3 Thoughts on NBA Opening Night, CFB Expansion and the Fan Tipping Point. Plus Jeff Passan Previews the World Series!

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Yes, you already knew that. I could bitch about it for 10 straight minutes. I'm not going to do that right now. Maybe I'll do it another time. Maybe it's pointless, right? Because I want to talk to you as a fan, not as somebody that does this for a living, right? Like you and me are the same on this deal. Maybe you like it. I don't know. Maybe you're a Nebraska fan. I didn't mean to do that to you, Nebraska. I'm sorry. And that's kind of the point. It's like, what are you going to do? Stop watching? I'm not going to stop watching. I love college football, right? And I think the people that make these decisions know that we are the best customer base maybe in the country right now, okay? There's so much change that's happening so fast in all of the sports that we talk about that I'll immediately think like, is this really what we want here, right? Because I don't think anybody ever sits around going, you know what I'd love in my life is a ton of change for a team. It's going to happen quickly and all the time. But that's what's happening in so many of these different sports. But it also makes me think, okay, what if you need to look at this differently? What if sports have been too simple? What if sports has been behind all of these other cutthroat industries? What if you had a CEO come in from another company who said, so let me get this straight. You have this unbelievably loyal customer base and you have this great product and you can just kind of add inventory whenever you want. Like, why aren't you adding more inventory? In our industry, we would just, if we have this awesome product, we make more of it and sell more of it. The reason I bring that up is that that might be the simplest explanation of all this stuff. Although I'll admit, I despise the victory lap of brilliance that happens with the people that make these decisions when they start parading out their TV deals being like, look at this, look what we did. This is great. It's like, well, if everybody's all benefiting from the same thing at the same time, is it really you? You know, it's us. It's us, the consumer and all this. So as we keep looking at all these sports, adding more inventory, you know, the NFL add an extra playoff game. They add the extra game in season. This is all creeping towards, and I don't know what that magic number is, but there's going to be 18 games soon. They'll probably add another playoff team. They'll say, hey, we want to get back to giving the one and two seed buys, or maybe they'll add even more. Like, I don't know. What number doesn't work? What number of regular season NFL games for you goes, wait a minute. That's too much. Because like in reference to this whole playoff expansion, 24 is way too fucking much. It's stupid. All right. I don't want to even hear your counter arguments. What number of NFL regular season games make you go? That's a lot. Is it 20? Is it 25? I mean, imagine some of you would love NFL games 30 weekends a year. I think at some point in our lifetime, there'll be NFL games on five times a night. And maybe that's the right move. You know? I don't know what that number is. And maybe the whole point is that you push and push and push until you find out what that number is. And then you go, okay, hey, we finally found out the number while we banked billions on just trying to push the limits of what is even possible. And I don't even know if like sports is close to it. You know, there's such an emotional attachment to sports that we can take it more personally. I certainly do because no one's sitting around rooting for toothpaste or lawnmowers. Some of the things that have happened with these, all of these sports like proves the resiliency. The NFL owners had a run there like 10 years ago, 10 plus years ago where you're like, what's going on? The Department of Defense gave the NFL 6 million to salute the troops, but we're all paying for that. And if you dig through all that stuff, like it's not great. Although you can argue the NFL did a self audit and they returned like $700,000 of what they thought was misplaced. And they're like, well, you know, we don't know what's going on with the NFL. And I didn't quite understand what was like, what is the 6 million part? You also had the crucial catch thing where they were like, so the pink gloves and all the accessories to fight breast cancer, like five to 8% of that's going to the actual charities. I guess that's been fixed somewhat, but like those are just disastrous PR things that are happening on top of like whatever controversy or scandal that you're dealing with, with any of the players. And I'm not even talking specifically the NFL, just in pro sports in general, but we all know none of that bothers us enough to want to change the channel. The NFL was dealing with such a bad PR thing because it was kind of funny. At one point, it felt like they didn't even care. And then they dropped that football's family campaign to be like, hey, don't worry about the concussions or all the other stuff. Like, don't you love your kids? The NBA launched its streaming thing, and I know why they did it. It's good business, but it sucked. Like, it's the beginning of the season. I'm still opening up my TVs going like, where the hell's the game again? And if I'm having a hard time with it, I can't imagine how many of you or maybe how many of your parents are like, I haven't watched the Milwaukee Bucks in years. I can't find them. And I'm sure the people that made those decisions were like, they'll figure it out. It's not that big of a deal. We've had work stoppages in every single sport in my lifetime, right? Football technically had a work stoppage in a training. But they didn't miss any time in recent memory. I mean, I don't want to go all the way back to the 80s for some of you here. And guess what we found out is none of it really mattered. Do you remember the college basketball scandal from 2017 to 2018? Yahoo Sports was all over it. Federal wiretaps, right? Money, entertainment, NBA agents. Like, the reading of that in real time as it was happening, you're like, whoa, this is going to be a huge deal. Yeah. Who was even presenting it? Like, you know, the tournament could be in jeopardy. Multiple first round picks are going to be ineligible. This is going to be this tipping point for the sport, the sport of college basketball as we know it. A couple assistant coaches lost their gigs. An agent got decertified. Three headline head coaches all lost their jobs. They all have awesome jobs right now in the sport. So in reference to that tipping point, I've seen a lot of conversations now. About how we are now in this new world of like this sports tipping point, right? Sometimes it's references a bubble because you look at these franchise valuations and how much they're going for. And you're like, well, this isn't sustainable, right? The Clippers scandal, like it's a huge deal to what the Clippers can or can't do. But do you really care? Right. Do you really care about the Lakers sale timeline of like what happened there? It sold for 10 billion to that guy. But then he did something else. So now he has to sell it and he's going to sell it for 12 and a half billion, not two years later. does that even matter? I think sometimes this tipping point gets referenced as a response to private equity getting involved in sports. Is private equity getting a bad rap? I don't think I'm going to do that segment, but I'm like, maybe, but do you really care what the franchise valuations are? Does it bother you? I mean, some people are still so stupid about the franchise prices because they see a new record-breaking deal and they're like, well, that can't keep happening. I remember when the net sold for a valuation of around $3 billion. I was watching Fox News, obviously. It was Fox Business, I think. And one of their analysts was on laughing about the Nets deal saying like how bad it was. I was like, dude, you work in finance and you don't understand why this is likely not a bad deal. I'd also offer up like if an ownership group that's funded by private equity doesn't work out, does it not work out only because of private equity? I'd also offer up like if an ownership group that's funded by private equity, what are we doing with all the other owners? The list of shitty owners, a really long list of all the decades of all the other sports. So whether or not you're looking at like franchise valuation paranoia, which I don't think you really care about, I don't think you care about any of the scandals. I don't think you care about how hard it is to maybe find the product versus how easy it used to be back in the day. I don't know that you're going to care about the college football playoff. There's no way around it. The regular season will not matter as much. You can say, well, wait a minute. This is for a 23 seed. You know, if we go eight and four, we're out. Sure. That's excitement. But guess what? Like if you're a preseason rank number eight and you're just going to the playoff, that sucks. That should not be something that we want in this sport where it's regular season. Still matters this much. But again, it's the inventory that you're going, why wouldn't you just make more of it if it's so successful? And I think that's kind of the lesson in all of this is if the people making decisions are sitting around saying like, are we going to price out fans? The answer is they'll pay. Are they going to have a hard time finding us now when we're on seven different streaming platforms? Now they'll figure it out. Check cleared. You know, is there anything that we can do that will turn off the fans? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Our fan base and the answer with decades of evidence is a resounding no. In today's New York, nobody carries cash anymore, but Harry Lehman still makes a living the old fashioned way. John Turturro stars in the only living pickpocket in New York as a legendary thief who refuses to change with the times. Harry survives on charm, instinct and decades of street smarts. But when an unexpected score lands him in possession, something far more valuable than a wallet, he suddenly finds himself running from dangerous criminals determined to get it back. Critics are raving with the Daily Beast, calling it a perfect crime film. Variety praises Turturro's performance as a towering work and the Los Angeles Times declaring it instantly classic. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price and Steve Buscemi. The only living pickpocket in New York is a thrilling, funny and unmistakably New York story about survival in a city that's changing faster than ever. Opens October 23rd in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30th. Opening night in the NBA, three really fun games. So I'm going to give you three thoughts on all of this. Paul George not wanting to play for the Oklahoma City Thunder is the greatest thing that's ever happened to an NBA franchise. That's a bit of hyperbole. But watching them play last night and granted, Wemby wasn't very good. You could get into shot variants, which I'm really sick of being referenced every single time a team loses. It's like our threes didn't go in. For the Thunder to lose an Aaron Wiggins, who was like a real rotational piece, Isaiah Joe, who at some point has been a real playoff option. And Wiggins even two years ago was like a real playoff rotation. He was like a real playoff option. He was like a real playoff piece. And then to lose Lou door, who at some point was considered like the best on ball defender who had enough size to play against the bigger guys. To lose all three of those in an offseason and be like, yep, they're fine. And look at all that depth. And I don't know if they would have taken a die tomorrow from Michigan as high as they did if it wasn't about women Yama. Maybe they just loved them. You know, they're very good on this stuff. They're very particular on the kind of guys that they want in. Maybe because he's a good guy. I don't know. I don't know. I don't seven foot two and can pass a little doesn't get stuck with the ball like you would think some other guys that's why they liked hartenstein so much um chet you know is the best version of him is thought to be like this seven foot plus small forward offensively but to watch them go up against a team that they had some real problems with last season and then obviously losing game seven at home which just seems incredible considering how lost the spurs look in the finals and then to pull that off in the western conference finals it's like well you can't be young and stupid just a week later if you just pulled that off but to watch the thunder with this depth losing those three pieces what that would do to other organizations and you're like this might be totally fine because everything is done with this team of like who are we going to be able to keep and how do we replace this on the fly and you can sit there and just say well when you're loaded up with that many picks how can you not screw it up well whatever they have them they're always taking advantage of opportunities always thinking further down the line that i think look they're not the only team to do it but they've optimized it in a way where i look at that group like jane williams didn't even play well last night uh hartstein was in foul trouble constantly i think there's another positive in there that felt like chet was a little bit more up for the fight considering he spent a summer probably seeing himself getting trapped i don't even know that you could avoid it if you're an nba player considering how invisible he was in game seven against the spurs so i'm not saying it was the best way to do it but i think it's a good way to do it and i'm not saying it was the best game overall but he seemed to be up for the fight a lot more um and you just watch that team and go they lose those three rotation rotational pieces like you would go oh that team's going to be in real trouble depth wise and now you're like where are they going to find minutes for all of these players once again i'm not going to sit here and tell you i'm super concerned about the spurs they're rolling out the vassell power forward than the three guard lineup to start this with harris being out with the injury um i thought harper had the moments again late that kind of reminded you who he is uh clearly okc was going to give up i'm always looking for like okay what are they giving up in this game and they were giving up threes to castle so that'll be something to look at for the next matchups because castle hit five or twelve from outside and like when b started oh at 12 i think he finished one of 13 that's not going to happen again he's still a beast defensively but a really nice debut there for okc with um these these guys that are not like new people it's just your role is going to be this much bigger it's also like the mccain thing because they're going okay we're probably going to lose joe we know we can't afford door we have our wallace replacement with door and you know what we love mccain coming out of the draft he's kind of caught in a log jam there anyway can we pick him off because we think he's like plug and play scoring for us immediately and he doesn't even have to start for us but if he had to start that'd be fine we've got aj mitchell back on top of everything else who wasn't available in the west your conference final so um yeah i'm just raving about the thunder because this roster building i just don't know that you're going to see this you can't even look at this and go hey i'm going to go do that uh what else do i want to do oh yeah philly i like how they're staggering let's call it the four but really with vj edgecomb it should be the five i think they'll experiment with this a ton um i referenced the san vincini you should check out the vj edgecomb i think they'll experiment with this a ton um i referenced the san vincini you should check out his recap i did it with him on game theory and now with us at barstool uh was up late doing that one with him kind of going over all the different games he seems to be a little bit more down on nurse than i am uh and he's really plugged in with like the coaches and that kind of stuff so maybe we defer to sam on that one but the reference that i made on like the substitution patterns which is something that i think philadelphia should just toy with all season well maybe not all season but you get the point like what do we like what do we not like here um i remember when chris paul went to the rockets with hardened and you're like oh how is that actually going to work right we want chris paul off the ball that much you know hardened off the ball isn't really a thing so are you ruining like the best parts about chris paul and what they did was it was d'antoni he's just like i'm going to stay to this rule of staggering them as much as i possibly can so we can start the first few minutes of the game with them together we're clearly going to close with both of these guys but every minute of every game there's either going to be a hardener or chris paul on the floor and that's the luxury that the sixers have with this group and whether that's you know always a maxi or lebron with mbd lebron setting up mbd maxi having the familiarity with mbd maybe letting jaylen go with that second unit maybe it's with him or maxi maybe it's him with lebron there's just a lot of little fun things they can do and i also kind of love the intensity from edge comb and maxi defensively because you think okay is there a match that's going to be a matchup there where they feel like they're a little undersized there like who would play cade obviously it'd be jaylen brown it wouldn't be lebron um but i just thought that they were really intense and kind of got after it last night and yeah if you wanted to go shooting variants on this you could point out that og mikhail and brunson were miserable from the floor um but there was no result from that game where i was going to go wow this is different you know like if philly had lost by 20 i would go see told you this is gonna i'm gonna do that segment either um because i'm still not sure the only reason i would say like i don't know that it would work is because i think mb is a bad playoff bet which i think a lot of people would agree with all right the final thought uh speaking maybe this is why i'm so sick of hearing about shooting variants being the main factor and result so the celtics blow a huge lead to the pistons uh i loved what i saw from the pins the pistons i know they got down big but i thought they were playing with a level intensity of meeting the ball defensively that it felt like boston was going wait you guys are going to try this hard game one like this that was what kind of great about like last night's slate is it it felt like all six teams knew that they were the marquee event and they were taking the games really seriously i thought there was like really intense moments you know because we know there's going to be times during the regular season be like you guys are going to be the ones that are going to be the guys aren't into it tonight um but i i think just hey round of applause for all six teams for treating those those games but i thought boston was a bit like thrown off in the beginning going like god these guys are like getting after us all over the place and you know there's some little things kade knowing which mismatches he's just going to brutalize i think it's pretty clear detroit came into this hoping to have a sar more involved in the offense because if you're never going to be defended and you're never going to make three-point shots you're going to have to and you pair him with durin does that lead to some clogging in a playoff series like is there something you can do with a star to kind of get him going um you know get him going where you feel like he's just more involved you know it's a very simple thing i remember doc rivers telling me about this because i was like why do you do this with this guy or whatever he was like hey man did you like touching the ball when you played basketball you're like yeah loved it he's like same thing with these guys like they all love touching the ball make sure everybody gets a touch it's actually like one of the old ben wallace things they used to do it's why okc used to post up perkins on like the first play but if a star doesn't provide any spacing and he's just kind of a cut guy but you're not letting him handle the ball like there's just limited opportunities for him to feel like he's somebody that's worth even paying attention to and it looked like that was something that was prioritized coming into you know this season so like credit to that um here's kind of maybe the most this will be the breakout video and i already know how this works the celtics are like jalen hurts i know it's worked so i have to say hey i guess this worked i mean look jalen hurts it's worked out twice you make it to two superbowls and you win one but the entire time i watched jalen hurts i'm like something just kind of seems off like i don't like this i don't think it should work i kind of can't believe it did work but because it did work i have to like you want to talk about how cures things or maybe leads you down a path where it's going a little bit too far the way people talk about carl anthony towns right now because they won it last year because brunson put on a cape og was incredible the spurs i think were stupid and cat certainly had his moments i'm not diminishing like some of those huge playoff moments for cat but they're turning this fucking guy to magic johnson right now all right that's an aside observation um when i watch the celtics i go oh okay like i know exactly what you're gonna do if there was a league pass draft the celtics wouldn't go in the top 20 all right but because it's work because they have that championship in their back pocket right they even have a finals run with a different coach going back to 22 when it was still like tatum at the head of it and i'm a tatum fan i'll defend him i think he's terrific i know he wasn't great that opening game but watching them try to get out of the momentum shift where they can't make a shot and paul george was unconscious until they needed one from him he missed two big ones tatum misses one derrick white took a three-pointer last night that's so terrible and i know what the plan is the math is we want you to take like 15 more so in those 15 more three-point attempts we're okay with a couple of these being bad like when people look at tatum's three-point shooting the percentages don't matter declining from that 38 to 40 range he was in his first four years you want to know why it's gone down it's not because he's a bad shooter it's because he's taking so many more shots because everybody has the green light and this has led to incredible offensive efficiency numbers incredible offensive rating numbers throughout this entire missoula run so it's really hard for me to sit here and be like i don't like this and be like oh okay but do you like being number one on offense yeah that would something i'd be interested in yeah i would like to do that it's it's this between hertz and the celtics because i'm forever convinced i am right about watching it and the results tell me that i'm wrong with my conclusion this episode is brought to you by raising canes started back in the day by our friend todd graves look if you're ordering canes you already know the move you get the box combo that's four hand battered chicken fingers golden crinkle cut fries texas toast and a side of cane sauce they stick strictly to the bottom of the canes high quality chicken finger meals made fresh and cooked to order pair it with a freshly squeezed lemonade or iced tea and you're all set for halloween this year canes is rolling out a limited edition 32 ounce purple halloween collectible cup featuring trick-or-treat characters skeletons ghosts mummies and witches carrying pumpkin buckets and canes cups at restaurants nationwide starting october 14th head to your local raising canes and pick up one of canes combo or 32 ounce drink raising canes chicken fingers one love the world series is about to start with two teams that can make history and who better than espn senior baseball writer jeff passan to join us where are you right now jeff and how excited are you double barrel question uh i am sitting in a very old hotel with a broken elevator in st petersburg florida right now uh and heading on my way up to milwaukee in like an hour or two for the 122nd world series ryan and i'm actually extremely excited about this and not like in my typical it's it's the world series time excitement uh i this is the world series of a midwesterners and a a small market grew up in and live now's dream and beyond that it's just a world series between two teams that play really really good baseball and that's the part that excites me most i think it for people who love the game and all of its different permutations this is going to be an absolute treat yeah i'm with you on that and i'm going to dig into some of the numbers and the styles and kind of that thing but i'd like to talk about the path you know because it feels like with tampa having this this run of incredible regular season success getting to a world series you know not that long ago and then milwaukee feeling like hey they're on the cusp they're on the cusp but there's this team out in la that's just going to get in your way and they get revenge the first team in baseball history to sweep the team that swept them the previous year so let's at least start with milwaukee uh they were the best team in the national league all season long uh they are running through the playoffs here how did they get here through years and years of getting punched in the face and not going back to their corner and turtling uh you know this started when david stearns was president of baseball operations there and i know that you know he's you know everybody with the new york mets orbit right now thinks that david stearns is a bum but what david stearns built in milwaukee was something that looked to be sustainable and sustainability ryan takes time to take root um you know the brewers had made the playoffs eight of the last nine years and it took a couple of years of build up before that and they just kept falling short and and last year was the personification of that they felt like they had a really really good team last year and the dodgers came in and held them to one run in each of the first two games at american family field and they're going back in the nlcs los angeles and they hold them to one run in each of the last two games of the series as well it was just like a sweep and i i like i think the brewers is yeah i mean is there it's a perfectly said thing because you're you're like you know you're not taking it for real and it was it was the backdrop to the story of this nlcs we were going like you think you're at this level and let's find out and not only you're at this level like you just shut down this dodgers team and and in the context of all this ryan was the forthcoming labor battle which we could see all the way last year and it was almost like hey can the brewers do it can they be the ones to come from a small market and show that the disparity between the teams at the top payroll wise and the teams near the bottom which the brewers are uh you know it's it's not that big of a chasm it was and i i think it it really got into the brewers heads and and especially pat murphy their manager um he is an enormous personality he's someone who went and uh coached in college and a thousand games at Notre Dame and Arizona State. And only then did he begin his career in affiliated baseball. And he managed in the minor leagues and coached for more than a decade before he got his shot at the brewer's shop at 65 years old. And the only reason that he got that job, he wasn't even the first choice there after Craig Council, their manager, went and absconded to Chicago, which was just. Craig Council was born and raised in Wisconsin. And to leave for Chicago, it was like the personification of the successful Wisconsinite who moves to the big city. You're doing us like that. You're building something up and leaving. And Pat Murphy took that and frankly ran with it. And I think it's created a culture of accountability where he will bench players who he doesn't think are hustling. And also of just the idea. Hey, maybe we don't have the resources that other people do. So let's have attitude that's better than theirs. And they don't give a fuck. That's the great thing about the brewers. It's a clubhouse of I don't give a fuck what I'm looking at, who you are, how much money your team costs, what you've done. We feel so comfortable with the brand of baseball that we play that we think we're going to dictate the terms of any game against you. And that's what they did this year against the Dodgers. And that's what they did against the Dodgers that they didn't last year. They took their style and they imposed it on the Dodgers. And the Dodgers had no answer for it. The payroll part of this is going to be part of the story because of all the hysteria around the Dodgers. And I still don't know like, hey, we had two, we had a mid-market and a small market payroll team. Well, it's what? It's 19th and 28th in total payroll, right? So you're the back half. So that'll get paraded around as like, hey, the Dodgers. I think there's a bigger conversation where it's like, okay, when you have this world series matchup, it doesn't mean everything's solved. I do love looking at this kind of stuff where I looked at this year's payroll for Tampa and in 2010, it would have ranked 12th. I love that stuff because there's just, there's parts of the argument that goes, do you know how behind some of these teams are in the total payroll part of this? But this is when you talk about sustainability, whether it's moving on, kind of in that old Billy Bean way of the A's of like, we have somebody that's really good that we know we can't afford here. We cannot deplete our roster by just focusing on like one or two guys. Both of these teams have more star power than maybe people realize as far as like the non-household names. But if you look at like top 100 rankings and stuff, there's like a lot of players on both of these teams. But Tampa has basically, whether it's the Peralta reinvention or whatever, like subsidize their sustainability with two absolute wins at pitcher and catcher this deadline. Yeah. And getting Freddy Peralta and getting Liam Hicks in there at catcher, like the raise during the deadline were panicky. You know, they were trying to trade for Louisa Rise and the asks from San Francisco were absolutely outlandish. And it wound up San Francisco got a couple of good players back in the Louisa Rise deal with Philadelphia. So, I suppose like the asks were understandable, but there weren't a whole lot of bats that were out there. And Liam Hicks is just the guy who sort of popped up this year. And the catching position, Ryan, for the Tampa Bay Rays has been their bugaboo ever since they decided not to draft Buster Posey when they had the number one overall pick. And now Buster Posey is retired and running another team. So, you can imagine like how long that they've been trying to solve this position. To get Liam Hicks and not just get him, but you said talk about like improvement. Liam Hicks has become a much better thrower, a much better receiver, and his game calling as opposed to Miami where the Marlins call all the pitches for their players like it's a high school game. Liam Hicks is finally getting to call games now too. And it turns out he calls a pretty good game. And so, you know, there's almost the expectation that when you go to the Tampa Bay Rays, they are going to find something that's going to make you better at what you do. It's been the heart and the foundation of their success over the last 15 years of which there's been a lot. Shit, almost 20 now, you know, going back to the 2008 World Series and then 2020 again. And this they hope, they feel like is finally their time to win their series in 29 years of existence, whereas the Brewers are back for the first time in 44 years and trying to win it for the first time in 58 years of existence. And I just, I love what that brings, Ryan. I love what it's going to bring to the crowd. I'm not saying Dodger Stadium was like dead the last couple of years. It wasn't. It's a great place to watch a baseball game. But just the feeling in a city when you know something is possible that has never happened before, it brings a palpable energy. It's a palpable energy. It brings a palpable energy. It brings a palpable energy to those games. And I think it's something that the players feel as well. I want to talk a little about Mizorowski here because, you know, that game one matchup against Scooble is just the kind of thing, and you'll be proud of this because I think it was Sunday night football and I'm going, what are you doing? What are you like? Put that on the smaller screen. Like you have to watch the entire game one of these two aces going at it. Like this is the whole season. Like you love this sport. That's right. And, you know, I always like would tell people like when you give baseball a little bit of a chance and then you kind of get to the story within the game of like, okay, what's happening with the pitcher and how are they attacking this whole thing? Like I thought that was very telling in Mizorowski second postseason start of like what's happening here. And I'll just throw a couple of things at you because we know he hasn't gotten through five innings in the Padre star and in that game. And yet the velocity is the same. And it was like 42 swings in game one against the Dodgers and 21, foul balls. And you could almost see like, this is the part of baseball that I love that it almost felt like the Dodgers just went, we're not going to turn on anything. Let's just frustrate the hell out of this guy. Short, short to the ball. They're not, they're not taking their big A swings back here. They're taking a B swing because they know that the velocity from Jacob Mizorowski is just absolutely overwhelming. And that was it. It would look like a little league lineup against the kid who stayed back and has a mustache and his dad, maybe doesn't show up to all the games where they're just like, Hey, we're going to have to choke up and figure out a way to make contact. So, you know, some of the numbers here are incredible because of how great Mizorowski was in the regular season. If you look at the whiff rate on his fastball in the regular season, it was 40% in the postseason. It's 16% batting average against him. It was 174 in the regular season, three right-handers get a hit against him in that game. And it's like, Oh my God, you know, the, the, the sky is falling here. Uh, three 64 batting average against him. Now the velocity numbers are all the same. If you want to get real weird on spin rate, hand release, the plane of the ball is potentially off an inch here. Uh, is there any concern that there's basically this old school baseball approach to him in these huge spots, which kind of plays into, even though Tampa likes to attack the counts early. Um, I thought that that Dodgers approach, even though they lost was very revealing. Here's the only issue with that sort of approach from the Dodgers. Sure. You can get Jacob Mizorowski out of the game in fewer than five innings. If you try and work the count and if you try and spoil pitches, and if you're not going to get beaten by the fastball, so you cut down on your swing. The problem is then Aaron Ashby is going to come in and he's going to be throwing 99 mile an hour bowling balls from the left side. And then Abner Arriba is going to come in and he's going to be throwing 101 mile an hour sinkers from the right side. And then Trevor McGill is going to come in and he's 97 to 99. And it'll give you a hundred as well. The Brewers average fastball this postseason, Ryan is 98.3 miles per hour average for the whole team, for all, uh, all eight games they've played 98.3 miles per hour. And it just so happens that the Tampa Bay Rays against 98 plus mile per hour pitches this season have the 29th ranked OPS in major league baseball. So if you want to see something that's a potential vulnerability, it's going to be the Rays against velocity. And the Brewers bring more velocity than any team in baseball right now. And what they've done is they've, they've really narrowed because of off days and, and because of the opportunity to do so, uh, they've really narrowed the number of pitchers that they're using. So you're going to see the same guys run out there day after day after day. And to me, the most interesting question in this series is, are the Rays going to be able to win enough games to push the series to six or seven where the familiarity penalty starts coming into play? And by that, I mean, when you see relievers multiple times in a row, multiple days, in a row, like maybe it, you know, if, if Aaron Ashby's throwing in games three, four, and five, you start to get a little bit more used to them. You know, where the release point feels like, you know, how the, the sinker moves or, you know, how, the curveball pops out of his hand. You begin to know all these things and you get a whole lot better at hitting them. The more times a reliever pitches in a single series, the likelier he is to get got. To me, if I'm the Brewers right now, I want to ambush them early and I want to end this series soon because I know that one of my strengths, maybe my most distinct strength in the bullpen, will become less and less effective as the series goes on. A bigger picture thing here is if you look at. It's being billed as a small-ball matchup, although you can argue if you dig into it, it's like, yeah, but they kind of do it different ways. They do everything, dude. That's what this is. It's a matchup of two teams that do fucking everything well. Yeah, and that's part of what I've enjoyed about their paths through this is because there was a point, I think it was like 2018, I'm trying to remember which playoff series, but it was like a shortstop who had hit nine fucking home runs. His batting average was 2-0 something. He's in the postseason. There's a guy on second. There's one out. And he's worried about his launch angle. And I'm going like, what happened to the game I love? Get him over, get him in. Right. And he's sitting there trying to. And it's two strikes. Because I remember the at-bat because I sent Stanford Steve a text because we were both watching the game together. And I go, this is insane. This guy has no chance in turning. On anything. And he's still thinking yard. And it's wild what's happened in this game. So now when you combine these are the two lowest launch angle teams that they do not rely on runs through the home run. There are some different approaches throughout all of this, but it's just kind of a fascinating collection of kind of zagging on what we've accepted in baseball. And I don't know if this is all of a sudden NFL teams going, you know what? Maybe we don't need to pass 50 times. And if they're going light boxes, let's run at these guys. I wonder if you look at this as basically a momentum shift where teams are going to start reevaluating the way they look at their at-bats. I think that when you have outliers and that when you look at recent history teams that have made the World Series, none of them really look like the Brewers or the Rays. This is like the closest facsimile we've seen. You have to go back more than a decade, like the 2014-15 Kansas City Royals. They got to the World Series in 2014. They won it in 2015. You know what it kind of reminds me of, Jeff? Sorry to interrupt. It's that Angels team 24 years ago. Where it was like, all right, every single time, like every pitch, they're putting pressure on us. Like if somebody's at bat, especially at the top of the lineup, they're going to make us field everything. They're going to make us think about everybody taking another base. And I know Tampa's far more aggressive on the base, but there was something that reminds me of that, just to share with you. I think that's totally reasonable. And I think that the love of having balls in play, or the desire for that from baseball fans, is it's a response to where the game has gone offensively. And I think it's why people embrace the Brewers and the Rays as much as they do. But I also don't think that this is something that teams are going to be able to replicate overnight, Ryan. It's not going to be as simple as the Yankees say, let's emphasize fundamentals. And suddenly they're going to be bunting, they're going to be moving guys over, they're going to be hitting behind guys, they're going to be doing hit and runs, they're going to be more aggressive on the base pass. The reason that the Brewers and the Rays are where they are now is because they have had philosophies within their institution that they have preached for well over a decade each at this point. All of the homegrown players with the Rays and with the Brewers have come up being told, being unselfish is a virtue. Sacrificing an out of yours so a team can move up a base or providing a productive out. That's a benefit that you are giving to this team. And so when you have all of these people who have been told you, the individual does not matter. You are playing a role right now and your capacity to play that role is going to make the difference between our ability to win a championship or not. And you have the buy-in that each organization does because it has proven itself so adept at either rescuing careers or creating them. That's what culture is, Ryan. Culture to me in professional sports is having an ideal of what you want to be and then convincing athletes who inherently are going to be selfish because they're looking out for their own careers because those careers are for a finite period and could end with one wrong step and a ligament tearing or a bone breaking. You never know. And still they buy into these ideals because they see that it makes for better players and makes for a better organization. And that's what the Rays and the Brewers are. They're two of the most well-run organizations in sports that happen to have weathered baseball postseason that can take out even the most well-run teams and has done so in the Brewers' case for a long, long time now. Look at Yandy Diaz, leadoff hitter for the Rays. I mean, he doesn't look like a leadoff hitter at all, but then when you look at his numbers, you go, okay, that's a leadoff hitter. And I wonder if there was a different, if he was, you know, like, it's like, would he be a 40 home run guy hitting three or four with another organization just because they'd be like, let's sacrifice on base. Let's sacrifice contact. Let's sacrifice all the things we're talking about. Because when you turn on one, you can turn on one and he's actually like, if you looked at him and said, here's a stat line, you'd go, that doesn't make any sense. And he bats leadoff. No, but then if you looked at how hard he hits the ball, you would ask yourself, why doesn't he get more loft? Like if a guy is consistently putting up high exit velocity numbers. And I think Yandy Diaz is such a great example, Ryan, of what the Rays do best. The Guardians, or the Indians back then, I guess, had Yandy Diaz and he, you know, he was playing some play, like he was a good player, but there was frustration that as hard as he hits the ball, he can't get under it and elevate it. Like that's just not part of his game. And so he winds up going to the Rays in this trade that actually sent Jake Bowers away from the Rays. And now Jake Bowers, the NLCS MVP, going to be going against them in the World Series. But the Rays, the first thing that they do when a player gets into an organization is, and they did this with Freddy Peralta this year, they will sit him down and it'll be a group of people, you know, depending on the player. In Freddy Peralta's case, for example, pitching coach, catchers, bullpen catcher, all the people who are going to sort of have their hands on figuring out, okay, how do we crack this problem? How do we get you back to what you were? And they keep it simple. They say, we want to do a few things here and we're going to try them out. And then they test them, then they iterate them, and then they try and get to the best outcome. With Yanni Diaz, yes, they wanted him to increase his launch angle. And they work on training specifically in order to do that. And then it doesn't work. And when it doesn't work, you have a choice, Ryan, as an organization. You can keep bashing your head against the wall and doing the same shit that doesn't work, and it's the definition of insanity. Or you can acknowledge that this is who this player is. And instead of trying to make him something else, we need to try and figure out how to maximize what he does well. And so even though you have a 6'2", 240 pound, 24-inch pythoned out Yanni Diaz, who looks like a professional wrestler, he's a lead-off hitter. And he's a lead-off hitter not because of how he looks or because of what our archetype for a lead-off hitter is. He's a lead-off hitter because that's what his skills say that he is. He's really good at getting on base, and he's really good at getting the ball in play. And that's precisely who we want at the top of our lineup. Yeah, I love that you mentioned Bowers, too. Because he's played for Cleveland, he's played for Tampa, he's played for the Yankees, he's played for Seattle, and now he wins NLCS MVP. And you're just like, that was a long run. Like, it doesn't, quarterbacks usually don't get that long of a run, right? NBA players, you usually kind of know, like, if this guy's going to be special. I mean, we're staying on this theme here, but as much as you're praising the Rays for like, hey, we get the guy in here and do this, there's an expectation that, like, Milwaukee has multiple examples of doing the exact same thing. These two are like mirror images, man. And what's going to be most interesting, I think, about this series is seeing what happens, like, when the Spider-Man meme comes to life. Like, what happens in the frame after they're pointing at each other? I'm sure in the comic that, actually, is probably a thing, but I've never seen it on a baseball field before. And the, you know, how they're going to try and, like, out-nerd each other, or out-scout each other, or how that's going to manifest itself on the field. I, you know, we have to make picks. I hate making picks because I don't in reality know what the hell is going to happen. And in this series, I can't, I I think Milwaukee's going to win. But would it surprise me if Tampa Bay came out and took it to them? No, not at all. Because I think when you're looking across the field, it's something that looks very similar to you. It can be disaffecting in a way. And, you know, the Brewers pride themselves on clean fielding. Guess what? The Rays had 54 innings in the ALCS and didn't commit a single error and made so many incredible plays with Taylor Walls, who is a perfect example of a Tampa Bay Ray. You know, Wanda Franco is their shortstop, franchise shortstop, given $189 million at like 21 years old, and goes down to the Dominican Republic and sexually abuses a teenage girl and is out of baseball. This was the guy that the Rays were going to be building around. And all of a sudden, he's gone. And he had taken the job of Taylor Walls, who was just a glove-first, classic shortstop. Guy does not hit at all. And the Rays, maybe it was by circumstance, and they had to, but the Rays became comfortable with that. And they believed that Taylor Walls' defense is so game-changing that it doesn't make a difference that he's not hitting. We're getting so much out of him in the field that it's going to be worth it. And some of the plays he made in the ALCS, I don't think another shortstop in baseball makes. The range, the arm, how quick his feet are. When he's on the ground, like getting up from diving for a ball is 80% of the whole thing. Are you going to be able to pop up in time and get yourself in position for your arm to do what it naturally does? Are you going to be facing the right way? Is everything going to be where it is? It's those little technical elements of what Taylor Walls does that are beautiful. And you see that throughout the Rays. That's their identity. That they are the team that's going to do all of the little things better than you. We know looking at the pitching matchups, it's probably a bullpen game, game four for the Brewers here. And again, if you're talking about the back four, which is not how you would start it, it's May. That back four has an ERA of 0.6 right now in the postseason, which is why I'm leaning Brewers too, why it's kind of horrifying when you're like, okay, you're going to be seeing these, these guys that all have these different looks and with the success that they've had. When they pitch Peralta in game four in relief, was there any concern of like, are we jeopardizing Peralta for game six? Like what was the plan there? Because it ended up, you know, he hadn't pitched in a while. So maybe they looked at it as like high leverage work with limitations. But I just wonder if there's any scenario, again, it's the World Series. So you sort of throw it all out. But I was wondering if that was telling to you at all, you know, the use of Peralta. I think we're going to start seeing this more, Ryan, the Marlins who I mentioned earlier, who call their own pitches, they're the Marlins look at their organization sort of like a think tank. What can we do and come up with that's different than what's out there right now in order to maximize value? It's a, you know, think tank might be wrong. Maybe it's like a hedge fund. Like it's sort of the combination of those two things. How do we take policy and how do we try and make smart, smart deals or take efficiency and blend them together? And you saw Sandy Alcantara, who's one of the horses in baseball right now, coming out of the bullpen in between starts. That's his throw day. You know, most pitchers throw once in between starts. And it's, you know, depending on how your arm is feeling, it can be a high to usually medium intensity bullpen session of about 30 pitches. And that's typically just the pitcher and a catcher getting in work. If you're going, if you're going medium to high intensity though, why wouldn't you go and take one of your best pitchers and just try and get an inning out of them? And that, that was it with Freddy Peralta right there. We know if we're the Tampa Bay Rays, that because the back end of our bullpen doesn't have a lot of high velocity, you know, Brian Baker throws reasonably hard. Velocity has been down though. Kevin Kelly, more of like a sinker baller, like Cam Boozer, will be up to 96 or 97, but the Rays don't have those triple digit guys, anything close to that. And in a playoff environment, especially a World Series environment, in which the closer you get, the more you start counting outs, the more you start looking at this as we need to get, you know, we have two wins in this World Series, Ryan, we need to get 54 more outs. How are we going to get those 54? You have to have pitchers ready to come in, in uncomfortable roles, roles that they've not played. They've been in before, perhaps to go and get those extra outs. And that's why I appreciate using Freddie Peralta there. It was as much as anything, I think, not just to use those bullets that he had in a bullpen session, but to get him prepared for what it's like if you're going to come in, in a dirty inning in a World Series game, which we might ask you to do at a point when you're not typically doing it. Now, I appreciate that Kevin Cash, the Rays manager, put him in that position because now it's not going to be as unfamiliar. As it was otherwise. What haven't I asked you about this World Series that you think is important? I mean, you know, the whole labor underpinning of all of this, like I was going to try to avoid that on this pass. So we do another hour on it, but go ahead. Yeah, I love it. Let's go. I just think it's really interesting that of all the years for Major League Baseball, to put all of its chips in these small market teams have no ability to succeed in this current financial landscape for the Milwaukee Brewers, which come from the smallest market. You know, we look at their payroll, it's 19th, like you said, 30th ranked market. And the Tampa Bay Rays, who have been like the poster children for winning on a small budget. And they've done this for, you know, two decades. Decades now to have them facing off in the World Series and to see the way that MLB, which by the way, I do agree with MLB that if you go back and look at like the last 10 years, it is mostly big markets and big payrolls. Like that's a real thing. I don't know though, that this is entirely anomalous. I don't know that this is something that we couldn't see happen again because I do think some of these organizations have figured out, I'm not going to say entirely cracked the code because it's baseball, that never happens. The code is ever evolving, but they've shown at least that yeah, it's possible. There's going to be a small market team that wins the World Series this year. There's going to be a low payroll team that wins the World Series this year. And I hope we have all, you're right, we have all the time to talk about labor. I hope what people take away, Ryan, from this World Series is that you can have a different style of baseball than what we've grown accustomed to in the three true outcomes era where home runs, strikeouts, and walks have been emphasized as the only thing. You can have different offensive styles and still find success. There is no one way to baseball. And I think it's going to make for a beautiful, beautiful series between two teams that do it the right way. And I'll be extremely curious to see how few people watch. I hope I'm wrong here. I hope that people can be baseball fans outside of the laundry that they root for, outside of the players that they root for. Because I know what I'm going to see over the next week and change is going to be one of the best displays of baseball that we've seen in years. Just the heart of the game. And more than that, I'm just appreciating it because I don't know when the hell the next time I'm going to see it is. I want to remind you too is like a real like Midwestern right wing baseball guy that me is like a left wing loon that I will not use the ratings for a Brewers-Rays matchup against the Spurs and Knicks as basketball now overtakes me. I'm not going to use the ratings because I'm not going to use the ratings for a Brewers-Rays matchup against the Spurs-Rays matchup against the Spurs-Rays matchup the same way you right wing guys pointed out the World Series between whether it was the Yankees and Dodgers or the Dodgers and the Ray or Tim, excuse me, Tim Baser, the Blue Jays, which is still going to be one of my all-time favorite World Series ever. I just think that was like an absolute joy. And then they were like, look, you guys, like all you guys get together and you were like, look how much basketball sucks against this Pacers Thunder rating. And I'm just not going to do that. So tell everybody in your group. It's the first time anyone's ever called me right wing. I'm still trying to process this. I'm just having fun with everybody on that one. How about this? How about this though? How about this? How about we stop using ratings as a proxy for the health of anything? How about, we stop following numbers and just enjoy the things that we enjoy and continue to tell the world world about them and hope that they catch on eventually and if they don't they're going and living their best lives and just missing out on something really good yeah like there's there's nfl ratings guy who's in his own tier where oh there was like the christmas schedule for the nba was released and then the nfl one was released and there was this guy that was like here's what my christmas viewing will be it was like nfl nfl nfl and like he had no nba games i'm like you're fucking awesome dude you're the you're as hardcore as it gets uh i just don't want that to happen because we know it's not going to pull the number that the last two world series have pulled but in these these slight fluctuations year to year you can kind of make whatever argument you want to make and i'm just telling you as an nba guy i'm not going to make that argument uh unless i have to i appreciate that you by all means go ahead and there you go make that go ahead and make that argument ryan you do you that's my life advice for this episode be yourself a man in an empty room with echoes yeah there's a lot of echoes here we're gonna get a carpet but guys are not great at prioritizing carpets um say hi to your jack son for us it's parents weekend and i'm missing parents weekend because game one of the world series is going on am i like answer that answer that on on life advice today am i a bad father for prioritizing work over my child i don't know i think parents weekend half the kids don't even want their parents to show up anyway so it seems like you guys have a pretty good relationship but i was i think i had one one weekend my mom came up and she never did it again so you know they're they're just they're playing they're playing a baseball scrimmage and that's what i really want to see oh see that's right he's a ball player yeah yeah i think i think for the world series does he did you buy him a car have you ever bought him a car we've we've handed him down a car and and see i knew you didn't want to like say anything i'm imagining he's had a decent run though you know growing up in the passing household so you can point you can point to his starter jackets you can point to his la gear you know and you can just say hey if it weren't for me in the world series you wouldn't even have any of these things you know i'm so glad you got that reference enjoy the world series buddy i was messing around the other day taking a look at some holiday shopping um a big mid-october get in front of a guy and we're doing some stuff with fabletics and i thought i can get everyone in the family covered here with fabletics you get 70 to 80 off your order i'm serious here as a new vehicle and i'm like oh my god i'm so glad you got that reference enjoy the world series buddy unlock incredible value the moment you sign up there's something for everyone shop men's women's accessories holiday styles and everyday essentials all in one place find something for your partner family and yourself without bouncing between different sites check fabletics.com for special black friday and cyber monday offers as well shop now at fabletics.com slash ryan to get 70 to 80 off everything when you sign up as a new vip take a quick style quiz and be sure to like ryan when prompted to unlock this offer the best styles sell out fast so don't wait again that's fabletics.com slash ryan for 70 to 80 off everything as a new vip one of the biggest reasons kyle took up golfing is so that he could use nicotine pouches i'm serious he's like you know smoking is a bit frowned on from time to time it may be why i moved from california to new york but really it's been his experience with lucy's line of products lucy pouches have the industry's longest lasting flavor nicotine meat technology most pouches hit hard fade fast and call it a day lucy pouches are formulated with an optimized absorption curve that delivers nicotine more gradually for a longer lasting experience that's gentler on your mouth throat and stomach lucy is the only pouch that delivers long-lasting on-demand flavor get 20 off your first order when you buy online at lucy.co forward slash ryan r-y-e-n that's code ryan r-y-e-n and here comes the fine print warning this product contains nicotine nicotine is an addictive chemical you want details bye i drive a ferrari 355 cabriolet what's up i have a ridiculous house in the south fork i have every toy you can possibly imagine and best of all kids i am liquid so now you know what's possible let me tell you what's required i promise i'm not getting emotional today i just put eye drops in right before we started life advice life advice rr at gmail.com maybe some advice is don't do that right before you go back on camera it's okay to be emotional dude you know nba is back college football is expanding that would be the better one it's all happening highs and lows yeah i just love watching those duncan robinson pin downs i don't know what to tell you uh how is everybody i just want to ask everybody how they are man you have so much pats gear dude i'm gonna ask everybody how they are man you have so much pats gear dude i'm gonna do you have a hookup kyle i don't even think you do i think this is all just cash money paid hard earned dollars dude yeah i'm using those discount well yeah you know before i check out i always do a quick google search any sort of any sort of discount codes usually it's a bunch of expired ones but i never stopped trying it's the kind of household i was raised in if trying to think trying to think of some sort of hookup for kyle you know it'd be because i've been collecting patch shit for a while it's the johnny stuff that i'm really you know i'm weighing whether or not it's worth pulling the trigger on stuff so um yeah i don't know i don't i don't have any johnny's hookup it's probably because i didn't go there you know yeah so you can go to stanford c brown just openly ask people to send you stuff is that what we're doing right now just move on before they catch on dude it's just popping the dress you've had it in his bio at one point he did i was gonna say you just have a p.o box in his bio yeah wow send here there's a north carolina there's a north carolina crew sweatshirt that i think i'm missing um it was dope when north carolina sent you stuff you were like i'm committing here like we're not asking you to commit you just wear the shirt just the hoodie dude uh they're having talks though because kyle you know he's got like a pretty bare background if you're watching on netflix uh i'm spicing that up a little bit so you know i don't know what we should get but well we might have something well i have something a little lifestyle thing for kyle oh geez well you guys are just talking about shit all the time i guess that's just what i'm learning because this is just just a teaser for me do you want to be on the sales calls no definitely not what time you can make it happen if you want what day and time are those i'll let you know the thing is is you're always on call you're always on call i don't think you want me calling you as much as i call saruti i can tell you that no i've been there before i get it i get it yeah okay all right again lifeadvicerr at gmail.com a couple saruti feedback ones to get us started did we just hear an oh boy yeah it's usually just not good so maybe it's a surprise maybe it's a nice surprise okay positive saruti wedding playlist feedback you know what i'm glad you brought this up okay let me read the email and then the floor is yours yeah go ahead uh hey ryan kyle and steve 59 155 no gym stats using a 40 pound kettlebell at home two three days a week all right there you go uh i was checking out some norwegian four by four cycling stuff that basically if you do it for six months your brain is just supercharged for like five years so i might buy an indoor bike i don't even know what that is what what what what yeah i don't know the benefits sound amazing yeah i think i pivoted from you know instagram to like most of the stuff i'm sending myself now is different hip exercises and stuff which i know is just reeks of of getting older um all right have a baby girl do december 1st i've never played pickup hoops but i like to think that i could beat a three-year-old steph curry pretty easily i don't know dude steph had range out the womb but i do think i could beat a three-year-old steph my football comp is probably courtland finnegan in both stature and attitude this is a spicy character damn i was thinking about courtland finnegan the other day getting punched siding with my guy steve here on the yearly wedding playlist listenings i was in charge of the music for my wedding and my wife and i have shared playlists saved in spotify for cocktail hour dinner reception etc that we'll have on and shuffling for the few days around the anniversary coming up on night nine years now and it's a nice way to reminisce highly recommend been listening since the sbp days shout out smallman aka small talk aka not shelly uh thanks for all the years of content yeah i've got a lot of feedback on this i i think i am in the right here i think you you're getting clowned on a little bit because like it's i the more i think about it like i spent i talked about this with my friends in the group chat like i spent not like you know in total time weeks putting this thing together but like you know i would just like jot something down i'd throw it added to the playlist like this was accumulation of like months of thinking about this playlist like i'm gonna enjoy it more than just like one night of my life and uh it's still some classic songs on there are you are you big playlist guy i had just i have like playlists for different moods and different things so like i do this all the time and i kind of like go back different things if i want to be in like my high school gym locker room mood i have i have i have got some link what's the title buddy uh virgin jams no it's just called high school i think that's basically it virgin jams is great and i've added other people's playlists and my like my cousin has a throwing ass one which is great great playlist um throwing ass send that one to kyle yeah it's a good one let's see what's on there uh like rack city ludicrous little johnny side boys it's just tiger still a thing i don't know but that song is for sure didn't he just do a boxing match i might have been a different guy that's usually a sign that things are going great yeah yep one last rodeo um if you could celebrity box anyone in the media who would it be suri you can go first anyone in the media oh man like is this like i don't like this person or i think i could beat them take it however you want to take it oh man anybody in the media like i can't lose so i don't know greeny's kind of the the answer i feel like i could would you be able to do it would you be able to do it greeny's bigger than people think though man yeah i don't know he's tall he's six he's bigger than you he's got a bigger frame yeah yeah probably works out more than me too but i still feel like i could do it um you think his cardio you're not at his cardio level yeah no you're probably you're probably right i'd have to knock him out early um and i like greeny so this wouldn't be a hatred thing but just somebody who i think i could actually win you would definitely be meaner when forced to defend yourself yeah oh yeah yeah yeah i don't no doubt about it that's what about you kyle i don't have too many thoughts i'd say you probably just point me to somebody you don't like i think there's a couple of camps that you have you know i don't really have many thoughts i don't about it you know this is my work area my i don't spend too much time thinking about thinking about it there was some guy that was like obsessed with bill and i i almost did like the woge fuck you thing before uh and i i deleted that that was in the drafts a couple times and i i deleted that one i was like as cool as i would feel i don't think it would be perceived that way so i just kind of stayed out of it all smart but for my playlist thing um i've kind of been building a hip-hop one forever but uh oh yeah ryan's you can't ask us and then just quinn kesinick i'm gonna have to do a google search i'm just kidding dude he won goalie of the year twice at john hopkins that guy looks quinn kesinick been on the call for a long time i've never met him so if this gets back to him i'm gonna have to do a google search i'm gonna have to do a google he's gonna be like what the fuck did that guy say um i was just trying to pick somebody as random as i possibly could all right let's get to some emails at risk of losing my family this seems important long time listener always emailed a couple times basketball cop a more caucasian austin reeves rode the bench all through high school only for the game to slow down for me a month after my varsity season since then i regularly average around 20 in men's leagues all right late bloomer love it that's good uh don't read parentheses okay try to do this on the fly let's get right into a 25 raising a one-year-old with my partner to say we were ready to take this on couldn't be further from the truth we moved out west half a year ago because we were offered by my dad and stepmom to move in and relieve some of the financial stress while we both raise our kid and pursue our careers my partner i agreed that she'd be a stay-at-home mom for at least the first year of our son's life putting her venture in nursing school on pause i on the other hand i'm working a full-time job while also clinging on to my desired career um which i'm not going to share so it's a passion for him needless to say i'm not home all that often but i'm trying my best to provide for both them financially um my partner is starting to lose her mind she's with the baby 24 7 rarely gets any help from her in-laws as they are still working in their careers every day while i'm at work is constant messages about how she needs a break rarely gets help and how the baby is a lot i don't blame her the rare day off for me is spent relieving her of her duties we both feel kind of stuck i don't make nearly enough money for us to live comfortably on our own and we moved away from all of our family in the southwest who are much happier to help we've discussed moving back but that would effectively halt the momentum or even kill the pursuit of my career for the record daycare is kind of a non-starter at this point never mind the fact that we probably wouldn't be able to afford it anyway some of the pros of moving back would be a cheaper cost of living and the happiness of being closer to more immediate family my dad and stepmom has gotten contentious not sure if it's because their first time grandparents are just oblivious but they rarely ever help her no matter how many times i've asked them which is further infuriating her long story short every day she's threatening to take herself and the baby back home with her parents i almost said baby back ribs um but that wouldn't make any sense um with her parents so that she's happier that's all yeah yep uh and more willing to help i don't know what the problem is like really uh so what should i do guys it's not like she can just switch places with me and go to work and finish nursing school should i just man up pause my career and so i imagine that thing that he's doing on the side here which is a very difficult industry okay should i just man up pause pursuing my career and get an even more lucrative job do i cut my losses move back home effectively ending my career and i'm not sure what the problem is but i'm sure pursuit am i less of a man for putting my partner through this well let's not get that deep man uh what options can you guys come up with first things first the stakes are high that's that's real high there's no no question about that i think you gotta go saying oj dividing us i think i think saruti's right normally we kind of like dance around like hey what about this what do you think about this one gotta get your arms around this yeah the threats are already being made it's not even hints right they're like these are these are logged so i don't know i may leave with my baby i think she's probably serious yeah there's no really an inference you need to make so and from your perspective like your your your father and what stepmother right are are i mean other than just like you live with them are not being helpful and if you have more help somewhere else and it's going to be cheaper across the living situation maybe you feel like less guilty about that but if they're not helping at all clearly they're kind of clueless that's like a very weird thing i would i would that would annoy me enough to probably want to leave anyway um yeah i don't know i mean i don't know what the career situation is for you like obviously like you know you don't want to you know lose the dream and have that die on the vine but like you obviously have like your priority is now your child so that's kind of if they're going to have a better life and everyone's going to be happier that's probably the move and you got to just kind of sacrifice that i think that's that's the only thing worse than like i'm leaving with my babies i'm leaving my baby and his his name is doug you know so you can't you can't really like i think first of all i think this guy already knows that he has to go back okay uh and i understand as well as anybody you know pursuing the thing that you actually want to do in your spare time on top of having the job like when you pack it up and i've moved from places where i hated living there and then i would get bummed out about this like physical active transition where you know you can talk about the chapters of your life but when you're actually going through the act of like packing up and feeling like a failure that's not a good time that's not going to be a fun day for you all right but what i'm telling you is that the long-term health of the things that really matter your partner i'd imagine your wife at some point you know raising your kid that has to be the most important part of this and i do think you going home and having some kind of attachment to this thing that you really would like to be a part of i don't know that it's impossible you'll be in a different market um where you're explaining where you're living is expensive as hell now um so i imagine it's probably a financial decision that's immediately beneficial to you her mental health is going to be that much better you're going to actually enjoy each other far more because there's not going to be any of this resentment and i think you have to just tell her like look i don't want to abandon this thing because you don't want to do that like i'm not i'm not telling you to to just pack it up because that's that doesn't mean that has to happen maybe there's a delay maybe it's really hard to get back in but i think if you want it bad enough there's probably enough entry-level things that you're he i can't say what he's doing okay um but i'm just kind of vaguely talking around it i think there are avenues where you can still feel like you're connected to this thing that's your dream scenario while solving this major problem that is a much bigger deal right now so i don't and you know i don't even know that you can get mad about the in-laws a lot of people say stuff and go like hey yeah we'd love to help out and all this but they're working they feel like they're providing for you so they're probably thinking maybe they're oblivious to how much help your wife or partner here actually needs so it may not even mean that they're doing anything wrong they just miscalculated and over promised without realizing that they over promised yeah it's just it's a bummer that the perspectives could be so different because he's like excited about this and in the trajectory of where he's at and it's just sometimes it's just really hard to see through the other person's eyes but when it's when they're that close to you and it's that important you just have to be like well i don't get it but but that's what we got to do you know obviously you don't say i don't get what the big deal is but you just you just have to know that and then just like stop trying to understand it yeah stop trying to understand it because it's obviously it's clear that it's a big deal you're not trying to work you know yeah exactly downtime doesn't she's not even working how much downtime do you have uh listen i've been there brother it's not it's you can you can't say hey look in four years when he's in school no that is a very i mean it's incredibly isolating if you're if you're home all day with a baby like and you have no other like interaction with it can you imagine like yeah shout out to the babies yeah well uh and but by the way you have the same interests yeah credit to the emailer though he he is aware like he's like he's not like yeah this is a good email you're doing a good you're doing a good job so like don't you know i it probably sucks to hear this because we're kind of telling you to maybe give up on something or at least put it on the back burner but like being aware is also important here and you're very aware of like problems that are going on that email gives me hope that this is all going to work out because of what you just said because there's other versions of this email that we get is like you know i'm trying here and she knew and when we met and i always told her and then you know it's like dude you're not even you're not thinking about her yeah nearly enough because i just i just had a minor panic attack thinking about being at home with a baby every day and never getting to leave the house you know so for the guys out there thinking about your little lady back at home no breaks now some of you are doing well there's nannies there's all sorts but there's other people that are doing well there's other people that are doing well there's other people that are doing well that's why i kind of lose my mind about some of this content from some of these people out there that are pumping out like how hard their life is and you're just like shut the fuck up you know it's really hard not having a ton of money and being at home with no one else except for a baby that you have to take care of like that shit's hard and it's not because like one baby's tougher than the other baby it's just the lack of like i cannot do anything i want to do i can't even some babies are certainly better hangs let's be honest it's just the lack of like i cannot do anything i want to do i can't even like some babies are certainly better hangs let's be honest totally yeah all right um suburb issue here friends and suburbs always wanting us to drive to him 5 11 3 quarters like it morgan at home gym guy weighted vest i bought another weighted vest don't use it a ton well there'll be another one down the road i don't know i started sprinting on the beach i'm like this sucks yeah i can imagine you get one of these coasts you know yeah i was like maybe don't start with the weighted vest sprints like get back to the sprints and then i was like am i going to slow is it the tide it makes me think i'm going slow it's just a matter of perspective right i'm actually flying yeah i'm probably if you're out on that catamaran i'm hauling i'm flying right now what's that guy 38. all right working on my first uh muscle up all right big calisthenics guy pickup comp sasha vujicic but shorter hair and less annoying i'll get right to it the core group has been whittled away over the years by people moving out of town and we're down to three guys we still managed to get together about monthly that's great for dinner drinks despite kids work and being pretty geographically dispersed within the greater city area we live in a big east coast city but not new york i'm in the city proper one of the guys is in the close suburbs let's call him chuck and another let's call him arthur nice use of names how old are these guys right like we're 74 we still get together for drinks and firing on cocktail waitresses once a month you're like what all right anyway so arthur he's the he's in the far suburbs about 45 minutes from me whenever we get together i propose a location that's reasonable for me and somewhere in the middle this usually means 15 20 minute drive for me five minute drive for chuck and 25 30 minute drive for arthur but arthur really likes to propose locations close to him and i'm in the middle of the city so i'm reversing that equation i really don't like making this 30 minute drive um okay with parking on the way there it's more like 35 and on the way back it's more like 40 since i don't have a parking spot i'm not trying to be a bitch but i feel like when you move to the suburb it's on you to come into the city to meet up that's the trade-off suburbs bigger house more space but you have to commute to stuff for all the good restaurants or they're all in the city arthur made the move to the suburbs because he wanted a bigger house that's on him chuck doesn't really care either way because it's the same difference for him should i not care this much should we pick a place on a rotation if we go by rotation there are a lot of places i'd like to go that we skip because they're too far for arthur i'm being considerate of that but i feel like that consideration isn't being reciprocated for group dynamics understanding arthur is by no means the main guy in the group and chuck and i are much closer to each other than either of us there are that sounds like arthur's on the outs on this one um what do you think about this so real quick you're right if you move far away you have to understand people are not going to come to you as much all right but it's not that insane i mean there still is like some middle ground here also there is no people if a car leaves there's no person that i think is more annoying than hey i live in this cool place so that makes me cool like i i don't i don't is that what he did i kind of i don't like i'm a city guy like he moved out to the suburbs like this is like i don't know man like you left what do you expect some people want to get to the suburbs some people want to stay in the city i don't think it like really matters but i think there's a lot of city people who are like i live in the city so i'm way cooler than you it's like all right man i didn't really ask you about that but cool thanks some west harper guys thanks for offering that years ago no nothing not even this isn't a connecticut thing i think it's more of like a maybe it's a new york boston thing i don't know but like i i just find that kind of odd and annoying like hey man your life took you in this direction i'm glad you're in the city but like we live different lives like doesn't mean that i want to be in a city and i'm happy for you to be there but whatever having said that i'd be listen if arthur's on the outs which it sounds like he's like a like a tier c friend here within this equation he's probably not like if all things were equal i would say just you guys just every third time that person picks where the place is and then you just kind of rotate it's not that you're anti-city guy right now you don't like the email yeah i don't know i just don't like the tone i don't like the idea like oh he moved out to the city so here out of the city so he's like a lesser person okay yeah i don't know i fought this every summer when i was like no fucking way are we coming up to poughkeepsie dude and i got i got him up for guys in manhattan yeah that's it it was you know i was fighting it for so many times i know i know i get i've given this up for years i would get him up for like asking me to get lunch in toronto you know like dude it's not listen don't don't just start bringing up all it's not even shitting on poughkeepsie like new york city it's not i get it you live there because you don't you don't want to leave i get it i get it i didn't really understand the walking bridge situation we had up here i was trying to show them but listen at that that's on you buddy i guess my question i do have to spot harder i do have to maybe that could be my new background but um is it that arthur's gonna is he not gonna go is he one of those guys who's like well if we can't do this i'm not gonna go because that's just easy then then that's easy and he'll just miss a couple and he'll he'll drive to the city he will uh i thought this was going to be about like hosting or something but no this is just like picking a spot you know what's interesting like are you the kind of friend group that like you can or you can like add new things into the uh into the group chat here it's like hey flip a coin heads or tails siri go ahead or whatever like is there a way you can just say like either you win or you lose this one or if he's if he really is going to fold his arm and say well i'm not gonna i don't think i'm gonna make this one boys then you just say okay and then you and the other guy just hang out and i think i think nature will take its course and he'll just he'll bow to the to the city plants eventually he might he might miss a couple but i think he'll he'll come he'll come to the city plants eventually he'll come to suggesting places near him like that's it steve is 100 yeah i gotta be honest with you i'm not feeling this guy i'm not it's not my i'm my favorite i don't know why i'm just so amused by sruti right now um this is a classic one right i like the people that live in cities never want to leave like look i think the boston one is a little bit more understandable because it's a smaller city where it kind of sprawls out where i feel like in new york city you're making a real decision there like this is where i live and i'm not going to visit you in greenwich i'm not going to ride you know rockaway beach not happening so the the advantage you have in new york city that i don't think you have in boston is that if you're in the friend group and you're the guy that lives in new york city you just be like yeah i can't make it and then they can't get retaliation on you because they're going to come into new york city and everybody wants to hang out in new york city uh i don't think it's the same way for boston especially as you get a little bit older like yeah sure the celtics games sas games bruins and all that kind of stuff um yeah there's more restaurants and everything but i always felt like the migration west from boston usually led to like slowly phasing yourself off of boston in a way that i think people that live outside of new york city like need new york city uh because it's fucking awesome right So, in Boston, I just don't know that you're going to get away with it. Now, it doesn't even seem like you like this guy all that much. So, if I were applying like the New York City suburb rule that I'm explaining here, again, some people could think I'm totally off on this. I don't think that I am just because of firsthand experience of friends that have all gone through this. Right. But I don't I don't know that you can pull it being like if you say to him, hey, I'm not coming out all the way there. The cooler shit's here. I stayed here. You're the one that moved out there, especially if you're all Massachusetts guys. This is going to turn into some sort of feud where even if you both really liked each other, you wouldn't hang out to prove some stupid mass whole point on top. I kind of love that. You got to like throw a little of that in this equation as well. But just start like see what happens, man. I would I guarantee if you say, hey, I'm not going to come out there. We've got to get on this rotation thing. He's going to take a personal. You've already taken a personal. And I see a future where you just see less of Arthur, no matter what's going on here, because I understand like you not wanting to go all the way out there. And, you know, when you're factoring in guys want to go out and drink and everything, I don't look. The reality is there's there's the two drink people that are really strict about it. And there's some people that don't even want to have the second drink if they're going to have to drive. Then there's other people are going to push the limits of it a little bit that are going to be like, hey, I'm fine. But they're just going to say, I'm not going to be doing this for thirty five minutes. So I'll just get an Uber. Everybody, I guess. I don't know, man. Like, I obviously I live I don't live in a city, but a 30 minute drive to me is like not much at all. It is when you live in the city. You're right. But he said it was like thirty five minutes with. You know, parking, you know, whatever. He's adding some stuff in there. Yeah. Like, all right, because he doesn't have a spot in the way back. I still think if Arthur's your friend, like part of being a friend is, you know, like doing each other favorites here and there, like, you know, not putting your friend first in certain instances. Like, this is why there just needs to be a rotation. If you want to keep hanging out with Arthur, why can't there just be a rotation? That seems like the answer is probably you do this. You say to Arthur for every two Boston visits, I'll do one summer visit. Fair. Yeah. Yeah. And if he's still it's arbitration, he's still anti, then just be like, all right, well, then we'll see when you come on down. And I promise you, I promise you he'll come after missing a couple of those things. He'll he'll come around. I made out with your sister and third and we were 13. You say third grade. Well, he stopped himself. He stopped himself. Hey, now, what happened? People don't forget. Yeah. All right. I think that'll do it for the show today. We'll do a quick Bears Pats pick before. I think by the time people hear our next episode, it'll happen already. You're a Caleb guy tomorrow night. Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, I'll be rooting for Caleb Williams against the Patriots. I know that. I'm just saying you think he's going to win. I do think he's going to win, but I think he's going to win big. Oh, side bet. Sorry, DK. What do you want to bet? This one's personal. All right. How about this? If I lose, you can expense a full Poughkeepsie back. You can take some photo, and then you could put it up. A mural? Yeah, it's just whatever kind of Poughkeepsie mural. I imagine it's probably a digital photo thing that gets blown up, and then I'll just pay for that. I don't think I want to pay, although that would be- You know, I think Tom told me that he could make that happen for me. I think I need something else. What about some Johnny's gear? Expensive Johnny's gear. What do you think about that? One hoodie, one t-shirt. Done. Standard shipping. Yeah, yeah, I'll wait. There. What do I get? I get to pick your Johnny's gear. That Ryan buys? I feel like that's a lose tie. I think we're out of time, guys. Damn. We got to close the show. But you heard it here first. Okay. All right. No problem. No problem. Good luck to the Pats. A lot of history. A lot of history in those parts. Thanks to Susie. Thanks to Tom. Thanks to Kevin. Thanks to Kyle. I don't know why the end of the show was so weird. Maybe it's because I completely murphed that. Stupid sister joke at the end. Potentially. All right. We'll be back. What do we got? Danny Cannell in the mix tomorrow? Cannell and Sandoe is returning. Yeah. I know where the end of the show was a little weird. There's something I wanted to say. Sad note here. But we lost Dan the Duke Davis. He was a staple at ESPN updates. And I don't know what it was about him. Like, you knew he was a legend. As the announcer, Flutie did it. Flutie did it. All that kind of stuff. He was just always like, he always felt so important when he would grab you to say something to you. Because he didn't talk to that many of us. Like, he wasn't like somebody who showed up to work and was like walking into the control room to just chat away and bombs, like all this stuff. Like, he was so good at what he did. He'd sit in that little room and he would do his prep. He would just crush every single update. The voice is like, one of those absolutely branded voices. Like, as soon as he's saying your name, you're like, this is incredible. But in the times where he would hear you say something, he'd be like, hey, that was really good or whatever. Or just if he wanted to like chat about a game from that weekend, it always made you feel really, really special. And just thoughts with his family and a guy that so many of us worked with on so many of those days and was a part of, I don't know, 15 years of shows for me. So, yeah, again, Dan the Duke Davis. That'll do it for the show today. And of course, please subscribe. Brian Russo, The Show. Barstool Sports. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.