitching as I did from any pitcher just because of talking to the best of the best at what they do.
	Manny Ramirez, that just gave a completely different perspective.
	Probably one of the two smartest offensive players I ever played with.
	Who would you put ahead of him?
	Him and Lenny Dykstra.
	Lenny Dykstra.
	Lenny Dykstra?
	Mentally, offensively, as talented.
	Lenny Dykstra and Manny Ramirez were the two guys in my life that I played with who multiple times told me what was going to happen in a bat before it happened.
	And it happened exactly the way they said it was going to happen.
	Do you remember the story that Billy Bean told about Lenny Dykstra?
	Which one?
	You interviewed him.
	You know Billy Bean, obviously.
	I do.
	He told multiple stories.
	He says one story member, he said, he's like, why are you reading?
	You know, that's bad for your eyes.
	It's going to help you.
	You need your eyes for hitting.
	He's like, why am I reading?
	What do you mean?
	But Lenny Dykstra was that focused on hitting, not reading.
	He was a beast though at his listen.
	Post-career, whatever he did, business.
	I'm not even talking about that.
	Yeah.
	Well, and I got to tell you, I'm still, I still speak with him every now and then.
	The off-the-field stuff was crushing to me because it was horrible.
	He was a degenerate, and he'd probably be the first to admit that he's just completely screwed his life.
	But on the field, one of the funnest guys to watch play by this.
	So we're playing in game five, game five of the playoffs in 93 against the Braves.
	It's extra and what you're doing from the Mets.
	Right.
	And they tied it up in the ninth inning.
	Lenny tells me, he said, and I'll tell you the whole story.
	So Lenny had a lisp.
	All right.
	And this is Lenny talking.
	He's like, hey, bro, this is what's going to happen, bro, right here.
	I'm telling you right now, bro, this is what's going to happen.
	Mark Woolers is pitching.
	He said, this dude's going to work.
	I'm going to work this count against this dude, and we're going to get it full.
	I'm going to get a full count.
	He's going to try and throw me a high fastball.
	I'm going yard.
	Watch the bat.
	He tells you this.
	Works the count full, high fastball, homer on the center field.
	And he's running around third base in slow-mo, so you can hear him.
	He's screaming, didn't I?
	Didn't I?
	And he did things like it, but mentally, he was born.
	Some people are born to do things.
	He was born to play base.
	You guys also had Darren Dalton, right?
	Who was like one of the best catchers in the league at the time?
	So when I, and I'll tell long-winded stories to get to the point, but when I was in my first trip in the Middle East, I was at the headquarters of the fourth ID.
	The day three men got lost, three men lost their lives on patrol, and they came back and informed the fourth ID, Major Hammond, I think it was his name at the time.
	He addressed the room, and it was one of the most powerful five minutes of my life, watching him address his soldiers.
	I'd never seen it, I never felt, you could feel it, right?
	I mean, it's just that sense of leader.
	Some people were just born to lead.
	And this guy clearly had everything about him.
	That was Darren Dalton.
	The best leader of people in any venue I've ever been around.
	In what way?
	In what?
	Never said the wrong thing at the wrong time and always said the right thing at the right time.
	Wow.
	And he knew his, and this is what a leader is, right?
	A leader is a person who puts his position in the best position, people in the best position to succeed.
	I don't care what you do for a living, right?
	You understand your roster.
	You understand what strengths are and what weaknesses are, and you put those people accordingly.
	Darren knew us to the point where Philadelphia and Northeast media could be a little bit of an animal, right?
	You can play the game and then you have to play the media game afterwards.
	Darren, I'll give you a quick example.
	Middle of the season, I'm struggling, having the worst month of my career, and it's all self-inflicted.
	And we just get, I pitch a game in St. Louis and I give up like 505 runs in two innings.
	It was horrific.
	And it's 190 degrees out on the turf there.
	And after the game, we had another pitcher on our staff who was really, really good, but mentally wasn't a strong guy.
	Darren goes to the media comes to Darren.
	He says, you know, he calls me out.
	He said, you know what?
	This guy's worried about all the wrong stuff doing all and just over, just burying me.
	And the other guy, he doesn't really say much about, but he hints that it's more than one guy.
	And the media comes sprinting over Philadelphia media.
	They're in love with this, right?
	They come running over to my locker and they lay out this laundry list of things that Darren just said about me.
	And they look at me and they're like, what do you got to say?
	And I was like, he's right.
	He was.
	And I, okay, I got called out for some.
	I had never had a problem.
	Listen, as a Christian, the one thing I'm telling you is I'm admitting to you that I'm far from perfect.
	So I don't have a problem being wrong.
	I have a problem being wrong twice, but I was like, yeah, he's right.
	And I knew what he was doing, more importantly.
	So then stupid me says, well, you know, this and that.
	I'm not going to lose a game in the second half.
	And I didn't.
	But the point was, I was, I was.
	Really?
	You lose a game?
	No, no, I was that guy.
	Well, you said this to who, though, you're not going to lose again.
	The media.
	You told the media you're going to lose.
	I did that a lot, though.
	Well, because a lot of it, sometimes nothing out there will put the challenge to you that you put to yourself.
	That's right.
	And I'm okay with that.
	By the way, the other pitcher, we won't talk about his name.
	Was he also protecting him?
	That's why he threw you onto the bus.
	Exactly.
	Because he knew you could take it and he couldn't.
	Exactly right.
	And I don't know if this dynamic happens in the military, but I've had situations where as a coach, I want to find a player, preferably my star.
	Listen, I'm going to undress you in front of the team.
	Don't take it personal.
	I don't mean it to you.
	But if I can undress you in front of the team, then nobody's exempt.
	You always want that guy.
	And I was comfortable being that guy.
	Yeah.
	Because I knew who I was.
	But was he a feared guy or was he a respected guy?
	Dalton.
	Both.
	So he was.
	He was a bad guy.
	So would he push you around?
	Because he wasn't a big guy.
	He was.
	In 22 years of professional sports, I never was on a team that got in spring training fights.
	We fought four times that spring.
	We cleared benches with other teams.
	We is who?
	Our team cleared benches with other teams four times because we finished in last year before and we were like, you guys aren't pushing us around.
	And we were a big bunch of boys.
	Yeah, yeah, John Crook, who was the big guy, right?
	Dave Hollins, who was the meanest, toughest player I ever played with in my life.
	Dave Holland.
	Dave Hollins.
	This guy has an operation.
	Broke his handmate bone.
	He's got a pin sticking out of his thumb.
	17 days after the surgery, he's in the batter's box playing in a game with a pin still sticking out of his hand.
	Who else was on that team?
	He's talking about all these badass dudes.
	Mitch Williams?
	Yeah.
	22 years of playing baseball.
	Interesting.
	Only battle of pitching.
	Only bad team I ever had.
	Really?
	Only bad team.
	That's the only bad team ever had.
	Mitch Williams.
	Because he was kind of a loose cannon pitcher, right?
	Yeah, he was what he was.
	He had the guys that it's funny, too, because when I think back to the most impactful guys in the clubhouse setting, and it's one of the dynamics that, and I say this very loosely, I share with the military, the barracks, the police barracks, the fire barracks, the sports clubhouse.
	Those are four places that the real world couldn't function.
	The things that we say and do to each other in those environments, because I can say anything I want about your mother, but nobody else can, right?
	In that environment.
	That is the definition of locker room talk.
	It's the place where I, my God, I wish America was.
	Because where you come from, what color you are, and who you sleep with are totally irrelevant.
	Can you turn a double play with runners in scoring position?
	Okay, as long as you're not sleeping with my wife, I don't really care who you sleep with.
	I don't care who you worship or pray to.
	Those things are irrelevant.
	And so it's the most racially inclusive club you'll ever be in.
	And the things that are said in there, if the real world knew, they would probably stop watching sports, the things that we say and do to each other in those environments.
	But it's how you de-stress.
	Because we lose a game, but we do it in front of 50,000 people on TV in front of hundreds of thousands.
	When you lose in that environment, you lose a life.
	And there's a very different, you know, obviously very different.
	That's perspective.
	Right.
	So Dalton, who else did you play with that was an incredible captain of the team, leader the team?
	I played with, so, so, it, and I think it probably mimics real life.
	And I say that because coming out of professional sports and going into the software industry and running a company that was almost 300 strong, I saw the enormous discrepancies that should not have been between sports.
	And I say that in this way.
	In sports, you'll have guys, that sixth man in the NBA.
	You know, you'll have that second and third line in hockey.
	You'll have that utility guy in baseball.
	All those guys excel in those roles because that's what they're meant to do.
	That sixth man, if you played every, would get exposed.
	He has a weakness.
	That utility guy couldn't play 155 games, but he's exceptional playing 75.
	And I find in the real world, it's a lot like that in the sense that people get promoted out of their skill set.
	You find a guy that's a tremendous producer and you say, God, you're so good at this.
	I want you to manage producers.
	Well, he doesn't mean he's going to be a good manager.
	And you see that happen a lot.
	Example, great players don't make great managers.
	Pete Rose wasn't a good manager.
	My first manager in the big leagues, Frank Robinson, I would argue the most underrated player in the history of baseball was a terrible manager.
	Terrible.
	Because he couldn't understand.
	He's a Hall of Fame player, one of the greatest that ever lived.
	Frank Robinson couldn't understand.
	If there's a runner on second, just hit a ground ball to the right side and move the runner over.
	How hard is that?
	Well, actually, it's kind of hard, Frank.
	It's in the big leagues.
	But guys that are great at stuff sometimes have trouble understanding how you can't just do things.
	And I found that people, players in the big leagues, Doug Mirabelli, I play with Doug and still one of my best friends, backup catcher.
	Todd Pratt, backup catcher in Philadelphia.
	Enormous clubhouse influencers.
	And I found it was for this reason.
	Leadership is something I think it's genetic, right?
	You can put a C on somebody's jersey.
	That doesn't mean they're actually going to leave.
	Who was a real C, though?
	And the reason why I'm bringing this up, because did you watch Captain?
	Did you watch all the episodes?
	So, you know, the conversation came.
	We were watching it this last weekend at the Breakers.
	We brought 50 of our executives and we watched the whole thing.
	We've done the same thing with Man in the Arena.
	We ran it out of Foxborough and we watched it and we did the same thing with The Last Dance.
	We watch these types of documentaries.
	And one of the topics that came up was Jeter won four out of five as a non-captain, but one out of 15 as a captain, which means, you know, if you take that as a, and Steve, he always had a squad.
	It's not like he didn't have players with him.
	It's still a small sample size, but I understand the message.
	It's still a small sample size.
	So the question then comes to, you know, again, going back to you, who would you say was a great captain?
	So when I came up with the Orioles, Cal Ripken was kind of the guy, right?
	Cal Ripken never held a clubhouse meeting.
	He didn't stand up in front of the team and talk.
	Cal would go on the field and expect you to play the game the way he played the game.
	And if Cal had a problem with you, he'd pull you aside.
	No one touched Darren Dalton.
	Darren Dalton was so far beyond anybody I ever played with as a leader.
	Jason Baritek was the captain in Boston.
	He didn't have clubhouse meetings.
	Same thing.
	I'm going to show up and play the game and work this way.
	I expect you to do the same.
	So it was more about, because to me, leadership has two things.
	One is setting the example for people to follow.
	Number two is getting people to do things they wouldn't do on their own.
	Leadership is statistically agnostic in my mind.
	The best leaders I ever had had nothing.
	Darren Dalton, that's what made him so great.
	It didn't matter what his batting average was.
	If there was something we said, he said it.
	And there are a lot of guys who believe I have to do, you know, I was never a leader in the sense I was always a veteran and I led my pitching staffs, but I was never a clubhouse leader because I didn't play every day.
	I couldn't tell you what it's like to play game seven of the week on a Sunday day game when it's 155 in St. Louis.
	But I could pull you aside and talk to you and tell you.
	And that was what the great leaders did.
	And same thing.
	They knew their players.
	Darren knew he could call me out.
	So he did.
	And then the guys he needed to pull aside and take behind in the back room, he did that too.
	I'll tell you a great story.
	A guy that we got, you know, for Orlando Cabrera, we traded for him.
	He came over from the Expos.
	I didn't know him.
	I knew it played against him.
	We had a guy who, a star on the team, and you'll probably guess who he was, but he was a Latin player.
	He didn't dress with the rest of the team.
	He dressed in the back with the trainers.
	He did his own thing.
	One day, right after the trade, Orlando comes over and this guy's name is scratched out of the lineup.
	And now I'm in the part of the locker room where this guy dresses and there's hot tubs.
	And I'm in a hot tub.
	And Orlando comes back and this guy looks at Orlando and says, hey, Poppy, what's up?
	He's like, don't poppy me.
	He's like, what's up?
	He said, your name's not in the lineup.
	Yeah, a little tight today.
	He's like, no, no, no, no.
	I'm going to come back here in 20 minutes.
	If your name's not back in the lineup, you and I are going to go.
	Who said this to him?
	Orlando Caburra said this to this guy.
	He said this to the guy who was a star.
	Yeah.
	We're going to go.
	We're going to fight.
	I'm here to win a championship.
	I don't give a shit what this other stuff is.
	20 minutes later, his name was in the lineup.
	That's a leader.
	Huh.
	Back to your initial comment about sometimes if you're a great producer, you might not be a great manager, right?
	So, you know, different qualifications for leaders.
	Like, I'm a big NBA guy.
	I mean, I know Major League Baseball as well, NFL.
	Like, you know, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, right?
	Even recently, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, these guys haven't never won a championship, never been to a finals.
	Maybe Bird, maybe one time, but never won anything.
	But meanwhile, you've got Steve Kerr.
	He was an eighth guy on the bench, right?
	You've got, well, even Phil Jackson, Pat Riley.
	These guys were never NBAs.
	Look at the guys managing the playoff teams right now.
	You know, you had Seattle.
	Scott was a backup catcher.
	I played with Scott.
	He screened manager as a player.
	Aaron Boone, one of my favorite human beings in the world.
	Not a superstar.
	That amazing hit.
	But I'm saying they didn't have profound, outstanding careers of length.
	Craig Council, I think, one of the best managers in the big leagues.
	Bob Melvin, one of my, you know, these guys are all.
	And then there's the, you know, the Phillies manager.
	You got guys that none of them are superstars.
	Now, they'll bring in the superstars as bench coaches or place.
	But being a leader, again, to me is statistically agnostic.
	Is it because your skill set doesn't translate to the standards?
	There's no manufacturers.
	Right.
	It's the same thing in the military.
	You don't have to have the stripes on your jersey for the guys in your unit to look to you as a leader.
	Because when the shots start firing, everybody's ducking their heads down the hole.
	They're looking to one guy.
	And sometimes that's not the guy with the most stripes on his shoulder.
	Who would you say Kevin Millar was?
	Would you say he was the locker room guy that rallied or was he?
	No, he was just a guy who kept it light.
	He kept it light.
	Yeah.
	Because in the documentary, you know, it's like, hey, we just got to win one.
	We just got to win one.
	Well, I mean, and, you know, that was, that was a very different group of guys.
	I mean, we, we, you know, a lot of times when people ask me about the ankle and all the things that went around that, I try to explain to them, I didn't do anything I didn't think the other 24 guys would have done were they in my place.
	And as, you know, it's baseball.
	It's a sport and I don't want to go to these extremes, but we would take a bullet for each other in that sense.
	Like you play with certain, you're with each other nine months every hour of every day.
	You get in, you know, you get in fights.
	We got, there were fights in the clubhouse all the time.
	We had some of the funniest, greatest, like fisticuffed brawls ever at 2.30 in the morning out in front of a hotel on the road because we were drunk and somebody said something stupid.
	But we were family.
	Who was the best brawler?
	Who was like the one that just straight up was always down and was good at it?
	So the guy that, well, I don't, Jason Veritek was a guy that I, so I locked her next to Jason who loved to be naked, and it was embarrassing because he was, you know, he had like 2% body fat, and he just sat around like, put some clothes on, dude, all right?
	Catcher, right?
	Jason Verica.
	Captain.
	Yeah, but, but, like, Dave Hollins was the toughest player I ever played with by a wide margin.
	They all feared.
	Can you pull him up, Tyler?
	Dave Hollins.
	His nickname was Headley because his head was like nine and three quarters.
	There he is.
	That's a young Dave.
	And by the way, his son, yeah, look at that head.
	That's like eight and a half half size.
	I just was with him last week.
	His son is going into his junior in high school, probably going to be, I would tell you, will be the number one pick in the major league draft in two years.
	That good.
	Two ways.
	First baseman pitcher, left-handed top of the rotation guy, number four hitter, typed out.
	So like a Otani type of guy.
	Yes.
	Unbelievable.
	What are your thoughts on that guy, by the way?
	What he's done in the league.
	No one's ever seen it.
	Right.
	Since Babe Ruth or something.
	And Aaron Judge had a great year, but nobody was more valuable than Otani.
	Not even close.
	He won 15 games, struck out 200 guys, and almost 40 home runs.
	I mean, he's your ace and he's your cleanup hitter.
	He should be the highest pick guy in the league.
	Babe Ruth didn't do what he did at the same time.
	Babe Ruth was never a pitcher hitter during a season.
	It overlapped a little bit, but he never did both at the same time.
	No one's ever even come close to doing it, much less he could be the best.
	Well, it's not even doing it at this level.
	It's the level at which he's doing it at this level.
	He's one of the best hitters in the game and one of the best pitchers in the game at the same time.
	Where would you put him ranked?
	Pitcher?
	Just pitcher?
	He's in the top 10, easily in the top 10.
	And hitter, what?
	He's absolutely in the top 10.
	Is he a better hitter or pitcher?
	Otani.
	Yes.
	I mean, he's a guy.
	On any given day.
	Not many guys can win 20 games.
	He can win 20 games.
	Not many guys can hit 40 home runs.
	He can do both.
	What is really the market value for somebody?
	You just said it.
	These guys are making 30, 40 million annually.
	He's worth twice that.
	And think about what that means to a team.
	Two roster spots used up by one player is insane.
	That's a good point.
	That's a great art.
	Who represents him as an agent?
	Do you think that's a good idea?
	No, somebody that's going to make a lot of money.
	25%.
	A Japanese guy?
	American guy.
	It's an American guy.
	So you got to realize this guy's.
	So the sale would be $30 million times two.
	Right.
	This guy's a $60 million year guy.
	You can't dispute.
	I could make the argument if I'm representing him all day long.
	Very comfortable.
	Comfortably.
	Very comfortable.
	$60 million guy.
	Kurt, if he continues this trajectory for the next five, 10 years, let's say, all-time rankings, where do you think he ends up all-time?
	You're saying if he puts like 10 seasons on the base, he does so if he wins 200 games and hits 500 home runs.
	I mean, he's won.
	Above Babe Ruth.
	Above Lou Gehrig.
	Above Documental.
	But again, he's doing what they do at the plate, and he's throwing in Cy Young's.
	I appreciate greatness while it's happening in front of our offices.
	And I've said, I still believe, and unfortunately, he's been injured.
	I still believe Mike Trout's the best player anybody alive will ever see.
	Having said that, now watching this guy, there's two, and think about how bad that team is.
	These two guys are wasting away in Anaheim when, can you imagine if they were on the Yankees?
	Oh, my God.
	Wasting around the same thing.
	And they can't make the playoffs.
	And you know what's interesting also?
	Otani, at least to the casual viewer from the outside, really appears to be a really decent guy.
	They both are.
	They're both very, very good guys.
	I was Otani and Kershaw picked me off because I wasn't paying attention.
	I was putting my gloves on at the All-Star Game.
	Remember, he got the single, and then he didn't put on his running gloves yet.
	And all of a sudden, oh, gosh, Kershaw got him.
	And everybody, every player is laughing because it's like, right, Clayton, you're not supposed to do that at the All-Star Game, first of all.
	And then I would have destroyed the dugout.
	He just went back down in the dugout, took it, and actually smirked a little bit and said, well, I guess this is where we are.
	But, you know, that's just a decent guy.
	Billy Bean talked about that, you know, when you look at picking up players, you know, one of the things is like temperament and character.
	You can't teach that.
	You cannot teach the character that he's got.
	It's what the saber met.
	So, you know, you've seen the influx of sabermetrics and all the things, you know, the Ivy League guys that never played the game and the baseball guys who hate them and all that other stuff.
	Since I met Theo Epstein in the winter of 2003, it's the one thing I've always looked at, the sabermetrics guys, the frustration for them.
	They can't quantify chemistry and it bugs them.
	Because I think Theo got a great lesson that first year.
	I was in 04.
	He realized that I can do all the stat whoring and tracking I want and put the best roster together, but I can't saber metrically quantify chemistry and I need those guys in my clubhouse.
	Can you ever?
	No.
	Tom, can you ever quantify chemistry on a business team?
	I mean, that's like the unthinkable.
	No, that's why it occurred.
	It's very interesting.
	We have a great investor that we've worked with over the years, and he has said, listen, it doesn't matter what era, doesn't matter what industry, 50% of the C-level guys that we bring in don't work after a year.
	And sometimes it's just the intangibles.
	So it's always the intangible.
	When it gets down to it, it's always the intangibles, right?
	I mean, you can find a roster of players who are major league average and they won't go 81 and 81.
	Why will they win 95 games or why will they win 65?
	And it's what those guys that bring the intangibles to the part, how powerful and how influential they are in the clubhouse.
	Just last night's game, just go to two nights ago.
	You got the Lakers playing the Golden State Warriors, right?
	The Lakers have three players that as superstars.
	Hall of Famer.
	Yeah, you got Westbrook, you got Davis, you got LeBron going up against a team that all of them came up, not all of them, most of them came up as rookies.
	They were drafted.
	And you see the chemistry of what they got versus the chemistry that the Lakers have.
	They can't create that chemistry.
	It's what makes basketball so hard for me to watch is that there's no team that should be able to go in the court with the Lakers and beat them if you're talking about talent.
	None.
	And it happens all the time.
	Well, what's the famous quote?
	Culture beats strategy for breakfast any day of the week.
	But just a couple other topics with sports going on right now.
	Trevor Bauer.
	So here's a guy that wins a Cy Young.
	Okay, and I know you and him have gone back and forth.
	So he wins the Cy Young.
	He calls it the Mickey Mouse Trophy, whatever he calls it.
	So he's also another guy that's a good troll.
	He knows how to get under people's skin, and he was doing it regularly.
	But this guy was a qualified star pitcher.
	He was a great.
	He won Cy Young.
	He won the Cy Young.
	You don't win the Cy Young, luckily.
	And then all of a sudden, the story comes out.
	And he can't play.
	He's not getting paid.
	He's never going to play again.
	You don't think he's ever going to play again.
	But is that deserved, though?
	No, absolutely not.
	No.
	No, nothing happened.
	So what do you mean he's never going to play again?
	You know as well as I do, especially when you're talking about corporations and images and a majority of owners are very liberal people.
	They're not going to touch him because sports has gotten to a very uncomfortable place.
	Professional sports has started to cater to fans who don't buy tickets.
	If you think about the fans they're catering to, they're catering to the fans who will go to their sponsors and boycott their sponsors, not the people that show up at the ballpark or the stadium or the arena or the rink.
	And there's, think about the blowback.
	I mean, first of all, look at the Deshaun Watson stuff and how that's, I mean, Cleveland, I always say, you know, if you're a, if you're a Cleveland Indians fan or you're a Mets fan or you're a Rangers fan, you can't be mad at players, right?
	If you're bad for 30 years, the roster turns over.
	Your coaching staff changes.
	The only constant is ownership.
	And it's owners just consistently suck at things.
	And it's just the way it is.
	Daniel Snyder, there's a reason the Redskins are continually bad.
	You know, there's a reason the Cowboys with the Supreme Roster haven't made that final step.
	When the owner starts to meddle.
	Is that your phone or whose phone is making that?
	When the ownership starts to meddle with the, if you're going to hire people to do things, let them do it.
	You know, you know that from business, right?
	You hire, you bring people in, you bring in someone to run your HR department, and then you meddle in every decision that's made.
	That person's not running your HR department.
	So you're saying he's done, done?
	He'll never pitch again.
	I don't think he'll ever pitch again.
	Again, what can he do, though, as a player?
	Like, you know, we have a legal system.
	We have a justice system.
	What can he do?
	Can he hire lawyers and go?
	What can he do?
	And there's still nothing's going to happen.
	And I feel like sometimes I get asked questions.
	You know the answer.
	You know the answer.
	In this day and age, with the way society is going, it's not going to get better for him.
	Things aren't going to improve.
	People aren't just going to suddenly start saying, well, it's in the past.
	I mean, there's some things that we don't have second chances for in any capacity.
	And that has to be things with children, you know, things with women and abuse and things.
	We don't give second chances to people like that.
	And in many cases, I think.
	Let's talk about that.
	But see, this was not, there was no legal basis for them to do this other than he offended Major League Baseball.
	Yeah, but District Attorney sat on it for nine months and then didn't file.
	Yeah.
	But if you go to the go to the Cowboys.
	Remember the Cowboys when they always had issues?
	Leon, every time stories would come out, well, this person, this, and that person, this, and girls, this, and you would get LT stories would come out.
	None of that is even close to what this is consensual sex he had.
	The girl comes back for a second time around.
	And all the text messages to back up what he did.
	All of it.
	All of it.
	And you still don't think he's going to ever play.
	Do you?
	I would think which team would risk it to sign him?
	Which team would be somebody that would have?
	Well, and let's just add to the fact that he's clearly kind of a dick.
	I mean, if you look at the way his teammates have talked about him and the things that he'd done, I mean, he and I got into it over the fact that he cut his finger on a drone during the playoffs and caught, and his response was, well, we won the game.
	I was like, well, it wasn't about winning the game.
	That wasn't the thing.
	You taxed your bullpen because you were dicking around with a drone and it cost your team down the road.
	He's a little short-sighted to see this unbelievably gifted, talented pitcher, but I don't think there's any team that would want the headache.
	But, Kurt, all it takes is one.
	What comes to mind is like, you know, in the 80s and 90s in the NFL, who was the team that would sign all the players with problems?
	The Raiders, Al Davis.
	So if you had a freaking problem, you're the recent Antonio Brown.
	We're past that now.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Is there a team in baseball that's like, all right, we'll be the badass team?
	Who's the running back for the Ravens?
	Ray Rice?
	Ray Rice.
	I mean, if you look at some of the stuff that's happening.
	But what he did was astronomically worse, whichever matters.
	I apologize for using that as a comp.
	That's not really.
	But if you look at what's happening now, it's got at the end of the day, that's why people say, oh, you played a game for a living.
	No, no, no, no.
	Baseball is a $10 billion year business.
	They'll never forget that.
	The only thing owners hate more than bad press is losing money.
	And there's no, what's the advantage to bringing this guy in?
	He has to win 20 games, 25 games with a sub-2ER8 to be even remotely break-even because of the blowback you're going to be dealing with.
	But even if you give him a veteran's minimum, the guy who used to make 30 million, there's going to be some value there, no?
	The problem becomes when you go to New York, every single start of Trevor Bauer's season, all 25 guys are being asked what they think about Trevor Bauer.
	It's an enormous mental headache.
	It is.
	And your teammates have to deal with it.
	And, you know, I'm sure I've seen video.
	He's running around throwing to hitters I've never heard of.
	And I think that's my phone, actually.
	I apologize for that.
	I thought I turned it off.
	Those are my chickens bucking.
	But no one wants to deal with it.
	And I really don't blame them.
	But just so you know, at 30 years old, his contract.
	So here's how he got paid.
	He played for the Diamondbacks for four years.
	For two years, he got 1.18.
	Then he got two years, Indians, 1.18.
	Then he went to 1.19.
	Then he went to 3.5 million with the Indians.
	Then 6.5, then 13 million Indians, then 17.5 Reds, then 31 Dodgers, 35 Dodgers.
	He's supposed to be at 35.
	Obviously, he's not getting paid.
	This is going to cost this guy a couple of hundred million dollars.
	And he's at the peak of his career.
	He's very young.
	Peak of his earning potential.
	Peak of the earnings potential.
	Man, this is very, very strange to me.
	Well, you see the way baseball has played it.
	So they let one section of it play out.
	So that goes from July to the end of the next season.
	So there's a year and a half of career until just now we hand down the two years.
	So now he's got two years.
	So now you're out to the end of the 24 season.
	So effectively, that's three and a half seasons at 30 to 40 million percent.
	And so baseball is drawing a line at three and a half years, and they're just saying, okay, I dare you.
	Leaving it in the hands of the owners, right?
	It's like three and a half years from now, three and a half years from the fury that went with it.
	And by the way, I got two daughters, and no one lets read about this kind of stuff.
	None of us do.
	But my legal brain says, you know, it was consensual between two adults, and it's really unfortunate that it went this way.
	However, baseball is setting it up.
	Three and a half years.
	Which owner would like to cross the line?
	He clearly doesn't have a lot of common sense.
	Which owners in baseball are conservative?
	Like, you know how you know Jerry Jones is conservative?
	Like, you know where he stands.
	You know where Robert Kraft stands.
	You know how certain people stand?
	You don't know who they are.
	There are some, I know some, but they don't make it public.
	They're quiet about it.
	But again, it's a loss leader.
	It's going to bring in, it's not going to help your bottom line to be openly conservative now.
	Why would it not help your bottom line to be openly conservative?
	Because of the activism.
	It's the same argument we use politically.
	You talk about fans, though.
	Fans are going to show up.
	But it's not about the fans.
	It's about the people that aren't showing up.
	The people that are going to go and boycott your sponsors.
	Right.
	You're talking about.
	And now, look at the contracts, look at the payrolls.
	TV, the revenue is all coming through through video.
	How much of the decision of him not coming back is Manfred?
	How much of the decision is the owners?
	I would say probably 95.5.
	95 is Manfred.
	I think that's how it yeah Holy name.
	Oh, like the commissioner doesn't want him in the league.
	He's done.
	Bad PR, bad publicity.
	There's no upside.
	Can he go to Japan today and get paid a real kind of money?
	No, no, no, no.
	Nothing pays the way we do.
	No, and I don't know.
	I don't know about that.
	I don't know if he could go to, I don't know how Japan would, I don't know how they'd handle that.
	Because you don't read about this with Japanese players.
	You don't read about this in the Korean league or any of that other stuff.
	Where Tom Select played in a movie years ago.
	Remember that Mr. Baseball?
	Yep.
	I loved it over there.
	I went over there on a tour with the team we played.
	That was heaven.
	That was what I hear.
	That's what I hear from a lot of different people.
	Anyways, listen, for a guy who's got talent, who didn't break the law, and they're taking this position, if Manfred's position was different, would the owners also take a different position on it?
	They might take a different position.
	I can't see a team stepping up to do that.
	Not in this environment.
	I know a lot of athletes that did a lot of 10 times worse who are not good players who still played and they were forgiven two, three years later.
	Yep.
	I mean, the world has forgiven Pete Rose, even if baseball hasn't.
	I mean, Pete Rose bet on his team to win and lose as a player in a manager.
	It's a rough thing to replace a $35, $40 million a year job.
	There's not a lot of places you can make $35 to $40 million.
	That's your skill set.
	I have a quick question regarding Trevor Bauer.
	Japan, you brought up stories about Latino guys.
	You're an American guy, red-blooded American.
	If you could rank the best nationalities in baseball today, I feel like there's so many Latinos.
	Okay.
	There's not a lot of black guys.
	Okay.
	There's a lot of American guys, Japanese guys.
	Obviously, there's, I'm sure, more Americans in MLB, but, you know.
	Latin players.
	Latin players seem to be dominating.
	What's the breakdown in any?
	Well, I don't know what the breakdown is, but to me, that's per capita, there's, I mean, if you look at Latino population in baseball, I'm going to guess it's somewhere in the 20% neighborhood, maybe.
	But I would argue that like 85 to 90% of them are above average players.
	You don't have the, there's very few Dominican players that are 25th guy on the roster.
	And having been over there and played Winterball over there, you understand why?
	I mean, the abject poverty is, I don't think people understand just how bad it is in those third world countries.
	And in the Dominican, I guess I don't know what to compare it to, but baseball is your ticket out, period.
	There's no other ticket off the island.
	Same with Cuba, by the way.
	Because I can remember Vladimir Guerrero, who swung at every pitch he ever saw in the big leagues.
	And a lot of Latin players would say, you don't walk off the island.
	And they come over here as son, same way, very aggressive.
	And then you realize the environment they grow up in playing.
	And baseball is life from the time they're six or seven until they can't play anymore.
	It's literally a religion over there.
	And they play in some of the worst environments.
	They come over here.
	It's heavy.
	Tomorrow, somebody made a very interesting comment right now.
	They said, if Pete Rose put on a dress and used pronouns, he would be in the Hall of Fame today.
	Really quickly, if I may, I want to go back to this Trevor Bauer thing.
	I think this is a really interesting topic because this isn't the first time you've seen this, right?
	This is the most dramatic, but you've seen it with Deshaun Watson, Ezekiel Elliott, like all players in the NFL.
	They may play, you are guilty until proven innocent.
	And I think you made a very astute point that it's the people that don't buy tickets that are coming after.
	Or look at Gillette, the title sponsor, the home run derby, right?
	It's a world we live in now.
	Exactly.
	So do you think it's incumbent on the GMs and the owners and the Rob Manfreds of the world and the Roger Goodells to step up and say, no, you people go kick rocks.
	These people, they're not guilty.
	There's no criminal charges.
	They did a stupid thing.
	You know, Trevor Bauer, he's probably an idiot.
	There's no criminal charges.
	Go away.
	Like, he's going to continue to play.
	He's going to continue to make $100 million a year.
	He's going to continue to pitch at the top level.
	Kick rocks.
	That would be the only way he gets a uniform on again, but it's not going to happen.
	So I guess my question is, are the owners and the GMs and the commissioners feeding into this nonsense?
	They're cowards.
	That's my personal.
	So is it incumbent on them to step up and say, you people are ridiculous?
	It depends on what you're after.
	Right?
	I mean, again, it's a $10 billion year business.
	They're not going to do anything that takes money away from that bottom line.
	Just think about what they did last year at the All-Star Game, right?
	It's supposed to be where?
	The game is supposed to be played in.
	In Atlanta, Atlanta, and all of a sudden, because of that position that they had, they moved it out.
	I can't see what he's saying, but I don't know, man.
	I mean, you go, you know, Michael Jordan, you know, the whole thing with Last Dance.
	He says, fans don't come here to watch the GM play.
	Fans don't come here to watch the owners play.
	Fans come here to watch the players play.
	No one's watching the GMs play.
	So this guy, you know, for whatever he was, however controversial he was, you know, he was loud.
	He was, you know, I don't think he deserves what he's got.
	Yeah.
	But in this day and age, everybody else does.
	I mean, listen, look no farther than Justice Kavanaugh.
	Right.
	Guilty until proven innocent.
	Never had a chance.
	Didn't do anything.
	I mean, it's just, it's, we're in an upside-down world, man.
	Well, Kurt, let me ask you, just to kind of give a devil's advocate here, and I'm not, this is not a Trevor Bauer thing, but like you see NFL players, as an example, get a DUI on the weekend.
	It's like, you're making $10 million a year.
	You fucking idiot.
	Why are you driving drunk?
	I think at what point does individual responsibility come into play here?
	I think you have to stop the expectations.
	First of all, professional athletes, there's just as many spousal abusers, drunk drivers, and drug addicts playing in the big leagues and the NFL than there is working for Fidelity.
	Their income doesn't change decision-making.
	But shouldn't it?
	If someone's making $10 million a year, you should have people around you in the world.
	Save me from myself.
	How in the world has anybody ever been convicted of drunk driving in the last 10 years?
	Given the Uber lift.
	Everything.
	It's crazy.
	Every, especially.
	Personal drivers, what are you talking about here?
	Guys that are making $40 million.
	That's my point.
	But it's common sense, and common sense has nothing to do with your pay, with your annual pay.
	Nothing.
	It should give you an acute awareness of like, hey, I've got this window from 20 to 30 to make $100 million.
	And whoever's around me needs to be implementing a strategy so I don't screw it up.
	I saw something yesterday talking about celebrities.
	And why in the world do we think Brad Pitt's opinion on climate change is any more valid or even remotely as valid as somebody who's actually studied it?
	And it's because of the world he's put on his screen.
	He's made to look to be something he isn't.
	And he's made to talk in a way he doesn't.
	And we all admire, we think that translates.
	My ability to throw a baseball had nothing to do with my opinion on the Middle East and the conflicts in the Middle East.
	I mean, and I'm just as comfortable sitting talking about our insane fuel and energy policies as I am talking about pitching with a runner on third base.
	Not everybody is and not everybody should.
	So then this takes me to a different place, though.
	So when you have this going on with Manfred, you're saying 95% is Manfred, 5% is the owners not getting the diet.
	That's my opinion.
	Yeah, of course.
	But Bauer not getting a job, costing him $40 million plus per year.
	How about the way he handled the Astros when they won the World Series?
	Well, I mean, listen, they cheated in a way that was different than everything.
	I mean, you know, everybody says, well, very creative the way they cheated.
	Absolutely.
	And, you know, having played with Alex Cora and I love Alex.
	I've always loved Alex.
	What they did was, but I got to tell you, I've always said pitchers are the smartest athletes on the field.
	I can't imagine saying that anymore, given the fact that if they're banging a garbage can and I'm standing on the mountain, I'm hearing it.
	And I'm going to put together the fact that I just threw a nasty split and some guy didn't chase it in a one-two count over and over and over again.
	And, you know, I remember the White Sox did it when they moved into their new stadium before this last one.
	They had lights on the scoreboard in the bottom right and bottom left.
	Bottom right was breaking ball, bottom left was fastball.
	And I saw that like the first series we were in there.
	And Jack McGowell talked about it a couple years back.
	Like he said, we were doing it for 10, 15 years.
	We were cheating.
	Like, you know, and then you have Spygate in the NFL with the pay.
	It's a plate game.
	It's not a game.
	It's a $10 billion year business.
	People are going to, if life hasn't showed us anything, it's that human beings will do whatever it takes, Lance Armstrong, to win.
	Because the thought, and in baseball, especially, you saw guys still getting 50, 60, 80, 100 million dollar contracts after being caught cheating with PEDs.
	And so, I mean.
	So you're not saying it's okay.
	You're saying it's what's going to happen because it's a $10 billion business.
	Is that what you're saying?
	Absolutely.
	Okay, got it.
	So you're not surprised it happened.
	No, no.
	How should have Manfred handled it?
	Because the way it was handled, it was a very, you know.
	I'm not sure there were a lot of options.
	What do you do?
	Take away the title and give it to the Dodgers?
	You do not put an asterisk next to it?
	Do you remember that one player from Milwaukee Brewers who got the MVP and it was supposed to be Campbell and all that stuff?
	And destroyed the life of an innocent FedEx driver.
	Right.
	Well, and that, you know, that gets back, that's a whole different discussion.
	The guys that have done that, I mean, look at Bonds did it with people.
	Clemens did it with his trainer.
	People have like sacrificed other people's lives to keep a lie going.
	And then you had, I can't remember the pitcher from Houston who left after and said he was ashamed.
	And, you know, he told everybody it's exactly what was happening and all the things that he did.
	Well, Springer said the following.
	He said, I feel horrible for our sport, our game.
	You know, our fans, our city, our organization, just fans in general, Springer said, I regret everything.
	Yeah.
	And I go back to Sheila's Joe Jackson, who people still say was not part of that whole thing.
	I don't think all the guys were in on it.
	And clearly they weren't.
	That was the 1929 White Sox.
	What was that?
	They threw the World Series and he was never a part of the whole thing, apparently.
	He very carefully hit 400 when it didn't matter, apparently.
	But I only got the hits when they didn't matter.
	I don't know what's the death penalty, right?
	Taking the World Series away, suspending them from the postseason.
	I don't know.
	You're talking about a multi-billion dollar entry.
	You can't take draft picks away.
	You can't take...
	Yeah, you can.
	And I think they did take two picks from them in the draft or something like that.
	That's correct.
	Yeah.
	They had draft picks and then they gave up their general management.
	But think about it.
	But think about it.
	What do they do in college football, though?
	In college football, you can't go to a bowl.
	You can't win the championship.
	But you can't do that for a professional sports franchise.
	Why?
	Because first of all, let's be very clear about winning the World Series.
	It's a multi-billion dollar boon.
	When you think about the finances involved, it's incredible how much money they make.
	Somebody's got to go to Disney.
	Right.
	But you're not talking about Alabama or Nebraska or Oklahoma State where the school just marches on.
	Baseball in the postseason is everything they play for.
	If you have no fans would show up the next year, you would put the team in a position to possibly go bankrupt unless the rest of the league is going to support them financially, which they're not.
	So, I mean, you're really limited in how far you can go.
	And I think that's part of the reason why people push the sides.
	Did you see, you know, again, for me, I understand the position you're taking with it, but when it comes down to how you handled the Astros and how you handle Trevor Bauer, there's a lack of consistency in what's getting punishment.
	So cheating is not punished, but the way I live my personal life is.
	But isn't that what we're dealing with in sport?
	Actually, we're dealing with that in every facet of life right now, the inconsistency with which we apply the law.
	My bedroom is officially your business?
	Right, right.
	No, listen, no, it's not.
	The government and ruling forces don't belong in the church, the bedroom, or the school.
	This became this, but this wasn't about the bedroom.
	This was about a man beating a woman.
	And that's what we were led to believe.
	That's what the media framed this as, right?
	Because it wasn't.
	This was about two adults having consensual sex more than once.
	And all of the evidence I saw supported Trevor's claims that nothing outside of what she was expecting happened happened.
	And she's a B-back customer.
	You know, when you go to a restaurant, you don't like the food, you don't come back.
	She came back.
	But let's go back.
	Let's take it to the extreme.
	You know, a man rapes a woman.
	The woman doesn't look the man back up for a second visit.
	This was being posited as he abused this woman.
	And nothing of the story was the actual story.
	But the framework the media put around this, to me, was criminal.
	And it's, again, I will be stunned if he ever puts a uniform on the big leagues again.
	Pat, back to this cheating concept.
	This kind of is reminiscent of the conversation we had with Andrew Tate.
	You remember what he said?
	Familiar with this guy, Andrew Tate.
	He's kind of everywhere these days.
	And he talked about cheating at all costs, right?
	We're talking about athletes, competitive edge.
	How can you get a competitive advantage?
	You know, what you're willing to do to cheat.
	And he gave an example of if you had a pickup basketball game, you had five people on one team, five people on another team, and no referees and said, all right, the winner gets 10 grand.
	How much cheating do you think would happen to win 10 grand?
	Like a pickup basketball game.
	Now, extrapolate that to politics, to $10 billion industries.
	You don't think a little bit of cheating is going to go on?
	We're talking about money and power?
	Trillions.
	Right.
	And that's why we're seeing what we're seeing.
	And we're being influenced the way we are.
	What is that right there?
	So 2019 players pool amounted to $80 million.
	The World Series Champions Nationals received $29 million of that grand total, while the American League champion Astros received $19 million.
	The Nationals voted to award 61 full shares, which amounted to $300.
	And that's $82,000.
	That's just players' pool.
	That's not merch.
	That's not one of the greatest.
	That's not people coming in.
	That's not people buying tickets.
	That's not.
	You could make the greatest two-hour television show in history if you could video the shares meeting.
	So the shares meeting is basically where you're only in the shares meeting if you're on the roster the entire year.
	And basically, you get in a room and you get to figure out who gets the cut of the $29 million and how it gets portioned out.
	So for me, it's all about the clubhouse guys.
	You've been in those meetings.
	Oh, I've been in those meetings.
	That's per team?
	Per team.
	So let's just say there's, I think the year we won, it was a couple hundred, it was $350,000 or something like that.
	Only the team that wins a World Series gets it.
	The winning team, the winning chair.
	It was $350 a player, a person.
	I'm sorry, not a player.
	Because for me, you include the traveling secretary, the trainers, the clubhouse guys, the guys that are making $50,000 a year.
	Get out of here.
	Oh, this is life-changing money for them.
	This is every, I mean, and that is one of the, but you'll have players, and I had players in shares meetings making, you know, the equivalent of $30 million a year now, stand up and say, I don't, no, we're not giving that guy a share.
	Like, wait, what?
	Why the hell would you care?
	Because your share is going to go from $350 to $346.
	Why would you care if we could give the, and again, you're talking about life-changing money.
	What happens to the dynamics of how players view players?
	Oh, a player that's making all the money makes a comment like that.
	How do you view it?
	And it wasn't that hurt the locker room.
	It was always the, not always.
	The biggest, the wealthiest guys on the team would be the ones bitching and moaning about the little guys getting money.
	It was not always, but it was, those were the guys that would stand up and go.
	So weird to me.
	Oh, it was.
	Why is that?
	What was their mindset?
	Again, human nature, man.
	I deserve, because it's kind of like it's because of me we're winning it.
	I should be getting the most variety.
	And it's so awkward, which is comfortable.
	So you're saying that like the guy that carries the bags that makes 40, 50 grand a year, when the team wins a World Series, he's eligible for 250 grand.
	Put anybody on the list you want.
	How many people are generally on the list?
	So it's again, the only guys in the meeting are the guys that were on the roster the entire year.
	So that's usually between 15 and 20 guys because there's usually no more than that.
	You have guys coming up and down.
	So let's say 15.
	So you then employees.
	Right.
	You put in all the clubhouse guys, which might be between five and 10 guys, the trainers, the assistant trainers, another four or five guys, the traveling secretary, and anybody.
	Awesome.
	And the coaches.
	And the coaches all get a full share.
	But again, you're talking about.
	And you think about those Yankee teams that were winning year after year after year.
	Those clubhouse guys were making bank.
	And most of the teams I played on, we were always pretty good to those guys.
	I would tip my traveling secretary 20, 25,000 a year because he was my wife away from home.
	He took care of all my travel and all my, you know, when I was bitching at three in the morning about something, I bitched in him.
	So I made sure at the end of the year, I took care of those guys.
	Especially in the clubhouse guys, those guys, they're washing my underwear.
	You know, they're doing the, and, and, you know, they are always an incredibly like very tight-knit part of the family.
	That would be the greatest book in history.
	Ball four by Jim Bowton would be a comic book if a clubhouse guy ever wrote a book.
	Those guys know everything about everybody.
	What are clubhouse guys exactly?
	They're doing laundry.
	They're carrying bags.
	Yeah, there's a clubhouse guy who handles all the equipment in the locker room and all of the amenities in the locker room, the bathroom.
	He's like, you know, the guy that is in a bathroom in a fancy restaurant or a fancy anything times 10 for 25 guys.
	25 spoiled millionaires.
	He's got a crew of four to five guys who wash all your clothes.
	They'll run every errand a player has.
	Go grab me this, do this, do this.
	And, you know, so I would pick one every year and I'd have one guy lean on all year and I would tip him excruciatingly large at the end of the year because I knew I made his life hell for five months.
	But if they're good at it, those guys on the road, that's where the guys make on the road, you typically tip clubhouse guys anywhere from $50 to $200 a day.
	And I would pick a guy out in each clubhouse in each city that would be my guy.
	And I wasn't a high-meanness player by any stretch, but if I needed something, I'd ask him.
	And then those guys can make huge.
	By the way, I love this.
	I love this aspect of what happens.
	The whole when everybody wins, even the guys that are going above and beyond, they participate in the victory.
	Because they're such a crucial part of it.
	Of course, it's like supply and logistics.
	At the end of a campaign, the soldiers getting the medals were the guys on the front lines.
	But the guys in supply and logistics made life possible for everybody.
	These are the same, very much the same way.
	That makes sense.
	That makes sense to see that happen.
	By the way, Tom, did you know about this or no?
	Yeah.
	And as a matter of fact, this is also an opportunity where players that only do half a year, because remember, it takes five years to get a big contract.
	And I'm going to be on the 350, 375, 410, big gear.
	Oh, I can arbitrate, right?
	It all goes like that.
	It's changed now with the minimum salary going through the roof.
	True.
	And the new rules that don't allow the teams to play games with the 24-hour disabled players.
	But you're talking about $350,000 shares at a time when minimum salary was $40,000, $50,000.
	It's $1.8 million.
	That's a big number.
	Right.
	Right.
	And so actually that share goes down.
	So if you go to the postseason, you get postseason check.
	Yeah, but I think the point you were trying to make, the reason why you showed this is to say, listen, they pay so much.
	That's why the guys cheat.
	I don't think the guys from the Astros were doing this because they want a $350,000 auto check.
	And I don't think the employees were doing it because they wanted $350,000 auto check.
	I think they just wanted, they knew a World Series means you're going to get a bigger contract.
	I love the idea for a documentary of it because there's also players that are in there.
	So let's say I'm a third-year player and I'm a really good pitcher and I was eight and three, but then I got chip in my elbow and I was off the roster for the second half of the year.
	I'm on the 40-man IR effectively.
	And they can vote and they say, you know what?
	That Ellsworth guy, first half of the season, eight and three, he's responsible for part of this.
	He gets a share.
	Yeah.
	Or I had a share.
	Basically, you vote in quarters, quarter, half, three quarters full for the most part.
	And so, you know, what you do is you'd start out by eliminating the big list.
	You'd say anybody that was on the roster that wasn't a full member gets at least a quarter share.
	And then you might have three, like in 04, Jacoby Elsa, or in 07, Jacoby Ellsbury came up and played like the last two months of the season, which, you know, generally would be a third of a share or a quarter of a share, but he was literally almost the MVP of the postseason.
	So he got a full share.
	And for a guy coming out of college that's making...
	Who votes that?
	The...
	The people that are in their four players that were on the roster are able to vote.
	Those are the only people who get to vote.
	Who get to vote?
	Right.
	Nobody else is in the room.
	And how is the vote structured?
	What is it like?
	Majority.
	Okay, that's cool.
	Right.
	But there are some teams that will do like a secret ballot.
	So nobody finds it.
	No, but we always made everyone I was in.
	It was like, raise your hand.
	I like that.
	I like that because I think there's a form of oppression.
	Well, it's accountability.
	Yeah.
	And there would be almost fist fights.
	I bet.
	This is very serious here.
	It's more fist fight because they wanted more money or they were defending someone who deserved it.
	That.
	So spending the deserved money.
	Of course.
	I mean, this is life-changing money.
	It's not life-changing money for the guy that's the superstar.
	So we were just talking about how Manfred is handling baseball and all this stuff.
	If there's one sport that hadn't gone woke and it was like heightened the corner, nobody was bothering it was NHL.
	And then we heard what happened this week with the NHL.
	Yeah.
	Hey, you guys are not diverse enough.
	And you saw this case here.
	The NHL's first internal demographic study found its workforce to be overwhelmingly white.
	Tim Davis, NHL, EVP of social impact, growth, and legislative affairs says seeing the number is a first step towards fixing a problem.
	What are your thoughts on this?
	It's horse shit.
	I mean, listen, this is why the country is where it is.
	When your qualifications and criteria to get a job are based on your skin color and your religion, you're not picking the best people.
	Well, look at the vice president of the United States.
	There's not a bigger box of rocks in existence than this woman.
	And she is affirmative action live.
	She's never done anything that you would look at and say, well, that merits her being someone in a position of prominence and power in this country because she clearly understands what's going on.
	She doesn't have a grasp of anything.
	And when you have, I'll never forget this.
	I don't know if you ever saw this, but when WikiLeaks came out and all of the emails from the Clinton campaign were revealed, and I mean, I read through tons of them, and there was a document, and Podesta was on it, but it was a document listing a bunch of cabinet positions and sub-cabinet positions.
	And they had the position, and the candidates listed were what we need.
	We need a black or a Latino.
	We need a homosexual in this one.
	We need an Asian man in this position.
	And none of them had anything to do with qualifications of the position.
	And you're starting to see that permeate in the real world.
	People are getting hired and promoted and are doing things based on anything but their job qualifications.
	And that's what I, my argument for as a conservative has always been, I don't care what color you are.
	I don't care who you sleep with.
	And I don't care who you pray to.
	Are you a law-abiding legal American citizen of any color race who can achieve at the job I need you to achieve to?
	If you go back and look at Trump's four years and you look at the fact that the liberals would like to tell you, look, he hired and fired so many people.
	Well, I think a lot of that, having known Mr. Trump, President Trump, since 2006, he's a pragmatist.
	He's a problem solver, right?
	And I think what he thought was a lot of people in the private sector, their success was going to translate into government, and it didn't.
	So when they came in and he saw that they weren't doing the job, he said, okay, you're fired.
	And he moved some, and everybody else saw that as instability and an unstable.
	And I saw that as I need to find the right person for the job.
	Man, woman doesn't matter.
	And then you have other administrations who hire and never fire anybody.
	And that tells me that we're living their mistakes because not everybody's right for the job.
	Meaning it was like a favor when they hired somebody.
	I owed you a favor.
	I hired you where Trump didn't have a favorite.
	You helped get me elected.
	I promised you a position on the board of gratification.
	Here it is.
	Doesn't mean you're the best person for the job, but go ahead.
	I mean, Pete Buttigid.
	Really?
	That's your guy?
	Hey, that guy fixed potholes in Indiana.
	I mean, seriously, you look at some of these people, and the challenge is it's gotten so ridiculous that we joke about it now.
	Did you hear about the Build Back Better, the money that, you know, one of the most Biden calls it one of the most incredible, you know, what do you want to call it?
	Infrastructure bills in the history of mankind.
	It is incredible.
	They just spend the first million.
	They just spend the first $2 million.
	That's the way they thought, but it isn't.
	They just spend the first $20 million.
	You know what it is?
	Did you see this thing?
	The first $20 million that was spent to the sidewalks of the city.
	And they went and interviewed people in the city.
	They said, you know, you're getting the first 20 million.
	What are we doing with that 20 million?
	We're going to heat your sidewalks so the ice can melt.
	The citizens of that city is like, what are you talking about?
	I get the wrong place to spend the $20 million on.
	Well, they're trying to block out the sun now, too.
	Have you seen that?
	They have plans.
	They're trying to actually block it out.
	You know, sports on the field is the ultimate meritocracy.
	The fans don't care.
	Back in 2004, Calgary Flames made it to the finals and lost to Tampa.
	And it's when the entire NHL kind of flipped out because the retirement community had a Stanley Cup.
	And Eroma Ginla was on that team, and he was beloved.
	You would see up in Calgary.
	It was up there.
	He was absolutely beloved.
	He was an African-American on the ice.
	It was, can you skate?
	Can you shoot?
	Are you valuable to the team?
	And I think when you look at the NHL, Gary is the worst commissioner in professional sports, which is really hard to do because there's a lot of competition to be the worst commissioner.
	And you sit back and say, is it a good thing to raise awareness so that we make sure that everyone has an opportunity for front office jobs and everything?
	Yes, it is.
	But to the fans, the fans, it's a meritocracy on the court.
	It's a meritocracy on the ice.
	Talking about the government spending thing, one of the things that, and I get, I don't want to say physically ill, but it's borderline.
	I'll get acid reflux at the discussion.
	There's 32,000 homeless veterans in this country every single night.
	There should not be a dollar of our government's money exiting the borders of this country or being spent for anything until they have a roof over their heads.
	And I say that because you were mentioning that 20 million.
	I just saw something.
	We're sending something like 200 million, 20 million to South America to help transgender activities in the community of South America.
	Like dancers.
	I mean, the stuff that we're seeing in the United States with these kids being put in front of transgender, the cross-dressing dancers and all the things that are going.
	And it's like, it doesn't seem real to me.
	We're arguing about things that to me are, there's no logic to the argument, but the left is winning because we're having the argument to begin with.
	Why are we arguing about who can vote in our election?
	How is that an argument?
	Can I go to Germany and vote in their election or Mexico?
	No.
	Why are people allowed to come here and vote if they're not citizens?
	And then secondly, why are we even arguing it?
	But that's the win, right?
	We're discussing something we shouldn't even be discussing.
	That's like me coming in your house and telling you how you should paint the wall in your living room.
	And I don't even live in your house.
	There's no lot.
	But again, why are we arguing things that aren't just ⁇ they're not even logical.
	Why are we arguing about what bathroom a man or a woman should be able to use?
	How is that a logical argument?
	I agree with you.
	Can I make just one point?
	Just kind of a just to throw my counterpoint 100% with you on the woke stuff.
	It's obviously getting very annoying.
	I think Democrats are going to pay the price in the midterms.
	We're about to see in less than a month, three weeks.
	But you use Kamala as an example, okay?
	So what part of it is optics marketing?
	Meaning she wasn't, they didn't, they didn't, I mean, in all fairness, Kurt, they didn't pick her up on the side of a highway.
	She was a senator.
	She was re-elected senator.
	She was called the California segregation.
	Correct.
	But some of it is optics, meaning he saw optics.
	Correct.
	So hear me out.
	You know, he said, I want a black female to be my VP.
	It could have been her.
	It could have been Stacey Abrams.
	Same thing with Springer.
	It could have been Condoleezza Rice.
	It could have been Susan Rice, who arguably would have been better candidates.
	But at the same time, I mean, Trump did something similar.
	Now, here we go.
	He said, all right, who's going to be my VP?
	Or I'm going for optics here.
	Who's going to help me get votes?
	It could have been Chris Christie, nah, two New Jersey guy in New York, a little much.
	All right, I kind of want to get the Christian evangelical vote.
	Hmm.
	Who represents that?
	Well, you got this person, you got this person.
	This guy, Mike Pence, could be something.
	And I think Mike Pence was very deserved of the job.
	But ultimately, my point is he was solving for something.
	Right.
	He was solving for optics, agenda.
	I don't look at those as similarly aligned interests in the sense that I'm looking to hire a black woman or I'm looking to hire somebody that will bring me a voting block.
	That black woman didn't necessarily bring you a voting block.
	They would say that she did.
	Well, but she got women to vote.
	But see, that's the bigotry of low expectations of the left.
	The left believe that black people are too stupid to get their own ID, to get their own driver's license.
	They're too stupid to get on the internet.
	So if they're too stupid to do anything, they'll vote for us just because we put a black woman in office.
	And the black people, I know they're not that stupid at all, not even close.
	In fact, they get offended when you ask them questions like that.
	But the bigotry of low expectations from the left drives a lot of their decision making and saying, well, listen, if we put a Jewish guy here, then we'll get the Jewish vote.
	And if we put a black woman here, we'll get the black vote.
	Someone just say that's just playing politics.
	So, I mean, the Pence, as an example, we're going to get the Christian vote versus a Chris Christie.
	The debate for me now is people talk, and every second I don't get a block number that gets through.
	I get to help us raise money for this campaign.
	We're all getting that, by the way.
	It's election season.
	I'm getting that left and right.
	I continually think to myself, I don't know in my lifetime, and I don't know anybody that does.
	I've never seen a commercial that's made me vote for somebody.
	I've never seen a commercial that said, you know what, I'm going to go vote for that person.
	But they would have you believe that whatever side raises the most money is going to win the election, which basically is them saying, you're too stupid to think for yourself.
	So we're going to buy your vote with this.
	Well, most people already, before they walk into the voting booth, know who they're voting for.
	Do you know anybody in the last 20 years that's walked into a voting booth unsure?
	Do you?
	I'm there right now.
	I don't know where I'm going these days.
	No, that's not true.
	I swear.
	Very true.
	You know who you will never vote for.
	No, I've just, I know.
	No, no.
	Listen, I think all three of you know who you're walking into the second you walk into a voting room.
	I'm very convinced of that.
	I was also that person.
	These days, I'm very unsure.
	I'm an independent.
	I've said it on the podcast multiple times.
	Like, you know who you're not voting for.
	Wow.
	I'm not a Trump fan.
	Yeah, that's not.
	I'm not going to reverse course all of a sudden.
	But what I'm saying to you is that is a position, though.
	You know who you're not voting for.
	He would not.
	I'm not a Trump fan.
	Wow.
	What would it take for you to vote for Biden?
	What would it take?
	How about this?
	Listen, how about this?
	Hear me out.
	Where to place?
	When's the last time you voted for a Democrat?
	Clinton.
	Okay.
	So it's been 30 years.
	And I saw this the other day, and I think it's absolutely essential to where we are.
	And I think it's going forward.
	We're at a point of no return.
	And I say that because when I was growing up, and I was not very political when I was growing up, but you had people left of center, right of center.
	And then you had center and all the things.
	The Democrats and Republicans of our childhood are gone.
	But we're at a point in time where there's no going back and there is no peace because both sides see each other as inherently evil.
	Right.
	And I tend to believe as a patriotic flag-waving American and all the, and again, I've known President Trump since 2006.
	All the things you can say about him, you can say about him.
	But the fact of the matter, this country, in every metric possible, was better under his presidency, except for the fact that the left was angry, bitter, and hateful.
	The economy, minority employment, female employment, the stock, by every measurable metric that we measure, that we have in the past measured presidents by, we were better.
	And by those same metrics in the last two years, we're far, far worse.
	And the fact that we're having a conversation around who you would vote for, that blows me away.
	That blows me away to think that an educated person would ever consider allowing Democrats to be in power again for the rest of our lives as long as people live.
	I've watched, I mean, we've all watched it for two years.
	The destruction that they've wrought on the foundational principles of this country.
	And listen, you can say all you want.
	This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.
	It just was.
	You don't have to agree with it.
	You can want it to go in a different way, but that's the way it is.
	And the fact that we're having these discussions now about who, who, I've been alive for two years, I watched it for two years.
	I've seen it happen for two years.
	I've seen the moral decay.
	Listen, I grew up at my dinner table, right?
	When I did something wrong, I had a slap on the back of the head.
	I grew up at a dinner table.
	But the farther from the dinner table and the Bible this country's gotten, the farther down the toilet it's gotten.
	And it's just been sad to watch.
	How did we get here, in your opinion?
	How do we get here?
	Apathy.
	For, gosh, 30 or 40 years, we had 40, 50% voter turnout.
	We let them get where they are.
	And I think there's a certain level of corruption in the process that has gotten people into office because you can't convince me that a majority of people in Maxine Waters' district or AOC's district or Nancy Pelot vote or Eric Schiff, these people are the dumbest of the dumb.
	There's just there, I mean, listen, we know that there was a massive amount of election fraud in the last election.
	How much?
	I don't know that we'll ever find out, but we know because we've seen the evidence.
	And, you know, I was up at three in the morning when the vote total for Biden changed by 2 million and Trump didn't move an inch.
	And I was like, wait a minute, what just happened?
	But, you know, you say something like that now and you're a conspiracy theorist.
	God, my God, I don't know how many years ago, I mentioned something.
	I didn't know what Q was.
	And I somehow, somebody sent me a Twitter link or something.
	And I wrote down, you know, this is actually kind of interesting.
	I want to follow this and find out what it is.
	I became a Q disciple from that point on.
	It doesn't matter what I've ever said or what I actually said.
	What do you mean someone labeled you?
	No, just like you said.
	Oh, yeah.
	I've been a QAnon person since then.
	And like everything else, my mom taught me how to speed read when I was young.
	I have 15 or 20 books sitting by my bed.
	So I read everything about everything that I can find out.
	And I like to find out about stuff.
	And so I was curious about it.
	And I come to find out that everything they've ever said was going to happen never happened.
	And it's pretty much a group of people that are all bought in on conspiracy stuff that isn't happening and hasn't happened.
	And none of it's ever come to fruition.
	So you're calling out Q right now.
	But no, but my point is those niches exist everywhere in every sort of conspiracy theory.
	But here's the thing.
	They're not all conspiracies.
	The trouble is finding out, figuring out which ones are right, are real and are not.
	And I think in a lot of ways, the internet has proven to be incredibly valuable and unbelievably dangerous at the same time because of, you know, I don't know why I say power, but, you know, being able to find out and look and research and understand the world going on around you in a much larger way now than we ever could.
	That's where I get back to how could anybody, if Trump runs against whoever next election, how could anybody not vote for him?
	Any logical, adult, rational, educated person, not a good public speaker, not a funny guy by any street.
	Nothing worse than funny at someone who's not funny that thinks they are.
	But he delivered on literally every campaign promise he made.
	And you cannot like him.
	He's easy not to like.
	I like him.
	Again, I've known him for a while.
	And I know the personal side.
	I know the guy's got a heart, an enormous heart.
	And that's my phone again.
	Sorry about that.
	But the fact of the matter is, you know, where we're at now, after two years of this.
	But I think there's such a yearning in this country for something new, something fresh.
	We've seen the Trump show.
	We've seen the Trump show.
	But hold on a second.
	We've also seen the Biden show.
	Neither of them are what the country wants from a max capacity.
	Yeah, but we asked for it.
	Remember what the big cry was during the Trump run-up to the election?
	We want someone who isn't the establishment.
	We want someone who isn't a politician.
	That's what it looks like.
	An outsider to drain the swamp.
	That's what it looks like.
	It's a guy who's not going to be able to do it.
	That's what the right is.
	No, everybody.
	The left wanted it to be.
	Well, the left wanted Bernie.
	This is what it looks like when a guy who isn't bought by anybody, isn't owned by anybody, and is a business problem solver.
	Does he have, you know, I love the people that call him, you know, he's filed for bankruptcy.
	Guy's had over 500 business transactions.
	He's filed for bankruptcy 12 times.
	I'll take that batting average.
	I mean, but the hatred is so deep and so deranged that it makes people, I think, do illogical things.
	Do you think that that hatred, obviously coming from the left, and a lot of it some from the traditional Rhino Republicans as well?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I mean, that exists.
	Do you think that's going anywhere anytime soon?
	No.
	Oh, God, no.
	No, it's just growing.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So my question is, are you ready to double down on that knowing, or is it time to maybe anoint a new candidate?
	There isn't like a DeSantis type of thing.
	There would be nobody to be anointed because the game is foment the anger against the opponent.
	So it doesn't matter whether it's Trump or this person or Biden or this person.
	You're going to see this massive game unfold to foment as much controversy and anger in the other side.
	That is the reality of our elections.
	By the way, Tom, you're not wrong.
	You're absolutely right.
	But amplify that times 10 when Trump's name is in the mess.
	I didn't make it.
	Maybe politics.
	Maybe in one neighborhood, but in the other neighborhood, amplify it times 10 when Biden's name is.
	That's my point.
	But nobody's got one-sided.
	Nobody gets more hate than Trump.
	Nobody.
	Not even close.
	Not even close.
	Nope.
	Obama.
	Biden.
	But again, we are at a point where both sides see the other side as inherently evil and there's no middle ground anymore.
	And that's dangerous because there's nobody out there that's looking to put that bridge over troubled water.
	And you think Trump's going to be that guy?
	No, no.
	But the country will be, again, it'll go, in my opinion, the things that people that matter, like your income, the price of gas, your 401k, all the things that matter to everyday Americans gets better.
	Otherwise, it doesn't.
	To most people today that are alive today, right, this is pure history.
	This is like ancient history.
	But there was a time when President Reagan, once a week, had lunch at the White House with Tip O'Neill.
	And we had a teacher.
	The Speaker of the House, for those that don't know.
	Correct.
	And we had a degree of civility between the two sides, even though Tip was very much about welfare, very much.
	Actually, he was more about Social Security and Medicare and increasing benefits to make it a permanent retirement.
	Reagan was like, I think you have to moderate that.
	And there were things that they disagreed, but they were both civilly at the table.
	And we've lost that.
	Well, and that's never coming back.
	Yeah, but that didn't start with Trump distivisiveness.
	No, no.
	You might argue that.
	No, Kurt, you may argue that it started during...
	No, come on.
	Well, not here.
	I didn't even make my freaking point.
	It was more racially divided during President Obama's presidency.
	Yeah, but it started before Obama.
	Kurt.
	So it's always been that way.
	But where did it really start?
	A lot of people will say that it happened during Clinton and Newt Gingrich.
	Okay.
	Where he went when he went, no, during the whole impeachment over a freaking blowjob, Newt went full nuclear on this guy.
	I do find it funny that the people that were skulking and laughing and getting all perturbed about the fact we were upset over Clinton getting a blowjob in the White House are the ones that want the moral compass with Trump.
	I think that is funny.
	But the fact of the matter is, in my mind, the biggest opportunity this country lost was when we elected a black president.
	And instead of being the guy who bridged the gap, he widened the gap in ways that I never, ever expected.
	His hatred of the or his outward disdain for law enforcement was very open and very public, using statistics that were absolutely not true.
	His stuff about the climate change and the 97%, which is still, it was one of the biggest fallacies ever.
	All of those things he perpetuated, and he could have just said, you know what, this is a time to heal.
	But I agree with you to a certain extent.
	But like, I'm not a big Obama guy.
	The last Democrat that I truly, truly, truly loved, I was a Clinton guy.
	I grew up like my dad was a big Clinton guy.
	But some of the divisiveness wasn't his fault.
	There were people that genuinely hated the fact that there was a black Democrat in office.
	It's never the president's fault.
	The president has the chance to amplify someone else's message.
	And unless he's openly saying race war, which was never the case, right?
	I mean, these it's it's it but President Obama had opportunities, multiple opportunities, I think.
	I think every president has multiple opportunities.
	But I think he went so far to the one side that we've never seen before, anti-police.
	I mean, he was very anti-police, which that's your president.
	Like, you know, if you want to say that Trump's steering the nation and their opinion on certain things, you can't deny the fact that Obama did that very thing in ways that were self-destructive.
	Yeah, it's interesting because Obama seems like a very rational, logical actor, but especially when like the Trayvon Martin things happens and he used things, used words like, that could have been my son, that could have been me.
	Obviously, he was acting emotionally in those instances, right?
	And even what was the situation in Dallas where police officers were shot?
	Five police officers murdered.
	Right.
	And then at the funeral, he stood there and talked about the inherent racism within the police department law enforcement.
	Right.
	Like an emotional actor.
	Well, but that's not your job as president of the United States is the exact opposite of those.
	So then the question becomes a follow-on, though.
	By the way, Kurt, moving forward, we don't like election deniers on the podcast.
	Please don't do that again.
	Specifically, this is show this tweet.
	If we can go to this, I don't like this kind of stuff being said on the podcast.
	Nancy Pelosi tweeted this back in May 2016, 2017.
	And it's still on there just so folks want to find it.
	Our election was hijacked.
	There's no question Congress has a duty to protect our democracy and follow the fact.
	So let's please not do that again, Kurt.
	Please follow those pieces that makes me in the hypocrisy is just mind-boggling.
	But you know what I was going to ask?
	Here's what I was going to ask.
	Okay, so what's the solution?
	What's the solution?
	So is the solution letting bad ideas go so far out that it gets so exposed that finally, you know, JFK Democrats and Republicans, conservatives say, listen, man, dude, I got a lot more in common with you than I do with these other people.
	I don't know what the hell is going on over here.
	Do we let it get that bad?
	Is that what we have no other choice to?
	Is the other option, which you got Adam Kinzinger, you know, comes out a couple of days ago, says, misty-eyed Adam Kinzinger says conservatives will be the first to die in a civil war.
	So is the second option, you know, we go through some like this where in a response to a comment about Republican on Twitter, Adam Kinzinger openly fantasized about a country being driven towards civil war and suggested that anti-war conservatives will be the first to die.
	Kinzinger made the comments in response to a user who went on a mild rant about Republicans not supporting the war effort in Ukraine, referring to them as fascists and labeling them as the GQP party.
	Truer words have never been spoken, Kinzinger replied.
	Spoil people who have never seen warlike to play dress up.
	If there is a civil war, they will be the first to pass away because Walgreens will run out of heart medicine, right?
	So he makes comments like this.
	So option number one, let bad ideas play out and everyone's going to unite.
	Number two, civil war.
	Number three, you know, unify, bring everybody together on one side, you know, together to sit down and talk.
	Number four, do what Musk and some others are talking about.
	Hey, just vote Republican.
	What is the solution?
	Well, number three, bringing everybody together.
	I think we're way past the option.
	I don't think that's going to happen.
	I don't think there's anybody out there that that can happen.
	I think we're living number one, letting these ideas get so rotten that the Bill Mahers of the world go, wait a minute, I'm not on the left anymore because that's idiocy.
	And Joe Rogan, who was very far left and is understanding that the right actually isn't what the left would have you believe it is.
	The Civil War thing for me is one thing I've learned growing up as a military brat and being around the military is the last people in the world who want conflict are the ones who have seen it.
	They understand the price.
	And, you know, having been and seen an active war zone and seen what it looks like and what it does, you know, I would certainly never want it.
	But I'm also not even remotely uncomfortable at the thought of standing up to defend and fight for my country physically, if that's what it meant.
	I don't, again, I said, I think both sides are so far apart and see each other as such bad people that there is no bridging the gap.
	My question has been for 10 years, former military and military and law enforcement.
	And having kind of spread myself into those circles and tried to have those people as much as I can in my life, I asked the same question.
	Mike, I'm going to look to you if the rubber meets the road.
	I'm starting to see videos of ATF agents and FBI agents knocking on the doors of law-abiding Americans, asking them if they possess a certain item that they bought legally.
	And if they did so, would they turn it over?
	I never thought that was even remotely something that would ever happen.
	And my question is to law enforcement: what are you going to do?
	Are you going to enforce a law you know to be or an order that you know to be unconstitutional?
	Because the oath you took was foreign and domestic, right?
	Enemies foreign and domestic.
	What does a domestic enemy look like?
	Because my argument is it looks sort of like what we're seeing.
	It looks sort of like people who are locking the country down for two years over what we now know was an enormous power play and was a bunch of bullshit.
	And we were being lied to about the vaccine and all the other things around that.
	And we were finding out that all the quote-unquote deaths were those with comorbidities, and 90% of these people were elderly and overweight and had all the things that people die from the flu from.
	All of the, like, that's the thing is, I get the feeling that the liberals that I see and the Democrats that I see truly hate.
	Well, I mean, the president came out and talked about fighting MAGA Americans, right?
	If you're going to fight the government, we have nuclear weapons and F-16s.
	I mean, openly, I've never heard to think that a president would even utter that, much less say it at a press conference, is mind-boggling to me.
	I think there's a combination of all of those things that you're having.
	Like I said, I think we're living number one.
	I think we're letting bad ideas play out.
	Yeah, and I think we feel like we have to.
	I think we feel like we're powerful.
	And I'll say this: Jim Jordan, I'm so tired.
	I'm a fan.
	I'm so tired of seeing him complain on Twitter.
	And I've written to him a couple of times saying, just shut up.
	You got elected to fix it.
	Stop complaining on Twitter and do something about it because you sound like a voter.
	You sound like me.
	I'm complaining to you.
	And you're, who are you?
	If you can't do anything, then resign and put somebody in the office that has the guts to do something because I'm tired of hearing them.
	Rand Paul and all of them, again, the same thing.
	Committee after committee after committee.
	No one ever actually does anything.
	What can they do?
	I don't know.
	But I know I'm powerless unless I take up arms against a sitting government, which I'm not going to do.
	I can't do anything.
	Don't we elect these people to steer the country?
	And by steer, I mean hold on to the wheel and move us in a direction.
	If we know people are breaking the law, which we know, we know that the last Democratic Party in the last administration that was Democrat weaponized the DOJ.
	I mean, that much we know Comey and all the things that went with that.
	I mean, we watched Comey, James Comey, stand up in front of Mike and talk about Clinton's crimes and say, well, not enough to prosecute.
	And now we, I mean, I followed along some of the Giuliani stuff.
	The stuff that's been done to him since Trump has been in my, in many facets that I've read, unconstitutional and against the law.
	Again, law enforcement agents knocking on Americans' doors, asking to have items that were legally purchased to turn that in and then being told and the person saying, do you have a warrant?
	No, I don't have a warrant, but you don't need to be a jerk about it.
	You know, you can just give me the item and we'll go away.
	And he's like, no, I'm not doing that.
	And he's like, well, we'll probably see you again down the road.
	Like, they're threatening us.
	That's the gov. That's Russia.
	That's Eastern Europe.
	That's fascism at its core.
	And it's happening live.
	And the internet's allowing us to see it.
	That's the even worst part.
	And we're still doing nothing about it.
	Tom, how do you process it?
	What do you think is going to happen with this?
	Is it playing it out?
	Is it playing it out?
	Is it let it play out?
	Is it number two?
	You know, a civil war is going to happen.
	A Republican is going to get elected.
	Is it what do you think is going to happen?
	Unifying forces in the history of America have always been very violent.
	And it's very sad.
	9-11 was a unifying force, a tremendous unifying force.
	We didn't care what color you were.
	We didn't care anything about it.
	We were just all.
	We were hurting.
	We were pro-us.
	We were pro-us.
	And we saw us getting together those, what was it, nine days later in the NFL was this healing moment on Sunday.
	And we talked about praying together.
	We talked about unifying.
	We talked about helping.
	We talked about reaching out.
	Unifying forces are usually very, very violent.
	And the problem with the political structure is it's a power and economic structure.
	It's not just a power structure.
	And where words have to be weaponized, and you have to create such hatred to move these voting blocks.
	At least that's what they think.
	And you take billions and billions of dollars from people that want hundreds and hundreds of favors later.
	That's the way this works.
	And I think you need to get, there's got to be a unifying force.
	And I don't wish it on this country.
	I don't wish it on any person, but there's got to be a unifying force that comes together of it.
	And it's usually when people realize we don't have it so bad and something really horrible has just gone down.
	And my goodness, we do have it better than we thought we did.
	You guys are at the tip of the spear in a sense in this ideological war.
	You talk, your job, in a sense, one of the most important jobs is to bring people from both sides to the public and expose them in good and bad for what they are, what they believe.
	And when you look at the fact that our government is trying to enforce its mandate on our speech, that should be, I mean, free speech, every book in the world in America is legal to read.
	Everything you can say in the world other than causing harm to another human being is legal to say in this country.
	It has to be under the First Amendment.
	You cannot like it.
	You can be offended by it.
	But those two things have to read true.
	Those are no longer true here.
	I just saw something this morning.
	I was reading them and this blew me away.
	Apparently, Amazon, the largest seller of books in the world, has banned an enormous stable of books based on order from the Department of Justice.
	That should scare the shit out of people.
	And, you know, all the things happening to these people in the FBI showing up or investigating someone from the news media that is writing a story about Biden and all the things.
	It's so distant from people that are reading it, they can't translate or come to the conclusion.
	What if that's me?
	Yeah.
	And it started out because apparently there is an author in Russia who is one of the Alexander Dugan.
	Yes.
	The philosopher.
	Yes.
	And his books are prominent in every educated person's bookshelf because apparently he's written, I've never read anything he's written.
	But this gentleman went to look for them and Tucker Carlson had mentioned that he went to look for them and there's not one on the site.
	None of them are on the site.
	So then what the left does is, well, when they have this, I love this argument.
	Oh, it's a private company.
	They don't have, well, yeah, there's no First Amendment issues until the government is involved in the decision-making process, which is we need you to ban these books.
	We want you to ban these books.
	Again, a book can't offend you unless you read it.
	So, you know, and then the throwback is, well, the conservatives in the South are trying to ban books.
	Well, it's my understanding that the books they're trying to, not ban, but remove from elementary schools are basically adult pornography or whatever that might be.
	Now, I could be wrong, but this is the, I mean, we're having, again, Patrick, we're having discussions that five years ago, we would have just said, no, that'll never happen.
	And now we're living it.
	And that's the scary part.
	My thing is, you know, how many times is it?
	A kid grows up in a family household that parents get a divorce.
	One side of the family tells you stories about the other side of the parent.
	Let me tell you who your mom was.
	Let me tell you who your dad was.
	And the kid could believe it for five years, sometimes 10 years, sometimes 20 years.
	And then 20 years later, they're like, why'd you say that about mom?
	Why'd you say that about that?
	That wasn't true.
	You made me not like dad for four years, right?
	Because that's what's happening.
	And the kid is in the middle, experienced mom and dad getting a divorce, and the kid is the one that loses 10, 20 years of his life, right?
	So to me, I think America is- Not for my opinion.
	I have four kids.
	That's where my pain is.
	Let me tell you, I feel that pain.
	I mean, I was willing to put and still willing to put $5 million on the line if Trump and Obama are willing to do a three-hour podcast together to figure out a way to get people to come together and talk on what they actually agree on.
	Because one is the voice for MAGA, the other one is the voice for the left.
	What can we do to bring them together, right?
	Because more people are going to sit there and say, this kind of does make sense.
	America's.
	MAGA.
	Especially before systemic racism.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	President Obama believes inherent systemic racism in this country, which we know there's racism in this country.
	There's always going to be racism in this country because we're a free country and you're allowed to be racist.
	We've marginalized those people.
	The Klan no longer has a voice at any table that matters to anyone.
	They still exist.
	But if you had left had their way, they would define hate and they would be able to jail people that they deemed were hate speech.
	That's a perfect example.
	That gets back to MAGA is seen as this ultra-racist movement.
	And President Obama believes this country is systemically racist.
	Those two things don't have a meet in the middle, right?
	I mean, we can, listen, I am as conservative, finance, fiscally conservative as anybody on the planet.
	Like, socially, I don't care.
	I don't care.
	My middle son started the LGBTQ club in high school.
	I had kids that were transitioning coming in and out of my house.
	My whole, my son's high school never ever mattered to me.
	I didn't care.
	We opened our home to everybody.
	I don't care about stuff like that.
	That has nothing to do with what kind of person you are or how you treat me or how I treat you.
	But if you listen to, but if you go on the, if you Google me, I'm an Islamophobe.
	I'm a homophobe.
	I'm a trans, all the things.
	That's an intentional.
	People intentionally are out there ruining other people.
	And again, just the Justice Cabinet hearing was an insight into who we are as a nation right now in many ways.
	And that was embarrassing and uncomfortable as anything I've ever seen.
	Well, Kurt, you know, you're talking about the system.
	And I'm with you.
	The system on both sides is screwed up.
	But also, you know, we're in election season.
	Candidates matter.
	Like you brought up Jim Jeffries, right?
	Exactly.
	You said in 04, Jim Jordan.
	Yeah, yeah.
	In 04, you were advocating Bush, right?
	But the candidates matter.
	Like if you look on the right, you've got situations like Oz or Herschel Walker or some of the clowns that Borat interviewed or whatever, that whole thing is who was America.
	And then you have, if you go deeper down that rabbit hole, in Alabama, they were putting up a guy, Roy Moore, who you talk about what some of these sexual allegations, what he was doing was freaking ridiculous.
	But then on the left, you've got the Maxine Waters of the world.
	No, the problem is you just said the word allegations, right?
	And listen, I'm not defending Roy Moore, but the point is you don't have to do anything anymore.
	You just have to be alleged to.
	If you're alleged to, you're guilty.
	So Jim Jordan molested wrestlers at college or allegedly.
	But if you look at anybody on the right, they'll tell you he is.
	And that's where, so anybody that, and that was one of the reasons why I decided not to run for office, when I realized that families were now on the table, the media can do and say whatever they want about your family, especially if you're conservative.
	And it just seemed like it's not worth the price.
	Nothing's worth the price.
	And we're at that extreme where, I mean, God, there's so many examples.
	It is honestly hard to think of just one.
	But in the last five or six years, think of the people that have been canceled.
	And we find out later, the canceling act never actually happened.
	A tweet that they did in high school or some stuff like that.
	What comes to mind is freaking Al Franken.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Like this, I mean, I liked him on SNL.
	He was a senator from Minnesota.
	He freaking stepped down because he like gave a lady a hug and went to give her a kiss and whatever that fucking situation was.
	It's a nothing burger, but he got so caught up in that that cancel culture has canceled some people that started the culture itself.
	I mean, which is poetic justice, but nobody can survive that system.
	Nobody.
	You know, if you go back and find every tweet ever or every social media experience or you talk to somebody who went to high school with you, I'm sure you said something in high school that was probably this is why you shouldn't apologize.
	Unless you truly, truly, truly, truly did something wrong.
	You should, hey, man, that's my opinion.
	I'm sticking to it.
	And the truth will provide.
	I think that's why I sleep good at night because I've made mistakes, but I know who I am.
	I know I've never been malicious.
	The only people I can't stand are bullies.
	And I know I've never tried to hurt people, so I'm okay with you.
	Did you say that you didn't want to be going to the Hall of Fame?
	Like, you made a standard.
	I said at this point, I didn't want to.
	Remove me.
	I wanted off the ballot.
	Yeah.
	You said that.
	Yeah.
	And what was your rationale for that?
	I didn't want to go through the process anymore.
	Every year it came up, my family was subjected, my kids especially, to social interactions that they didn't want, didn't merit, didn't deserve.
	And your dad's a racist.
	Well, what did he actually say?
	Well, the way you defended your daughter was epic.
	I mean, that's when everybody had to come to your side and, you know, give you, pay your respect on the way you backed her up because you were celebrating.
	And then Reggie Jackson said what?
	Reggie Jackson said, hey, you know, the only reason you're not in Hall of Fame is because you feel freedom of speech, bullshit, you know, whatever, something like that.
	He said that.
	I'm okay with that because I've never met anybody that didn't say Reggie Jackson was an asshole.
	So I don't care about Reggie Jackson's.
	Mr. October is an asshole.
	We're in the middle of October right now.
	Yeah.
	But again, people that have, I've never, you know, I played 22 years in baseball.
	Never had a teammate, fan, clubhouse guy, trainer, anybody I've ever been interacted with in my lifetime has ever said I did anything or said anything racist, but I'm a racist.
	He says, quote unquote, freedom of speech, you got your ass out of Cooperstown, bro.
	Yeah, whatever.
	And again, he's an asshole, so I don't care.
	I mean, my dad told me early in life, don't ever live your life for the opinions of people you don't know.
	And it made doing what I did a lot easier in that sense, in the sense that, like, again, I'm true to myself.
	I'm sure I've said things that I know I've said things that I shouldn't have said.
	I know I've said things I don't want to say or should have done, but it's never been about, I've never done anything to willfully or harm somebody or hurt somebody.
	Curt, what do you do nowadays?
	Well, I have a, I live in Tennessee, about 30 minutes south of Nashville.
	I have an animal rescue farm.
	And actually, my last llama passed away last night.
	Rosie, my llama, passed away last night.
	So it was kind of a tough morning.
	Sorry to hear.
	But no, but I love animals.
	I grew up in Alaska.
	So when you grew up in Alaska, you learn to shoot a rifle because getting eaten by a bear on the way to school is like a real thing.
	So you learned firearm discipline, but I also learned an insane affinity for wildlife and nature.
	My dad was a big hunter.
	I've never been a hunter, but I understand that whole thing.
	But I grew up with a love of animals and I've always had one.
	So it was just natural for me to gravitate that way.
	And I have a huge animal.
	Well, not huge, but I have a rescue, llamas, goats, pigs, all of it.
	And that's where I find peace and comfort a lot.
	And that's what you do full-time, right?
	So like I said, my Monday and Saturday, the exact same day, except that Sunday's football.
	I'm retired.
	Are you all sports?
	Are you doing all sports?
	None.
	Hockey.
	My oldest son and my youngest son were both goalies playing hockey.
	My youngest son played juniors.
	My youngest son is contemplating a military life.
	But I don't watch any.
	Baseball?
	You don't follow baseball?
	I can't.
	It's hard to watch.
	It's so hard to watch now.
	It's uncomfortable to watch.
	Why?
	Well, because I was raised at a point in time, and I know this is going to sound like the old man yelling at a leaf on his lawn, but I was raised that as a starting pitcher, those nine innings were yours.
	I was raised, you know, my goal wasn't wins.
	It was 245 innings a year because that meant I went seven innings every night for 35 nights.
	And I was raised by Johnny Padres as a pitching coach, who was one of the greats.
	And I watched these guys coming out of the game after the fifth inning and they're tipping their hat.
	And I'm thinking to myself, you should be ashamed of yourself.
	I mean, there's still four innings of this.
	And it's not really the players' fault because it's the way the business has gone.
	They've really got middle relief, relief, so much money in these arms that these kids have to get to the big leagues of their investment, the team's investment screwed.
	So these kids are, I came to the big leagues.
	I had six or 700 innings in the minor leagues.
	I had a couple 200 inning seasons in the minor leagues.
	These kids are throwing 180 innings a year and making $40 million a year.
	And it's just hard to watch.
	And so the ace has gone away.
	And if you think about it, not when I was coming up, but probably right before this last generation, the starting pitchers always provided you the hero and the villain, right?
	Maddox against Clements.
	That was that backstory to a game.
	That no longer happens.
	You don't only have four or five guys, the Scherzers or the Kershaws, who, oh my God, this guy's pitching.
	I'll buy a ticket.
	Those guys don't exist anymore because Jacob DeGrom is going to go six innings.
	And that's just a different game.
	And this influx of Sabre metrics, which I, again, I buy into Sabre Metrics.
	I bought into them in 1995.
	I was way ahead of that curve in the sense that I didn't care about home runs and RBIs and those bullshit stats.
	I wanted to know swing percentages.
	When is the hitter going to swing?
	Because Greg Maddox said the key to pitching.
	When you switch percentages.
	Well, the key to pitching is to throw a strike when the hitter's taking and a ball when he's swinging.
	You just have to know when those times are.
	Very simple idea, like everything else, though, with a complex formula.
	And so I studied.
	And the preeminent moment in my career was I watched Tony Gwynn go five for five.
	I was pitching a Sunday game and Saturday night Tony Gwynn went five for five and he was on the news afterwards and he said, Yeah, I kind of knew everything was coming.
	I was in counts.
	I got comfortable.
	I knew what he was going to throw in those counts.
	And I'm thinking, holy shit, I have no chance of getting this guy out tomorrow.
	None.
	He knows everything I'm going to do.
	And I thought, oh, wait a minute.
	Hitters are kind of creatures that have.
	So I started studying and realized I could break the strike zone down into 15 quadrants, nine in the strike zone, three on the corners, and hitters would swing at different, had different swing patterns in those categories.
	So in my mind, because I couldn't understand, I watched Greg Maddox throw an 88 with a 1.62 ERA.
	I'm throwing 95, and I'm getting my ass handed to me.
	And I'm like, this doesn't make any sense.
	And it was all about fastball command.
	So I said, listen, I'm going to find the blue areas, which are the cold areas.
	I'm going to find the blue areas on every hitter, and I can throw my fastball there.
	So what I did was I developed fastball command.
	So I could manipulate the ball three, four, five inches at a time around the strike zone, and I knew where you couldn't hit the ball.
	So if you had a really big blue spot, it's one of the Aaron Judge.
	You can't strike out 175 times a year and not have holes.
	It's why in the postseason, those guys generally don't translate.
	You strike out 175 times, you're not going to hit well in the postseason because you're not going to see the number four and five starters.
	You're not going to see the middle of a bullpen.
	You're going to see the top three guys and the back three guys.
	And that's it.
	Let me tell you, I can sit here and listen to you for hours.
	I truly enjoy listening to you.
	I've been very quiet on this podcast just listening to you because the stories, whether it's baseball, whether it's your thoughts, your life experiences, it's fascinating.
	And I look forward to the next one we do here.
	I've got one funny story.
	Sure, please.
	All right.
	Joe West is an umpire in the big leagues.
	He just retired.
	He umpired more games than anybody.
	I am at a banquet in Philadelphia, sitting next to Darren Dalton, Joe West, and it's in Philadelphia.
	Philadelphia hated Joe West.
	They sold dartboards with his face as the bullseye.
	And I didn't know Joe, but I knew him as an umpire, right?
	Cowboy Joe West.
	And he is, he's a country singer in the offseason.
	Big hitter sick.
	Yeah, but he was a prick on the field, like a real, he was a jerk, tough guy.
	So I'm sitting next to him, and he starts talking to me, and I'm talking.
	He's funny, like he's genuinely funny.
	He gets up after Darren and he says, he tells this joke.
	He said, you know, I just realized that the reason Darren Dalton is this guy is because Darren Dalton thinks this is eight inches.
	Crowd was nuts.
	Fast forward to July of that year.
	I'm pitching in Florida.
	Now, the thing, one of the things I've known about in my career is I didn't walk hitters, right?
	And so it's the sixth inning.
	We're playing the Marlins in 97.
	See you at the Marlins won the World Series.
	That's right.
	I was there.
	Gary Sheffield, seventh inning, sixth inning or seventh inning.
	I throw strike nine.
	He walks.
	Joe calls it a ball.
	I've walked now my fifth or sixth hitter.
	I don't walk six hitters a month.
	And I was on.
	I had my stuff.
	And Joe calls it a ball.
	And it goes back to after Joe told that story, I got up and told a story.
	I said, you know, I just figured something out.
	I saw Joe West in Montreal this winter, this summer, during the season, and he was with this hot blonde.
	And I looked at Joe and I looked at her and I looked back at him and I'm like, holy shit, this doesn't add up.
	And I said, I just realized to Joe West, this is eight inches.
	Crowd goes nuts.
	He walks out from behind the plate in July.
	I walk up.
	I walk up to change baseballs because I got to talk to him.
	I said, he hands me the ball.
	I go, Joe, what the fuck?
	He goes, that ball's about eight inches outside.
	Boy, he remembered exactly.
	And I'm like, he got him back.
	I never ragged him up higher ever again.
	He never forgot it.
	No, you can say that now because he retired, which is cool.
	So it's like something come back.
	So I have this guy to thank for that Marlins World series that I went to.
	Thank you, Joe West, huh?
	So anyways, Kurt, thanks for coming out.
	This was fantastic.
	Appreciate you.
	We will definitely have you back.
	Are we back on again this tomorrow or no?
	We're back tomorrow.
	We're back on tomorrow.
	Okay, sounds good.
	Who's tomorrow?
	Katie Hopkins.
	Katie Hopkins tomorrow.
	We'll see you guys there.

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