The Best of The Dan Patrick Show

00:00:00
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox Sports Radio.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: I'm watching yesterday and watching last night. I'm fascinated by Mason Miller. He he is the Padres closer, and when he's on the mound, he's bringing three digits. It's one hundred miles an hour. Fifteen total pitches were one hundred or more miles per hour by the Padres versus the Cubs yesterday. Eleven of the fifteen were by Mason Miller, seven in the seventh inning, four in the eighth inning, four by Robert Suarez, all in the ninth inning. They're just bringing in one oh four point five on the FM dial. I mean, it's impressive. And if you wonder why they have a you know, they're going to be a pitch count because there are more guys throwing, you know, more than one hundred miles an hour. Now it I mean it's jumped up almost five miles per hour. That's incredible. We'll have more on that coming up, but you know, I started to look at just the velocity with the Padres bullpen. They had fifteen pitches of over one hundred miles an hour. Last time that happened the Yankees game three of the alds when they had twenty eight of those pitches, and with Miller, Miller's faced nine batters, eight strikeounts and he hit somebody sixteen of his forty pitches or one hundred miles an hour or greater. Now, it used to be that you would have a couple of guys who threw hard. I go back to Bob Feller, I go back to Nolan Ryan and Nolan Ryan. You know the jugs gun. He probably threw one hundred and four hundred five miles per hour. But there is a difference, and I remember we've asked pitchers before, what's the difference between ninety six and one hundred, and hitters will tell you there is a big difference with that. But everything is the speed and how often I see that. And that's where you'll see guys get locked in. They'll say, throw me that fastball. All hit that eventually catch up to that. Breaking ball. That's different. Breaking ball will withstand the test of time. Fastball they can turn on it because they'll see it. You see one hundred mile an hour fastball more often. It used to be you'd be like, oh my gosh, I don't see anybody throwing like that. Now it's commonplace. Now everybody's built that way. You're encouraged to throw as hard as you can for as long as you can, and then they kick you to the curb. Tommy John Surgery, come on down. Somebody else is going to come on in fewer innings. Now it's about you get in. Throw as hard as you can, and then we'll bring in somebody else. Throw as hard as you can. I always wondered why pitchers would start out, and I talked to Kurt Shilling about this many years ago. I said, why do you throw harder the longer you're in the game. He said, well, those pitches mean more. And I'm loose, like I'm you're you're building up momentum. My nickname in high school was fast but won't last, and that had to do with pitching as well. Basel. Yes it is, and I could throw really hard, but I couldn't throw, you know, for a long period of time. It'd be like seven pitches. Be like man, that guy, you know, he can throw hard, and then all of a sudden, I have a noodle arm. After that, these guys come in, they know I got about fifteen or twenty pitches. That's how how long I can go and then you'll bring in the next guy. So starting pitching used to be you were going six or seven in announcers are shocked, like I'm a moto. He came back for another inning and the announcers were like, oh, he's coming back. It's just sixth inning. But it's just different now. The days of finesse feels like long gone. But you still have that breaking ball. That breaking ball is the great equalizer in my opinion, and you see that with these guys. You can have a fastball, but you better have a breaking ball, something off speed, because if not, they lock in and that's where you go. That's one hundred and four mile an hour fastball, and he took it deep. They can. They're geared for that, even these pitching machines. When we were at the Super Bowl and we were at the Giant's facility in Scottsdale, and we asked them, they had the jugs gun down below the stadium and we went down there to take BP one day and I said, can you make that throw like Clayton Kershaw curveball? And they said yes, like they've gotten it. So it's not just they're throwing fastballs. They can throw off speed pitches, they can throw breaking balls, they can throw sliders. That's what amazed me because it's like even us, you know, with an eighty five or ninety mile an hour fastball, you can put your bat on it. But if you say, hey, I'm not going to tell you what's coming, and then all of a sudden, you know you're up there and your legs give out. That's that's what's still amazing. That's why Clayton Kershaw can still pitch the way he pitches because he has that breaking ball. Now you have to keep him hon Us with a fastball that is at least in the nineties, but now and you're watching these guys like I would too. PAULI text me to say, Mason Miller's coming in. I went over to watch the game, and he looks the part of a guy who throws one hundred and four miles an hour. He looks like he could be, you know, a linebacker. But that's baseball now, and you saw that yesterday and last night. These guys throw hard for as long as they can.

00:05:31
Speaker 3: Yes, Marvin, remember when Tim Linskin came on the scene and everyone was like man, he's so slight. How is he going to be able to last that long? Because all these guys, just like you said, Mason Miller looks like a linebacker.

00:05:42
Speaker 2: Now, these guys got to be big. Also, well, you still get that guy that defies logic. Where you go, how does that guy throw that hard? And there are certain guys like Pedro Martinez, to me, is one of the most fascinating pictures of all time, one of the greatest pictures of all time, one of the most underrated pictures of all time, because if you meet him, he's slight, but he had that ability. He was able to make that ball move, but he also had velocity. Even when you're around Mo Rivera, like you're standing next to him and I'm going that guy is the greatest closer of all time. And he doesn't look like he's a baseball player. It's just like, oh, what do you do for a living? Uh? You know, I'm a closer for the Yankees. You know, enter Sandman. Oh okay, but that's the fascination you have with baseball. There's certain guys who can do certain things with the baseball that we can't. But what they're teaching now is go out there and they've studied it's physics, it's probably geometry, algebra, math, all that thrown in there. Spin rate, you know, that's why you get that. You want a little bit of tackiness on the ball, so you get that spin rate there. Pitchers would complain about that early in the year, but it's fascinating to watch it really is. Yeah, Pauling, That's what I'm curious about.

00:07:00
Speaker 4: Is it the natural human development or is it things like less ending so you could throw harder, more often, better medical advice, better workout routines. Because in two thousand and two, the average fastball Major League Baseball was eighty nine miles per hour. Now it's ninety four. It's gone up five miles an hour in less than a generation. Does that mean it's going to keep going that way? It's hard to know.

00:07:22
Speaker 2: I would have to talk to somebody who is in physiology or smart people.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: Yes.

00:07:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, See, if you can get somebody at Yale who can join us this morning, we'll do Satan. Yeah.

00:07:33
Speaker 5: I think a lot of it is just how good we've gotten at breaking down the mechanics rather than anything else. You have such slow motion, you know, and graphics and technology and all of this stuff that you're able to understand if you're pushing off at the right angle, you're doing all of these different things and the leverage that your body creates or the torque that it creates to throw the ball. I think we've gotten so good at just figuring that part of it out. I don't know how much better you can get at it, but I think that's a big part of it.

00:08:04
Speaker 2: When we go to spring training, or I used to go to spring training, I always love to see what pitchers were doing, because you know, hitting hasn't really changed other than you know, you're swinging up on the ball. You know, you're trying to launch the ball. Launch angle is the big one. But with pitchers, there's always these different kind of routines, exercises they were doing, Like they would take a towel and then they would you know, have the pitching motion and they were just you know, holding onto a towel, snapping the towel. Yeah yeah, And I'm like, wow, okay, but you're seeing all of these different things, and it goes back to Mark Pryor when he was with the Cubs, like these are things that guys have been doing and Tom House, who's a former reliever with the Braves. He's a pitching coach, but he's also helped Tom Brady. He helps a lot of these quarterbacks and how you throw the football, you know, how you torque all those things, and teaching a lot of this modern phillot. It's like the golf swing. When you look and somebody is hitting the ball less than three hundred yards, we go, man, what's wrong with him? Okay? Now it's you know, the shamba hit a three seventy two, and we go, did he get all of it? Rory? Some of these other guys, we're shocked when somebody doesn't hit it three hundred yards. But that's technology. But that's also understanding. They're using the ground now. It starts from the ground up. It's not how fast you can swing your arms or how fast you move your hips. You know, you look at John Rahm, it doesn't even look like he's finishing his backswing. They've studied this. It is a science. It's not boy, he's just naturally gifted. Rory's naturally gifted, so is Tiger. But they did understand how do I get more distance? How do I get and how do I compress the ball, the accuracy, all of those things. That's what they're doing with every sport. It can be kicking a soccer ball, kicking a football. In fact of which Vic Fangio. Vic Fangio was talking about kickers and he compared them to the steroid era in baseball. Have that for you coming up. Also, Sean Payton is facing the Eagles this weekend. He defends the toush push. We'll have that for you coming up. We got a lot of things to get to today. Your phone call is always welcome. Will settle on a poll question. We'll discuss that and the greatest lineups in baseball history. And I'm talking about not Hall of famers, lineups that have MVP winners in him. We'll talk about that as well. I think I said in them. I don't think that's a word. I think it's in them. Everyone gets in them. Yeah, outam in them.

00:10:45
Speaker 1: 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.

00:10:55
Speaker 6: Hey, this is Jason McIntyre. Join me every weekday morning on my podcast Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre. This isn't your typical sports pod, pushing the same tired narratives down your throat every day. Straight Fire gives you honest opinions on all the biggest sports headlines, accurate stats to help.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: You win big at the sportsbook.

00:11:14
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00:11:16
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00:11:27
Speaker 2: We were talking about great lineups in baseball history and how many teams have MVPs in their lineup. You of course have show a tany Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts with the Dodgers. We talked about the Big Red Machine because those guys won their MVPs with the Reds when you had Rose and Morgan and Bench and Foster Peter King who covered the Reds. I believe for a little while in Cincinnati, longtime NFL writer, where do you rank the Big Red Machine as far as lineups of all time?

00:12:01
Speaker 7: Dan, It's got to be in the top five, clearly. I think it's hard because you have to rank lineups as you know, in their era, So I don't know how a lineup could be much better, any better? Than what the Yankees put on the field with Garig and Ruth. But the difference with this Reds lineup is that, you know, look a lot of times, obviously the pitcher's still hit. You have Davy concepcionn betting eighth, you know, sometimes maybe Caesar Geronimo. But I mean, you know, they they had an all star batting eighth a lot of times, and I don't know, to me, I thought it was so dangerous and that was such a potent group. And you're right. I covered them on and off for four years in the late seventies and early eighties as an intern, and and then I mean I actually went on the road with the Reds three times in eighty eighty one and eighty two, and so I got to know those guys. I got to know Johnny Bench, got to know Tom Seavers some and they were they were totally fearless. That's the thing I loved about him. You know, I just love the fact that Tony Perez conceptsi on, Hey, bring it on, we love it.

00:13:28
Speaker 2: You know, we've been talking about Shoho Tani that he has this added advantage that he's able to pitch, so no matter what you do, hitting he's gonna be a great hitter, but he always has that, and I'm wondering if that translates to the NFL that Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have the added element of running as well as being really good passers, and how that gives them. Does that give them a little bit more of a head start when it comes to MVPs.

00:13:58
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, sho he, Otani to me is the guy in the NFL who'd be like him. Maybe is Travis Hunter at some point, because you've always had mobile quarterbacks. I mean, you know, he had Michael Vick running for in Colin Kaepernick running for one hundred yards in playoff games. I was at lambeau Field in I think O two when Michael Vick came in and be far of twenty seven to seven in the snow, and he did it with his legs just as much as his arm. So that has existed. Otani is so special because he's not just a pitcher. I mean he might be at his p I mean, he might be Garrett Kroschet. I mean, hey, Garrett Crochet might be sho Hey. I mean, because I don't want I don't want to demean show. Hey, Otani because man, he's great. When I'm really looking forward next year, I hope that we could see him pitch seven or eight innings every fifth day.

00:15:06
Speaker 8: I hope.

00:15:06
Speaker 7: I have no idea what his body can take, but man, what a treat it is to watch him play.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: All Right, So I get a random text from you yesterday saying, basically, am I the only guy who is affiliated with football who is okay with a tie in overtime?

00:15:23
Speaker 7: I actually liked ties? I mean the biggest reason, Dan, I'll take you back to twenty twenty one. There was one tie in the NFL that season. Pittsburgh tied Detroit sixteen. All okay, that was you know, that was I mean Detroit either was winless at the time or whatever. They were a bad team at that time, but there was a tie sixteen sixteen. At the end of the year, the Steelers record was nine seven and one, okay. And that season there were three teams in the AFC that were nine and eight, the Chargers, the Colts, and the Dolphins. So just imagine. And the Lions had a field goal in overtime that they missed. So imagine if the Steelers, if that field goal had been good and the Steelers would have lost. I don't know who would have won the tiebreaker, but it would have been a four team tiebreaker. A tie basically eliminates a tie. At the end of the seat, you know, you're either north of the Mason Dixon line or south of it, but it eliminates it. And plus, here's the other thing, Dan, that game the other night was incredibly fun and at the end of it, Now, if you're if you're a fan of one of the two teams, you know, Green Bay or Dallas, maybe you're ticked off that you And if you're a player, you're ticked off that you got a tie. I mean, how can a fan just watching at home, you see the bizarre end the clock stop with one second left and they're able to kick a field goal. How can you be upset at that? I mean, it was fun. It was scintillating the whole time. So I don't know. I mean, I bet that was a lot more fun than the sixteen sixteen tie between Pittsburgh and Detroit. That was a fantastic football game.

00:17:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a great meal, but I gotta have dessert in coffee. And when we didn't get that, I want to have. I'd like to have, you know, a winner and a loser. That's why we play these games, to win or lose.

00:17:40
Speaker 7: But but it's so unique, it's so I mean, you know, there's they don't There isn't even on average one tie per season. I think it's kind of cool. My grandson, Freddy, who's a huge football fan, he's seven years old, about to turn eight, and he watches all the games. And he got up Monday morning to get ready for school, and you know, my daughter said, hey, there was a tie last night Green Bay in Dallas. A tie? How does that happen? I can't believe it a tie? So I don't know. I think once in a while, different is fun.

00:18:19
Speaker 2: If I task you with make overtime, how you would want to make it? Let's say it's different than what it is now? Is how would you improve overtime?

00:18:29
Speaker 7: Well, you know, the selfish person in me would want them to just play sudden death, don't have a clock in overtime. The problem with that is, and I very much empathize with the players I am. I was dead set against a seventeenth game. I am deador set against an eighteenth game. It's just not fair to these players. It isn't You're adding on six percent more snaps for a starting player and saying, ah, there's not any more injury risk. Of course there is, so I understand why you don't want to add more snaps to overtime. Selfishly, I would like to see it go until it ends. But I don't think right now, in my opinion anyway, that there's a better system than this system that there is. The only way you could do it differently is to have first score wins, which I think is eminently unfair.

00:19:25
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if the tush push is esthetically not pleasing. Seeing kickers kick all these field goals is not esthetically pleasing either. In my opinion, does the NFL how much of it? Should they be worried about the glut of kickers being so great at what they do.

00:19:46
Speaker 7: I would be because they didn't create this game to have. I mean, let's just say Dan that you're playing the Dallas Cowboys and your kicker skitter's one out of bounds and you get the ball. You know, the Cowboys get the ball at their own forty yard line. Think about it. They need ten yards to get Brandon Aubrey and field goal. It's and again, let's say they get it at the run it back to the twenty eight. You know, they only need twenty two to twenty three yards to get him in field goal range, and not just a maybe field goal. He is likely to make a sixty six sixty seven yard field goal, you know, in in weatherless conditions. I think the one thing the NFL has to look at. And you know, and I don't really cover this obviously now I'm retired, but I I've been reading about how, you know, some of the balls that get broken in the kicking the k balls they get broken in better than they did before. And they're going to have to look at that to see if that is a big factor, because kicking a well worn football is much better for a kicker than kicking a football right out of the box.

00:21:08
Speaker 2: I know you voted for the Hall of Fame. For decades, there's been a lot of conversation about Russell Wilson. Can you play your way out of the Hall of Fame? Now, I don't know if you had russ in the Hall of Fame in your opinion, but have players played their way out of the Hall of Fame?

00:21:24
Speaker 7: I think so, and I think coaches can coach their way out of the Hall of Fame. You've got to consider a guy's entire career. I think Russell Wilson was a borderline quarterback for the Hall of Fame. We have to remember a few things right now about the quarterback position. Look at the incredible glut of strong quarterback candidates for the Hall of Fame. I mean, I think Eli Manning is a strong candidate. Matthew Stafford is going to be a strong candidate, Matt Ryan is a candidate. You've got a lot of people who areates, who've put up really, really good numbers. What differentiates you? And now we have seen Russell Wilson be disappointing in Denver, kind of get run out of Pittsburgh when they needed a veteran, they didn't choose to resign him. And he has, you know, two out of three ignominious weeks with the Giants and loses his job. It's it all has to factor in Dan it would you know. I think he and again we'll see. I think he's got an uphill fight, but then again, his career is not over.

00:22:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Russ was far more consistent than Eli. You got ten Pro Bowls back when it did mean something to be a Pro Bowl player.

00:22:43
Speaker 7: I'm not sure it did mean something in twenty ten years ago. Dan, I don't think the Pro Bowl has meant anything in twenty five years.

00:22:54
Speaker 2: Okay, but he did. He was a better He's a better regular season quarterback. His stats aren't. It's not even close. Eli is an inch away from having one Super Bowl with David Tyree's catch, and Russell is an inch away with Malcolm Butler from having two Super Bowls.

00:23:11
Speaker 8: Blah blah blah.

00:23:14
Speaker 7: You know so what, I don't care. Could we go back to the championship game in nineteen fifty eight and say, well, what if Johnny Unitas hadn't made such and such a pass, a miracle catch by whoever?

00:23:29
Speaker 2: Raymond Berry?

00:23:31
Speaker 7: Yeah, you can't. You can't act that way. In my opinion, I don't think.

00:23:35
Speaker 2: We're holding it against him because he lost that Super Bowl. If you win two Super Bowls and you have his resume, he's a Hall of Famer.

00:23:43
Speaker 7: Okay, but Dan Eli Manning beat the best quarterback head to head in the Super Bowl, best quarterback of all time twice head to head. He beat the best coach of this era, head to head in Super Bowl twice. I don't care what his stats were. I don't care numbers, and I understand I'm not saying he's a walk in Hall of Famer, But what I'm saying is, at the biggest moments, how about Eli Manning going into Green Bay when it's nine hundred below zero and beating a team that is used to playing like that in that a lot, beating Brett Farv in overtime, and you know, look, I think Eli Manning. I in my opinion, I'd vote for Eli Manning, And I'll tell you why, because at the biggest moments of his career he produced. And You're right, his regular season record, a lot of it is mediocre, even though he put up huge numbers. But I am more of a fan of let's not get totally hung up on the numbers, especially because the numbers for quarterbacks now don't mean this same thing as they used to.

00:25:01
Speaker 2: But I can argue that the defensive line won that Super Bowl, that first one against Brady. They beat the hell out of him. They dominated that game.

00:25:10
Speaker 7: How about the Joe Namath Super Bowl? Did Matt Snell have a much better game that day than Joe Namath, Yes, yeah, and did and did the Jets defense totally snuff out the vaunted Colts offense.

00:25:27
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, But Joe.

00:25:30
Speaker 7: Namath was drafted by the New York Jets, was you know, chose the AFL over the NFL. And he had the signature one of the great wins in history, and he predicted it was going to happen. And so I understand what you're saying.

00:25:50
Speaker 2: But that's not enough to put him in the Hall of Fame. I don't think Namath had Hall of Fame numbers. He didn't.

00:25:55
Speaker 7: That doesn't matter. He had Hall of Fame impact in a Hall of Fame impact, huge, huge impact. Oh, I understand the ara, and I think it's it's more I'm not one of these guys. I just of course, you look at his numbers. You look at Ken Stabler's numbers. You know you're gonna say, geez, that's fairly mediocre. You're judging it in a different thing. How about Joe Namath thrown for four thousand yards in a fourteen game season. That is incredible in those days. So I'm only saying I'm not I don't think you can say that. Well, Joe Nama didn't have Hall of Fame numbers. No Craps Sherlock. I see the numbers too, but he had Hall of Fame impact.

00:26:42
Speaker 2: Lenny Dawson was a better quarterback.

00:26:45
Speaker 7: Okay, don't I don't.

00:26:47
Speaker 2: Did he have did he?

00:26:48
Speaker 7: Did he do what Joe Namath did? Yeah?

00:26:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, he beat he won the Super Bowl. He didn't do no guarantee sixties. He didn't know one.

00:26:58
Speaker 7: No one in the sixties did what Joe Namath did for the sport of pro football. No one, no one, And so in my opinion, he absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame. Was Joe was Len Dawson? A better quarterback? Was Darryl Lemonica?

00:27:13
Speaker 6: Was?

00:27:14
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not. I don't really care. I mean, I just don't care.

00:27:19
Speaker 8: I like you fired up?

00:27:23
Speaker 2: Do you want to get right?

00:27:24
Speaker 9: Dan?

00:27:25
Speaker 1: Who do you?

00:27:25
Speaker 8: Dan?

00:27:25
Speaker 7: Who do you like?

00:27:26
Speaker 8: Tonight?

00:27:27
Speaker 2: With the Red Sox in the games, Red Sox the Eggs. Well, here, since I'm talking to you, I'll take the Red Sox now.

00:27:36
Speaker 7: I mean, hey, look, they're relying on a kid who started the year at a ball right.

00:27:41
Speaker 2: Both of these starters, I don't think they shave. They're only they're like twenty four years. Whatever happened to deep pitching staffs?

00:27:49
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, starters, the whole thing has changed. It's a bullpen game. I know it's a bullpen game. And I'll tell you what. These two games, I don't know. I got it. I'll tell you something. Both these teams, I don't know how they get to the park and don't just pour themselves into their chair and say, geez, I need a nap. I mean these games, just to watch them have taken a ton of it. I mean they've they've really been fun. This has been good for baseball.

00:28:19
Speaker 2: What were you doing forty seven years.

00:28:21
Speaker 7: Ago, forty seven years ago today? Yes, I was with my good friend Tony Grossi of the Post, the student newspaper at Ohio University. We skipped class that day and at two o'clock in the afternoon, we walked into the Union, the nice little bar on campus, and we asked the guy to put it on I think ABC, right, put the TV on ABC, and we watched the Yankees and Bucky Bleeping Dent win that game, and the class we skipped news writing and editing. We were seniors. The professor of the class came in midway through the game. At the end of the class and he just said, yeah, you guys are in trouble. But he knew that we were going to be there, and we watched the game. It was a lot of fun.

00:29:18
Speaker 2: Don't be a stranger, Pete. You know something bothers you get you fired up, you let me know.

00:29:23
Speaker 7: Thank you, Dan, really appreciate your reaching out.

00:29:26
Speaker 2: That's Peter King, Hall of Fame NFL writer.

00:29:29
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.

00:29:40
Speaker 2: Live Thursday Night football companying the baseball Today and Tonight. Now, Michaels will be on the call with Kirk Herbstreak and it's an NFC West matchup. It's the Niners and the Rams kicking off at SOFI at eight point fifteen Eastern on Prime Video. Home game for you.

00:30:01
Speaker 8: Dano, nothing better than a home game.

00:30:03
Speaker 9: You're kidding, you know, get I get per diem and I get mileage.

00:30:07
Speaker 8: It's perfect. Man.

00:30:09
Speaker 2: Is there a stadium though that if you look back or you go to and you go that's the best place to call a game. And then the stadium where you go that's the worst place to call game.

00:30:21
Speaker 9: Well, you know, Kansas City was built like in nineteen seventy one or two Arrowhead and they built it vertically and we shit right over the field, I mean at the fifty yard line.

00:30:31
Speaker 8: It's perfect.

00:30:32
Speaker 9: That's a game that I could actually call with the naked eye and not even have to look at the monitor. So far is really good. The newer stadiums, you're a little bit higher. They're all pretty good. The worst of all time, of all time, and of course it was the worst stadium of all time, as well as Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It was cold, it was windy, you know. I did the Giants for three years and then but calling football, you were in a press box that was so high. One night, I said, I think on Monday night foot. I said, it's the only place where you look down on the blimp.

00:31:03
Speaker 8: That was the worst.

00:31:05
Speaker 2: Did you ever have all time? Did you ever have fog?

00:31:09
Speaker 8: And so everything?

00:31:11
Speaker 9: You know, when I was doing the Giants and they were Moribun franchise, and they had chapter eleven and that a man named bobb Leery no relation to Jeff came in and saved the team in nineteen seventy six. But it was so bad at Candlestick that one night they handed me a slip of paper with the attendance figure. We had an intern, his name was Larry Behar, who was not the president of the team, and he was an intern in the press box, and he gave me a slip of paper and I looked at and I went, you know what tonight's attendance.

00:31:37
Speaker 8: Why don't I just tell you who's here?

00:31:39
Speaker 9: Jim McAlpine have come in from Little Valley, Harvey Fluki and has come up from San Joseana station wagon with the dog. Those were the days my friend and I had left oft forget. I had left the Cincinnati Reads, the Big Red Machine because simply, you know, obviously it was a money grab. I mean, the Giants were going to triple my salary, so what was I supposed to do? But that's crazy, since you and I, you know, I announced the Reds, and you grew up in the area and loved the Reds.

00:32:05
Speaker 8: So I'm listening to the game the other night.

00:32:07
Speaker 9: The last time I'd forgotten, the last time the Reds won a playoff series nineteen ninety five.

00:32:13
Speaker 8: I did it. I did it.

00:32:15
Speaker 9: They beat the Dodgers in the divisional round and have not won a postseason series since.

00:32:22
Speaker 8: What's going on?

00:32:24
Speaker 2: What about the I brought up the Big Red Machine. I think it's the best National League lineup that I can remember. You called those games with the Big Red Machine, and I'm probably biased because I was there all the time and got to listen to you call those games. But is there a National League team that would compare to them?

00:32:46
Speaker 8: I can't think of one.

00:32:47
Speaker 9: I mean, look, you were there, you know as a kid, I'm announcing those games. I mean you have Pete Rose in his prime, Johnny Bench entering his prime, Tony Perez in his prime, Joe Morgan getting traded over in his prime, Day eighty conception on his prime, Sparky Anderson Hall of Fame manager. I can't think of any team that, you know, I'm sure there have been through the years some that people would say, hey, listen, they compared to that, But I can't think of one. In my last year, the nineteen seventy three, you know, we call up our top guy from the farm system. His name happened to be Ken Griffy Senior, who's kid had a pretty good career as well.

00:33:26
Speaker 2: But if you were going to call, I'm going to give you your pick of any sport to call.

00:33:31
Speaker 9: Well, I used to love baseball. I mean I built my career around baseball. I love baseball. I've been removed from it. I haven't done a game since the nineteen ninety five World Series Atlanta against Cleveland. So obviously I've been now involved with you know, football prime time. This is the fortieth year of doing primetime football between Monday night, Sunday night, Thursday night. I'll go to you know, if I live long enough, I'll do it like a Wednesday three am.

00:34:01
Speaker 8: So you know, right now, it's it's all about football for me.

00:34:04
Speaker 9: You know, hockey is you know, obviously the centerpiece and uh that's the most relevant thing that you know, happened to me in my career obviously with Lake Placid.

00:34:14
Speaker 8: But hockey is a hard game to call, A rough game.

00:34:16
Speaker 9: I mean, it's it's so fast and and you know, obviously I have such great respect for the guys like you know, Mike Emrick, who who did it for years. That's that's that's the toughest game to call. But as a fan, I think, you know, I love hockey. I love it I think king season tickets for thirty three years. Season starts next week.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: But being locked in on a game where you have to call, you're constantly calling the action. Whereas baseball you can let it breathe, football you can let it breathe. Hockey you can't let it breathe.

00:34:46
Speaker 9: Yeah no, And you know TV and radio are pretty much the same. You almost have to do the same coal that you did on radio. On television there's very little spacing there and it's a it's it's a great little back and forth between the play man and the analyst in hockey because the analyst has to pick his foss. He has to know exactly when to come in. And on that note, I mean, I just have to shout out to the late Ken Dryden who passed away, you know in the past month, who was my partner in Lake Placid, and you know, in the middle of the Olympics for calling seven games including obviously the Soviet game and the victory over Finland that since the gold medal, and Kenny had never done, he'd never done announcing in his life. He has just retired from the Montreal Canadians after winning six Stanley Cups something five as in the Trophies. It was unbelievable. He had to pick his foss, get in and out in eight seconds. It was a tough thing to do when he did it.

00:35:40
Speaker 2: Talking to al Michaels will be on the call Thursday Night Football on Prime Video with Herbie and that will start at eight fifteen Eastern. But working with somebody else, I mean, there's chemistry, synchronicity. But how do you how do you suggest to your analyst, don't go as long as you're going, because I still have to get I have to set up the play. How do you do that in a professional manner?

00:36:07
Speaker 9: Well, I think I've been lucky through the years because when I started doing Monday Night, Frank Gifford had done it for a lot of years, and then we added Dan Dierdorf for in nineteen eighty seven, and Dan had had done a lot of broadcasting in Saint Louis. So, you know, the guys that I worked with are guys that have had a lot of experiences. Obviously, when I had John Madden in two thousand and two through two thousand and eight, he understood top to bottom. Chris Collinsworth had had a lot of experience. I mean the only and I also had Dan Fouts for two years, but I had Dan with Dennis Miller. Now that was that was tricky. But Dennis was so smart, you know, he kind of figured out how to how to pull that thing off. But those were I got to tell you, those were two wild years. If you remember on Monday Night football with Fouts and then do.

00:36:54
Speaker 2: The Howard Cosell relationship, how would you sum that up of working with somebody who was you know, there's been nobody like him since, but dealing with somebody who had an ego that he thought he was probably more important than anybody else who was playing in a game.

00:37:12
Speaker 9: Well, I did a lot of baseball with Howard in the seventies and into the eighties. It was a lot of fun at first. I got to say, I mean, the one thing about working with Kohell is you knew you would always come away with the story.

00:37:24
Speaker 8: And I've got a million of them, right.

00:37:26
Speaker 9: And Howard was He was fun to work with to a degree early on, and he got toward the end of his career in life just became bitter and it became very, very.

00:37:38
Speaker 8: Difficult to work with him.

00:37:39
Speaker 9: In like nineteen eighty four, nineteen eighty five and finally, you know, that was the end of Howard's broadcasting career. So you know, at first when you know, like in the seventies and early eighties, and it did a couple of world series with him as well. He he was fun and as I say, I go home and have you know, five stories from the night before. And then after that it was he did you know, he just grew tired of like everything at the end.

00:38:04
Speaker 8: So it wasn't a pleasant departure.

00:38:06
Speaker 2: You never got close to Fistokovs like Brent Musburger with Jimmy the Greek.

00:38:12
Speaker 9: No, no, not at all. No, he wouldn't have been able to handle them. At the end of my right before yeah, I left Jem you know what.

00:38:20
Speaker 2: I tell you, you would have thought that would have helped him.

00:38:24
Speaker 8: I would have pulled his stupe off first.

00:38:27
Speaker 2: You know, do you want to do one more baseball game, one more hockey game?

00:38:33
Speaker 8: No? No, not really because uh.

00:38:39
Speaker 9: With baseball, I mean, I've been out of him for thirty years then, so I'm you know, beyond rusty. And I used to know obviously when I was doing baseball, we knew everybody. Now I you know, I watched the All Star Game this year. I knew like six guys, seven guys. But I will say this, man, I do love postseason baseball all of a sudden. I mean it's it's great. I mean, you know, totally immersed in it already. So postseason baseball is as good as it gets. And just you know, it's in October, just the way, just the way the sun is. You know, we watch the day games and the shadows and the whole thing. It's I don't want to say it's romantic, but I mean it's it's really it's very it's very very cool.

00:39:21
Speaker 8: I miss it. Where do you part they miss for sure?

00:39:23
Speaker 2: Where do you stand on overtime in the NFL?

00:39:28
Speaker 9: I think they should go back to fifteen minutes. I think it's okay for a game to end and to tie. And when it went when it was fifteen minutes, it did. But the ten minute thing is is you know somebody obviously the other team can get the ball. Now they've changed that rule, so each team is going to get in no matter what the first team does. If they score a touchdown, the other team is going to get an opportunity. But they may only have two minutes, so you know, you might have an eight minute drive. So I think I don't know why they went to the ten minute thing. I think maybe to reduce injuries. But you know, I mean, what's the difference at a certain point whether the game seventy minutes or seventy five minutes?

00:40:02
Speaker 8: You got the only thing I would change, I'd go back to fifteen.

00:40:04
Speaker 2: You got the Rams and the Niners, and here you got the Niners. A lot of interchangeable parts here. How does that change your approach tonight broadcasting doing play by play?

00:40:14
Speaker 8: Well, I mean the Niners are star crossed. I mean last year six and eleven because of all of the injuries, and here we go again. Brock Perdy is not playing tonight. George Kittle is is still an injury reserve. They're two top receivers Pearsol and Jenny's are out. They've got you know, I mean, DeMarcus Robinson or Marcus Valdez Scamming are two of their guys that are going to, you know, be the receivers tonight. Kittle's out, They've got a rookie left guard.

00:40:41
Speaker 9: They've got Mac Jones starting, but he's won two games for them already, so, I mean the Niners are They're just a mass unit right now, but you know, it's the National Football League and anything had happened. Meanwhile, the you know, the Rams look great. I mean, the Rams are definitely a Super Bowl contender. We were talking in our meeting last night about the offense. You've got Stafford, You've got Kyrien Williams, one of the best backs in the league. Puka Nakua is over the moon. I mean, this guy is phenomenal. They got Devonte Adams. Higbee is a tight end. He's out tonight. They built you know, they built their team dan around the defensive line. What they've done with that defensive line, with the Verse and Fisk and the other guys that they brought in and drafted.

00:41:28
Speaker 8: They did what the.

00:41:29
Speaker 9: Niners did in the late nineties with John Lynch and Excoose me nothing that the late nineties, but like in the late teens in twenty eighteen nineteen in that area, they went to two Super Bowls by building that defensive line around both and the other guys.

00:41:43
Speaker 8: Now they have none of those guys.

00:41:45
Speaker 9: And the Rams have morphed into what the forty nine Ers became on the defensive front. So, I mean the Rams are a full flowed Super Bowl contender.

00:41:53
Speaker 2: Any problem with Tom Brady being in meetings with teams as a minority owner of the Raiders.

00:42:00
Speaker 9: Not really, No, I mean you can get all the information you need without necessarily being in those meetings.

00:42:08
Speaker 8: No, I have no problem with it at all.

00:42:10
Speaker 2: Ever been told something in the meeting that you wondered if it was true?

00:42:17
Speaker 1: Oh?

00:42:18
Speaker 8: Yeah, a lot. But that was in the early days. Now the guys are much better.

00:42:22
Speaker 9: But my favorite meeting Mike Marris's coaching the Rams when they were in Saint Louis and around two thousand and two or three. It's a Monday night game and we're in there and Mike says to us, hey, off the record, and he tells us something. And I have the Saint Louis Post dispatch on the desk in front of me. I said, Mike, here it is. It's on the front page of the Sport Session. Off the record.

00:42:47
Speaker 8: It became on the record. Well while we were sitting here at this meeting. Yeah. Now, most most of the meetings.

00:42:55
Speaker 9: Look, the coaches understand it now, especially the younger guys, and they understand, you know, how to with the media. Had to do with the you know, with the broadcast folks. We were talking.

00:43:05
Speaker 8: It's funny.

00:43:06
Speaker 9: We were talking to Kyle Shanahan yesterday on the Zoom and Kyle was talking about, you know, every press conference now is you know, how's this guy has that guy?

00:43:13
Speaker 8: Is it a ligament? Is it attendant? What is it?

00:43:15
Speaker 9: And so all of a sudden he says, you know, I didn't go to medical school. I'm answering all these questions, which reminded me of one of my favorite stories, Doc Rivers, who was my partner on the NBA back twenty years ago.

00:43:25
Speaker 8: And Doc was coaching the Celtics.

00:43:27
Speaker 9: Like in the eight to nine area, and I think Paul Pierce had gotten hurt in a playoff game. So the first five questions are about Pierce. You know, how long is he out for? Is it an acl is it a ligament?

00:43:38
Speaker 8: What is it? Blah blah blah blah blah.

00:43:41
Speaker 9: So after five or six questions, Doc finally looks down at the guy and he goes, hey, listen, He says, you do know, Doc is a nickname.

00:43:47
Speaker 8: Right, So.

00:43:51
Speaker 2: Steak before or after the game, you.

00:43:55
Speaker 9: Know, tonight, maybe a little a couple of bytes, maybe at halftime. But you know, I'll have like maybe a I'll have a burger at the hotel before I go over there, and then some candy corn during the game, and Junior mentioned and maybe maybe two or three bites of a steak maybe tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, for sure, Dan at Tuscana.

00:44:17
Speaker 2: Probably, yeah, maybe you can leave some scraps for Herbie's dog.

00:44:23
Speaker 8: Absolutely.

00:44:24
Speaker 9: Herbie's dog's already almost one hundred pounds.

00:44:27
Speaker 8: He's just a baby. What's going on here?

00:44:30
Speaker 2: Crazy stuff? Matt, have fun tonight. Great to see you again. Thank you about it.

00:44:33
Speaker 8: Always always great, Dan, take him in Al.

00:44:36
Speaker 2: Michaels Al on the call with Herbie tonight Thursday night Football in Prime Video. It'll be at so FI at eight point fifteen Eastern Niners and the Rams.