Best of the Week on The Dan Patrick Show

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Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox Sports Radio.

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Speaker 2: We bring in Don Mattingly. The numbers, the official numbers are five and thirty one games over thirty six seasons as a player, coach, manager, and you're going to your first World Series. How's it feel?

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Speaker 3: It feels pretty good, Dan. How many shows you probably got.

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Speaker 4: The similar amount of shows? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yes, And I haven't money either.

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Speaker 4: I haven't won to oh you one for sure.

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Speaker 2: What's your role as a bench coach for the Blue Jays.

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Speaker 4: Anymore? It's getting It just feels less and less.

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Speaker 3: I think when I first came here, John was, you know, in his first year of.

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Speaker 4: First full year of managing.

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Speaker 3: I thought, you know, I felt like my role was to come in and just be a voice for him and be another set of eyes as he went through it.

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Speaker 4: It feels like it's getting less. I kind of look at the Marlo Hale and myself for here.

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Speaker 3: We're both over sixty and I call us the first respective coaches.

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Speaker 4: We've got to keep things in perspective.

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Speaker 3: As the season goes and it gets a little crazy, you lose a couple of games, and you got to try to keep it in perspective. But in general, you know, going through the game with John and staying up. I do more of the offensive side of Hey, you want to pinch it here, we want to run, you know, just kind of staying on top of a few things, cause he's usually thinking about pitching or what he's going to do next inning or whatever, and I just try to make sure I'm just kind of keeping up with a game for him.

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Speaker 2: Love is going through your mind when you're trailing in Game seven, Uh.

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Speaker 1: You know what?

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Speaker 4: Trust?

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Speaker 3: This has been a team that all year long, like through this postseason, we've came down to like we need to win last day of the season to give ourselves a few days and get healthy, get our pitching together.

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Speaker 4: We get down a couple.

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Speaker 3: Of games, we lose the game in New York, we got to lead, it could have could have turned And all year long, this has been a team that I could sit here and go, you know what, I trust these guys. And that doesn't mean it's going to work out. But for the most part, these guys show up and they play.

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Speaker 4: They're a team and they are really fun to be around.

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Speaker 2: Of all the teams that you're going to face in the World Series, and it happens to be the Dodgers. What are you thinking when you go back to Los Angeles? What kind of feelings?

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Speaker 4: No good?

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Speaker 3: I had a great run there in LA and walked away from there, you know, feeling good. Didn't feel like, you know, any negativity towards those guys, and and then going back it's it's really more it's kind of like going to New York at this time of year.

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Speaker 4: It's like, hey, what do.

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Speaker 3: We have to do to win a game?

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Speaker 4: Right?

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Speaker 3: And it's it's business. It's it's pretty much that for us. Obviously, I've never been in a World Series, so I'm gonna enjoy this. I've been enjoying this ride with team again. It's a fun team. It's a team you can trust. It's probably the best word you can say as a coach or a manager is that you can trust these guys.

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Speaker 2: What's it been like though, all of those years where you're watching somebody else win a World Series or go to a World Series?

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Speaker 3: You know, different phases of that. Obviously, early earlier as a player, you always feel like you're going to get there, always felt like we were going to win it, you know, any level that I've ever been we've won, and I always felt like we were going to win in New York. As a player, I felt that way. As a coach, I felt that way a coach. In LA I felt that way. Miami maybe had one year there, we had a little run, but it wasn't quite as good as I would have liked there. So yeah, I've always felt like I was going to get there and have a chance to win.

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Speaker 2: What's it like now to have a younger son. I think you have three grown boys, but now a younger son watching add on the big stage in a World Series.

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Speaker 3: It's it's been a lot of fun watching him go through this and the difference I think with my older boys, you know, we never got on this run, so they didn't do this, you know, extra month of baseball where you get to go and you get to have the celebrations and you get to go through, you know, losing the first couple of games here and having to you know, have some must win games and.

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Speaker 4: Different spots on the road.

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Speaker 3: But to have him go through it and kind of see his.

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Speaker 4: Love of baseball grow.

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Speaker 3: And that's what's been kind of fun this year is he's just really kind of gotten into baseball. You know, Kirk gets a couple of homers. The next thing you know, Louis wants to be a catcher, you know, and then it's like, okay, this is great, you know. So it's been fun to watch him go through it.

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Speaker 2: But go back, and this is what ninety five, when you hurt your back or you may have to make that decision that you're going to retire, and how old are your boys then like, if it doesn't happen, you're going to continue to play for a little while longer. And that team was going to World Series, so you may have held on even longer, but you wouldn't have been at home with your boys at that time. So I don't know, can you look at it as a blessing that you did get hurt and then you retired so you could be at home.

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Speaker 4: One hundred percent? I don't.

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Speaker 3: I feel like I had a choice at that point in ninety five and I was actually starting I finally had kind of found a routine, you know, with my back that I was able to start to figure out, Okay, I can play, do this much work and I stay fairly healthy. Right, So that part I'd kind of figured out. But the family part I couldn't figure out because all I was doing in ninety five and really ninety four, I probably would have retired after ninety four if the strike didn't them along. All I was doing Dan was in Jersey. The kids weren't really coming anymore. They were at an age where they were starting to play Little League and they didn't want to come to New.

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Speaker 4: York and sit around and do nothing.

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Speaker 3: So all I was doing off the road was come, I'd go home, I'd go to the bedroom, I'd go down through the kitchen, grab a cup of coffee, and go to the ballpark and rinse and repeat every day. And that just wasn't enough at that point. And for me, so the baseball part I still loved. I still felt like I was I was starting again, starting to get where I could produce again.

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Speaker 4: But that other side of it, like the thought of my.

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Speaker 3: Boys me trying to play more and not being a part of their lives.

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Speaker 4: I just couldn't do that. And I'm so glad I.

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Speaker 3: Did what I did, and because I don't think they would have known me near as well if I would have kept playing. And yeah, I lost out at the.

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Speaker 2: End of the day.

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Speaker 4: I didn't get rings.

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Speaker 3: I may had a chance for but I would do I would not I would not change it at one one bit.

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Speaker 2: Don Mattingly, the Blue Jays bench coach and a former batting champion. You know, we met in nineteen eighty three, and there is actually a report that I did on CNN on you. I think it's from nineteen eighty four. It's on YouTube, and I will say, I look pretty damn good back then. But you you had that mustache. You look pretty good back then.

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Speaker 4: I don't even want to look at those pictures because you feel you feel good on the inside. You feel the same I. Did you see the mirror and you're like, ooh, the skin. The skin was a lot tighter in those days.

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Speaker 2: Did you How did you feel about Donnie Baseball as a nickname?

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Speaker 3: You know what, I didn't mind it because number one came from Kirby. It was just awesome, awesome guy who kind of he's started this baseball baseball baseball thing.

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Speaker 4: At a dinner we would do and.

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Speaker 2: Gave you that nickname, Kirby, Oh wow.

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Speaker 4: And it started in Rochester, New York. We did a dinner uh for Kenny Kaiser. Uh passed away. Got the rest of the soul.

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Speaker 3: But we do it from every year and you kind of hang around afterwards, you know, you might have a few drinks and Kirby's talking and gets going.

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Speaker 4: And Donnie Baseball baseball, Donnie baseball, and it just kind of hit and it stuck somehow. I don't know how it got passed on.

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Speaker 3: But then I thought later, I said, you know, I've probably been called a lot worse.

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Speaker 4: So I'm like that suld like that one. That one's okay.

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Speaker 2: Critique, well not critique, I guess analyze. Show he tani at the plate.

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Speaker 4: Oh, I probably shouldn't do that. Probably shouldn't do that.

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Speaker 3: But I mean, I haven't looked at him really really close. But I think, like anyone, there are places to go to get him out right, And it doesn't mean you can go there all the time. That means you got to find different ways to get there.

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Speaker 2: But the strategy of having him lead on. Could you imagine in today's game you might lead off?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's it's different, right. I think it depends on your lineup, right. I think the year, one of my biggest years, really put me in a two hole.

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Speaker 4: And that was ahead of his time.

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Speaker 3: You know, hitting in front of windfield behind Ricky, So that was a great spot to hit it. I always felt like the two hole was probably the best spot to hit in if you have a really if you have a deep lineup, and that means you're eight and nine guys are getting on base, which for me in that that year, ik was Willie Randolph hit ninth with maybe a four.

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Speaker 4: Hundred on base and then Ricky. It was just a perfect spot.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, the game, I think we've we've seen it with Atlanta when they did it was so lair in the World Series, they threw him in the one hole.

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Speaker 4: He hit some big homers. It gets him an extra at bat because that spot comes.

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Speaker 3: Around if it's a close game in the ninth, you're getting to the ninth that that spot's probably coming around for the extra at bat.

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Speaker 4: And who do you want to.

00:10:12
Speaker 3: Get at a you know, a leadoff guy that may be a high own base guy, but or do you want the guy that can change the game right there?

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Speaker 2: So you don't want to give me any secrets, You don't want to give the Dodgers any secrets on what you think about Tony.

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Speaker 3: I mean, probably the whole league tries to do the same thing Dan with the information that they have today, you know, everybody knows where you can go or where the spots are to get him out. But that doesn't mean when he's swinging good, he doesn't get there. And it doesn't mean you can just keep going there, right, You can't just keep doing it. You got to find different ways to get to that spot or those spots, whatever they are.

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Speaker 4: And that's that's what makes it tough. It makes him tough.

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Speaker 3: Mookie, I mean, Freddy, they got a club now, so you know we're going to show up and play. So it'd be a series.

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Speaker 2: What's your favorite Ricky Henderson's story?

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Speaker 3: Uh, I probably look at it, think of it differently. I think not necessarily story, just memories right of You know, when we go to Oakland, Ricky would he invited me out. We had lunch his house with his girl and just seeing his place, and I remember he had this beautiful weight room. I'm like, man, this equipment's nice, and I said, you use this in the winter. He's like nah, I basically do push ups and sit ups and run sprints. So he had this beautiful weight room that he never really used. But I just have memories like that. Just him and I just kind of hit it off, you know, on the field and off, and I.

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Speaker 4: Thought that was That's what I think about.

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Speaker 2: Did he talk in third person to you?

00:11:50
Speaker 1: No?

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Speaker 3: I mean I think we all kind of like take this stuff a little further than.

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Speaker 4: It needs to go, right. But you know, Ricky, Ricky was sharp for me.

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Speaker 3: He was a he was a player that knew what he was doing and and.

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Speaker 4: And was smart.

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Speaker 3: I felt like off the field too, Uh, wasn't doing crazy stuff. Uh.

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Speaker 2: Do you feel like an underdog in this series?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, a little bit.

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Speaker 3: I mean I think you have to. I mean, the Dodgers have got experience. Uh you know, they won last year. They've showed it. You see a little bit of the bulls like in Michael's years with the regular season doesn't really It's like if they get in, who wants who wants to play him? So they've got that experience in that pedigree. But the great thing about our club, and I say I've said it a couple of times, they just show up and play. It feels like sand Lot with our guys. I mean, I'm okay, they look like they're having fun. They've always just showed up and played. We lose two or three in a row during the season, they show up and play. We won five or six in a row. They look the same. They show up and they play, And I think that's what we'll do. I think we'll show up and we'll play pretty good baseball. We catch the ball, we run the bases decent, we can put it in play.

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Speaker 4: A little bit. Their starting pitching is really really good. Uh.

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Speaker 3: Those those you know, the four guys they threw that last series, they're all number ones. So I mean it's it's gonna it's gonna be a battle.

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Speaker 2: Do you think about the Hall of Fame? Uh?

00:13:22
Speaker 1: Now?

00:13:22
Speaker 3: And then more when people bring it up, only you know, and I've started. I think I've changed over the years. You're kind of like, man, whatever, I've played my cards or whatever.

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Speaker 4: But I think I look back at it now.

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Speaker 3: And go, you know what, there's not a guy in there, a pitcher in there that I don't think I could hit.

00:13:42
Speaker 4: There really isn't. There really isn't. There's never been a guy that I didn't think I could hit. And I know that if I was on.

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Speaker 3: The field with those guys, I wouldn't be out of place. And that's but after that, I don't what am I gonna do?

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Speaker 2: You keep going, Yeah, but we put in guys who got injured and their careers cut short. We do this in all sports, especially football.

00:14:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dan, you know what, you know, I'm not going to politic. I'm just going I basically did what our club does, showed.

00:14:13
Speaker 4: Up and I played.

00:14:14
Speaker 3: Now I'm raising boys and getting along in baseball, getting older.

00:14:19
Speaker 4: I think I'd be just as happy.

00:14:22
Speaker 3: Being a bench coach or an advisor or coaching Louie's tenu team. You know, it's just like and just get a different perspective over time.

00:14:33
Speaker 4: So that part of my life is those cards have been played.

00:14:37
Speaker 3: But I do feel like, like I know.

00:14:41
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be out of place on a field with any of those guys.

00:14:43
Speaker 2: So Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, no no problem, bring them on.

00:14:48
Speaker 4: No yeah, I say bring them on. I don't say no problem. You know what I mean. There's guys that give you problems that.

00:14:57
Speaker 3: But you figure them out. You got to try to figure it out. And Randy was kind of the opposite. Hit Randy early really well, as he started to get the slider over, he'd give me more and more trouble, all right, And that doesn't mean that like Carlton, I faced him, but he was he was kind of past his prime. I didn't get to see the nasty slider and all that. But I just think I just know that I figured it out. I figured it out. I've never felt like anybody really ever overpowered me, and nobody that I felt like throw too hard for me, any of that kind of stuff, and just kind of always figured it out.

00:15:34
Speaker 2: Great to talk to you again, Congrats, have fun. We'll be watching, and thanks for joining us.

00:15:40
Speaker 3: Thanks Dan, It's always good to talk to you. And I didn't get thrown out of a game this year.

00:15:43
Speaker 4: I know.

00:15:44
Speaker 2: I thought I could have gotten a uniform at Toronto Uniform. I got your Dodger uniform over there, still on display in the Mannicu.

00:15:51
Speaker 4: Oh my, oh my.

00:15:53
Speaker 2: And I have your hit Man poster in the man Cave as well.

00:15:58
Speaker 4: I like it.

00:15:59
Speaker 3: I like it d him all right, you guys, have a good one.

00:16:02
Speaker 4: Thank you.

00:16:02
Speaker 1: Don be sure to catch the live edition of The Dan Patrick Show weekdays at nine am Eastern six am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app. It's me Rob Parker.

00:16:15
Speaker 5: Check out my weekly MLB podcast, Inside the Parker for twenty two minutes of pipe in hop baseball talk, featuring the biggest names of newsmakers in the sport. Whether you believe in analytics or the icast, We've got all the bases covered. New episodes drop every Thursday, So do your sofa favor and listen to Inside the Parker with Rob Parker on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: Prior to joining Front Office Sports, Ben Horny spent twelve years at Law three sixty and he oversaw sports betting, mergers, acquisitions, capital markets, private equity. He's been covering this latest story with the NBA, and really it's big than that. Than just the NBA. It's the FBI with over thirty people arrested involved in gambling schemes that had to do with poker, also apparently sports betting as well. Ben kind enough to join us. Give me the tone of that press conference.

00:17:13
Speaker 6: Ben, Yeah, Dan, thank you so much for having me. It was it was How do I describe the tone? First of all, there was no internet, which was not great for US reporters. It was pretty intense, very serious. There were more than twenty officials including Cash Bettel, director of the FBI. Very serious. They said, this is the tip of the iceberg. Both of these investigations are still ongoing.

00:17:38
Speaker 2: Okay, let's start with the Chauncey Billups allegations and Terry Rogier and Damon Jones. What were they alledged to have been involved in?

00:17:49
Speaker 6: So there were two things. One was this a legend. By the way, they're all alleged. Still everyone's and said until proven guilty. They made sure to make that clear. There was one operation called Operation Royal Flush that involved the poker scheme and basically they would dupe everyday people into playing these games with high profile people like Chauncey Phillips and Damon Jones. But everyone else besides the victim knew was in on the scam allegedly. So they were using technology to like read cards. They said something about X ray technology where cards would be faced down but they could still see what cards they were, and they were duping people out of thousands, you know, ultimately it was more than it was millions of dollars, Cash Pattel said, So that was that was that. It was when Chauncey Bilts was a former player, Damon Jones former player. They're both coaches.

00:18:40
Speaker 2: Very not cool. Where what's the timeframe on this? Because Chauncey Billups coached last night? But when is he alleged to have been involved in this gambling ring?

00:18:52
Speaker 6: So it's relatively recently, and by that I just mean within a few years ago. It was he was a former player, now he's been retired for a while.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't.

00:19:00
Speaker 6: I would need to go read the indictment, which I have right here, hundreds of pages to find out exactly the year, but I think that it was a legend before he was a coach. This has been going on for years, they said.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: But why is it surfacing now?

00:19:13
Speaker 6: So they've been investigating for a handful of years, collecting evidence, trying to figure out, you know, how they could nail them. And they obviously have enough evidence now that they felt they could charge these people. They arrested Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier this morning, along with others. The other interesting factor here is that they said that the Italian mob is I mean, this is like a Hollywood movie. They made a mention of that, but it is real life. Has the NBA responded, I have not been in touch with the NBA. I did ask at the press conference whether the NBA cooperated with the investigation, and they said, yes, the NBA cooperated.

00:19:50
Speaker 2: What do you think is next?

00:19:53
Speaker 6: Well, like I said, it's the tip of the iceberg. So you know, now Chauncey Billups and Terry Rose here, they're going to be arraigned in court. And for the wins by the way in Oregon and Florida today, we don't know exactly when. And they're you know, they're charged. There's going to be trials moving forward. I think the FBI and the law enforcement agencies they're still asking people, hey, if you know anything about this, you know, we're open ears. They're still investigating. So the the implication is that further players, coaches, et cetera could still come out.

00:20:25
Speaker 2: But are we talking about fixing games? Betting on games?

00:20:29
Speaker 6: But that was so that's the other There were two investigations right there with the poker one. The other one which is what Rosier is involved in? Players like Rosier and you know he's the only player and John Taye Porter is the other one that was part of this. They were giving inside information about they were going to claim that they were injured. They were going to say they're going to play poorly. They were telling other people involved in the scam so that people on the outside would bet on you know, Terry Rozier is going to score less than ten points. And then Rosier would exit the game in the second quarter saying that he's getting a leg cramp. You know, that's what it was. I mean, this was being reported for a while, but now the charges are really out there. That's what was happening.

00:21:07
Speaker 2: Ben. Thank you. I know you got a busy day. Thank you taking some time for us.

00:21:11
Speaker 6: Thanks so much.

00:21:11
Speaker 1: Dad.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: That's Ben Horny from Front Office Sports covering finance, private equity ownership, and gambling. So you got the crime families in New York, you got poker games, X ray tables, you got people wearing contact lenses or glasses that can read a marked card. Then you have prop bets maybe with gambling, and that's what Terry Rozier Johnte Porter was involved in. But did Chauncey Billups lure people to poker games knowing that those people were going to be cheated? And I think that's what it sounds like he's been arrested with. And you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars here that added up to now I think around seven million dollars. Who that's wild, It's wild, yeah, Pully.

00:22:07
Speaker 7: And you asked again, Chauncey Billups is not a victim of this, He's allegedly a participant.

00:22:13
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, but imagine that your job is to lure, not that If Damon Jones said, hey, do you want to come to a poker game, I'd go, Sure, that's Damon Jones or Terry Rogier. But Chauncey Billups Okay, And then are you getting a kickback? And if so, what kind of kickback? Or you I'm sure that you're getting a kickback. Let's say, you know, the house is making seventy five thousand dollars we're going to give you, but you got to make it worth his while. That's what I don't understand, because he's not really playing poker then, But I don't you know, maybe Chauncey Billups owed somebody, hey, you want to pay down your debt and here's how you do it. Now, Once again just speculating, but just trying to figure out. Chauncey Phillips has done well in his career. In his NBA career. Now was this in between when he retired to becoming coach of the Blazers. Sounds like it, but wow, how much could you make where you go? This is worth it? Now? Once again you never do these things, and you go, what if I get caught? They're probably thinking nobody's going to know about this, it's just us. But all of a sudden you bring in the mafia, the crime family. Man, my antenna would go up. I'd be like, uh yeah, Paul.

00:23:42
Speaker 7: The one thing journalistically is Lebron James is going to be asked about this with his friendship, long term friendship with Damon Jones, the player they played on different teams together. The Athletic and the Times. The New York Times already running different article about things Damon Jones.

00:23:56
Speaker 8: Is accused of.

00:23:57
Speaker 7: So it's one of those things. Whether obviously not a choose anybody, but you have to answer for It's gonna.

00:24:03
Speaker 8: Be tough week.

00:24:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you can just say, you know, I have clearly no idea.

00:24:06
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm just saying that.

00:24:07
Speaker 2: He's not going to be answering and he's not around, right, you can't talk to Lebron he's not around. I don't think. Yeah, all right, then the Blazers players too, a bunch of young guys. Yeah.

00:24:18
Speaker 8: Hey, let's ask you about what's going on with your head coach?

00:24:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, tip of the Iceberg.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to listen live.

00:24:38
Speaker 2: John Jashaw look at him, six time Emmy winner, Radio Hall of Famer. He of course was on Entertainment tonight. Man. He gave us round Ball Rock and he has come out with a first album of all original music. It's called Sports and he can talk about that coming up as well. We've talked about that round Ball Rock helped put your two kids through school. But what are you making off of this round Ball Rock?

00:25:08
Speaker 9: In nineteen ninety, when I heard the story, when I when I heard that NBC had had gotten the rights to the NBA back, I would I'm in that sports ecosystem right because I'm working for the network doing other stuff, and I thought, well, what would a sports theme? What would an MBA theme sound like? And as the story goes, I woke up in the middle of the night in majev France as I was covering the Tour de France and had a melody in my head and it was k k k k k k k k k kick can k And I knew that. I knew that if I if I didn't, if I went back to sleep, and I'm sure you've had this feeling, you have a great idea and you go back to sleep.

00:25:47
Speaker 8: And it's gone.

00:25:48
Speaker 9: I didn't have an I didn't have a tape recorder or anything to put it down sheet music, and so I called my answering machine in the middle of a nine at two am.

00:25:56
Speaker 8: And recorded that.

00:25:58
Speaker 9: And when I got home the two seconds you know, k kick and kik kick, can't kick and kick kick gang?

00:26:04
Speaker 8: Where on my answering machine?

00:26:06
Speaker 2: Okay? Can I play that. One of the portions of this is John Chash calling himself.

00:26:15
Speaker 9: This is a message for me about the NBA theme. Here's an idea.

00:26:18
Speaker 4: It goes like this.

00:26:27
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's the original. The original.

00:26:31
Speaker 2: I've been played over twelve thousand times, John, that's sports history.

00:26:37
Speaker 9: Well and and uh, it's supernatural for me because the first time it was on the air and I was sitting in a bar watching it come on the air. I had I had written hundreds of themes for for CBS, in particular, uh, you know football, everything for football to tennis, and so this wasn't just another theme. It was sort of bouncy and and not as epic as most of the stuff that I But.

00:27:02
Speaker 2: Are you telling people in the bar, hey, that's my theme?

00:27:06
Speaker 8: I wrote that, Yeah, I did. It didn't go well.

00:27:09
Speaker 9: I was sitting there by my I'm in Atlanta and San Antonio, I think it was San Antonio versus the Lakers, and I had no family or any of their friends in Atlanta.

00:27:18
Speaker 8: So yeah, I went to a bar knowing it was going to come on the air.

00:27:21
Speaker 9: And back then, you know, only one network had the NBA, so it was on every TV set and it was really loud, and there was a lot of people in there watching it. And so I'm sitting there for a while, and after the third time it came on the air, I couldn't help myself anymore, and I said to the bartender do you hear that song?

00:27:34
Speaker 8: And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:27:36
Speaker 9: He never did, right, And I go that I wrote that, you know, and he goes, oh, yeah, you want another beer?

00:27:43
Speaker 4: You know?

00:27:44
Speaker 8: And that was it.

00:27:44
Speaker 9: You know, so two days ago whatever it was last Tuesday, I'm sitting in a bar in New York City after doing the Today Show with my family Italian family, watching four TVs.

00:28:00
Speaker 8: They're twenty five years later.

00:28:02
Speaker 9: You have thirty five years later since its debuted, and so yeah, and we got the same reaction.

00:28:07
Speaker 2: But when I go to one of your concerts, how long do I wait before you bring out round Ball Rock?

00:28:14
Speaker 9: Well, it's it's really strategic because my concerts are women who have dragged their boyfriends or their husbands to a John's concert, and they do that because they're looking for.

00:28:24
Speaker 8: A little relationship cred, right, the little little yeah. Uh.

00:28:28
Speaker 9: And so the husbands are are like this, you know, we joke about in the band, you know, and so we save it until like the second to last song, and we because of ad libs. You know, the song is only a minute four, but we turn it into like a fifteen segment. Why not, right with stuff from the Saturday Night Live bit and people learning how to play it on all the different instruments and people twirling their batons, marching music to it, and uh, and so this becomes they lean over into their into their spouse and it's like, god, this is this is sorely it's you know that kind of thing. So we finally get them, but until that point, it's it's it's complete torture for the guys.

00:29:09
Speaker 2: But you have some songs off your album sports Chasing Gold, over Time Mile eighteen, Dream Mile, Iron War ConA Paris seventy eight. So obviously you love these sports. What is it about sports that brings about a theme or you know, it becomes anthemic to you in your mind.

00:29:32
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I do here in my studio, I always have video playing. I have a couple of you know, great loops highlights of many different sports, and so I love that. I love that movement, and it just it just the experience of being there, of being at the Iron Man, the experience of me I ran five New York marathons poorly, of being in the start house with Franz Klamer at the beginning of the laber Horn downhill in vengan Switz, or having you know, carry strug uh you use a piece or or figure skaters from Russia using a piece of mind to to skate to the I love writing in that format and and and basically it's all left turns. You can't write verse chorus, verse, chorus bridge and then you know, like the hit songs, it has to be like okay, theme and then and then the brass hands off to the strings, and the strings may play it again, they hand off to maybe the drums. And so when I turned Round Ball Rock in to to NBC, it was fully formed like that, where there was a place for the theme and the animation and the peacock to open up, and then there was a floor with it just went bump bomb ba bump, bump bump bah bah that. So so that Marv could say, here we're going, this is happening. And then and then at the end it was just doom doom, doom doom, so that we could go brought to you by Macy's and Kohle's and and Bud and that that kind of stuff. So knowing that, knowing the segmentation of that, and that's what you hear on the album Sports Too is the left turn. So it might be in four to four rock four four, and then it might go into a seven eight tempo, or it might break down into just acoustic guitar, because that's the way we work out.

00:31:13
Speaker 2: Right, we're talking to John Jash, National Radio Hall of Famer, six time Emmy Award winner, won a couple of Grammys. He created round Ball Rock better theme song Entertainment Tonight are round ball Rock?

00:31:26
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:31:26
Speaker 8: Round ball Rock?

00:31:27
Speaker 9: I mean Entertainment Tonight was what I mean both Somebody in a review called called round Ball Rock the Hallelujah chorus for the NBA and and and you can see it on people now who will say that when they hear those seven or eight notes, that that always told them back in the day, run to the run to the living room, because that was the start of basketball. Was the same thing with entertainments.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: Is this the Leonard Cohen like you're talking about Katie Langing, you know, Holly Loujah, that that version. Is that what you're talking about? That that kind of aestic song.

00:32:02
Speaker 9: Oh no, no, no, no, they're just saying that that it was that the eight notes of round Ball Rock was was a Hallelujah the the NBA is on right, Okay, yeah, yeah, it would be nice if it became that that song. But with Entertainment to Night, I didn't write Entertainment to Night, although we did record it.

00:32:22
Speaker 8: I used.

00:32:23
Speaker 9: People would would hum that to me in airports, and you know, when I flew to New York and came back, it wasn't that. It was above blah blah blah blah basketball. And and people on X right have said over and over again, and even your fans, you know, hey, we want to hear the lyrics first song, we don't version of the song, which also reminds me that you know, when NBC was experimenting during during the preseason, right on Peacock, there was a there was a very serious conversation going on about no, no, no, you can't. It has to you can't edit the theme here. It has to hit on this and it has to go like go like this. So fans are in charge now.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: But did you ever think about lyrics for round Ball Rock?

00:33:03
Speaker 9: Not until I saw the spoof on Saturday Night Live when it when it became with Jason Sideka's dressed like me and my brother Dave, I don't have a brother, day of Dave, Dave tesh and they and they were auditioning the song for Vince Vaughn, who was who was supposed to be Dick Eversall at at NBC, and they and they went blah blah blah blah blah, basketball, give me, give me, give me the ball because I'm gonna dunk it. And they would high five on the on the dunkets. So there are a lot of people. And by the way, by the way, Dan that when that came out in the sort of the nascency of of of YouTube, uh, when YouTube was coming of age, that's when the theme came back. That was really the point that I can point to because it was on the shelf for twenty years. When ABC got the coverage away from from NBC back in the day that that was, I went to I went to ABC and said, hey, would you like, uh another version of this song? They said no, no, no, We're going to do our own thing. And I think the reason for that was that this has always been the NBA on NBC, and I think they're probably worried that people are going to start turning in Nielsen ratings forms with oh I just saw it on NBC when they saw it on ABC.

00:34:13
Speaker 8: If that makes any sense?

00:34:15
Speaker 2: All right, before I let you go, can you give us a little taste of round ball rock?

00:34:21
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'd love to. And this actually this song and eleven other new Songs is on. You mentioned the sports side, the Sports Record, which is which is not an easy listening record. It's a record that you would want to you would want to exercise do.

00:34:37
Speaker 2: So here we go, Oh that was fun. How often does your wife stop by and go, oh no, not again, round back?

00:34:45
Speaker 9: It's a such good questions because right over there is we're in our house. Right right over there is my wife's office, and there's a hallway here. And when I was working on the Sports Record, and she would hear hear me you know whatever, whatever melodies it was, and she would walk by and she'd go football, and I go, okay, okay, up for this football. And then she'd hear something else that she was walking back, and she'd go hockey, like hockey. We don't watch hockey, you know, hockey. And then she'd walk back, you know, two days later, and she'd hear me do something.

00:35:16
Speaker 8: She'd go nope, that one's horrible.

00:35:19
Speaker 9: And so she's definitely a producer on this on this record.

00:35:24
Speaker 2: Great to talk to you again. Congrats on Round Ball Rock Part two.

00:35:28
Speaker 8: I'm a big fan.

00:35:29
Speaker 2: Thanks Dan, Thank you, Buddy.