Eric Davis Unfiltered: Pete Rose's Street Life, Steroid Era, Elly De La Cruz, Marge Schott

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back, or actually welcome to all the smoke dugout.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: Man.

00:00:05
Speaker 1: I got my brother Nick Swisher here. I appreciate your time. Doubt we go back we were. I was with Golden State in six to nine or six to eight, and remember but you were with the A's at that time, and we would always cross paths and your energy still stand strong today. That was that we were going on twenty years ago.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: Yes, sir.

00:00:24
Speaker 1: And when we started this thing, the first person I said, like, I gotta get swish. I know there's something there with me and him. Let me get swishing. And we're here, man. So I appreciate your time coming out and your willingness to to help me execute these interviews.

00:00:36
Speaker 2: Man.

00:00:36
Speaker 3: Absolutely, man, I mean what you guys have been doing, uh absolutely, just elevated yourself along with the overall.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: Anything that you bring on. So I'm just stoked to be here.

00:00:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe that we're here twenty It's gonna be a good time.

00:00:50
Speaker 2: Man.

00:00:50
Speaker 1: The man sitting to our right was man, someone I grew up idolizing. I tried his batty stance. It wasn't for me. Fucked me up, but.

00:00:59
Speaker 2: It had one of the sweetest stance and swings.

00:01:03
Speaker 1: I remember as a child, got a chance, I ran into them because I had been chasing you down. You didn't know, but I was trying to, like, where is this man that I need to get them on the show. And lo and behold you here man, Welcome to the show, Eric Davis.

00:01:15
Speaker 2: Appreciate you doing. I'm doing good. Good to see. I'm looking great. Bro, I'm still tricking it. I'm still tricking them.

00:01:24
Speaker 3: I mean, let's just get right into it right. Serving is a special assistant role in the Reds front office. I do the same thing with the New York Yankees. I guess in a sense, just give us a little bit about that role and kind of define that for us.

00:01:34
Speaker 2: Well, actually I've improved since just so that's how I know this is. Oh, I'm the senior advisor. I finally got to see that at the table. I feel good about it. Yeah, I'm the highest ranking black executive in our organization. So I feel good about that. Yeah, congradulations. But it's been my eighteenth year and it's been like anything else in life, you got to pay your dues, especially in this sport. Who didn't allow blacks to even participate for a long time. So as a black player trying to get to the other side, you got to be willing to pay your dues, and I was willing to do that. And actually starting with an organization that I started with and having to be able to come back and support them and do things that I've been doing is fantastic.

00:02:17
Speaker 3: Well absolutely, I mean, you saw the jump to the teammate last year. Obviously, you bring over Terry Francona. You got players like Ellie de la Cruz, who's actually wearing your number. I don't know how the fuck that your number hasn't been retired, but at the end of the.

00:02:27
Speaker 2: Day, some strange shit, right, I mean.

00:02:33
Speaker 3: Let's talk about it, right. A lot of young talent on the Cincinnati Reds right now. They made a huge jump last year. I mean, talk to me a little bit about just the overall electricity that someone like an Ellie brings, because it almost makes it seem that we got a little left handed, you know, switch hitting ed coming in there now, because what he's different.

00:02:51
Speaker 2: I've been on Tito for a long time. I actually signed and play basketball and baseball at the University Areona, so I've had history with that school and then knowing him. He was there when I was actually being recruited there, and then I played with him two years in Cincinnati when Pete Rose brought him over from Montrealfice stuff, so we've known each other for a long time. And then watching him from Afar, you know when he first started managing, how he was doing with the players, and how he moved that whole city at winning championships and all of those things. And it was crazy because when we lost our manager, he was the first one on our list, but you know, he had kind of semi retired and didn't want to do anything because of some health reasons, so we didn't really know if we could get him or not. And so we had him up there and it was a quick phone call and Nick, who was our president, flew down to Tucson, and before we could interview anybody like he was already on the docket. So it made our job easy. Ellie. He asked me about the jersey, he asked me about the number and things, and when you see a kid as talented as that kid, it was easy at least different, And when you're talking about a kid that can do everything like he's at that level, the problem with that is is he's still learning and people don't allow him to learn, and he's he hasn't been around veteran players, so he hasn't he has to do everything. Where we differ is is I had Dave Parker and Ken Griffy, seen Pete Rose with my manager, Tony Perez, with my eating coach, you know what I'm saying. So I was able to blossom into without having to be that then at that time. And and it's difficult for a young kid when you want to do well, especially now where everybody's watching. You don't miss shit. When on TV. Now you rubbed somebody the wrong way, it's news, you know what I'm saying. But what a kid. It's crazy because he wasn't a bonus baby. He was just a regular kid who blossomed into something that kind of took us by storm and stuff. You didn't really know how good this kid was. Uh, But the most important thing for him was was he knew he was a shortstop. And that's a position you have to be confident in. It's like you can't make nobody a point guard. Either your point guard or you're not a point You got shortstop or you're not a short stop. You know what I'm saying. He's still he's bled that he loves it. He like so we have to do everything to make sure that he succeeds as a short shop.

00:05:23
Speaker 1: I got a question though, obviously it's probably an honor for him to wear your NORMALI said, you guys had that type of conversation. But to you, what you meant to that organization bringing a World Series there, the way you represented that organization. Is it hard for you that your number isn't retired at this point?

00:05:38
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. And some players say that they don't care about certain things, but deep down in side, we do. Yeah, we give a fuck, but but like it's out of my control, and actually people talk about it. Yes I did some things, but normally when that happens, it's almost like like you a Hall of Fame type of guy and stuff. But you see other sports blessed guys that didn't play twenty years or didn't have those type of things. But baseball has always been in the sport where we've had to fight for every inch, every nook, every cranny. We had to be better than everybody. Yeah, it kind of bothers me. But when you see a kid like that, that's representing it. It's still keeping Ed forty four alive because everybody still compares him to me. So I kind of still get to weave and bob when he put a cycle to one time and stuff like that. So if I would consume that to anybody, it would definitely be human. Yeah.

00:06:31
Speaker 3: I mean, bro, I'm waiting for the next badass motherfucker to come through Decky Land where number thirty three. Yeah, and I'm gonna tell my daughter, baby, that's my jersey. That's my name on the back of Swish Wars.

00:06:40
Speaker 2: Swish War. You know what I'm saying, I don't keep it alive. Yes, I'll be just speaking about you know what you're talking about.

00:06:46
Speaker 3: Just about there's all those veteran guys that you had, and those guys that molded you and kind of guided you into being the player that you are.

00:06:52
Speaker 2: Just give me a little bit about the state of the game today. Is the game in a good place right now? Yes? And no, financially it's in a great place. You see what the numbers are for some of these players are getting for it's replicating what it should be about. No, because we've allowed people to infiltrate the game with things that doesn't make the game better. And analytics has been a part of our game for so long, but it's really not the analytical side that's missing our game up. It's the private sector, almost like AAU basketball to a point, everybody's a teacher. They're getting these kids there. Parents are paying these guys who has no resume to do anything, and all it takes is one guide to have success in that whatever you're trying to get them to do, and it blows up. And now this whole era is what instant gratification. It's a microwavable era. So that's what's really driving the swings and one hundred mile an hour throwing and stuff like that. But as an organization, we don't really teach it, like we don't really you gotta do this, or you got to swing a certain way. But more so we do more deprogramming than we do program which is crazy because especially from college, it's worse in college than it is in high school. Right because when you in college you gotta do certain things or you don't play. High school, if you're the best player, you're gonna play regardless and shit like that. But man, you get with some of these quote unquote gurus and people who are talking about us swing and what you was trying to baseball's too tough for all this. It's way too and the people who play it don't talk like that. The people who've gone through the failures don't talk like that. So that's what's hurting the game more than anything in my prospective.

00:08:45
Speaker 3: Because I was just thinking about this, and I talk about this a lot, the overall development of the young American.

00:08:51
Speaker 2: Baseball player is not what it used to be because back in the day, all of us in basketball baseball didn't matter.

00:08:57
Speaker 3: We practiced four or five days a week, played maybe one or two games maybe. Now these young ThunderCats are out there playing four or five games a week maybe, So you're not learning anything. You're just kind of going on the fly. So in my mind, I love what you're saying about that. I think that makes so much fucking sense. But at the end of the day, being able to develop these kids is what we should be focused on. But now you've got PG, you got all these young leagues and stuff, and they chasing rings at eight, nine, ten years old.

00:09:24
Speaker 2: A mom will come to me and be like, Nick, what do you think about my kid. You think he's got a chance. I'm like, he's nine years old. He ain't even got pubes yet, you know what I'm saying. Like he's still learning, Like he ain't met drugs. You said way better than I do. I'd be like, see, Bobby can't play, Bobbie needs to get his education. You know what I'm saying. But it's crazy because of things that we know now actually from growing up and you growing up in La well actually growing up in LA you growing up in another part of county. You were doing stuff when you was a kid. You didn't know what's gonna lead to that, like picko, run down over the line. You didn't know that that was gonna lead to certain things like we used to play where if you have enough guys, right field would be closed. So I learned to pull the ball right feel closed right right because you didn't have as many guys, so you had to pull it or you was out. So there was so many different things that you did that transformed into your ability to play at the ultimate level. Not knowing when I was nine that that was gonna be because you didn't have ESPN and you didn't have highlights and stuff. Like that. So you didn't do that. You heard Ben Scully on the radio. That was our thing, and he spelled it out so well. You was trying to replicate Joe more than based on what said, not what you saw, but what he said. So that's the difference. These kids don't know how to play three on three where you got to make a maneuver to get to the basket. You gotta have not you can't just dribble, because they were like, man, you're taking too long. Get off the rock. You know what I'm saying. So it was a lot of things that we did that led us down the direction of success. That these kids have no idea what it took or how to get to where they want to go.

00:11:07
Speaker 3: And also to these young kids out there, they don't know the history of the game. I was in the locker room the other day on the minor league side and I brought up Ron Gad. I was talking about he had the biggest arms I ever seen in my life. And they're looking at me like, who's Ron Gad? And I said, no fucking way, you don't you know what. Go home, google Ron Dad, and when you come back tomorrow you tell me all about it. But I think that's one of the problems with the game is that they don't know the history of it.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: Well, but look in the clubhouse, and who's going to give him the history such a great right? His dad probably is not there, his mom don't know the history of it, So who's going to give him that? And if you see some of these kids today, especially black kids, they don't have black coaches in the minor leagues. That's a problem. So as a white kid, you have white coaches, so you have someone that you can relate to. As a Latin kid, you have Latin coaches where you have someone to relate to. Who does the hundred green relate to Will Benson? Nobody? Why is that because of analytics? Because the fact that every player knows analytics, because you put the numbers up. I know analytics, I know what my stats are. I not put them up. So the whole terminology behind them is one plus one is always going to be two, and everybody in the room is going to have the consensus of one and one is plus two. We can get to two, probably one hundred different ways, so it's multiple ways of being right. They only got one way to right, so they don't want anybody to say, well, why don't we try it this way? That way don't work because they don't know how to do it. They could never be in the batter's box. I can go to college and get accounting degree, I know numbers, I can do what they do. They could never do what I do. So that's what's scary. They don't want to be in the room where they're not having any advantage. So what do you do? You have to alleviate. You don't want them there, so you're not You say, listen, we've got to get all of these people out the way so that now you ever seen analytic people argue no, because one plus one is two, We're okay, let's go to the next one. Like all of us that center around and we hop notch about basketball. You can tell people different ways to do the crossover. There's a multitude of ways. It's not a multitude of ways of adding for these no and and they're gonna bet the house on what those numbers are.

00:13:33
Speaker 1: But also analyticsly's got a lot of intangible the eye tests, the under pressure, the count being three two, like just so many shit that they can't weigh. And it's similar in basketball as far as analytics, and I think basketball is taking a little bit of a step back and kind of gone back to can this guy actually play in certain situations? But that kind of led me to the next question was the decline in black baseball players. I mean, growing up, I can name twenty five black stars in the game, and then you can pick and choose who you wanted to be. Like you know, We've talked to Bond Sheffield Mookie about this. I'm interested to hear your your perspective on this and why is there such a lack of black talent in the major league system these days?

00:14:16
Speaker 2: Because they don't need it. Because the Latin player looks the part. He checks the box. If you go to a game and you see seven blacks out on the field, you think they're blacks, but they're not blacks dif from Cuba, Dominican Republic. Yeah, but you bought the ticket already, you already in, they got get you already in. So until you hear them speak, you don't know what they are. So that checks the box. Well, how do we get them back in? Well, it's it's just like with anything. He who makes the rules, make the decisions. Right, So you have to have black scouts, right, you have to have black coaches in the minor leagues who justify signing this guy. Those are the people who make the decisions. It's about the decision there. See anytime that they keep saying blacks aren't playing, it's the reason they say that so that you won't look for them. But they are playing. They are playing right. But when they get to thirteen to air Jordans, the basketball sneakers, the travel the whole nine yards. Now they're moving see black. It's hard because as a baseball player, every one of us has been introduced to the game from a male figure, uncle, grandpa, somebody. But in the eighties the dope game transcended to black man. So either they was dead or they was in jail. So now you leave an these single mothers with three boys. She wants them to go to school. What sports you gonna want your son to play? It's not baseball because there's never been a higher percentage than five percent it's ever played college baseball. Like the majority of the brothers come from high school and then we go that route. So it's never been a route for us. Some guys have gone to college but there was never a real route for us. We would go to JUCO and didn't get drafted because they had to win the draft and stuff back then, so there was a multitude of ways outside of d one. So we never looked. I don't won't say never, but ninety five percent of the players didn't go to college. But now he's not even continuous because if you got an AAU team, you'd be like, hey, miss John, this dude gonna be a basketball player. It's wing fucked up. He ain't gonna play, you know what I'm saying. He a good athlete and stuff like that. So he's gonna convince your mom who's working, that he gonna take care of you. Yeah, so now you on his team, and your little brother's coming, and everybody want to be with the big brothers. So now they're going to play. The football player and a basketball player that we was back then are still there, like they're just after they get thirteen. They're going because now you have a coach that's saying if you don't play football, you can't play. He's not gonna tell that to your daddy. If your daddy in your life, you're gonna be like, get the fuck out of here. We're going somewhere else. Why But the Moonga like, well, you gotta go because if you want to get to school, you gotta do that. This is our best way. So they're manipulating the system all the way around on why we're not getting an opportunity. If you look at California just by itself, it has the most major leaguers in the world Dominican include it. If you look at Sack and Oakland and all the way down through Cali, it's a game of us that came out a lot, and it's a lot that even didn't make it. It was the It was the it was the Dondra of baseball was California, right. So we had a winter league team where my scout had a winter league team right where all the Reds who was from California. We played sc UCLA. We played those guys. I was playing with them in the tenth grade. They came and got me off the basketball court and used to have what you usuld call a bird scout that was just looking for talent. Yeah oh I got one, Yeah, I'm saying, So they would come get me. I would play with the Rids on the weekend I had to use wood bats. I couldn't use the loom though, so they knew me when since I was fifteen years old, that no longer exists. So the opportunities to be a multi star players gone so much because they're not down there where those players are.

00:18:37
Speaker 1: I also think to the cost, if we take it back, if we take it back to what a glove's going for these days, what a bat's going for these days, like that's.

00:18:46
Speaker 2: Five hundred dollars, gloves three fifty four hundred.

00:18:49
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, travel ball's mad expensive, you know what I mean, So to be even put yourself in a position to be seen. And I don't know how baseball works from that kind of standpoint. I know, if you're good enough in basketball, everything's taken care, but I'm not sure how that works in the baseball system. Then also earlier to another point you made, we don't even see it anymore. So we don't even see the black star that hey, I might want to be like one day on the on the baseball field, they're all crossed over, whether it be football or basketball, so we don't even see it to believe it anymore.

00:19:17
Speaker 2: Either. It was always expensive Chuck Taylor's was twelve dollars when I was coming up, No, shit's like eighty. Now Spot built rollings. It was like thirty bucks. But that was a lot for a pair of sneakers. Back then especially was like thirty five bucks. It was still a lot. But the coaches that we had, they provided the equipment. We didn't have like a lot of travel ball. Me personally, I never played Little League because literally you had to pay to play Little League. You had to have a patch. So our little league team won every tournament in southern California, but we couldn't go because we weren't part of the league, right, So they tried to take our whole team, and our whole team was like now. They was like, well, y'all can take our place. And we just put a couple of our players on your planers and were like, nah, we don't know that shit if our team is not going, so we're not going. But like you just there's not inner city parks that has Little League. It's parking recreation, you know, out rough parking recreation is playing in that little area. And if you had a coach that could get you in some tournaments, you played in some turnament. We won every tournament in southern California, but because we have a PATS, we couldn't know. So it's always been that way. But you don't need a three hundred dollars back to be no hood. No, you don't need a four hundred dollars glove. And to your point, there are doing scholarships for other players because they need him at the draft parties and stuff. They need to say he's playing. So all of the young ones, like the cam Cars that we saw over the past four years, study they were playing in perfect game. They were just getting gifted because of who his daddy was or who is such and such as what. So they still do it, just not as much. But baseball is not about the five star player. It's never been. It's always been can I turn a C player into a B player? Can I turn that B guy to a B plus? If you look at every team right now, the only got one one, maybe two studs. Dodgers won the World Series on a backup that started in our organization, real hosts. That's that's what championships say. You know what champions there's always an unsung hero songe stars matches except that, yeah, they gonna match each other. Yes, so so base is no different as great as the teams that was good. Mark Lempkey was MVP the NLCS probably three times. I remember David Eckstart followed Yeah, you know yeah, with Sam and and all these guys, you got a little bit of thing and then you got Mac and you got so those those are the black players that were missing. The studs are still going to be the studs. But the regular, regular players who was playing every day, who wasn't a stud, those are the guys that's getting shitted on.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: South Central LA. You came up in an influential time with a lot of talent.

00:22:35
Speaker 2: Uh. They came out of that era.

00:22:37
Speaker 1: Doctor Dre, John Singleton, Dryl Strawberry, easy E, all kind of in the same area. What was it like growing up in South Central and then seeing people that you were never whether you knew them or not, kind of make something of yourself and get out of there.

00:22:49
Speaker 2: It was easy really because it was only one thing that prohibited you from from having success, and that was gang bangon. But like you didn't really know like like like sports transcended problems back then, and I grew up on the East Side and stuff but my first the basketball team I played with was the Inglewood Signings with Byron Scott and Ralph Jackson them, so we like we caught the bus over there. But what it did was when we went to Inglewood, like the Inglewood guys had our back. And then when they came to the East Side, when Byron and we would be over there playing the verbs and stuff over there, niggas and gardens, we had his back because we knew all the East Side people. So it transcended sports where the shot callers it was it was off limits to athletes. You got to pass because see, every gang member, every shot caller, they all know each other. There's no secrets to gang banging. Why because they all went to junior high school together, or they went to high school together, or some of them stay right around the corner from each other, so they know. And and half of my family was bloods and half of them was crips, So you know, you kind of there because like where you grew up at is what you repped and stuff like that. But we wasn't. I would have no one, no rag or nothing like that. But they knew I did have a problem fighting, so I was more scared of my mama whooping, and we could take in my live of coat for if you were gonna take my bomber jack, I want to get whooping with a stintion cords so you don't have to fight me every day, dude, till you get tired. And you know what I'm saying. So it really wasn't that bad because it wasn't gunplay. It was it was fist to cuffs and and all right, I'll see you next time. You go. Well, we're gonna fight again, you know what I'm saying. It became crazy like in the as the dope game came into the whole thing. So that's when the gunplay really came. Yeah, that's when it really got bad because they start robbing people. You start, uh, that's when the drive bys came in and stuff like that. We didn't have those problems in the late sixties all the way through the seventies, you didn't have that. So you just had to fight at the house party when you could go to the house party. And shit, it was mad because you had his bro you know what I'm saying. You was gonna give them another day, you know, Yeah, But you lived to fight the other day. So it really wasn't a lot of turmoil until after we became what we became. Yeah, and the coolest thing about the seventies and early eighties was the forum club. That was the part everybody wanted to enjoy life back then. You know, you look at what Showtime makers did. They brought fun and atmosphere to La Man and everybody wanted to be a part of that.

00:25:44
Speaker 1: Talk to us what that was about. We've talked to basketball players about that. You're the first baseball player that brought that up. What was the forum club like back in the early eighties with show Time with Magic Byron Scott, your former teammate.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: It was a problem for the players because they was playing. It was a lot of times Straw went to the form club and they went to the games. You never made it in the game sometimes, you know what I'm saying. And I was really good friends and stuff with Doctor Buss and those guys. Man that doctor Bush was so man. He was different and like just on how he viewed things and and it was never a problem for us to be around and stuff like that, even though we was baseball players. He kind of enjoyed the difference of having us in there and man, come eat at the big table in the back and we ate at the table all the time and stuff, and they're saying, you know, it was some of the finest women that was in the world then, like like you dressed and press and shit. Now you had to get g to come in the form club, you know. So that was the excitement part about that thing. And if you was lucky, you you know, you got blessed if you was lucky every NW and then you know.

00:26:56
Speaker 1: Let's take it back a little bit because you also you put up some numbers to twenty eight game. Yes, senior year Freemont, you said you met you played with Byron Scott.

00:27:04
Speaker 2: We all.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: I think we all came up in the era where to your point earlier, I did football, baseball, basketball, track and they all helped me play in the NBA. So we had a plethora of different sports and skill sets that would help us with our main thing. What DoD basketball mean to you back then? Man, it was everything. I didn't sleep with a glove. I didn't want to be a baseball player, you know what I'm saying. It wasn't my thing. I just did not played everything. I actually got recruited to high school to play football.

00:27:29
Speaker 2: Okay, well position wide receivering cornerback and so actually, so my older brother and my older sister was there first, and they was always talking aout. Y'll ain't seen nobody tell y'all some of my little brother. And at Freemont, it was always either Drew against Patuna, so dumb the junior high school, that's where Caspa wearing a lot of those guys went, and then all the Batune guys, myself and Dane saw the one, a lot of guys. But Freemont was our whole school, so we had to come and we had to meat. So that was the challenge of which side was going to win and which side was going to have that battle. So just actually them not knowing who I was, it was almost like they was like disrespecting me and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying, Because I got some stories and we're talking about. One of them stories was that where the coaches didn't like me because I had terrings since I was eleven, and shit, you know, I had a perm when I.

00:28:27
Speaker 1: Was in the sixth grader, Taylor, you know that shit wet or dry?

00:28:32
Speaker 2: No, it was dry. I ain't had no good friend, or I wasn't shirt, wasn't leaking and stuff, you know what I'm saying. But I've always worked. I worked at McDonald's during the summertime, I worked at Boys Market, So I was a hustler trying to get my money, like to make it easy for my parents and stuff like that. And plus my mother was a sainstress, so we did. You could get two yards for like five bucks back then, and she make a pantsing event and she was so cuse she would put our initials on them so it looked like we was really like I was doing that in elementary school and stuff like that. So I've always dressed the part and had fun and did things. But the school that I went to wasn't ready for that, right, So it was the most Like Freemont High School had the most major leaguers from any high school in the country. At some point it was nineteen of them. Damn yeah. And it goes all the way back to when Freemont was all white, when Jean Mark and those guys went to Freemont, Sparky Anderson and went to Dorsey High School, which was at the inner City. That's when our City went to Dorsey. Yeah it was all white then, yeah, obviously, So so that was the history that's crazy of South Central was all white in the thirties and the forties and then at Willie Crawford and and Chet Lemon and Danny Ford and Bible Watching. And it's crazy because Eddie Murray and Ozzie Smith was in the district. But they built Locke High School in sixty nine and that's when they left. So just thank them and George Hendricks and Disco, danny Ford, all them guys would have been on the same high school team. But that's how South Central was. Like Paul Blair and those guys went to fucking manu Ars High School. So it was always so much talent down there where our school was like the Goddess. So they was like really particular about your hair and shit like this, and I was like, man, I'm been playing baseball, so they wanted me to cut my hair. I'm not cut my hair, dude. I was militant back then. It was always something and stuff like that. I was Samson the string with you know what I'm saying. I just mumbled that. So it was always something that was going on in high school for me always something.

00:30:54
Speaker 1: What was buying Scott's two game?

00:30:56
Speaker 2: Like back then he had the same jump shot at twelve as he did when he was with the and he was one of the guys that you knew what was doing day he was going. But you saw that at the early age because everybody we were still pushing it, you know, we were still trying to He was just like the same up, the identical, same way you saw him shoot at Morningside to a State, to the Lakers. He was the same guy. And at Ralph Jackson, J Humphries, we all played together. But I was a point guard and I kind of mirrored my game after Russell Brown. I don't know if you remember Russell Brown, not familiarly. He was one of the best point guards that came out of the city. He came out in like seventy six and our minor league team was a certain age and he was on the juniors and I watched him and he went to the University of Arizona and he probably had what it was the Pack eight at that time, so he probably let the Pack eight and assists and stuff like that. So being a traditional point guard was my thing, and I wanted to do that. So you had to find somebody that was in the city that showed you how to do that. So what stopped basketball for? What? Stuff? For you?

00:32:08
Speaker 1: Pursuing basketball and win? Did that switch for baseball become the main thing? Right when I got drafted? Honestly, Yeah, I tell people all the time.

00:32:19
Speaker 2: Had I graduated high school after basketball, I went to college because I was in that frame of mind and I was just all everything in baseball, and the draft came and that was that first opportunity where I was like, Okay, I might not ever get this again, but I could always go back to college and play. And then so when I looked at my mom and dad, they was like, it's totally up to you. And I was seventeen years old. I was like, Okay, let's do it. And I never looked back. But had it been right after basketball season, I would have definitely went to college because I was in that frame of mind, right, Yeah, you're just keeping it rolling. You signed?

00:32:59
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, eighteen stacks, bro, that's it, eighteen thousand dollars.

00:33:03
Speaker 2: I was a shortstop then, though, okay, and at that time it was only three black shortstops in Major League baseball. Ozzie Smith, Gary Templeton, and U had Washington who played with a two pick in his mouth right at Kansas City Royals. So like that was not the glamour. It was almost like the quarterback in football. Now, you gotta be fundamentally sound. And I wasn't fundamental. I just hit it. I'm catching here, yeah, So I was just raw at it right. And then what they do now, we didn't have infield coaching. You didn't have hitting coaches, you didn't have none of that shit. You hope your roommate knew how to play, so y'all could talk about what y'all needed to do. That's how hard it was for Blacks back then, just the whole game in general. Now you got infield coaches, hitting coaches. It's it's thirteen coaches on the major league team, so you're getting all the fundamentals. And they told me I was too big and powerful to play shortstop and they moved me to off. I had never played outfield in my life and I was playing Eugene org I started in left field and the third d in the center field to pull his hamstring. Greg Riddock was my manager at the end of managing the padres in the big leagues. He said, ed, you go from left to center, and he never came back to center field. You won't, I wi it, Deroy pipped him. I did some kind of it. But I just did it because I knew how to run a pass pattern, so I knew how to track the ball. I could jump on the wall because I could reverse dunk. So I just took to your point, I took my skills, everything that I accumulated. I just took it because I had a glove and I took it in the base. That would be my next way.

00:34:57
Speaker 3: Not to jump in on you, but I gotta know this the young kids out there, how big of a deal was it for you as a young athlete playing all the sports? And now as an evaluator of talent, you can tell who the specialized kids are way early.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: So how well was it playing all those sports? How important was that to you in your overall journey to be It was huge, huge, right? But he's specialized at like seven, eight, nine years old. It's crazy because because what we have now, guys, is we have a sense of work. You gotta work, You gotta work, You got to put in time, you have to put in time, but it's not so much as the time as it is to quality, and me playing other sports was giving me more quality than working on one sport because I was always doing something that was pertaining to whatever I wanted to do, whether it was basketball, football, or whatever. I was still training, but I was training live. They're practicing, and I was training live at everything that I want to do. So to me, the more you can do, the more it takes your mind off of one thing. And if you don't get it done, that's why these kids like don't understand failure. That's why they cry and they do a different thing because they're putting all their eggs in one back. And out of one hundred and fifty years of professional baseball more it's only been twenty something thousand. A lot of people ain't gonna play. A lot of people, a lot of people ain't gonna pray. I don't care how hard you work, there was something inside of you. There was something inside of you that you couldn't measure, that drove you, regardless to whether it was in aau or or college whatever. Because I heard you talk about this, I had problems because I was light skinned. That was the thing back then, Oh he was soft because you was light skinning. Yeah, so you had to That's why you probably knock on bugs out because you had to prove that. I always fighting, always, yeah, but it was real. It was bullshit, but it was real, right, but it was always something. So you had to have something that gave you that extra that was just going past me just going out there dribbling or shooting or doing whatever I needed.

00:37:20
Speaker 1: But also too, I mean to your like, I loved everything growing up, but I found out like my two alpha sports for football and basketball, and then I took one to like sometimes to what Nick was saying, we're specializing in such a young age. You don't even know if that is right, right, You don't even know because you don't give.

00:37:36
Speaker 2: The other shit a chance.

00:37:37
Speaker 1: And I mean, I hate that, And that's a whole long conversation. But Tony gwyn came up in the same time. Many stories with Tony Gwinn was a rookie ball. You know what he called me, the baton tied in rookie ball. I still remember that.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: He was in like three thirty man, I was in like three twenty something, and he he went from rookie ball to double. That's a joke. And he was legit, bro man. He could hit the ball where he wanted to when he felt like my daddy told me. He could also run back in the day too. He was a point guard too, and he had some tremendous state the loan beas poly so so he was tremendous in anything that he wanted to do. He could steal be He could have hit thirty homers if he wanted to, but he just didn't want to. He loved to play cat and mouse with the pictures and the fol You're gona pay right there, You're gonna pay them over there. I'm gona hit it over here. But as a right hand hereter, we don't get a chance to win too many baton titles in any league. And he left too. Man, I've been mad at him ever since. I used to tell every time with the San Diego will run your answer to that wall and win.

00:38:50
Speaker 3: My you know what I'm saying. But he was phenomenal, man, he was great. We're talking about hitting right. One of my favorite things is your iconic batting stats. I'm gonna give you what I think it was. The hands down, low, nice and loose, and they well, you had that cock coming up in them hands raised up, and you was bringing the thunder man. But the one thing that I really appreciated about you back in the day is you weren't two hundred and thirty pounds, right.

00:39:14
Speaker 2: You were so relaxed and the quickness of your back. You were so loose that you were able to provide that sort of speed through the ball that equated into power. I mean, where did that all come up? Because I know you didn't start hitting. How much did you in your and in the major leagues? How Now I was one sixty five when I came to the big league. Yeah, I had them hig top red, Nikey's all broke. Yeah, but all of my I'm just gonna start with my strength. All of my strength came from playing basketball because I had such strong hands, from dribbling and doing the thing. So my forms and everything was super strong. From getting the bat from point A to point B is your bat speed. I was the fastest guy, so my legs were strung. I just had a little waist. I was just well, god, but I was six three, right, But I didn't hit like that when I was little. I didn't hit like that in a minor league. I was totally closed up, closed off stands. Yeah, and then what happened? What shifted that? Steve Carlton, Tom sever Oh, they said they're getting in there. Bro. That makes you change yes quickly and sliders consistently better pitching. I was good enough to get to a certain point. We're all good enough to get to a certain point. But what's going to allow you to keep moving forward? Right?

00:40:42
Speaker 1: Right?

00:40:43
Speaker 2: Most people are stubborn. They're afraid of change, and change is the unknown. But if you want to survive and you want to succeed, you have to change something that and I went from putting one eye on him to putting two eyes on That's when I opened up. I did AD three sixty hands was up here and I was like, okay, But when they was bringing my hands down, I was getting stuck. I said, well, why don't I start my hands here? And it was a short backup front to get to that point. So that's what I did, and it just clicked and it got to the point to where it was comfortable. Well, bro, I know it for damn sure look good on TV. I know that, like, but you can't do anything tensed and even when you talk about how you hit your hands was just like, huh, now I'm ready to go. That was my mistique was that they didn't never know when I was gonna pull the trigger.

00:41:35
Speaker 3: You played the miners. Tell us about I mean, obviously minor league life is one thing. Tell us about some of your first memories go from seventeen.

00:41:43
Speaker 2: Years old getting drafted. I do need to know this. Eighteen grand you got on your draft? What'd you do that? What'd you buy? Color supreme? What color? What color? White on white? With the cocaine guts? Talk to me? Goodness. I had to defer about the round, the mirrors and the fuzzy dice and everything you had. The whole thing.

00:42:04
Speaker 1: Couldn't tell you shit. They didn't have enough money. Put no gas in it.

00:42:09
Speaker 2: About the car, but you gouts, whoever gonna ride, gotta put something in the tank. This ain't move, and I'll let y'all put something. Just tell us a little bit about of your early memories and prog I actually went to Eugene, Oregon.

00:42:21
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:42:22
Speaker 2: It was probably the cleanest city I ever been too. It's the greenest, beautiful, most city you ever want.

00:42:26
Speaker 1: To be to.

00:42:27
Speaker 2: That was before Nike and everybody blew up and stuff like that. Michigan too. I went from there to see the Rapids, Iowa, which was a culture shock because I had never been around slaughter houses and shit like that. That's what they do in the Midwestern You're talking about the stink and the smell and stuff like that. But it was the only place that I'd ever been in my life where black people were sectioned off a small town like that. They had like three blocks of black people. But I'm going with the black people now, I don't trust you, know what I'm saying. So me and my roommate I can caught a cab and found us a little the two bedroom hut on top of a dry cleaning or something like that, you know what I'm saying, where it was furnish the thing. We played like three hundred bucks a month and just learning how to deal with people from every race. That's the first time I saw Dominican guys. Uh. It wasn't a boatload on them that you had that they were scattered in and stuff. But black guy speaking Spanish that kind of confused me and shit like that, you know what I'm saying. But just knowing how white people. Was the first time I was ever called a nigga, And I was like, because it didn't happen in Cali. You saw blacks and whites was dating and stuff. No, there it was. That's when I really saw race segregation on people like not even knowing you but didn't like you. Yeah, just judging you already. Yeah. I had a fight in spring training. The guy tried to white dude tried to rush me in a phone booth because I was talking to my dad's cell phone wasn't I was on the payphone and somebody whistled at his wife and he thought it was me, so he tried to rush me something. Talking to my dad, I said, oh, on Pops, I'm like, okay, I just had to dot this dude. But he actually tried to rush me in the phone both. So that's why I knew what racism was really real on on on how, when, where, and how just because the color of your skin, somebody's not gonna like you. I actually went from there to Waterbury, Connecticut. Waterbury that's where I really took off, and I had twenty four homers and stole like sixty basis the time that double a double a so I played a half season Double A and a half season Triple A. And so everybody on Triple A. When the season was old and they got called, they went to the big leag This was eighty three and so I was the last dude and he called me in the room and he said he d we want you to go to instructur league and work on bunt because I used to lead off. Said what he said, go work on bunny said. So I come out the room and everybody's like, man, you're going to big leagues. I was like no, he was like, stop blying. I said, now they want me to go work on bunton. Right, So I got instruct league. I bunt every ball. I don't swing at a pitch for two weeks. They was like, no, even just wanted you to. Now y'all told me to bunt. So so now I'm following orders right, count three to two, bunt, bases, loaded bunch, whatever the situation. Bunt. They sent me home after two weeks and shit, you don't want to be it. That's what I want. So I was militant. I didn't really right, God, y'all knew I was. I was supposed to be in exactly where you. Yeah, I was the number one prospect in three in two leagues in doublin atriplay the same year, and you want me to go bunt? Okay? Is that? Yeah? Y'all asked for that, so y'all gonna get it. So it was never peaches and cream for me. And and once I got to the big leagues, Pete Rose saved me because when he came over as a player manager. That was in eighty four. Was that your first year? Yeah, everybody had me leading off and I tried to bunt and I popped it up and he said, kim here, kid, He says, sit down and say listen, man, I know you can steal bases. He said, he fuck. He said, just like he said. But when you can hit that motherfuck up in the third decks, the next time you bun, it's one hundred dollars. And Pete Roe said that yeah, And I was like, okay, I ain't got a hundred. The fucking minimum salary was thirty two thousand dollars. Then one hundred dollars. That's a lot shit, right, So the next day he moved me to fifth and I go to Tony Paris was out hitting gout out said talking, how do I drive in one hundred runs? And we sat in the in the cage for two hours and he talked to me about how to drive, and that's how I learned how to drive in runs. So it really takes a village when you're talking about a black player having success. It's not just you. You have to have people that help you along the way. And that's what he did for me. But Pete allowed me to become me. Everybody else was trying to mold me into Ricky. It was only one Ricky Henderson. Yeah, I could hit the ball the ballpark, but I wasn't ricking. I could steal bases, but I wasn't ricking. No, you got to hit the ball on the ground, on the turf and use your speed. That wasn't me. So I was trying to do that. That's why the first probably two months of my big league career, I was struggling because they was trying to get me to do something that I wasn't doing. And when he came, I did this. There's so much freedom.

00:47:22
Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of people try to box me in as well because I am as hyper and off the wall.

00:47:27
Speaker 2: The whole nine. But at the end of the day, baby, you ain't got to worry about me. Same thing with you.

00:47:31
Speaker 3: You know, I'm gonna get my shit done there. I'm gonna be there every day. I'm gonna be ready to roll. And at the end of the day, it's so so much power improving people wrong when it comes to that, because when Pete came along in your life, it was like, you know what, ed b ed. There's something there's something to be said for allowing.

00:47:46
Speaker 2: You because somebody has to allow you to do you because I've heard, I've actually heard you guys say that's not a good place for him yet it's it's it's in the NBA. But if they're not playing the way that it fits you, what's the point. Like you're not gonna prosper doesn't mean you can't play. I can't pray the way y'all want me to pay. I gotta get somewhere where somebody's gonna allow me to do something. Because I remember she was talking about the mo cheeks things. Oh man, I think how you want to kick it. You said you shoot again. You told you if you shoot again, I'm gonna cut as some shit, you know, what I'm saying, why I can't shoot? I might put the work in. Yeah, I'm doing everything I was supposed to do. Nothing. You as the coach, you're gonna tell me I can't shoot. Come on, that's that It is gonna crush him. Now, I gotta figure out why. Then I gotta go somewhere and hope that shit ain't.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: Traveling with me, especially as as a young player too, because we're looking for obviously with vets, and we'll get into your vets, but you're looking for that guidance. And you said, obviously Pete unlocked you and pretty much saved your career.

00:48:51
Speaker 2: What was it about him?

00:48:53
Speaker 1: Obviously you knew, you know, the type of baseball player he was, the man he was. How would you guys relationship You know, he called you every year on your birthday.

00:49:01
Speaker 2: You guys really developed something that was more than just baseball. Actually, the goodness of Pete where would cause a lot of people like Johnny Bench and those guys not the lock like Pete is because see Pete grew up and over the line with all the brothers, and it was always a question of why he was hanging with the brothers, and people would always say because they're the only ones here that talk to me. And he knew him, so he was everybody gonna be around who makes them feel comfortable, and that's how he was. And he knew talent like he was genuine and if you was good, you was gonna make the team to eighty six. We broke camp with six rookies and people was like, how are you gonna do that? They like, they're the best players. We're gonna win, period. So he was like that and then people couldn't stand him for being who he was, but deep down inside he was that dude. He didn't ca here what color you were if you played the game a certain way. That's what he was about. Authenticity. Man.

00:50:06
Speaker 3: That is such a fucking great quality of guests. And at the end of the day, I didn't know Pete had that much swag. Bro I didn't know he had that much swag. That's nice to know he was in the game he.

00:50:19
Speaker 2: Carried or not if everywhere he went he carried about five thousand in a rubber band. I love well. Actually see it was some slacks that we should have when we was coming. They was called seamless. They didn't have no pockets on him and Ship like that, so that the ceiling so he couldn't have it. So that's when the pouches came out and you had a bag and like that. But Pete that and some ostros cowboy Boot shouldn't tell him. Ship always had a tin with him, always always had a tiny save Pete. How you get that? He said, two pretty mouchfuckers are supposed to be together. You see, I can't be more pretty than my bro. That's how he looked. He was cool as a fan, he was cool. I love the rescue Pee.

00:51:10
Speaker 1: Also, another someone who was very inspiration to you early in your career was the late great Dave Parker.

00:51:16
Speaker 2: How instrumental was he. He was my second dad man. Yeah to us about him our first spring training in eighty four. I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna introduce myself to him, and that's the cobra, you know what I'm saying, of course. And when he was coming into the locker room, I kind of went up to him and he kind of shoved me up, like I know who you are, kid. I talked to you in a little while, and I was like, damn, I already know. And five or ten minutes lady said come on over here and stuff, and then we started talking and stuff like that. But he told me, he said, listen, he said, I've been watching you, and I know what you can do. He said, but if I ever hear of you doing some of the things that I do, I'm gonna whoop your ass. That's when they had just came off that drug trial and Pittsburg and him and all that, and the clubhouse was happening and stuff, and for him too to see that much in me to instantaneously make that analogy to me. Period. I didn't pay for nothing for like two years stuff. But by the way, that's how it's supposed and all the limo drivers they showed you how it was supposed to be done, and they bought me my stuff. That's what I did to the Barry Larkins and the guys. And the only thing they said do unto others that I have done on to you. And that's where the chain was supposed to keep going and somehow somebody somewhere. When you lose that type of leadership, you lose the bond absolutely. And that's why our game is so diluted and separated, because there is no bond and stuff. But he, man, he showed me everything. He took me there. Willie Starge gave me some of the best advice and and he told me he was that eighty four. He was a hitting coach with the Braves at that time. And he said, listen, that was all out and stuff. And he said listen, he says, he said, did you ever if you ever meet abroad and you take her home, leave her one hundred fifty one hundred dollars. If she ever takes the money, she becomes a prostitute. She could never say you raped her, dang because she took the money. Willie was ahead of the game. This was like in eighty four. Due Willie, I said, can I give her a twenty or ten? I'm only making thirty two. He ain't got no scunya right now. I hain't got no pockets. Can I give her a five or ten or something? He just fell out that. That's how will he was. Man. They were some of the coolest people man and stuff. But they was real because they had gone through and I feel like not to cut you off. That's what across the board professional sport, missus. Now it's about potential in young guys and vets are late twenties. Now, there's no When I came into the NBA, there was thirty eight, thirty nine forty year old dudes. Whether they played or not, they bridge the gap between the players and coaches or getting you your suits or took it.

00:54:06
Speaker 1: This is how things are supposed to be done. And I feel like now, respectfully, it's the young kids. It's the blind leading the blind. And that's why because they don't know, they haven't gone through anything.

00:54:16
Speaker 2: And that's the scary part is because they're out there trying to find their way with all of the stuff that's going on and millions of dollars in their pocket and twenties and thirties now that's crazy. So they're going to do the best that they think that they can do, or they're going to get advice from who they think they can get the advice from. And to me, if I'm the president of any organization, I don't want my kids out there naked like that. I don't want Elie Dela Cruz to have to try to figure it out when the whole world is after him. You know what I'm saying, You need some people that's gone through some of the things, and you have to protect these guys. We're not doing a very good job as the league of protecting these kids from everything that's out there.

00:55:06
Speaker 1: Real quickly, before you go, you mentioned Barry Larkin. You guys were a hell of a duo, and you mentored him the same way Parker mentor Dude, what did you see in Barry early on and what he was able to turn himself into.

00:55:18
Speaker 2: He was a safe player. And when he came out of Michigan that was the second time we had drafted because we drafted him out of high school in Moler and at kirk Stillwell was the number one pick for us the year before, so he was a shortstop too. And so they're all battling, but I'm not seeing Barry exued himself right. So I told him, I said, listen, I want you to come to Cali with me during the Austine and I took him to the program a right because way he grew up, he didn't see none of that shit. And he'll be the first one to tell you because he said it in his Hall of Fame speech and stuff, and it was like, like, you are more than what you're showing. Why are you like this right? It's because the two biggest home run years ever had, I was hitting behind you and he would just settle for a two ohd single to write, And I'm saying, why are you selling them? Thank you? When I'm finna get these richs. I'm about to take teas. You should have dusted him. Why are you in adusting him? And we had those conversations about dude, take the shot. You ain't got a swing cart, just change your angle. First year he hit twenty, he broke the cardinal record for the actual Reds records for homeless from a shortstop, and then he became the first shortstop to go thirty thirty just because he changed his mindset and he was a safe player. That's what college does to a lot of kids, because you can't really exude individuality when you're in college. And see, actually, what people don't realize is he went to Michigan on a football scholarship and he was telling me some shit about both shimbacks. He come out of Mold in high school when they had a good cour program, and he was like, shit, I'm not tackling these dudes and shit. So he told Bo he didn't want to play no more. So Bo was gonna take his scholarship and he said that. He said to him, he said, why don't you just come watching me play? So when Bo was an athletic director then too, and he actually went and saw him playing. That's how he maintained his scholarship. He was going to take his scholarship away because he didn't play football, but he was impressed what we saw in the baseball field. Yeah, I got the spinish.

00:57:31
Speaker 3: I've gotten a real great opportunity to meet Barry Mark and uh, we've got a lead going over in Dubai right now, and he's really big on that and the fields named after him and the whole nine. And you want to talk about just like a quality fucking human being, his family, his wife, they're just salt of the earth people.

00:57:48
Speaker 2: I didn't know he's one of the few college players that I ever seen that got better. Mmm huh, because historically you don't see college players get better. They are what they are, the kind of maxed out once they get to that spot. If you saw what Mark McGuire had forty nine his first year, he didn't get better, he was already doing that. He just did what he did right, right. But he was the first one that I saw that got better. High school kids get better every year. You can see them cling. If if you saw will Clark when he came out of Missippi State, he was gonna hit Yeah, you knew he was the same thing with Paul Meryl. He didn't get better. He just continue what he did in college, right, but he got better. Certain guys that you look at Odob mcdowald, a lot of guys, they were what they were, but they didn't get better. But if you look at all your black players that did this, came from high school interesting because they was able to like they didn't have We didn't have restrictions in heightst gotta be themselves. You could do what you do and that's how you got better and you became what you one because nobody will say if you don't do this, you ain't gonna play right. I'm'na tanke your subject a little bit. I'm'na read a few quotes here real quick. It's an honor to be compared to Eric Davis. I hope Eric is honored. Willie Mays Hank Aaron.

00:59:08
Speaker 3: Eric Davis has unlimited ability, awesome ability. I don't think he'll be Willie Mays. That would take some doing. But on the other hand, I don't think he has a weakness either. You're talking about two of the most unbelievable, blessed thereat, two of the greatest players we've ever had in our game, and they're talking about you.

00:59:27
Speaker 2: How does that make you feel? It's crazy, But at the time when I was playing, I thought it was disrespecting Willie Mays. So I was super humble about it. Here's a kid twenty one, twenty two years old who's talking about a guy who's arguably the greatest player of all time, and you're talking about me off a great month and it kind of put a lot of undue pressure on me to become that right at twenty one years old. So I'm like, here, Willie, you' seeing Willie probably would have hit eight hundred homers had did he not went the Candlestick Park. That place was tough to it played against the ocean when they had turf back then too, when it was open and stuff. So I kind of thought it was disrespectful, and I kind of never talked about it or anything.

01:00:16
Speaker 1: Like that, but.

01:00:18
Speaker 2: I was kind of boiling inside to because they come on. Yeah, who don't want to be compared to Willie? But how was that going to mark me for life? Because if I don't do something that he was never made this or he was never there. So met two great people, had some great conversations with Hank, And it was crazy because the conversation I had with Hank was about how he survived not what he was doing on the field, but the death threats and all the things that he was going through when he couldn't you doing all this and that you got to get your food out the back? Like what would like? That was my conversation with the What was your mindset? How did y'all do that? What was at stake? And he was like, you guys was at stake even before you were born. Wow, that's what they were talking about because it wasn't for them. It was for the group and people that was coming behind him. And you're talking to the greatest players ever to have that kind of foresight to say that it's not about me, because if I don't do what I'm doing, y'all wouldn't have got a chance. That's what made them special. I mean obviously on the field, you took care of business. The whole line. But just how was life off the field in the crazy eighties? Bro? Because I was born in eighty.

01:01:40
Speaker 3: And I mean, obviously a great year for sure, But at the end of the day, I'm like, how was in your shoes?

01:01:47
Speaker 2: It was fun like, but you had to create some form of discipline. And I've always been a discipline aian because my mom and dad was a discipline. I'm gonna have fun, I'm a go out, I'm enjoying myself, but at a certain time, it's like, Okay, it's time to go to work. Yeah, it's freaking time. Yes, and and and that's what I led on was that gift. Now, if we went out as a team and you didn't play well, you can't go the next time because you hadn't figured out how to play a day game at the night game. You gotta run to do that, right. So you got to get your life together first and figure it out. So however you do right. So that's when spring training became the actual narrative on how to go out on day game practice practice bell because you play all day games down here and so Vets boy, you gotta know how to play a day game at the night game. So you gotta drink fast, you gotta talk everything. Everything is quicker because the time is going to exactly. All the cool all the coup points go out the window and stuff. You got to get there. It's something you like. You got to get at it because you're on the clock. So you were everything a day game after night game. I love that Marge shot oh bro, we got to talk about this lady was. I want his perspectives because we saw it as we were young when we sing this. So you know, someone who used to let her dog shit on the field, reportably pissed that you guys swept the a's because you guys didn't. She wasn't gonna be able to make more money, called you and Dave Parker million dollar niggas.

01:03:26
Speaker 4: Uh.

01:03:26
Speaker 1: She she didn't want her players to wear earrings because only fruit wear ear rings. It says not too large. What was it like, What was it like having to deal with her say that?

01:03:36
Speaker 2: Well, she didn't. I can honestly say she wasn't a bad person person. She got a lot of bad advice because she was a woman in a totally dominant man sport. Everybody in the front office was trying to appease her, like no one would stand up to her. She just didn't know because her husband left for the car dealerships. Right, so she turned that into forty nine. It's give me fifty one percent ownership, but it ridk, which was fourteen million dollars at that time. Right. She had no idea what she was getting into. She would say she fired scouts because she said all they did was watch games. D make it make sense? Is there anything else to say? She would she would literally go down to the clubhouse and tell the trainers they're using too much tape. She had no idea, like what the budget was for players, and dang are they say? She's they need this much tape. This is some conversations with the trainers and stuff like that. You're like, what the fuck is going on here? Yeah, but she didn't. She had she had men that stood say, marks, listen, let me explain something to you. This is baseball, this is what's happening. She probably would have been better, right. She truly cared about the team. She just didn't know how to do it. Interesting. I think she didn't even know everybody's name, but she knew my name. Right, I was making more money than anybody. At twenty six years I was the highest paid play in the whole state of Ohio history. That's what Boomer Signs said. And Bernie Cole's always in Cleveland and all these type of guys. So when she called me that I had asked Sharpton, Jesse Jackson in double S in Double ACP was at my house, right, and so they talking to my mom and my dad's over there they talking to him, and I'm saying, what are we gonna wen't gonna do this and do this? So I said, can I ask us something? And it was like yeah, I said, if I take this stance at twenty five years old, my career is probably gonna be over and I'm making two point five, So can can y'all replicate that two point five? And it was like, well, no, hey, we don't have no money. I said, well, thanks for coming. I'm hollering. I'm gonna take my chance as long as my check don't bounce. I'm gonna deal with this the best way that I know how to deal with it. And that's how I dealt with it because I used it against her. Why because she couldn't piss me off no more than what she did, so it fewed me to becoming one of the first two or three guys in any sport to make three million dollars. And when I did that, that was some Azernine type shit. Nobody it was like, you want what? I was like, yeah, yeah, this is what I Yeah, And she gave it to me, and I was probably wondered befo. She said, if I give you this, you're gonna give me a championship. Yeah, I'm gona give you a championship. And I gave her a championship. But I but I gave it. Ain't right you do? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So prior to all of that, I should remind her, you know, I gave you that championship, and that's how I used to use sh But she got bad advice when I got hurt in the World Series, and it was more the general manager than it was her because I tore my kitney and I didn't know we had won until Wednesday. We went on Saturday, I was out of man. They had to put an epidural in my back and my family was there. They kicked my family out the hotel. You know, when your family leave, everybody got to go with Shi when the team lead and I didn't even know we had won, right, So my doctor said I was there for three weeks and stuff. So the doctor said, if do you think that they would fly you home because I think you would heal better. You've been here a long time. I was like, yes, I'm then franchise. Of course they was gonna do this. So my agent called the general manager, and the general manager said he made three million dollars. They didn't get his own damn play, so it started with him. And so I was like, oh, so he said that. So when I called Marge, I don't even know if she knew he had said And she said she didn't know. Nobody would have played and stuff. But Carl Linder, who owns Procter and Gamble, is probably the richest dude in Ohio. He owns forty nine percent. He's one of the solid He don't like, you don't even c called and stuff. But he bought it so that nobody would ever take the team out of Cincinnati. So he had that right. So he he had like three planes and stuff, you know what I'm saying. And she said she didn't know nobody. So I rented the plane and center the bill. She took care of it. Yeah, she took care of she ain't had no choice because after I called a press conference, then it was all on the news and why because I had to lie down. I couldn't sit up. I had to lie down. So they had to get the G two's G one's back. Then they weren't G five still player shit shit. But I was laying down the whole way and stuff. I had some stories. They was fine too. I had two nurses had to travel with me. Yes, I had to had to have because I was still in the IVS and all that kind of stuff. So they took me there. The ambulance got me from the private plane and took me to Christ's Hospital.

01:08:55
Speaker 1: But they said, your your knny looked like someone slammed the tomato on the side.

01:08:58
Speaker 2: Wal walkers. Do you remember you play? Yeah, talk to us about it. Actually it was the first inning and you played and Willie McGee hit me a slice because I was in left field. And the only reason I was in left field because I tore my knee ligament in April sliding into third base in Philly. But I just it, yeah, just just had him shoot it up the whole time. That's why I was in left field because as you saw it, I had a brave from here to hear it playing, and I dove and to keep from rolling on my shoulder, I dove and my elbow went up under my rear. Cag yeah, oh sh And I just picked the ball up and I saw the baar and I flipped it back into the infield and stuff. So everybody called me here Roy, but I was trying to call time out to tell Barry, but I was yelling, but was nothing coming out. And and so what happened was was the hal bains flew out and I was able to get off the field, but I was supposed to lead off the inning. I'm gonna sit down and catch my breath, and it hit me again and I couldn't get up. And that's when you see that photo of me walking up the stairs. And what's crazy was they put me in the back of a van and drove me past like five five hospitals and my mom and my wife is in the van. But my mom she you know what I'm saying, She wanted them and she motherfucking everybody, you know what I'm saying. But we got a police escort, but they don't put the sirens on until we get to the hospital. So they took me like twenty minutes somewhere from Oakland, and she was trying to get me to fill some papers and I don't know, so my mama cussing them out and everything like that. So that's how I got to that thing. And I don't remember anything until like that Wednesday, and the team left Sunday morning, that's correct, and just left.

01:10:51
Speaker 3: I mean, listen, this is the part of your story that I did not know. You had non surgeries after that, didn't make an All Star game after that, but still continue to play for the next ten fucking years.

01:11:05
Speaker 2: How you do that? Desire Bro?

01:11:08
Speaker 3: I need to bring you with me because I got some boys you need to talk to because that's sort of mentality, is the shit I'm talking about.

01:11:14
Speaker 2: See, the sports has moved into a place where it's not about the game, and sports has always been about the game, and now it's about everything but the game. Everybody has a brand. Everybody wants to do this and how can I profit off of this and this and this and this and this, And they've individualized the game to fit whatever their criteria. Is. But greatness is about the game, and you love doing what you do because of the game. It didn't matter about the money. People tell me all the time and man, if you played this, you would be making means. I'd say it, but I don't want to because of when I played and what I went through and the people that I was there made it all worth the while. No, it wasn't changing for the world, just going through what I went through to be able to tell that story with the people that helped me get there, watched over me, protected me, fed me, jailed at me, disciplined me the whole nine yards. It's it's it wasn't about the money, because the money wasn't there. So what drove you to be able to say I'm a professional. You love to play the game. You probably pick up game now if you come on, let's go. I don't come on, because when you do that, you love the game. Everything now is specialized training, right, So only one person has to appease you if if you better pick up game with them, Oh that motherfucker, let's go, come on. So there's always more and it's always the game. They've lost the fact that the game is the most important thing. But we was talking about that, bro when we was coming up, bro, the same thing, Like, what the fuck was a brand? Yeah, we didn't even know what that was. At the end of the day, if you took care of what you needed to on the field, that was brand.

01:13:14
Speaker 1: And if you won, everyone was gonna eat. Take us back to your first at bat real quick in the World Series.

01:13:19
Speaker 5: Stu off of Stu still talking like this, right, Yeah, Yeah, it was crazy because I had just faced him in All Star Game in eighty nine and I came up in the identical situation and he threw me at first pitch fastball and he threw.

01:13:36
Speaker 2: Me four splitch and walked him. So when I was walking, I'm like, Stu, damn full spitch. He said, shit, I gave you one. I was like, you know what you did? Right. So when we go a whole year later, remember that game one that's on my mind. First identical situation man on first two outs, identical script, play first pitch fastball. I ain't taking this motherfucker and ate him up. But that was just having a muscle memory. I didn't need analytics to tell me what he was gonna do because I knew it absolutely So just knowing what he was gonna do, because I know he didn't want to deal with me, but he wanted to get ahead of me. And then if I chase whatever, whatever wherever, that was an easy formula. But we knew them more than they knew us. Because Stu pitched in the National League. Honey could bob welch all of their guys. So we had faced those guys before. They hadn't dealt with what we was bringing. So that's why we felt like we had a real good advantage of him. Because if you know eighty eight, the Dodgers did them bad, unfortunately, but hershizes in them. Had it not been for McGuire hitting the homer in the tenth, they would have swept them. And if you look at eighty nine at Earthquake one, if every game was ten to seventh, the Giants put runs on the board. They just didn't have a pitch and and sustained. So we knew that if we got to the seventh with the lead, it was over with the Nasty boys. It was a round and that's how we played the whole. Yeah, that's why we went wire to wire. We was like eighty two and oh after the seventh in or some shit like that. It was crazy. It was just straight. We literally would be playing like we got to have a lead by the sixth in and every night and that's that's a recipe for success for you guys for sure. But we really had three closers with Charlton Dibarren Myers. All of them had closed yeah particular time. Yeah, interesting, man, coolest dudes with everyone. Be coolest a fan, that's dope. He was cool as a fan.

01:15:42
Speaker 3: Hey, okay, we've talked about some iconic players. Give me your favorite stop and one of your favorite teammates that you had towards the back half of everything when you became the veteran.

01:15:52
Speaker 2: My favorite stop probably was Baltimore because we had the team nothing but a veteran team and we went wire know why that year, but we like blew three saves against Cleveland that year, but you had to deal with you had third how big homemouch you hit that year twenty eight? Yeah, yeah, yep.

01:16:08
Speaker 1: But just.

01:16:11
Speaker 2: Harol Vains was what was my locker mate, and I kind of nicknamed him Sleepy because you know how he was so LEAs, so relaxed, so chill, cool, cool, knowledgeable, so we just talked. I had thirteen years and then, and I'm still getting information from this dude. Cal Ripken was probably the best. He drunk a twelve pack after every game. I love it. By the way, man, when I met Cal, I never knew how big that may. He's huge.

01:16:41
Speaker 4: He's a monk about six y four, Yes, every bit of that. Maybe five, bro, maybe I shoulders like this two thirty five? Was that the not to cut you off and keep your thought? Was that the random year that out of nowhere Brady Anderson had like fifty two home runs?

01:16:55
Speaker 2: Was that? Actually that was ninety six, that was the year before. Yes, yeah he went back to hitting eight again. She got his paper. Yes he did, Yes he did, but it wasn't illegal. Right. So, But but just that team at David Johnson, who I think is one of the greatest undermine managers of long time. He was he never had a losing season. Wow, ye impressive, that is to say, right with the Mets, the Dodgers on some high pressure teams. Yeah, never having a losing season. So they never gave him his praise and stuff. But he was such an architecture of knowing veterans and how to treat him importing. Robbie Alamar was probably the smartest player I've ever played.

01:17:36
Speaker 3: Names instead sides of play both sides of the ball, because he could literally back one through five and do what was required.

01:17:45
Speaker 2: Wowd hit thirty, driving one hundred, lead off, hit three thirty, steal your forty bad second, get him over, buddy mode. Whatever was required, he could do it at a high level. Raphael palmerrow too right. Yes he was hitting behind me and and and it's something for having protection because when I went there, I had three twenty eight when he was protecting, so you was you was always the protection. Yes, I was always the protection, but I was always having to feel like I had to get it done. So I would chase pictures just for the movement of the team instead of walking and saying that's so I would hit two seventy five or two eighty instead of three twenty because I got to get it in and stuff like that. But it's such a comfort zone when you have that, So when you see that, you be like, shit, I know he's sleeping good at at night, you know.

01:18:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I felt that matter feel like when I was in New York my second third year, I hit second, and I had people hitting behind me like Mark to Chery at the time.

01:18:44
Speaker 2: Who was leading the league. He was a beast. He was, you know, like Robinson Cano, like it's just had the most badass hitters on the planet. So every two ozer count.

01:18:55
Speaker 3: I ain't missing this one right now because I'm not walking that motherfucker because I don't want to say those dudes behind it with somebody on first base, you know.

01:19:01
Speaker 2: That's a huge advantage, big time. It's a huge advantage.

01:19:04
Speaker 1: I'm in high school during the they called the steroid era, but to me, it was some of the best baseball I had ever seen with what was going on. As a player who played it the right way, What were your thoughts during that time as you're seeing your contemporaries do what they're doing.

01:19:22
Speaker 2: It really wasn't a problem because you didn't know the outcome, okay, because when I got the dodge, Lenny Dyster came from the Mets to Philadelphia, like he was one of the first ones that the league had saw that transformed his body and he went from like one sixty five one seventy to two ten monscle And when we went over there, it was fun, like, look at this mother. He was swown up like we giggled at it. Right, it wasn't. I didn't think that of trying to gain an advantage or not that it wasn't even a thought process. But I didn't didn't care. Shit wasn't illegal. As small as I was. If I'd have thought I could have put on fifteen pounds, I might have used it, but not to help my game and stuff. But it helped me running into these walls. They kept me on for the recovery and in which we do know what it does. But out of all of the guys, and this is where and brother mister roll with me, is they want to pick the guys who had the best years they can choose to say when it was a lot of guys doing it. But because that they was still terrible saying nothing shit didn't help them, so they didn't even so like, but there's guys that they put in that players you know they used and stuff like that. So why you gonna pick and choose? Do these and pick and choose? That's why for me, the Hall of Fame has lost a lot of credibility in what they do and stuff. And I didn't find this out until a few years. It's that the Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball is two separate entities. Major has nothing to do with it. They don't have nothing with how they treated or the whole nine yards. And everybody think it's the league that has something to do with that, but no, that's them on their I didn't know that. Yeah, that's what they're doing to protect whatever they're protecting. But you got all the shit in there for millions of people to come pay money, you know, take pictures with all the bats, the balls, the strikeouts, the pictures, the whole You got a whole wing of Pete Rose everybody going there. So how much money are you making off his stuff? If you don't want him any here, give all this stuff back to his family. You don't have the stuff in there, but you want to make the money off his stuff, But you don't want his plaque to be in there. It's a museum. It's clearly a museum.

01:21:40
Speaker 3: It's crazy because great people, Because I was thought the Hall of Fame was a story, like a story told of the game, supposed to be exactly right, and there's so many of those players that steroids are no steroids.

01:21:51
Speaker 2: You still got to hit the fucking thing.

01:21:53
Speaker 3: You still got to answer the bell every single day. So at the end of the day, regardless of you know, what players might have done.

01:21:59
Speaker 2: In my opinion, this is just an opinion.

01:22:01
Speaker 3: That there is a whole grip of dudes out there that should be in the Hall of Fame because you can't tell the story of Major League Baseball without those motherfuckers.

01:22:08
Speaker 2: You know, if you look at what Mark McGuire and Sammy's so Bro in ninety eight brought the game back ninety six after we came off a lockout in ninety four, so the game was tinkering with bad attendance and everything. So cal breaks the record and then they going on to do what they do millions of people and viewers. They made so much money off that, it's ridiculous. So how can you pocket all that and market all that and then try to destroy all that when you think it's not right?

01:22:43
Speaker 1: But they leaned into the member chicks dig the long ball, everything like the marketing. They leaned into what was going on at the time, and then.

01:22:51
Speaker 2: The commercial You knew what was happening, but you still got to hit it. Yep. It's still the most difficult thing in the game to do it. It's hit a baseball. That's the thing right now. Just in the Hall of Fame in general, some guys are in the Hall of Fame that.

01:23:11
Speaker 3: We know have used but they might have been a little nicer to people than other guys, you know what I'm saying. So it's like it shouldn't necessarily be It's not a player's job to necessarily be nice to people, even though it helps. But the end of the day, it's all about the production on the field. So I find it very interesting the fact that, in my opinion, there are some gentlemen that should be in the Hall of Fame because their numbers say so, but because they might not have had the attitude that everybody wanted, they're not in.

01:23:38
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but also that the people who are voting, I think they're important and you're not important, so they have a chance of flexing up because they have a vote. I don't think you should even have a vote, because you had nothing to do with my career at all, regardless of whether I spoke to you or not. You have nothing to do with my success or failures. Why do you get to validate Why do you get to say so? Yep? I agree. Why you shouldn't get to validate me because you have nothing to do with what I did or know what it takes to be in your position to begin with. Yeah, and yet that was attributed to Barry. But what people don't realize is Barry had a certain time where he talked every day, spoke to them. As I was there, he spoke every day, but it was on his terms. At his time. He said, from three to four o'clock, I'll answer all y'all questions. If you came in four oh one, he was off dim. The people that called him an ass because they was late, those are the people that said, again, because he don't want to talk. You know, he didn't want to talk to you after you came late. That was the problem with that story. I don't feel like that story told enough. It's not. Sheffield also told us that of how the media treated his dad. Yeah, but he talked every day. He just didn't talk for five hours a day. He wasn't available. If you was late, you missed out, that's your fault. And then he would talk the next day. And if you was late, you missed it again. So why are you mad for your shortcoming? Oh? He was doing. Was just setting boundaries.

01:25:21
Speaker 1: Come on, tough, tough childhood best friend. We had the honor of sitting down with him.

01:25:27
Speaker 2: Was it last year? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, some last summer.

01:25:31
Speaker 1: Daryl Strawberry, both selected in the eighty draft, grew up together.

01:25:35
Speaker 2: What does Daryl mean to you? He was my backbone because it started when we was twelve and he was playing at Ranch Show and I was playing at Baldwin Hills and we met in the playoff game, and like he had heard about me, and I had heard about him, but I had never visioned that he was going to be six two or twelve like that leader and stuff. And he was just different. He was more so ahead of his time than I was, because he knew that was his dream. It wasn't my dream. And he thought about baseball way more than I did. But he could throw a football seventy yards that he was a good basketball He wasn't a great basketball player. Well, he was a good basketball player, so we could have did whatever he wanted to do. But baseball was his thing and he showed that. I played it because it kept me off the streets and it was the things to do and stuff like that. But our bond was such a bond where even when we was playing Connie Mack, I always bat at first. He batted third. But we always challenged each other to be more than what people expected. And what was crazy was because like when he got drafted that he was He was the black Ted Williams and I was Willie Mays. How do you put two seventeen year old two of the greatest ever played a game, and if you don't reach it, then you was considered a failure. But he could do whatever he wanted to do on the baseball field, throw pitch, run off O. Connie Mac team is seventy nine. We had eighteen guys get drafted and me and Straw was junior. That was Chris Brown and that was at Chris Green. It was a lot of guys that got drafted off that team and me and him was juniors. So we go to Seattle, Washington for the It was a Connie Mac Pacific Regional, so we flew down there. So they took us to this little park and the dimensions was not what we was playing with in Compton, so it was like we're playing here. It was like this shit ain't gonna hold us little too little, so we were like, what's the most, Like, what's the most home runs was hit in the tournament? They said six? We had eight the first night I led the game up power in the tree number time. It was crazy, like in five games, like we had like thirty homers in games or something like that. That after Steve Bulls shelled them beat us. They was from Orange County. It was Steve booth Shell and it was Jeff Beaconship. They had better pitching though they beat us thirteen to ten in the championship game. Just thinking he was sitting to myself thinking how fucking cool would it be.

01:28:36
Speaker 3: To be best buddies with somebody at twelve years old and for us to live the same life.

01:28:41
Speaker 2: Like I don't have that.

01:28:43
Speaker 3: No, not many, That's what I'm saying, Like, I'm just thinking to myself, like how badass is that that you guys could have leaned on each other.

01:28:49
Speaker 2: It's huge and stuff. But it was a problem sometimes because whatever he was involved, when I was associated with it totally, I didn't think about that. So so the times that he was going through his thing, then people would automatically assume that I was with aociations. So it was tough and that thing because with his first wife and stuff, and me and Do was coming back from a Laker game and we both had five sixty SEC's and mine was white and his was black, and we rolling up to full five. And I was living in Woodland Hills at the time and he was living in Sino, So you know, we got to come around the curve. Shit, he would go back to LA. I would keep going to the curve and shit and going home and shit. So his wife would call the house at two o'clock in the morning, like Eric and drelling. My life was my wife be like, Eric, is sleep? What are you talking? So it was always I didn't think about it. It was always what he was doing I was doing. People thought I was on drugs and shit like that. It was a hindering sometimes and stuff. But to know our friendship, it really didn't bother me. But it bothered me why because it's like, you got to judge me for who I am. And and he was the kind of guy where he would give you the shirt off your back. And uh, I remember when he won the Rookie of the Year. Actually we was in the Forum club and all he talked about was they needed to see me next year. Y'all ain't seen none until y'all see Ed. Y'all. That's the kind of individual. He just won a major award, but he was pubing me at the game like that. That's friendship. That's why we've been through thick and thin on on on life's issues and and and we've had heart to heart conversations that friends can have, and and and sometimes I was wrong and sometimes he was wrong, but it never didn't our friendship because we know where it's coming from, brace of love. Does that relationship still stand today? You guys are still pretty close. I just talked to him the other day.

01:31:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, You guys both also faced a life altering battle, both being diagnosed with cancer and beating it. You found a baseball sized tumor and went through thirty six rounds of chemo.

01:31:17
Speaker 2: What was that battle like? It was tough, It wasn't scary because I was misdiagnosed. So we was in Cleveland. I just hear the triple and I came in to score the sacrifice a sacrifice fly and had kind of collided with Sandy and it was safe, and I went in to sit down and they made it three dollars and I went to get up and I couldn't get up in the pain and hit me where was the tumor at It was inside my colon? Oh shit. So I was like that ain't right. I couldn't get up the shelves. So they call the doctors over there there exam. They gave me some pills. I paid the next day, and it was kind of the medication. It was holding it where it was supposed to be. So we ended up going to New York for it was Memorial Day weekend and stuff. So we had a day game and I played the day game and I was in so much pain. The trainers put me on the train back to Baltimore and the ambulance met me at the train and took me to the University of Maryland's hospital. So I was there for eight days and they couldn't tell me why while you were having the pain? No, but they called it an apsets, and I wanted to know how did it get there, but they couldn't tell me. So the chief of staffs, everybody's coming down and they're trying to tell me they're gonna send me back to play, and I was like, no, y'all got to tell me something. So one of my girlfriends, who I was in business where she was from DC. She said, Eric, check out of there and go to John Hopkins. I can call the general manager. I said, I want to go to John Hopkins to get a second opinion. Like they actually stuck a catheter in and tried to drain it. Wow, so that she could have leaked all over my body and surround over yep. So I finally go there. It was like six thirty at night. The first test he did with me was a colonuster. I had been there eight days and they never did a colonox, none of that. The first test that doctor did was a He said, man, you got a tomor in your colon the size of the grapefruit. Yeah, he said it was about that big where it had just large. Damn. It was just I didn't have no symptoms of what I knew the symptoms were. After I started hearing what it was, I had no symptoms, no blood, no nothing. And so the grace of God was that I hit the trip and ran into the catcher that created that thing for me. So that was on a Wednesday, and I called my wife and my mom them and they came out Thursday. I had surgery Friday morning, and so they took out a third of my colon and they said they wanted to take chemo. So I was like, well, see did you got it? Why am I taking chemo? And it was like, cause you're only thirty four years old, could come back. And I was like, okay, can I get a second opinion? So the same doctor that operated on Straw, but I don't know that until afterwards from stuff. That's why I went up there to get my second opinion for he was like, yeah, because of the size in your age. And then I went to UCLA and so they was all saying it. So that's when I agreed to take it. And I took thirty two weeks of chemo. But but what really saved me outside of God, was that Eric Anthony wife is a herbalist at one of my teammates, and she lived in Houston, Man. She cooked me up some herbs, like seven or eight different herbs that my wife was boiling on the stove right and I would drink it every day and I never got sick when I took chemo. I never threw up, I never did nothing. So when I was making a comeback. It wasn't like I was heroic. It wasn't none prevented me. Once my scar held up, I was I'm like, that's good. I'm ready to go. Yeah. Wow. And on the days that I played, I wouldn't play that day to day that I had to chemo, but the next day I would play. Wow, Wow, incredible. So I didn't have got to get those herbs, bro we gotta figure out. But you know what was crazy though, was everybody thought I was a hero, But every time I took chemo, I was in the children's ward. Mmm, with the babies and seeing them. Man, that's heartbreaking what I'm going through. I done lived almost thirty some odd years and I'm doing okay. And to see them who don't have a hope in the world and they're smiling and joking. They made it easy for me. That hurts perspected for sure. They put it in perspective for me, and I was like, I gotta do this just from having conversations with it was like, but that's how it was. It was crazy because they motive v way more than I could have ever moved. If they were your heroes, that's amazing. Quick hitters.

01:36:03
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to think Brian and e J the MLB Player House for making this happen. My co host Nick has been a great run. First thing to come to mind.

01:36:10
Speaker 2: Let us know.

01:36:11
Speaker 1: Favorite ballpark, San Diego, worst ballpark Montreal. The toughest pitcher you faced, Nolan Ryan.

01:36:17
Speaker 2: Best singular pitch you've ever seen. The best one that I hit was probably a slider off John Smokes. And when I missed was a fast ball that Nolan Ryan threw me that I didn't see. He said, I didn't even see. Sounded good.

01:36:33
Speaker 1: Funniest teammate Dave Parker, Betch Cleary brawl. Three guys you want on your side?

01:36:39
Speaker 2: Oh shit, Glenn Braggs. Glenn Braggs, that name for ever strong and end up probably Kevin Mitchell, Kevin with.

01:36:48
Speaker 1: Or without the goal to.

01:36:51
Speaker 2: Either or Best baseball movie probably Major League. That's a real good.

01:37:01
Speaker 1: We had Charlie Sheen for a while and he told us what he did. He took steroids for the movie.

01:37:07
Speaker 2: By the way, he looked good in that movie. Ye, dude, he was. He was like, he's from Ohio. Yes, he would come to Dodger Stadium in his uniform and sit on our bench. Chuck Wood. All of that hid the flight stuff started with us. Well, by the way, he used to come to u c l A. Because he used to have a party out of Malibu every time we came and he would have like limos for everybody, just boatloads of everything. Charlie was the best bro. It was the best. But it was easy for me because I didn't go to a lot of times because I lived on the other side. See y'all, that's a good luck, right. All of that started with us. That's interesting clubhouse playlist. What was on it my first couple of years was probably the Dramatics Temptations because there was old dudes, and then when I got to lead, it was probably Tupac and w A. Snoop dre all my West Coast lovers. Too short, everybody. Hammer can't touch this. You know what I'm saying. I know you had them pants the hammer comfortable. I worked out with him at Harvard parkuse that was comfortable.

01:38:26
Speaker 1: Well, Eric Man, thank you for your time, what you did for our childhoods, will you know never be duplicated, and what you've been able to overcome and what you accomplished on the field, was incredible man, and we appreciate your time.

01:38:37
Speaker 2: Man, Man, I appreciate you guys, and go up to you guys. You apprecize, man, this is a great thing. Absolutely, Eric Davis, Yes, sir,