Pardon My Take - Cowboy Joe West, NBA Playoffs & NFL Draft Recap/Grades

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

The Bucks win Game 1 and Hank isn’t putting his mini whomp button away.(00:02:34-00:15:17) We talk Grizzlies/Warriors and some hockey (Biz coming Wednesday). (00:15:18-00:24:38) Who’s back of the week including recap from Saturday Night at MSG Taylor vs Serrano. (00:25:41-00:39:06) MLB Ump Cowboy Joe West joins the show to talk about his career, his music albums, stories from the road, and how he never made a bad call. (00:40:01-01:29:53) We finish the show recapping the NFL Draft and give out grades for a bunch of teams from the weekend.(01:30:42-01:57:34)You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, cowboy Joe West, the umpire that bothered all of us for many, many years, joins the show. Great interview.

He doesn't take any shit. He doesn't take any shit. And it was a fun time to talk to him. Some great stories told. We're gonna talk a little NBA at the start. We're gonna talk a little who's back. And then after cowboy Joe West, we're gonna give out our draft grades

and recap the Friday and Saturday of the NFL Draft Rounds two through seven. Great weekend of sports. Before we do all of that, cross-country mortgage. If you're still throwing away money on rent, every month you're just sitting on the bench. Cross-country mortgage puts you in the game and you'll be part of a championship team.

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Boy! Boy! Now in the street there is violence and then a lot of soft work can be done. No place to hang out or wash in and then I can't stay all on your side. Oh no, we're gonna rock it down to electric high brand new. And then we'll take it higher.

Oh, we're gonna rock it down to electric high brand new. It's a pardon my take, presented by Varsity Sports. Welcome to part of my take presented by cross-country mortgage. Today is Monday, May 2nd. And the Celtics are dead. Oh, I was gonna say, those aren't the nets. Those aren't the nets.

The Bucks are not the nets. Tough break for Hank today. This was a rough way to start the series. Now, I think the next game becomes a must win for you. Yeah, by the way, we're gonna talk NFL draft after Cowboy Joe West. We're gonna do NBA and Who's Back and talk about the fight at Madison Square Garden

that we all were at. But let's start with Celtics Bucks. Not to be reductive, Hank, but turns out being tall matters. Being tall matters. I might have been a little bit overconfident. I probably should have, you know, not underestimated Bobby Portis.

Dude, crazy eyes. But with that being said. I mother what Bobby Portis puts on those tactical glasses. Dude, you look awesome. I saw a tweet during the game. Someone was like, Bobby Portis has had his glasses sitting on like the scores table or shit. He was sitting out somewhere for a couple of minutes

and I'm surprised no one has tried to steal it. And I was like, wait, yeah, why didn't anyone try to steal the playoffs? Absolutely, steal it, throw it into the stands. What is the deal with the glasses? What makes him so much better? Does he think he can see? Is there like a heads-up display on it

where he's like, it's like virtual reality or like reality augmenting glasses where his teammates get highlighted in green and defenders get highlighted in red? That would be sick. He did get, he got poked in the eye in the bull series. So it's, I think it's preventive or whatever the word would be.

Yeah, I guess it is to get it, to get more poked in the eye. It's like when Rip Hamilton, when he broke his nose, he put the mask on and then he was like a different dude with the mask. I think Portis just has to keep the glasses. Even he does have crazy eyes. But yeah, Hank, turns out height matters.

It's game one, let's not overreact, but I was thinking about it and I was like, yeah. This, it does seem like the bucks are just way bigger. And then I looked at the actual height and they have three starters that are bigger than anyone who plays any minutes on the Celtics. Bobby Portis, Yannis and Lopez are all over 6'10". And turns out in basketball, height matters.

Well, if you're gonna go up against a team that's running all big, you have to be able to shoot. You have to make your jump shots. Well, they were doing, and so do you guess, guess how many two point field goals the Celtics made? I saw the tweet. So I saw Kirk Goldsbury our friend.

So I don't, did anyone not see it and wants to guess? I don't want to just give it away because I also know it. Hank? 10. They made exactly 10. You saw the lowest amount in Celtics history. So Kirk Goldsbury said,

the Celtics have never as a franchise had less than 14 two point field goals made in the game. They had 10 today. They've played 6,630 total games. So that was what I was gonna say, like spin zone is I would much rather lose a game where you play like absolute dog shit and couldn't play worse than lose a game where you're playing really well

and the other team just beat you. Like the Celtics played so bad. Jalen Brown was so bad. Jason Tatum didn't play well. No one was playing well. So like their defensive plan was very, very good. They basically were like, go ahead and shoot threes. And anytime you get in the paint

we're just gonna be taller and bigger than you and make sure that Jason Tatum doesn't have the ball in his hands. Did the Yanis pass to himself to that hurt? Cause he basically, Yanis is so good. He had a triple double. He had that pass off the backboard where it was just an NBA All-Star game.

He was just like, that was a big brother, little brother pass. It was emasculating, yeah. That was, I can do anything I want. Watch me do this cool trick. I kind of agree with Hank though that if, so like the first game of the Nets series when the Celtics were playing Nets,

the Nets losing that close game felt like real bad. It's like, that's a game that you should have won. In this one, you can like burn the tape and be like, that's an aberration. We're gonna be a completely different team. And that's, that is how the Bucks play defense just in general. I think they had the most three pointers attempted

against them by far. Yeah, the Bulls broke a franchise record by missing and shooting a million for three pointers. I have a spin zone for you too, Hank. I actually think that that was a must win for the Bucks with Chris Middleton's injury, not having home court advantage. Like the Bucks needed that win.

If the Celtics went on Tuesday night, I don't think that's, I think this, I already think the series is going seven, so I wouldn't freak out. But it was, the pass off the backboard hurt. It was tough. I also think that in a weird way, Marcus Smart gets better the more injured he gets.

Cause he needs to find stuff to like be pissed off about. And now it's like, okay, it's me against my own, but he's like the, he had two injuries, right? He had the shoulder and then he also hurt his leg on the same play, like the night in Monty Python where he was like, it's just a flesh wound. I got this. Like he's going to get fired up

because the story is going to be like, can Marcus Smart overcome this tremendous amount of pain he's going to have to play through? And Marcus is going to be like, fuck yeah, I can do this. I have two questions for you, Hank. One is a Marcus Smart question. The green hair, how do we feel about it when things aren't going well?

He needs to, it looks sick when it's corn road. He like took out the corn rows and it looks kind of crazy. Well, it's also just like, it's one of those things. But when it's the beads, like it looks bad ass. And it's cool when you're winning. And if you're losing, it's not as cool. The other question I had for you, Grayson Allen is still a fan.

Yeah, I mean, how can you not be? I was just watching him flop on that three pointer. And I was just the whole time I was thinking like, I hope Hank is happy, how cute and awesome he thought Grayson Allen was. It was like Marcus Smart does the same shit. He's the most annoying person in the world. The announcers are really going through

the checklist of like sneaky athletic. Like he's actually like an athletic dude. It was the perfect Grayson Allen play too because he not only flopped on the three pointer, but he also like stuck out his leg to try to trip the guy. He kind of kicked the guy. And then turned that into a flop on the same play. Yeah.

So it's Duke. How are you feeling? I feel like that was as bad of a game as you could play. I think Jaylen Brown was nowhere to be found. If they play like that, they're gonna lose a series for nothing, but I don't think they're gonna play like that next game. So in a state classy for the entire city,

Boston, Hank. Mini Wamp is still on the table, technically. The Mini Wamp is still there. Did you see this, Hank? This is from Jared Weiss NBA. That's his Twitter handle. You can tell he knows ball because his Twitter handle is Jared Weiss NBA.

He said- He does know ball. He said, of course Celtics fans, Bu Giannis, even though he's the most lovable player in the league. How dare you? How dare you? That's grasping right there. Hank, this is classic Boston sports fans.

How could you not cheer him in a playoffs? In the playoffs, he's the guy that is going to eliminate you from the playoffs if he plays well. How can you not throw rose petals at his feet, Hank? It's disgusting. Hank, is it? It's for your city, Hank. I mean, obviously, I don't know how to answer that.

Do you disavow? No, I don't disavow. Do you boom harder? Boom, absolutely boom harder. I love that you boom harder. We've gotten to the point where it's like booing your opponents is actually bad. Yeah, it's mean.

Don't do that. As an empath, you should not be booing other people. Big time empath energy. Yeah, that was a tough game, Hank, but I think this series, like this- Celtics never got it going, though. That's the only thing where it wasn't like, oh, they're going to run, they're playing well.

They played like shit all game. I have another spin zone for you. Just throw it throughout the table. I got you another spin zone. I don't think there's a harder transition going from playing the Nets to playing the Bucks because the Bucks play defense. They have an identity.

They actually like have a game plan on defense and they're really, really tall. Whereas the Nets were like, hey, let's just, let's try to shoot this, our way to victory and not play any defense and not protect the rim. So there you go. That was like night and day.

It's probably a very, it's a shock to the system to have to play the Milwaukee Bucks after a series against the Brooklyn Nets. Boom. Fun fact, Pat Conniton, Groban Massachusetts. Dude, that's a very fun fact. Yeah, he's also a recurring guest. Who, and if the Bucks win it again, we'll have him back on.

Yeah, I- And it's not like 25 times. Throw, did they, I had to have it on mute because I was doing parenting. So I had to like pretend I wasn't watching, but I was watching. So I missed all the, who was doing the call? Oh, Mark Jackson, by the way.

Doris Burke and I don't know who the- Mark Jackson. Shout out to LeBron James for actually getting Mark Jackson a job. He's going to go to the Kings. Kings, yeah. And I think Rasilo said that. I think Rasilo had the theory correctly that it was like,

LeBron doesn't actually want Mark Jackson as a coach. Clutch just wants Mark Jackson to coach, period. So if they throw it out there, someone will hire him. Yeah, and also LeBron James has probably pumped to be playing against Mark Jackson so many times in a year. Yeah, right. It's like, yeah, can we, can we get him like as close to where I play as possible

so I can just dunk on him? So prediction, Hank. I'm actually also happy because I was thinking about betting the Celtics to win the title and this now gives me a better price. So I appreciate that. Where's the panic button? Nowhere to be found.

Nowhere. You don't even have a panic button yet. I'm still like the mini-wamping button is still out. Are you looking up reviews online, like product reviews for the panic button? Are you just like completely, it doesn't exist in your world? He hasn't put the mini-wamping away. Win game, win game two and get on a roll.

They haven't found their game and if they find it, then it's gonna be a wrap. Yeah. Well, that's what the Bucks are gonna continue to do. So you just, you have to just hope to not have- They did a good job on Yannis. Like Yannis didn't have a triple-double blood. Yeah, he did have a triple-double blood.

I mean, Yannis is the guy in the NBA where like, if he is playing well, there's literally nothing that you can do. There's nothing. The only thing you can do to defend Yannis is if you like got his brother, gave him a bunch of steroids and then just used like his own genes against him.

Yeah. Because like there's no other person in player in the NBA that's that big, that strong, that talented. I wonder, I think that we've all decided that Yannis is the best player in the NBA right now. Like I don't know if that's a debate anymore. It does feel like after every game, people have to debate it.

I think that's just because Yannis is too nice. If he was meaner, I don't think it would be a debate. Do you know what I mean? Like he's, like people still are holding back like, oh yeah, but this guy's got the killer gene. But Yannis has the killer gene. He just will also kill you and then say a dad joke afterwards.

No, Yannis is like, he is a guy that is so nice that if you leave him off, if you don't mention him in the MVP conversation, he'll be like, yeah, you know what? You've got a tough job to do. That's really hard to decide who the MVP is. I'm glad that you picked one of the other guys. They're very talented.

And then tell like a knock, knock joke. Yeah. And everyone will laugh and then it'll run away. Joel and Bede will just be like, yo, that's trash. They didn't vote for me. You're trash human. But a shout out Joel and Bede for doing a better job than the doctors.

Cause after he got his face broken against the Raptors on whatever night that was, Wednesday night. No, Thursday night. Thursday night? Yeah, Thursday night. In the post game, he's like, I think I broke my face. And it turns out he did. So that sucks for Phil.

Can you not play with a broken face? I think it's kind of hard. It's gonna hurt a lot. You don't shoot with your face though. I mean, yeah, he shoots with his hand, which is also broken. That's true. Yeah, the wrist and the face together.

That's tough. He is the Monty Python guy. I feel like you should be able to play with a broken face. You put the mask on, right? Yeah. You deal with it that way. Orbital bone, I don't know. That's your eye sign.

Yeah, I imagine that like hurts every time you step. Are you sneeze? That's probably the worst. And yeah, heat culture would definitely go for his face. Yeah. They would take him out. Me personally, I would play with a broken face. I'm just built different.

I would too. Absolutely. You could break both my eyes and still play. Yeah, I could. I think if I broke my face, my day to day life would not be any different than it is right now. I don't know. I'm trying to think like ACL, I'd still play.

Yeah. Broken ankle, I'd still play. I got it out. Spray and ankle, no. Spray and ankle, no. High ankle, spray and no. Low ankle, spray and yes. Kidney stones.

Yeah. You didn't miss a podcast, either one of us. No, birth of a child, don't miss a podcast. Jones Fracture, didn't miss a podcast. Slip disc, play. Yeah, I'd say we're way tougher than any player in any league. Yeah, face is nothing. Walk a face off.

Yeah, dude. You know what you do with a face? You fucking, you go and get a bucket of ice and you put your face in it for a minute. And not only is it fixed, but you look a lot skinnier. Yep. So that's it. It's pretty basic stuff, Joel.

Yeah. Okay, so mini-wapping's still out, not worried at all. I think the series is gonna go the distance. I also think this is going to be a great test of has Jason Tatum fully arrived because he will take over some of these games and then we'll be like, oh yeah. He's really fucking good.

That's my prediction. But I don't know who the fuck's gonna win this series because it is gonna be, I think it's gonna go seven. And then we should talk Warriors Grizzlies. Well, I don't know where to start because I'm still upset. I had Warriors minus two. Grizzlies, Grizzlies Timberwolves too quickly from Friday.

Oh yeah, that was a crazy ending to that game. So that actually is perfect for this game because it turns out that the Warriors do know how to close out a game unlike the Timberwolves who, Karl-Anthony Towns, that three point shot will just live in my head forever. He's a psycho. And there were people who were defending it

being like, we've never seen a big man shoot this well. It's like, dude, he shot like four seconds into a shot clock. He shot a 35 footer when all they needed was a bucket. And every time he was in the post, they were doubling him. And someone did point out, Timberwolves did point out, you can double Karl-Anthony Towns because half the time he'll throw a pass like 10 rows up, which is fair, but that Timberwolves,

like I guess you just say they're so young and dumb that that was a series where they'll grow from it, but I was disappointed I wanted a game set. Yeah, well, you do learn more from your mistakes than you do from your victories, right? That's what they always say. And they made so many mistakes in that series. They're either going to come back next year

and be like really smart figure out how to win in the playoffs or they're just, that's who they are. And they're going to continue to be, I hope that they continue to be the dumbest and be a team because the games that they play in are, it's like you've never seen a game in basketball before. They blew, I think three fourth quarter leads in that series. And they did it in spectacular fashion.

It was a 10 point lead going into the fourth quarter. And I bet the Timberwolves, I was like, yeah, this is not going to be a win, no chance. But I think just either one of those teams, the Grizzlies or the T-wolves, they're just going to be the fun team to watch, regardless. Chaotic energy. This game had a lot of chaotic energy.

Draymond Green got ejected on a play where he fouled the guy. It was actually, it was the perfect Draymond Green play because he smacked a guy in the face, grabbed his jersey, threw him down onto the ground, fouled him twice on the same play and then got kicked out of the game, ran around the arena, basically flipping off the crowd. Which was awesome.

And then he ran into the tunnel and went and recorded a podcast. That's the Draymond Green hat trick. It's the perfect, and the Warriors won. Which is like the craziest part because you think like, oh no, they're in trouble with him out. But yeah, that was a soft flagrant too, but it also is one of those situations

where Draymond Green has a reputation, so they're always going to call it that way. You know what I mean? It was probably the right call to make, but it was very funny because right before that happened, Jeff Van Gundy was just deep-throating him. Just being like, you know what Draymond Green has done with this game?

He's gotten a lot smarter. He does all the little things correctly that helps you win games. And then like two seconds later, he was just mugging a guy, just ripping his jersey off for him onto the ground. Yes, but yeah, it was a crazy game. The ending, I'm happy that there's less reviews

in the end of game situations, but it was not fun that the ref just, the both refs, or all three refs just decided we don't have the balls to make a call here on the out of bounds with like six seconds left. And they did a jump ball instead after Clay Thompson missed both free throws, which I mean. It was he 90% on the year?

Yeah, crazy. So at that end of the game call that you were talking about, when it wasn't even that close of a call to me, you just have to say, we talk about players not being clutch all the time. Those refs are not clutch. They were couch.

That was a clutch moment where you have to step up and make a call and they choked. They choked away the call. They just kind of, the ball went out of bounds and then you see all the refs look at each other and there's that look on their face,

like, oh my God, I hope this other guy has the call and nobody did. All chicken shit. You can't do a jump ball. No. You can't do a jump ball there. No, when it was so clear, I think this might be a wamping.

Really? Because I, that was the perfect setup for the Grizzlies. I know that it was emotional to come back after two days after winning a game six in Minnesota, but Steph was in foul trouble. Clay was in foul trouble. Draymond got kicked out before the halftime.

Jared Jackson hit like all his threes. John Moran shot well and they still lost. They could have won too at the end. I know, but John Moran had a look that he wanted. I just feel like that was the game. Like they had everything going their way from a ref perspective and Draymond being out and to not win it.

Their player of the night from last week, Billy basketball's player of the night, Zebo was courtside. Yup. They had everyone in the house. It is an awesome arena and crowd, but I don't know. I think there might be a wampin' in place here. It's just not the same when they don't play the games inside the Bass Pro Shop, inside the pyramid.

Yeah. Fun weekend though. I mean, fun Sunday. I wish there was a game on Saturday. We do have, by the way, people are like, hey, the Stanley Cup playoffs are about to start and we're gonna have Biz for an extended portion on Tuesday.

He's gonna stick around for guys on chicks so get your questions in. I am just, there's some people who are calling me a turncoat because I'm rooting for Canada. I don't, the Blackhawks are one of the worst teams in NHL. Why would I root for another team? I'm just rooting for Canada. Yeah, so I'm rooting for my pocket book.

First and foremost, obviously the capitals. Right. I'm a bummer that we're playing against the Panthers because I wanted to go to the garden. I wanted to go see some playoff games at the Mecca and just Florida, that you talk about a wamping. I feel like Florida is just gonna wamp everybody. So I am rooting for the capitals, obviously,

but then I've got the Leafs as my one future, but the other that I put in is the Rangers. Okay. And the narrative that I wanna get going, we'll talk to Biz about this, obviously, but I think that now that the Rangers don't have Lunkwist anymore and they've got a clutch playoff goalie,

this is what they've been missing over all the years and this guy, Igor, is gonna get into the top. Wait, so let me get this straight. So the Rangers play where? They play at the Mecca. Okay, they play Madison Square Garden and their best player forever is out. There's done, gone.

Gone. Well, he- And now they're gonna win it all? Yes. There's gotta be a theory for that. No, I don't think so. It's a thing that I made up where it's like, you miss a team from New York, loses their best player

and then they actually get better as a team because the focus isn't all about this one guy. The PFT theory? Yeah, I had in baseball, which was the Bryce Harpothesis where after we got rid of him, then the Nats win the title. Yup. So I'll-

Think about it, think about it. Think about it with something with hockey. But yeah, I'm going, I have Leafs, Flames and Oilers and you can bet them all in the Barstool Sportsbook plus 330 for any of them to win. I'm bringing it home. I just want, like, it would be cool if Canada won a cup. It's been, what, 40 years or something?

It's coming home. It's coming home. I'm excited for the Bruins. Obviously excited to watch my first hockey game. You're a huge hockey guy, yup. Yeah, well, yeah, it's about the time to start tuning in. But the other one I put a huge bet on when we were talking about Minnesota Sports

and all the unluckiness is the wild. I put a huge, huge on the wild. I'll be pulling with the wild fans. I want to see, it's that, those are the best sports stories. That's close to Canada. Those are the best sports stories. Basically Canada. Cursed teams, cursed franchises, cursed cities.

But isn't, wouldn't you say that, like, Canada's a cursed country when it comes to Stanley Cups? Well, it's the last time they won a cup, like, 94, 93? I'm trying to remember, because I did, I did have to memorize this for the dozen a couple of months ago. I love our country, what can I say? I don't think Minnesota's even won a cup.

No, they definitely haven't. Yeah. So weird, that's where all the hockey players come from, but they've never won a cup. Yeah, yeah, 1993, the Canadians. That's the last time. Well, they don't draft just from regional. And Canada probably has.

Canada does have a lot of hockey players. That's a fact. If you, like, grow up in that area, don't you want to, like, play for the home team? Yeah, but see, they had this thing called the draft. And so the teams all select from a giant pool of players across the country, and they make them move to their cities. More importantly, they have a salary cap, too.

I think most guys want to play for the most money they can. Yeah, there's money that's involved, too. So between money and free agency and the draft, then you can see how it might be difficult for hometown guys to play for their teams. But, like, also, they do have preferences and negotiations. Right, but under that same thinking, Toronto would win every Stanley Cup, no?

With the Canadian dollar, it's when you look at, when you look at, like, a magazine or a book, the Canadian money is always higher. So they technically get paid more money to play in Canada, shocking they haven't won. Yeah. Hmm, hmm. Finance.

But yeah, we're going to do a full Stanley Cup playoff preview with Biz on Tuesday, which will be a game in. But that's OK. I'm also, I also love the Stanley Cup. I mean, who doesn't love the Stanley Cup playoffs? But it's such a refreshing thing to look at the schedule and have it not be the NBA schedule, where it's, like, every other night.

You just know, like, all right, we're going to get in the series and we're going to fucking do this thing. Yeah, I need to start, like, we need to do some sort of, like, endurance training. Because you forget how late those Stanley Cup playoff games go sometime when they hit overtime. And there's, like, always one three-overtime game. And it keeps you up until, like, 2 AM.

I'm not physically ready for that yet. And the one, like, the one thing I dumb, stupid idiot me, the biggest future I put was the Flames, and they play out West. Yeah, that's tough. I'm fucked. That's tough. Absolutely fucked.

All right, anything else from, we're going to talk about the fight and who's back. Anything else from NBA or hockey? Shout out to Mets. They got a no-hitter. Good job. We're going to do the whole draft recap after we have Joe West, which is an incredible interview.

Let's do who's back of the week, who's back of the week. Brought to you by our friends at Coors Light. It's a hectic time of year between weddings, graduations, spring sports, and more. We're busier than ever right now, and sometimes we forget to take a second for ourselves. So this season, take a second to enjoy an ice cold Coors Light, because you deserve a beer that's made to chill.

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Coors Light, brewing, Golden Colorado, celebrate responsibly. You can get Coors Light, Drizzly, or Instacart. Thank you to Coors Light, the greatest beer ever created. We are a Coors Light podcast through and through. Can't wait for Coors Light all summer long. All right. Hank, who's back the week? The New England Patriots are back in a big way.

Are you doing draft talk? No, I was going to mention that, you know, people might have, no, it wasn't technically draft-related, but have you gotten your Bayley Zappi jersey yet? There was a lot of hate. No, but I heard he's a cover machine. Dude, the greatest covering quarterback of all time. Love that.

Well, that brass. Bayley Zappi is a beast. Except he kind of has a noodle arm. And I don't really follow, you know, I'm going to huge draft nick. I don't care too much about the people that cover the draft say, but I saw some bad grades for the Patriots draft. We'll get into that later.

But OBJ first reported that we're getting Debo. So we're going to be, you know, unbelievable. Yeah, so he said on Saturday night. Breaking news, 19 problems for the Patriots. WTFFFF. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear what happened there, which is just Odell Beckham got fucked up. And then he just decided that he was going to start rumors.

I just believe it, though. That's exactly. Yeah, he, I tried to get him on the podcast because he responded to my, I don't know why he picked mine out. But he said, what was your tweet? I was like, it's good to know. It's good to see that star athletes, like multi-million dollar star athletes,

are just like us and get bored and just decide to troll on Twitter because like that's really what he was doing. He was bored and he was like, oh, I'm just going to get everyone upset by tweeting about this that's not going to happen. I think it's going to happen. He literally said he was trolling, though. But like it's one of those things.

And Demos like stopped, dude. Speaking into existence. He definitely heard something from somebody, like somebody made a phone call. And so then Odell was like, you know what, I'm fucked up. Like I can, I'm pretty good at identifying, even if there are no typos in a tweet. I can always tell when somebody's drunk,

when they send a tweet. That was the tweet of a drunk man. Well, he said back to me, I'm a good dude with four E's. I just love BSing with like five G's, like the rest of us. Serious when I need to be all the emotions like the rest of us, sorry for the jokes. Yeah, low key, high key, fucked up. Yeah.

He's the king of shit posting. Yeah. Yeah. That's good, Billy. That was a good joke. That was very good. But yeah, that kind of got everyone going crazy. And then obviously all the,

I loved watching all the reporters quote, treat it and be like, no. Yeah, this is not true. Because they were so upset to think they got caught. Yeah, they're more plugged in. They know somebody was just like, this is not true. I think it was Tom Pelastar. Yeah, and then rapper was like, no.

Yeah. Although I would, I would love to see how Bill Belichick would use him in that system. The offense would just be Debo Samuel. Yes. He'd probably have Debo Samuel playing quarterback. Yes. And just be like, okay, Debo gets the ball every play.

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you spoke it into existence, Hank. I think so. Okay. P.F.T. Year, who's back? It's kind of draft related, but it's. That's okay.

Let's dip it. Texas. Texas is back. Texas football is officially back. When I say back, I mean, back to where they were in 2014, when for the only time in the last 70 years, they went through an entire NFL draft where they did not have a player taken the entire,

how is that possible? Like the big 12 had a down year in general in terms of people that got drafted. They're retooling. Bijan Robinson is going to be a high draft pick next year. He will be. He will be. So there are a couple of guys that they're going to reload

with and I'm sure they'll be fine next year, but it's just very funny to me. It's tough. How is that even possible for the University of Texas to be so bad at college football that you can't get anyone drafted? It's very, very hard. And I like, it makes me thank God that I root for a team

that I just know there'll always at least be an alignment. Yeah. Like I'm always okay. Cause I won't have to deal with that embarrassment. Yeah. Something needs to change in Austin. It's very funny though, watch, because they still think that they are the Yankees.

Yeah. If you talk to Texas football fans, it's like we're not, we're not dead. We're, we're going to come back and we do. We're going to be like Alabama. Think about that too. Like the, like just the difference between Alabama and, or Georgia, who had what, five players in the first round.

Yeah. And Texas had zero in seven rounds. Well, people in Austin still blame Nick Saban or his wife. You know who you should really blame? Cause there was that rumor that like Nick Saban's wife was house shopping in Austin when he was just very clearly trying to drive the price of his contract to Alabama up. Blame the realtor that took it around.

Like what kind of shitty houses was she shown on that trip to make her be like, no, I'd rather live in Tuscaloosa than Austin, Texas. Yeah. I, we should have like a, there should be an alert. Zillow should be able to spy on coaches wives. Agreed. She's being like, yeah,

she just popped up Zillow here for no reason. Agreed. Cause who doesn't just go on Zillow randomly? Yeah. Sometimes they just Google coach's wives. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay.

All right. My who's back is, I have two who's back. One is Nick Foles is back. He's back on the free agent market. He's been released by the bears. It was very funny, like the wording of it was like, Nick Foles appreciates what the bears did here because basically they tried to trade them for two years and they couldn't,

but it also, it is the end of, I guess Justin Fields still counts, but Ryan Pace, I went back and looked at post Cutler. He had five years. He signed five quarterbacks. Justin Fields is part of this for a total of $90 million. Mike Glennon, he paid 18 and a half million too. Mr. Biscay, 29 million.

Nick Foles, 21. Andy Dalton, 10. Justin Fields, 11. So that was all under Ryan Pace. That's actually impressive to be able to do that. Five different quarterbacks starting a game in a five year span. It's very classy too.

Well, I mean, as a commander's fan, I've had some years where it's like 10 in the span of three years. That's, it's impressive that most of those guys are high price guys though. Like to be able to sign that many people for over $10 million each, like that's you, that's a lot of whiffs.

That's a ton of whiffs, but it was very classy the way that they said goodbye to him. So thanks for all the memories, Nick. Thanks, Nick. You're free to go. Hopefully he, he'll probably go win a Super Bowl knowing the Bears. Like he'll go, he'll, he will go latch on somewhere else

and then win a Super Bowl. Yeah, commanders should sign him. Get the gang back together. Why not? Yeah, why not? Just breathing down his neck. And then my other who's back is John Skipper. I saw him at Madison Square Garden.

He looked at me and then walked the other way, but I hadn't seen him since we met with him and he canceled Barstool Van Talk. It was too bad because I, I had a long day of parenting on Saturday, so I really could have used the bumps. So I wish I had been able to talk to him, but he's back.

He's back. Billy. My who's back is boxing. There's a huge fight at Madison Square Garden. The one we were at. Exactly. I want to hear your guys' takes, but Amanda Serrano's versus Katie Taylor went the full rounds,

went to a decision. It was a slug fest. The last 30 seconds were electric, just absolute slug fest. I think what we saw on the last Jake Paul card with Amanda Serrano's on it is that those fights are extremely electric in women's boxing. And it was the first headline by women fighters

at Madison Square Garden. It's 140 year history. That wasn't the only women's fight that night. There was also Franchion Cruz de Zern, who beat Ellen Cideros for the super welterweight champion. That was another slug fest. So women's boxing up and up. So we were all there.

It was one of the coolest environments. It was the fans, it was probably, what would you guys say? 70% Irish, 30% Puerto Rican fans? I think it was closer to 50-50. And both fan bases were like, so I bet on Serrano. And then before the fight, we were around a bunch of Irish people

that were all drunk as fuck and waving flags. And I was like, I wish that I'd bet on Kate Taylor because I want to be able to root with these fun loving Irish people when, if she eventually won. But then the Puerto Rican people around me, they were essentially just like the Irish people dancing and having a great time.

It was an incredible environment in there. And it was, I mean, it's the best fight that I've ever seen live in person. It was awesome. There's nothing like a big fight feel. And it just lived up to like the walk-ins were awesome. Kate Taylor's song wasn't great. Kind of put everyone to sleep.

She got to have bagpipes or something. And she was so ready for it. I was so ready for it. Yeah, the Serrano's walk-in was unbelievable. Incredible. So I was, and then it was like, all right, bagpipes. Like she's going to come up with some bagpipes and people are going to lose their mind.

She had like a very slow, like very slow song. I kept waiting for it to drop. I kept waiting for like the real music to start. Me too. During her walk-in. It was an awesome, awesome experience. I do think that it was closer than, I think, whatever. I've been on Amanda Serrano too.

She, that fifth round, she almost had her, but Kate Taylor's incredible. She got stronger the more she got punched in the face. Yeah, her stamina was insane. So yeah, that was a really, really fun night. P.F. got robbed, kind of. I did get robbed, yeah, by the Mad Lads. So this was wild.

So I go to the concession stand and Hank is like kind of behind me a little bit. I think you had already gotten your food. But I'm waiting to get mine. And the guy takes my ID, because I ordered two beers and a sandwich. He looks at my ID, my ID turns out it's expired by like a month, so he's like, I can't sell this to you.

And the guy that's behind me in line is with a group of like four other Irish guys. He's this Irish dude, drunk as shit. And he's like, I'm paying for your sandwich, I'm paying for your beers. Put it on my tab. And so they like put it on his tab. And then he leaned in, gave me a big kiss on the cheek,

like a wet kiss on the cheek. He's like, this lad's crazy, this lad's insane. I don't know, I didn't know what was going on. So he ends up ordering like $200 worth of beer. And he's like, I'm paying for all of it. They serve all our beer to us. And then I'm waiting on my sandwich and there's a big commotion going on behind the register.

The dude walks, the guy that works there walks over to me. He's like, do you know those guys that you were with? And I was like, no, I literally just met them in line. He's like, but they paid for all your stuff. You have to know them. And I was like, no, the guy just saw that my ID was expired. He's like, I want to buy this guy's beer because he's Irish.

He was like, they just walked away with all the beers and didn't pay me anything. And he called his manager over and was like, yeah, someone's got to pay for all these beers. And I was like, but I didn't even drink. They took the beers. They're like, we think you know them. I was like, I don't know the guy.

I was like, I'll pay for my, so I ended up paying for my entire thing after they had already served it to me just because I didn't want this guy to get fucked over at this job. But yeah, just a legendary move by the Irish bloke. That is great. That's fucking awesome. It was a great fight, a great night.

The Mecca's alive. And coming up this weekend, we got Canelo versus Baval. Yeah, how would you have called that? Were you thinking like, were you, you're obviously like sitting there as a fan, but you're doing an actual broadcast this weekend. Yeah, we're on Dave, Robbie and I in Caleb and Ron.

We're on an alternate broadcast. Make sure you buy our pay-per-view link because that's how you can listen to us. We're going to be in Vegas. I was thinking about it because obviously, I mean, I love boxing, I'm a boxing fan, but I don't, I'm not an expert, but I did say, and I think I would have,

I would have been right about this in the fifth round. I was like, I think Serrano just punched herself out, like she's fucked. Cause that was the moment. So I think I would have gotten that right and then everything else probably would have been wildly wrong. But if you get one thing, right? That's actually the story of what happened in the fight.

Yeah, no, I tweeted it at the moment. I was like, it's over. She was hitting her so much that she was getting tired. And you saw- She emptied the tank on her in the fifth round. You saw Katie as a fight went on, she got stronger and stronger, or maybe she was just getting like less tired

than Amanda was. And it was, man, I mean, it's actually like being on a drug when you're in like a full boxing environment like that, where the crowd's going crazy. And you want, and like you're trying to get someone to finish, like you're like, finish them, finish them. And everyone gets up.

I also, my only story for me was I sat next to Molly, Molly the Meatball, who's a bar stool sports athlete who we will have on the show in I think a couple of weeks. And if you don't know her, she's a UFC fighter, very, very good, just won her last fight. She has like crazy elbows that knocks people out. And she just throws them around like it's a joke. Like she was rooting for the guy who fought

before the title fight. To live a puddle in. Yeah, Liam Smith. And I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna root for this guy. And she just chucked an elbow right in my chest. And like, I like, kind of caught my breath. I was like, what the fuck? She's like, yeah, you're rooting for him.

I was like, okay, I guess I am. I met her for the first time in person when she was in the office, I think last Thursday. And I went up to shake her hand. I was like, hey, what's up, I'm PFT. And she gave me a shoulder charge. And she was like, this is how I used to tell people to shoulder charge and soccer.

You put your base and I was like, no, I know what that is. But that's how she said hi to me. It was just like knocking me off balance. She got in a fight without a fight, but she got in an argument with a dude in front of us. And the whole time I was like, this dude has no idea. Like he's gonna get fucking smoked. Kill him.

Yeah, so that's gotta be pretty cool to be Molly the Meatball and just walk around like talking shit, knowing that you can just elbow someone to death. She did a fake one too, like the guy turned back around and she like did this right next to his head, like you're that close buddy to get knocked out. So she's awesome.

Okay, let's get to it. We got Cowboy Joe West, incredible interview. After that, we'll do a full draft breakdown of the whole weekend, draft grades, everything. Before we get to Cowboy Joe West though, what do we got? I wanna talk to you about our great friends over at Sport Clips. Why can't getting a haircut also be relaxing?

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It's a champion haircut. You get a neck and shoulder treatment that's nirvana. And the best part, the perfectly steamed hot towel. If you've never been to Sport Clips, you gotta get the hot towel. You'll never wanna get your haircut anywhere else again. They have a seven point massaging shampoo as well. The neck and shoulder treatment

not available in Washington or Oregon, but Sport Clips is the ultimate haircutting experience. They take relaxation to the max. Not only we leave feeling great, but you're gonna look fantastic too. Check them out, Sport Clips, the pros in men's hair. Now here is Cowboy Joe West. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest.

It is the one, the only Cowboy Joe West. He has a podcast, new podcast out. It's called The Joe West Podcast. It launches on May 2nd. It's gonna be great. I'm very, very excited. You are, your co-host, Mike Claiborne, is also on the podcast.

Let's start there. What made you think I need a podcast? Because I wanna hear Joe West's thoughts. So I'm excited for this. Is the world ready for unfiltered Cowboy Joe West? Well, I don't think it has to be unfiltered. I think I can just tell the truth like it was. Mike Claiborne came to me and he says,

all the stories you told me over the years, he says, you should get them out there where everybody can hear them. He says, because you have a wealth of knowledge in all the years and people that you were around. You have a story about every city that you were ever in. And he and Mike Shannon, I've known them for years. And Shannon loves to hear my stories

about the country music artists that I hang around with. And Claiborne likes to hear the stories about the ball players and the managers. But he went to me and he says, let's just try this if it works and we have fun. Well, we'll keep doing it if it doesn't, we won't. So it was his idea, it was his brainstorm. And we've already done three so far.

And the array of people that have agreed to come on and talk are awesome. It's just really, really neat. And it just shows you that all umpires aren't two-headed monsters, you know what I mean? I like it. I like it. And you are a country singer.

I'm a fan of your musical career. I'm a big fan of Out at Home. That's my favorite single that you've got. Are you done recording new country music or are you gonna get back into the studio soon? Well, I think we'll go back in there. The guy that did that Diamond Dreams album was George Jones' piano player for 30 years,

his name was Kent Goodson. And he came to me one day and he said, and I had always sat in with them wherever I saw them. He came to me one day, he says, why don't you do a baseball stories album? I said, what, you don't like my singing? He said, he said, no, that's not it. He said, but you got some great stories

that we could put some background music to it and you could tell these stories. So that was his idea. So, and I thought that that album came off very good. And he and that guy named Pennington put all the music behind it and it was kind of unique. There are a lot of stories in there. Some of them were funny, some of them were serious.

And some of them were stories that have been told over and over. I'll never forget the one story about Johnny Vance that's on that album. Johnny used to tell this story every time we'd play in a golf tournament together. And I told it to Larry Gatlin and Larry picked up the phone and he pushed the button

and it went right to Johnny Vance. And he says, there's a guy here telling me about the first time he ever hit against Bob Gibson. And he says, yeah. He says, yeah, I remember that. He says it was the weekend of my first year in the big leagues. And he says, well, my dad was a, you know, a semi pro ball player.

He used to walk by the TV set on Saturday and say, I can hit that guy, you know. And the game of the week was the only game on at that time. You only had one game. And his dad would walk by and any later another pitcher'd be out there and he'd say, I can hit this guy. So Johnny says, he grew up thinking his dad could hit anybody.

And so, of course, Johnny goes to the big leagues. He's the next hotshot. He's throwing guys out from his knees and the first three games and since then he got like five hits. And then they go down to St. Louis for the weekend. And the first guy on the man was Bob Gibson. He said, he said, the first pitch got on me so fast.

He said, I just flinched in a strike one. The second pitch, he's not stupid. He threw it there again, strike two. And the third pitch, he threw me a slider outside, go to strike three. I'm just walking back there. I'm taking the bat off my shoulder. And he says, he started laughing.

And his manager was Fred Hutchinson. Fred started yelling at the bench. What's so damn funny? And he says, I don't think dad can hit this guy. So that's great. That's one of the stories. There's a story about Ryan Klesko in there. And the story is about La Sorda.

And I mean, the total array of people that you meet in this game, I remember the guy that managed the Red Sox. Grady Little came off the mound one day and they had just put in this thing about the pace of game. You know, we want to speed up the hitters. We want to speed up the pitch. We want the game to move faster.

And Grady walked by me and he said, you know, Joe, this pace of game is conducive to the way that you work. And I said, you don't even know what that means. And he said, I know somebody told me to tell you that. That's great. He mentioned La Sorda a second ago. I have to imagine that he was pretty colorful sometimes. Like, we were lucky enough to meet Tommy

when he was still with us. And I mean, half the stories that he tells are about how he tried to get in fights with everybody that I ever met. Did he ever actually, were you afraid when La Sorda would come out there that like, this is a guy that might actually take a swing on me? No, no.

In fact, Tommy told me one time, he said, I'll buy me and copies of your album if you'll just quit, I'm firing. That's a great line. And I said, you know, Tommy, if I thought you'd write the check, I might think about it. But I don't trust you because you don't pay for anything. I'm not going to go for that.

But he was quite the character, you know? And he had a photographic memory. If he met you the first time, or you or your wife, or you and your kids, he would remember. He had a knack for remembering everybody's name. He was a genius that way. And he was, for Dodger Blue, he was the epitome, he was really that interesting.

You know, we had to kick his picture out of the game in a playoff one time. Jay Hough, he had Pine Tarn is beloved. And they asked him after the game. They said, did you ever put Pine Tarn in your glove? He said, all the time, I needed the help. Yeah, I believe it. So who amongst your travels would you say

was maybe your biggest rival in terms of a manager that's like, hey, this day, if I'm calling this team's games, I know there's a chance we might get into it. And it's like every, you know, through the years, you might respect them, but you knew you were going to get an earful and maybe have to toss them from time to time. Well, or we were never finished the game I was in.

I only had him in two games at spring training. It threw him out of both of them. But Dick Williams was tough that way. But Dick Williams was a great manager. You got to realize he was like a hired gun. Everywhere he went, he won. He won with Boston, he won with Oakland, he won with the Padres, he won in Montreal.

They fired him and they were in first place. And but he said one day, he says, I don't care, we're staying at home plate exchange in lineup cars. And he said, I don't care what you call. If it goes against me, I'm coming out there. Well, sure enough, and about the third in, and there's a rundown in his third baseman,

Salazar didn't get out of the way. And we called obstruction and put the runner on third base. Here he came. Before he could get to the dirt out in the infield. I said, well, you said you were coming out here and you know you're wrong. So he started screaming that through the mouth. But yeah, I mean, that's, it's amazing.

You'd see some of the most mild mannered people turn into, you know, incredible Hulk when the play happened. And you got to realize these guys are trying to win. Right. You know, of all the managers I ever was around, the only one that never got fired was Earl Weaver. And yet he'd get kicked out all the time. He got, he got mad when Bobby Cox passed him

for most ejections. Yeah, you ejected Bobby Cox in a world series game. Is that ejecting a manager in a world series game? Is that an extra like when you get back with the boys in the blue, back in the dugout after, you're like, wow, that's pretty, that's like hitting a home run in the world series. You got to eject the manager.

That was a fluke. It was a check swing and we called the hitter out for the check swing. Then we called the runner out at second base. And I mean, it was a double play. So Bobby was so angry. He slammed the batting helmet down on the top step of the dugout.

And it went all the way out in the middle of the infield. So I thought the hitter that struck out had thrown it. So I went over and find him. It was Blouser, Jeff Blouser. And when I find him, the whole dugout said, he didn't do it. He didn't do it. So I said, OK, who did it? And Bobby said, I did it.

So I threw him out. And that was it. So who forced your hand on that one? So what I'm always curious, what was the line? Would the line change game to game? Did a guy have to say something specifically to you? Throw something? Where was the line where it's like, all right, now you're gone?

Well, they know where it is. I mean, the funniest thing we ever did, I think, with Larry Young was an American League umpire. And Steve Ripley and I are working with him in a spring trading game. And Gene Shallott came in the locker room and went to an interview. And he was talking about the baseball.

He rubbed up the balls and it Ripley actually showed him a brand new ball. He says, this is the showpiece. And then he showed him the rubbed up. I said, this is the workpiece. And right after that, he said, he looked at Larry Young. He says, what do I have to say to get kicked out of a ball game? And I realized that Larry had actually rehearsed this.

And he says, call me something. I'm not. I like that. I said, yeah, tell him he's good looking. That'll get you kicked out of the game. And of course, that made the interview on ABC Sports. Yeah. Oh, I think one of my favorite clips of of you, Joe, is when you were umpiring and Madison Bumgarner was on the mound and you guys got into it a little bit. There was there was like two alpha males going back and forth.

It ended up in a stare down for the ages. And when I mean a stare down for the ages, you need to go watch this video if you haven't seen already. The two of you just locked eyes after. I think you call it a you call it a walk, I believe. And then he wanted a pitch, a couple pitches earlier. He was he he actually wasn't mad at me. He was mad that he threw a ball to this guy.

He was I mean, he was upset about the pitch earlier. But when when the pitch came in ball for it, now he just screamed a profanity and and you could hear it all over the infield. And I mean, I don't want to kick out a starting pitcher, you know, when what he should be doing is going around to the front row. The people said, I'm sorry. So but so I just stared at him. And of course, the catcher, Buster, he says, what's going on?

I said, you just sit down. Everything will be fine. You're taking care of it. Now, as you're in a staring contest, because it can get awkward sometimes after like the first three seconds of a stare, you it's almost like you're fighting a mental battle against yourself to not look away. Well, yeah. And he knew he did wrong. I mean, and that's why he looked away first.

Yeah. So but I mean, you have to realize you're in a game where they're so competitive and so high strong. And they they they thrive on beating you. I mean, they are the most competitive people in the world. It's like the story in the Apollo 13 failure is not an option. It's just not an option. And that they they work all year round to be the best athlete they can be. And then any little thing like that will set them off.

And and the great players overcome the inadequacies of everything and try to get by the best way they can. You know, it's kind of funny, I mentioned the Apollo 13. We were we were working in Houston and we're in this bar. Called Studebakers, and they actually had a Studebaker sticking out of the wall. And we're down there and we're cutting up, having a good time. We don't have to work till the next night. And and this cocktail waitress came over to us and we were friends

with a couple of the astronauts that flew out of NASA, you know. And so she said, what do you all do for a living? And Randy Marsh got up and says, well, I'm a National League umpire. And I'm here to work the Houston Astros and the Cincinnati Reds. She said, yeah, those two assholes are astronauts and they were. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. What about I have a couple of your moments in your career that I'm wondering if maybe you can admit that you were wrong,

which might be a lot to ask for the famous Andre Dawson won at Wrigley. That was a ball. That was a ball. I saw more beer in the course of one swing of my arms than they did in six innings. It was, yeah, the Andre Dawson threw all of his bats on the field, then all the, you know, fans through their beers. But that was a ball. Have you ever looked back at that? I mean, that was, I don't know where your strike zone was that whole night, but that was low and outside.

You're complaining about one pitch. Yeah, yeah, we're going to go 460 games. Yeah, we're going to go through it. We got it. Can you admit that one was a ball? No. Oh, man, that's true, Joe West. All right, what about another Cubs one? Do you remember when Joe Madden tried to hit you with the spin move? And I actually, I went and looked at it because I was like,

I'm going to figure out how many times I tweeted about Joe West. It's a lot. And you, you had actually great, you had great O-line skills. You didn't get beat by the spin move. What would happen when, when a manager would get like right in your face? Was it like, how would that go in your head? Where it's like, we got to, we got to de-escalate this, but I'm also not going to just back down. Well, and that's another thing, you know, you're in a position of authority

and you have to, you have to realize that in that position, it's a delicate point because you cannot be overbearing and you cannot escalate the fight or the argument or whatever. And, and there have been times when you have to kick somebody out and they don't want to go. And then there'll be times when they want to get kicked out and you've got to decide, well, is this the good move to kick him out and give him his way or do I leave him in the game?

I mean, I can remember Eric, Greg and Larry Boa. And Boa is trying to get kicked out because it's 100 degrees and they're playing on Asher turf. And Eric kept looking at it and said, I'm not kicking you out. You can do whatever you want to, except my uniform on fire. But if I got to stay, you got to stay, you know, so, but handling situations is probably the hardest part of the game. And, and you, you look at it and what really bothers me today is

because we're working both leagues, you don't get to know the players and the umpires, meaning your relationship with each other, as well as you did when I first started, when you were just working one league. I'd go to Cincinnati four times. I'd go to Los Angeles three or four times. I'd go to San Diego three, four times. Well, now I'm lucky if I go there one time, right? Because you're working both leagues and you have to work all the team.

So it's it's harder for the players to have a rapport and understand how they can get along with this umpire or maybe not say anything to this umpire. There's there's, I mean, Tony Clark's a friend of mine. He's the player's director for the Players Association. And he he's actually said, you know, they're ballplayers that are afraid to say anything to Joe West. And then you got guys like Craig Bijo and Mark Grace and these guys and and they can't wait to say hello to you, you know what I mean?

So it's it's a difference in how you've grown up in the game. And do you know this guy? You know that? I mean, and it makes it makes a big difference. Yeah. Is there is there one game that you look back on and you're like, you know what I called the perfect game, not a perfect game, not no hitter. But I mean, like you personally, what's the best game you've ever called? Well, I think the the best game that you guys would remember was the one with the Red Sox and the Yankees when Alex Rodriguez

slapped the glove. Yeah, first base. And we had to change it because the first base umpire didn't see him. And so we took it had to take a run off the board, had to put Jeter back on for and when we called him out, the Yankee fans through everything in the world. And somebody threw their their BMW car keys at the third base umpire. John Hershbacher. I told him we should have taken him and tried to go through the parking lot to see if we could find it. Yeah.

But now we got to play right and the media took up for us. What if the media doesn't take up for us? You know, I mean, we're getting annihilated by the fans. And now if the media doesn't side with us, we're villains for the rest of our lives. You know, I mean, luckily, in my experiences, and I'm very lucky that I've had plays in big situations where I got them right. But how do you think Jimmy Joyce feels about his play at first base with the the pitcher that had the perfect game?

And how do you think Don Dankinger feels about the call at first base that the Cardinals swear that cost them the World Series, even though they made two errors after that. Yeah, I think with Joyce, he kind of manned up to it right after the fact. He goes, I kicked the shit out of that call. I blew it. I feel sick to my stomach. I think people. Yeah, people after that. Yeah, yeah, that was voted like the humanitarian war of the year

by some ESPN point was and you know what, it's sad. But he felt really bad about that. Yeah, you know, yeah, along those lines. How much did you hate when Kzone came along on TV? Because that had to be a bad day for OMPs when the regular fans can watch and be like, oh, that was not even close to a strike. Well, the the biggest problem with the Kzone system is it's not it's not exactly accurate. It's offline.

It's like the best example I can give you is they grade the umpires on a on a machine for a home plate. Every game they work and they grade every pitch that you call. And a year or so before I retired, we didn't have a single umpire. Now, one umpire that scored one hundred ninety five percent. Now, I think about that. That means if they missed five pitches out of a hundred, you'd think that was excellent. I mean, I do. Yeah, you know, I mean,

that's a that's the A plus in anybody's book, right? So now this thing comes along and it's not as accurate as the machine is grading us to call the pitches. And in fact, they they're they're looking at these robotic computers to try to replace the home plate umpire. Well, the robotic computer, they already know misses seven percent of the pitches. Well, we don't have an umpire missing five. And when the robotic umpire misses a pitch, it doesn't call anything.

At least when the umpire calls a pitch, he calls it one way or another. So what do you do if that robotic umpire doesn't call anything? Well, we're going to have a do over. I don't think that's going to work. I like this. So yeah, this is shooting down robot umps. I like this. I like the job. Don't get me wrong. I'm not I'm not shooting down anything. In fact, I think when they put instant replay in,

we had a bigger rebellion over instant replay because these umpires, all the umpires thought, well, they're going to take our jobs and we're going to know you're going to have an extra umpire helping you with the call that you're blocked out or maybe didn't see at a bad angle. I said, I think it's a good thing. And overall, the instant replay has been a good thing because it teaches our young umpires where to go.

Right. It's like on the field training. It's like a seminar. You send the dentist who's worked for 20 years to a seminar to learn new techniques. It's the same thing with umpire and it's it's helped umpire and it's made us better. And I think that's a good thing. Where we add on the uniforms right now, because I think that it's very confusing for a lot of kids that are growing up right now. You call an umpire blue, but they're wearing black uniforms.

Like, can we bring back the blue ones? Well, you know, I used to I used to have a have a crew and I'd send a guy out and say, what are they wearing today? And they go, what? Why do you want to know? I say, because if they're wearing black uniforms, then we should wear the blue uniforms. And if they're wearing light colors, then we should wear the dark colors so that we're not mistaken on a pop up in the infield a player runs into us or something.

So, but that didn't work, but for a couple of years. So, but and we have certain umpires that won't wear anything but the blue. Yeah, I love I love the blue ones. I never understood why an umpire would wear the black ones. Well, you got to realize years ago, when I started, we wore Hathaway shirts and they had this they had to unsew the pocket to put the patch on your pocket. And we had one guy in the national office that did all that. He did it himself.

And and this one year, they didn't give them to him. They sewed all the all the patches to the pocket. So now we couldn't get our lineup cards in our pockets. So we had to go back to the old fashioned way. Yeah. Would you have any rivalries with with your fellow umpires? Like, was there a competition? Are you a competitive guy to see who was getting more calls right? Well, I think every umpire is striving to get them all right.

I don't think there's like a competition. I think this is the wrong profession to be competitive in. You should be trying to help your umpire, each umpire be as good as they can be, because if you're on a crew and your first base umpire is in trouble, all all four of you are in trouble. It's not like it's not like you can come back in the fifth inning and hit a home run or you can make a great play at short term. Every we need to get every play right that we can.

And that's that's how they need to look at it. It's to be competitive to say, oh, I got this play right. You didn't. I mean, that's you're you're hurting the profession there. And, you know, I've always said this, that your first responsibility and as an umpire is to the game of baseball. And that doesn't mean the commissioner's ox and your second responsibility was to your profession. And that doesn't mean the union means your profession is an umpire.

And your third responsibility is to do what you know in your heart is morally honest and correct. And if you do those three things in that order, nothing you do will be wrong. You might get killed for it, but nothing you do will be wrong. Yeah. Who was the hardest pitcher to track? The guy who who either his the movement or the speed. But when you when you know that you're calling his game, you got to be real, real sharp because the, you know, the game

of inches and painting corners makes it difficult for you to get everything correct. Well, once you learn how to do it, the harder they throw it, the easier it is. Really? Because the ball levels out. The hardest pitch is to call her knuckleballs and sliders at the knees and breaking balls that are going down all the time. Those are much harder than Nolan Ryan and J.R. Richard and and and the flamethrowers. The harder they throw it, the easier it is.

And I know it's harder to catch up to it with that with a bat, but they're they're trying to hit it. Yeah, you're trying to see where it crosses the plate. So so guys with curveballs and nasty breaking stuff. Was it? Did you ever ump a Tim Wakefield start? Oh, yeah. And how that go? Like, was there times when you're like, I don't even know what that was. Well, the ball just comes in and it floats in there. And your eyes are my first game in the big leagues.

I had Phil Negro and Joaquin Andemar, one guy was throwing BBs and the other guy was throwing butterflies. Yeah. Geez. That's got they were they were throwing strikes. So that game was like an hour and 57 minutes. That's unbelievable. So along the same lines, if you get a call on the edge and the batter like, say it's strike three and the batter's like, hey, you missed that. Would there ever be a time where you'd be like, you know what, I did miss that.

Like, that's my bat. Well, you might tell the guy, I'll go look at it, but you're not going to admit that you missed it to try to get out of an argument. OK, you have to call it from your heart. Right. And your heart's always right. Well, you want it to be, you know, make every effort to call everything the right way. Yes. When a player would start to walk to first base, when to say it was like a three and one count, right?

And it was like a borderline pitch and he takes off out of the batter's box because he's like, that's a ball. He doesn't even let you say the words. You're more likely to call that a strike, right, just to bring him back in. Well, if you do, then you're overthinking your job. You know, you should call the pitch as it is. You shouldn't. That shouldn't have any effect on what you're doing.

What what about a pitcher showing you up, so to speak? Because we love the unwritten rules of baseball. Like when a pitcher is maybe yelling at the ump in our eyes from the fans perspective, we're like, oh, the ump's going to get him here. Like the ump's going to squeeze him a little. Well, no, you can't do that either. I think you can. I think you have. The biggest the biggest thing in baseball is that you have to make the game fair

to everybody. If you call something against the guy because you're mad at him, then you're cheating the game and that's not right. If a guy does something to you that makes you so mad that you would cheat, then you should have kicked him out. Yeah, that's a good point. OK, you should never be in a situation where I'm going to get this guy. You should never, ever put yourself in that situation. And I can remember my first few years in the major leagues.

When they'd argue with me, I'd get angry. I'd just get mad. I'd start screaming. And so I'm working with Doug Harvey one day and I called it ball four on Dave Kingman and Kingman said something smart. Because he didn't like a pitch earlier in the town. And I actually chased him the first base and I just walked the guy, you know, I called ball 41. So between him and Doug Harvey came down and he says,

don't let them ruin your day. You work your game. If they get out of line, you can come out, but don't get angry. Don't get upset. Don't be screaming and hollering. He says, you're just going to make yourself miserable. And I think from that point on, I had it was like turning the light on because you are the official authority. You have the last word.

In fact, Steve Garvey told me that one day when I got an argument with Joe Torrey, he says, you know, you have the last word, whether you take it or not. Yeah. And and if you look at it that way, then you're going to be much more calm in an argument. You're going to be much more approachable and and it makes makes much more sense. It makes it easier for everybody. I'm curious to know how your strike three call developed over the years.

If it evolved at all, how you came up with it, if it's if it got louder in certain circumstances, because there's a couple of elements that go into it, right? But and the big thing is, is I can I can remember we had a senior umpire tell a young umpire one time, he says, you strike one and strike two are very good. Your timing is very good. But your strike three is exceptionally fast.

You need to slow down. And the young guy got upset. And so I talked to him later. I said, you don't understand. He's trying to tell you something that will help you. He's not saying anything to criticize you. He's saying that if you wait on your strike three, you're going to be much better.

You have a better chance you're going to get every pitch right. And that's another thing that you look at is umpire. And when the pitch comes in, that umpire that takes a split second to be sure he's right, is going to get most of his pitches right. Yeah. Yeah. I just always love the turn to the side and the the strong punch out. There's nothing like a good punch out, right?

Like you felt that it's like when batters say, you know, if you make good contact with the ball, you don't even feel the ball hit the bat. Like after a good punch out, you know that you nailed it. Well, you're worried about your form now instead of getting it right. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we that's what we watch. That's what we watch. Can you tell me the you had a protest for the umpires

with the arm bands that I made fun of? I'll just I'll come clean on it because I just thought it was funny that like umpires are a persecuted, you know, class of people. This was in 2018 when they legalized gambling. How I think you only had it for one day. I actually think it was at Wrigley. You had the white armed band stand with umpires. That protest didn't feel like it got big legs there.

It didn't feel like it went anywhere. Well, that's because they negotiated with us. Okay. Okay. I just love the picture of you being like, you know, just so you know, Joe, like this has been a great interview. I don't think anyone ever feels bad for umpires. We were were were raised to hate umpires through and through. So I just I loved it when I saw it.

I was like, yeah, I don't think I don't think there's going to be a lot of people like crying over the umpires here. I know, but it got the message across and and and you know what? Um, over the years, I befriended Jackie Autry, Jean's widow, and she says the same thing. He says, she goes, I come here. Such a nice guy and everybody hates you. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's I mean, it's true. You there'd be times when like with Twitter now, like you would be trending because of a call or something. And like I said, I mean, there's been a great interview. So, uh, would you would you hear that? Would you know, like afterwards that people are just saying like Joe West is the worst or Joe West is trying to make it about Joe West. Would you get that noise?

Well, yeah, but see, that's another thing. This is you're not on stage. The ball players are on stage. I relate an umpire like he's the the offensive lineman or the base player in the band. You don't know he's there till something goes wrong. You know what I mean? As long as everything's going right, everything's good, dot it, dot it, dot it, everything's fine.

No one knows he's there, but as soon as you have interference or obstruction or fan interference or somebody trying to cheat and the umpire has to do something, then one side of the other hates him for it. And that's that's part of your job. You know, you can't you can't worry about what they're going to say about you. I mean, one of the funniest polls they ever had with the the ball players was the players got together and said, who's the best umpire? And they had this poll and it was a hundred and some players.

And I was voted the worst umpire in the league by five percent of them. And I was voted the best umpire in the league by five more. So where was I in the middle? Did I get the votes in the middle? Well, it's it's an emotional. Yeah, it's an emotional thing. I think fans just always think they're getting screwed over. I count myself in that group.

I've tweeted mean things about you. I don't I'll apologize. Here, I'll read one of them. I said in 2016, I said, Joe West is such a piece of shit. I actually kind of respect it. I'll delete that tweet if you say that you were wrong about the Andre Dawson call. OK, you can keep the tweet. I wouldn't want it any other way.

I wouldn't want it any other way. There are a couple other highlights. That's terrible, isn't he? He's trying to bribe me. Yeah, I think this business gets done. Negotiating. Listen, I'm not I'm not even working anymore. I've been on yours. I've been standing up for for the thin blue line and umpires for a long time.

I think that it's it's a discussion that needs to happen more often. You see that you see like kids now. They they have to struggle to find umpires to referee like little league games because all the parents are yelling at the umps and they can't even play on Sundays sometimes. Yeah, well, that's that's a sad thing. In fact, the first game I ever umpired I was 12 years old and they asked me to umpire the bases

because one of the fathers didn't show up to work the bases in the little town of Greenville, North Carolina. They had the the the fathers. There were two leagues and the fathers from the one league had to umpire in the other league on the basis and they hired played umpires to work with, you know, so that you would give back to the game. They made the the parents umpire the game says one guy didn't show up. He was something to do with his job.

And so the two coaches said, well, put Joe out there. He knows how to do it. So that was the first game I ever umpired. I was 12 years old and guys missed stadium and I umpired the bases. And you fell in love with it? Well, I don't know if I fell in love with it because I was hitting 400. But what, you know, that was that's when I first started. Yeah. And I used to I used to umpire

Babe Ruth and that kind of stuff when I was going to college. And and because I had a football scholarship, the football coach wouldn't let me play on the baseball team at Elon. And so I used to go on part of the local college and high school games. And this director of umpires and the Carolina League saw me work. And he says, you're going to do this. Y'all learn how to do it right. He took many clinics and showed me little things

that you would never think of like how to take your mask off without your hat coming off, always hold your indicator in your left hand and little things. And that so when I went to umpire school a year later, I was already doing the things that they were teaching these kids at the umpire school and I was ahead of them because I had worked with this guy. It was a professional umpire gave you a leg up. What's one thing about being umpire that like we don't see behind the scenes? One small detail about your job that nobody would ever notice watching on TV?

Well, they're human beings and they have feelings just like you do. And when they get criticized, it hurts them and they and they take it. And uh and there's some there's some guys that when they get started in the minor leagues after a couple of weeks, they can't take it at all. And they and they go by the wayside. And the biggest problem with all of sports officiating is you don't pay them enough to keep them around. We lose a lot of good quality umpires because they can't afford to go through six,

seven, eight, nine years in the minor leagues. Yeah. And so we lose good people all the time. And I was I was very lucky that the National League was scouting an umpire that was a former player when they saw me and I was only in like double A and uh he he made a call and he messed up the rule and I went down and Richie Garcia and I were both there. We went down and we fixed it and Fred Flag was the director of umpires for the National League. He says, I don't want the ball player.

I want him and Barney Deere who was director of umpire development. She can't have him. He's only in double A. So here's the director of the National League umpires. He said, well then promote him. I went to the triple A and then they brought me to spring training and that was how I got there. They should remake the natural with you. Like we just saw that guy.

He's got it. He's got the eye. You always hear like stories like that of a college coach going to a high school game. Yeah. Scouts somebody they're like, no. I want that guy. I want the center. Yeah, right.

And it was you. Wait, so uh technical questions. What's the hardest call to make on the field? Like the one that fans don't realize but it's just a very difficult call to make no matter what. Your next one. There's not there's not a specific like your your next call is your most difficult call. Doesn't matter how many of the other ones you got right. You got to get the next one right.

Okay. And you have to you have to focus on that. And here's another thing. You know, once I've had umpires ask me that, well, how do you take place at first base? And I go, I can't help you with that. And they go, why? And I said, because when that guy lets the ball go at shortstop or third base, I've been doing this so long that I know whether it's online.

You have to experience that. You have to do it enough where you can do that and see as soon as he lets the ball go. Oh, it's online or it's offline. You know, I I had that ability because I had over what 10,000 plays at first base. Right. And these kids that are asking me are just beginning and I can't tell them to do what I do because they don't have the experience yet. They have to do it themselves and get to where they've, they've done it enough.

Now along those same lines, what's the weirdest rule in the rule book that people don't realize? The one that you almost like it so rarely happens that when you get to flex it and like, oh, I knew this, you were kind of excited. Well, there's, there's some rules in there that you have to understand that the baseball rule book was put together as a work in progress. And it, it, it increased the more plays happened and the more things happened that were, you know, out of sync. And, but there's stuff that happens all the time.

Like they can hit a pop up by the, by the dugout where the, the team batting didn't move the bat out of the way or the on deck hitter didn't move the rosin back out of the way. Well, if the catcher trips over that, that's interference. Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. So, and you'll only see it one time in the, in 10 years. Right. But, and then the time you do see it, they'll go, oh, that's just a mistake.

No, it's not. He, he's out. Yeah. Keep your work station clean. Yeah, I like that one. That, that's a good one. But they have to clear the area so the fielder can feel the ball. And, you know, we had a, had a play in a playoff game where the ball went in the bullpen

in San Francisco and the players didn't get out of the way. The players have to vacate the space so the fielder can get the ball. Yeah. And the fielder just stood there. Instead of going to get the ball, then it, he could have created the interference, but he didn't. He just stood there. So what do you do?

And that's that you put your hands up? There's nothing you can, there's nothing you can do if they don't interfere. Right. So they, there was no call. And I mean, he didn't know the rules, you know, and I'm, I can remember being in Montreal and they threw a ball in the dirt and it bounced off Gary Carter's shoulder and it's going to the dugout. Well, the runner on second for the Cardinals, he's going to score.

Gary picks up the ball. He can't throw him out. So Dick Williams got up, took his glasses off and screamed, let it go. Don't touch it. The ball rolled in the dugout because it was a pitch ball. They had to send the runner back to third. Smart, huh? Smart play.

What about a balk? Do you, do you actually know what a balk is? Cause aren't there like 14 ways you might see, you might be the only person that knows what a balk is. This is a task. Yeah. Yeah. Most balks jump out at you, you know, and when I came up in the National League,

the National League umpires called balks because we had base runners like Lou Brock and Maury Wills and so on and so on and so on. So we called balks because we didn't want the pitchers cheating to pick them off. You know, if they spun on the heel, that was a balk. If they didn't step the first base as a left-handed pitcher, that was a balk. So once you were taught that this is a balk, when that would happen, it would jump out at you. And it was really easy to call them because you did it all the time, you know.

And I can remember when Vida Blue came to the National League, and the American League was notorious for not calling balks at the time. So Vida Blue comes over to these pitches, his first game at Candlestick Park. And it's me and Kibler Pully. I think Nick Colossi was the other guy. And he went to throw the first base and he didn't step the first base. Four guys called a balk. All four umpires called a balk.

That's got to be a great moment. That's got to be just like a biggest pro hug. What happened there? And didn't happen again because he knew we'd call a balk. So he didn't do it again, you know. That's fantastic. I, yeah, I mean, the, I was going to say, Ozzy Guillen would not agree with how you call balks.

I remember that one too. When you had to kick Ozzy out, he called two balks on Mark Burley. And you know what? Nobody wants to call a balk on Mark Burley because he pitches fast. Yeah, he must be one of your favorites. You guys know those like do you, when you look through the, yeah. When he threw the glove up in the air, Rob drinks it. Don't throw him out, Joe.

Don't throw it. Yeah. Yeah. When you, when you, uh, when, when you would look at the pitching matchups, we'd be like, Oh, okay. We can get an earlier flight today. Oh gosh, he, he keep the game moving. That's, but you know, the pitchers today, they, they nibble here and they nibble.

You know, it's another thing. This designated hitter is going to slow down the game because, and I've said this before, you know, if Tom Siever threw more than nine pitches to the seventh, eighth and ninth hitter, one of them found off a two strike pitch because in the old national league, they would go right after the seventh, eighth and ninth hitter. Yeah. And the American league, they didn't go right after them. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. So you, you have that, that discrepancy, that, that's been a bad rule from the beginning. And I know why the, the players put it in. They want to keep jobs and the set and the other, and I know why the owners put it in because they don't want their pitchers hitting and they don't want them to get hurt. I get, I get that. But it's going to slow the game down.

Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't really thought about that, but having, having the nine hole be like pretty much three guaranteed strikes doesn't make a difference in the pace of play. There's the other thing in, and this is the best example. When Roger Clemens pitched in the American league, he was a head hunter. He would throw up people. When he came over to play, play for Houston while they were in the national league,

he didn't hit anybody. Yeah. You know why? Because he had to bat. Yeah. He had to bat. He had to step in there himself. No, that's true.

That's absolutely true. There's no save back. To that point, when, when would you make the decision, like, how good were you at figuring out whether or not a, a pitcher hitting a batter was intentional? Where was that line? Well, you can, you can pretty much tell. There's, there's times when the hitter does something to show up the pitcher after you hit a home run or something.

And I remember, I remember with this young kid with that, I walked in between it. As I said, now when the shortstop comes to bat next to him, they're going to hit him. And I said, when they do, you're going to have to throw him out of the game, throw the pitcher out of the game. So sure enough, the shortstop came to bat because he'd done something to show up the, the other team and they drilled him. Of course, he threw the guy and now here comes the manager. So I had to throw him out because there was, there was not a warning at the time.

So the manager wouldn't eject it until he complained. I mean, you could have thrown him out, but we didn't. And, but he said, how did you know? I said, because I, I've been here a little while, you know, yeah, this, it's one of those things where you, you know, something's coming. Yeah. One of the funniest stories was Chuck Mary, whether it was an umpire in the American League and when we consolidated leagues, he's got, Greg Maddox has, has,

has thrown at one of the other hitters. So Greg comes to bat and he says, he says, no, Chuck, they're going to throw at me. And when they do, I don't want you to do a thing. I'm just going to go to first base and everything will be fine. And Chuck said, I don't think you understand. If they throw at you and I don't do anything, I'm not going to be here. But yeah, what, uh, what was, this is kind of a very specific question. I should have prepped you on this one.

Is there one player whose crack of the bat sounded different than everyone else's? Because that's my favorite is when you go to batting practice or you're watching a game and one of like the true great players, it just sounds different. It's like a violent sound. Was there one guy or maybe a couple guys who you're like, who that was just totally different than everyone else? Well, Willie Stardell hit the ball hard. Al Oliver hit the ball hard.

Uh, Dale Murphy hit the ball hard. Mike Schmidt hit the ball and Barry Bonds hit the ball hard. I mean, those, they're McGuire, Andres Galaraga. I mean, when they hit the ball, they made a different sound. Yeah. Cause it is cool that you know it when, when, when one of those guys hits the ball, it's just, it's, there's something about it where it's, there's, there's nothing. I know it sounds very like, um, cliche or romantic, but

that crack of the bat, when it's a true, you know, home run hitter, there's just something special about it. Oh yeah. Yeah. And speaking of home runs, I have to tell you guys this story because it, this is one of the funniest things ever happened. When they built Coors Field in Denver, Bob Gephardt was the general manager of the Rockies and they got this new facility and they put everything together and,

and he said, Joe, you won't believe it. We had, we didn't have to make those handicapped ramps. We didn't have to make handicapped parking. We're going to let the handicapped people park in the players lot. And, uh, we're going to roll their wheelchairs right up to the chain link fence and left field so they can be on the field level. And when they leave, they can go get in the players lot and they can go right out. And he says, and everything worked great till one of our guys hit a home run.

And 13 people got up out of wheelchairs and ran for the ball. That's fantastic. Well, Joe, this has been awesome. I have one last question. Everyone tune in. Joe's got a new podcast coming out May 2nd. It's called, uh, what's the, oh, it's the Joe West podcast with, with Mike Claiborne. It's going to be great.

Tune in. My last question is, uh, the robot question, RHO, BACK, use code take for 20% off your first purchase. You get Q zips, hoodies, polos, everything at rowback.com. My last question. Can you give us, I know you said that when you're, when you're calling from your heart, you can't be wrong, but best call, worst call, best call, worst call in your career. Well, that, that play in New York was probably the biggest call.

I don't know that it was my best, but it was, it was probably the biggest. And, uh, I don't know. Maybe the worst call was, uh, when I got my divorce papers. Classic. Oh, you're going to say Andre Dawson. Come on. No, that one was good. No, you can, you can keep your tweet.

It's okay. You're going to go to the grave with that one. Look at this PFT. Just look, I just want PFT to look at where there's a lot of beer. There's a lot of beer. No, no, but where's this ball? This ball is so far. I'll be the, I'll be the judge here, Joe.

Okay. Here it comes. Here comes the pitch. I've watched a lot of baseball on my day. I don't know about you. Here it comes. That's low and outside. It's so low and outside.

Joe, that's four inches off the plate. So I've got to kick you both out, right? I mean, it's a tough job. I fully admit, like you've got, you know, you've got a ball coming in 95 to 100 miles per hour on you and you have to make a call whether or not it's, you know, on the, on the black part of the plate or off the plate entirely. It's, it's not an enviable task to do.

Yeah. Yeah. But we appreciate it, Joe. And, uh, good luck with the podcast and, you know, you're a recurring guest now. So when we have, uh, something pop up in a controversial way in MLB, we're going to have to call on you to come on. Well, that'll be fine.

Are we officially 100% forever, ever, forever, ever retired? Oh yeah. Yeah, I've, uh, I've called my last baseball game. All right. But, uh, but it was fun. It was a, it was a good run. Yeah. You've seen Cooperstown a couple of years.

Yes. Love it. You look good, by the way, too. Have you lost weight? Yeah. I lost 30 pounds. My wife said, if I turn around, I'll find it. I love it.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Joe. We appreciate it. Good luck with the podcast. Enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Joe West was brought to you by our good friends over at ZipRecruiter. If you own a growing business and you need to hire,

ZipRecruiter makes hiring so much easier because they do the work for you. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash PMT. ZipRecruiter uses its powerful technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job. You can easily review these recommended candidates and invite your top choices to apply. Additionally, ZipRecruiter has a complete suite of tools that makes it easy to filter, review, and rate your candidates.

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day. Go to ziprecruiter.com slash PMT to try ZipRecruiter for free. Once again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash PMT. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. Okay, let's finish up with some NFL draft talk. Winners, losers, draft grades, futures you're going to make. I think I'm going to put a future on the Baltimore Ravens set it right now.

Yeah, I'm that sold on them being like, hey, you know what we're going to do? We're just going to not even pass the ball. We're just going to run the ball and play defense and have a bunch of fucking crazy ass dudes on defense. Regrettably, I think that the Eagles killed this draft. I think they just destroyed it. Like when they got Nikobi Dean, I think everybody who was watching was like,

oh, yeah, that guy should have been the first overall pick. Fuck, we all just kind of forgot that he existed. He's got a lot of injuries undersized, but I agree. Like he's he's awesome. And they got him in the fourth round. And I agree. Like I I think I might put a future on the Eagles and the Ravens. Yeah, the Eagles, the Eagles are going to be really, really good.

And the the injury stuff with Dean, I think is like, it's very weird what's happened with him because he swears that he's healthy. Right. And then people like all the people behind the scenes are whispering like, he might not even play next year. Right. But he's like, no, I'm good to go. So I have no idea what's going to go on there.

But I just I love everything that Eagles did regret regrettably in this draft. Yeah. And I I was actually thinking about it. I don't know the AFC is going to be an absolute fucking war. Because the Chiefs, I thought, got better. They they added a lot of defense. And like, I think they got a lot tougher on defense. And I'm not just saying that because they got Leo Chanel from from Wisconsin.

But they also got what's his name from Purdue, the the Greek. Oh, Collaptus. The new Greek freak. Yeah. The Bills filled the holes they needed to fill the with a running back in a corner back early. The Chargers got offensive line. The Colts had no picks in like the first couple rounds, but they got a bunch of freaks. I don't I don't know how anyone's like the AFC is just so

fucking stacked. Well, the Chiefs also got Skye Moore. Yeah, which is that's the guy that that we were told like here's a guy that you should pay attention to. That's going to be maybe the best receiver that does not go in that first run. Yeah, it's crazy. He runs he run what like a 4.29 or something like that. Is that the guy Skye Moore? Yeah, he's sick.

Insane. Hey, I just don't know the AFC has so many good teams. And I didn't even mention the Bengals who went to the Super Bowl. I don't know it's going to be tough sledding. And the Steelers too. The Steelers got two wide receivers. They got like a guy Calvin Austin who runs a crazy, crazy, crazy fast. And then George Pickens, who's an absolute stud who outside of character issues,

probably would have been a first round pick. They also got Hayward. So now the Steelers have three or four sets of brothers on their team. Wild. So it's very wild. Brutal. Wild. They're the wildest thing.

Yeah, it's scary stuff. It would be for people that are betting on first touchdowns of the game. Make sure that you check the initial. For the first name there. Yeah, I got to find it. I got to find it. Four sets of brothers. So yeah, here it is.

It's TJ and Derek Watt, Terrell and Trey Edmonds, Carlos and Khalil Davis, and then Cameron and Connor Hayward. They also have two fullbacks now? Yep. Because I'm well, Hayward is not like a traditional fullback. He's like a tight end hybrid. There was a lot of discrepancy during low man voting, whether he should be counted as a fullback.

He has played fullback in the past, but he's also like a pretty good pass catcher. Yeah, that's a torture chamber for you, Hank. We should talk about Sam Howell, Stephen Chay's number one pick overall in the last year's too soon mock draft. What a steal. What a steal. I'm just, and if I just completely forget everything I saw from Sam Howell last year,

I can convince myself that he is our Tom Brady. I like Sam Howell. I like him too. He was number one overall. Yeah, number one. Stephen Chay's early mock draft that he releases the day, the minute the Mr. Relevant is announced, he releases his draft for the next year,

and last year it was Sam Howell number one. Project him first overall. That's the mock draft. By the way, that's the mock draft that I based my particular player rankings on is his first one. So we got the number one overall pick in the draft in the fifth round this year. I just want to say I am a diehard Carson Wynne's defender.

I love everything that he's bringing to the table right now. You know that about me. Carson, I know you're an AWL. You listen to the show. It's so disrespectful what the commanders just did to you by drafting a quarterback in the fifth round. Who's number one overall? You should demand a trade, Carson.

You don't deserve to be treated like this. Demand a trade. Get traded to the Cleveland Browns for Baker Mayfield because I don't want you to be hurt by this franchise. You need to get out and look out for yourself first and foremost. I love you so much. I just think that you should definitely take this as an opportunity to demand a trade. Yes.

Sam Howell thick. Thick. So much so he called me fat online because I called him fat. Last year because I was like, dude, he's looking fat. And he was like, big cat, you're looking fat. I was like, touche, dude, that's actually totally fair. But he can run. He's one of those guys, too, where I think it's definitely worth

where the commanders drafted him because he had a ton of talent his sophomore year around him. A lot of guys left. His numbers obviously weren't the same. And he also had like Heisman Hype going into the season. They remember they lost Virginia Tech week one. I he's absolutely worth a fifth round. Yeah.

I mean, even even the mocks that I was going back and reading after we drafted because I wanted to learn everything about him after we got him. Everyone had him be going like the second or third round this year. Yeah. Quarterbacks just fell off the face here. I mean, Malik Willis going to the Titans. That was kind of a little bit of a steal, too. What happened with Malik Willis?

I feel like we all got punked. I feel like there was somebody that was making like a big inside joke. That Malik Willis is going to be a top 10 quarterback. And then obviously that was not whoever his agent is did a wonderful job at hyping him up before the draft. It didn't work out. So here's my theory. And I hope this is a theory because it actually like it's I've been thinking a

lot about the Bears draft because I actually love what Ryan Poles did. And he essentially was like, we need everything. So let's get as many picks as possible. They went into the draft with six picks. They came out with 11. So they're doing a bunch of trades on Saturday. I think that a lot of teams are probably saying next year is the year for quarterbacks. So why spend a first round pick or the weird thing with quarterbacks too is second round

like quarterbacks don't get picked in the second round usually. It's just it's it's probably I don't know. I'd have to look at the whole draft chart. But a lot like if you if you feel like he's a guy, you draft him in the first round. So you get the extra year. And if not, he usually slides. But I think a lot of teams are like next year is the year. And what I'm hoping what the Bears do is they're going to suck.

I know they're going to suck. And then next year they trade their pick and they get a ton of I hope we just get picks. I just want to become a franchise that just gets picks. I want picks, picks, picks all the time. Just give me all the picks. And I that's like I could I can transition to just being like a future future guy. You know what I mean? Like my pain doesn't hurt now because we have I want to be the Oklahoma City Thunder.

I want to have I want to have 15 picks in a draft three years in Capspace. Yeah. Go we have Capspace. We need picks. And so I'm hoping that's the case. And then next year the Bears are able to do some wheeling and dealing and come away with like 16 picks. Because that's all I'm like they suck. They're going to suck.

And yeah, I want that. I also like Ryan Poles because he actually I haven't seen this very often. He he had his scouts like he basically was like I had all my scouts sit down. Give me their top three that they're most like their highest conviction of. Put it on the board. And then after they drew anyone who was drafted from the Scouts area, he had meet with the media. And I was like, oh, that's refreshing.

That's not Ryan Pace essentially saying I'm not going to listen to your Scouts. I'm just going to draft a guy because he drives a shitty car. Yeah. So that was cool. But yeah, I think that's the answer for the quarterbacks is that a lot of teams are like next year's the year. But it's still insane that like we we were all told that Malik Willis was going to be a first round pick. Steven Chea.

Yeah. Steven Chea. Well, everybody. Everyone like some people had Malik Willis in the top 10 in the top five. Yeah. And then and then he slides all the way down all the quarterbacks. It it was just crazy to me to see that happen. You're probably right though that teams are looking at next year's draft class and factoring that into what they do this year.

And if you're one of those people that likes to go around reading the draft grades right after the draft happens, I like to remind myself of this one every year. This was from 2012. The 2012 Seattle Seahawks draft. OK, so just to refresh memories, they they pick Bruce Irvin, Bobby Wagner and Russell Wilson in this draft. OK, so here is the Bleacher Report 2012 NFL draft grade for the Seahawks. After one of the worst picks in the first round, I can ever remember the Seattle Seahawks didn't draft any positions of need or draft for the future. Pete Carroll is proving why he didn't make it in the NFL the first time.

Not only was Bruce Irvin a reach at number 15, the Seahawks proved they were oblivious to their madness by celebrating the selection as if that day wasn't bad enough. Seattle selecting Russell Wilson, a QB that doesn't fit their offense at all, was by far the worst move of the draft. With the two worst moves of the draft, Seattle is the only team that received an F on draft day. Grade F. It's perfect. And there's also remember that I can't find it right now, but there was that stretch where the Jaguars got an A plus every year. Yeah. And it's like, I'm not talking about when Blake Bortles took him to the AFC Championship game.

It was before that and it was just year after year. It's like A plus, A plus, A plus. Yeah, like when they drafted Matt Jones, a quarterback to play wide receiver, A plus. A plus. That's a great reminder. I have a Seahawks reminder that I want to read that's going to make us feel old. Actually, it's going to make Hank and Liam feel old too. Maybe not Billy.

OK. It's going to hurt us. Are you ready for it? No. OK. So, cornerback, Kobe Bryant spelled C-O-B-Y, not how Kobe's name was spelled. Kobe Bryant out of Cincinnati drafted by Seattle. After he was drafted by Seattle, he said, my dad used to talk to me about Richard Sherman,

Earl Thomas and Cam Chancellor growing up. They were actually my favorite group growing up. Like that's, that was like two years ago. That was, yeah. The Legion of Boom was like a year ago. You can't say that. My, like, I used to sit on my dad's knee and he would tell me about the days of Legion of Boom. What the fuck?

Yeah, my dad used to talk to me about Richard Sherman. My mom would sing me Drake songs as I was falling asleep. What the fuck? The good old days. I, I saw that. The NFL official count tweeted it. I was like, oh my god, age sucks. Getting old sucks.

I hate that. It's brutal. Oh, we drafted Chris Paul. The commander's got a guy named Chris Paul. Oh, nice. Nice team. So Ryan Rosillo, I'm now firmly, me and you are the two guys that will die on that hill. Rosillo, man, he's got, I mean, I mean, he's at Thursday night.

Live look at Ryan Rosillo. It's the gift of the guy that's just walking around on fire. Yeah, yeah. Just ready to go. There also was a very confusing, I think the Packers drafted Zach Tom is his name, which is all time two first name guy. That guy's a douchebag. I don't know anything about him and no disrespect to Zach Tom,

but you're a douchebag if that's your name. So here's the crazy part that is very confusing to me. The Packers drafted Zach Tom. The Bears drafted Zachary Thomas. I'd rather have Zachary Thomas than Zach Tom. What are the odds of that? Like how is the guy named Zach Tom? Zach Tom sounds like one of those creative player names.

If you get like a Korean designed MLB, the show knockoff game. Yeah. And that's like their idea of an American name. Yeah. Zach Tom. I mean, that's, how's that, how's that a full name? It's stupid. He's a douchebag.

That's crazy. Both offensive linemen too. So that's going to get confusing. Zach Tom versus Zachary Thomas. Any other, I'm trying to think, oh, Mel Kuiper, by the end, they hated him so much because he was on zoom the whole time. And it was just very funny. Like I turned it on around two or maybe it was like two o'clock

on, on Saturday and everyone's like, dude, Mel, just shut up, shut up. I'm still trying to figure out why Mel Kuiper wasn't. I think that there's something else going on. We ran through some theories on Friday about like maybe he's, maybe he's banned from casinos. Well, he might just be on a no fly list. Yeah, he might be. For just eating too much pie on flights and annoying the flight attendants.

And Mel Kuiper doing his zoomed in head nod for three days straight. I think that's probably what they were sick of. But it was, it was funny watching it get a little chippy towards the end where like there was a moment where Mel, or McShay was just like, all right, all right, Mel, like let's fucking wrap this up. We got it. We actually have a show we got to do here. Let's give out one F.

Okay. Let's give out one F. I'm going to give it to... Oh, the Jets had a good draft too. They did. The Jets killed him. They had a very good draft. I'm going to, uh, let's see.

Vikings. Oh, Vikings traded a lot in division, which was weird. Because I didn't like that guy that got up there and talked for five minutes. Yeah. And just ran, he gave like a complete oral history of his career. Oh my God. That was, that was funny though. I wish he, I like, I didn't want him to end.

Well, yeah, it was, it was lame that they kicked him off, but while he was still doing it, it was, I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Yeah. It was like, this guy is still going. I mean, they physically had a woman come out and be like, hey dude, you got to wrap this up. How does the guy that punched the ball seven yards per punt get drafted after two other punters?

Yeah, that's weird, right? That made no sense to me. Or, or, or Reza, the guy that went up to Buffalo. Maybe it was like, I was trying to figure it out too. Maybe it was just because he played for San Diego State and they just had no offense. So his numbers are all out of whack because he always had to punt. Like they, they, they, they,

So he still has bombs or bombs? Yeah, he does. Bombs or bombs. But you can only hit bombs if your offense is backed up. I read a quote from the coach that was saying like, a lot of times on offense, we get pumped up if we don't cross our own 20 yard line because it means we get to send our punter out there and see how long he can do it. Do you think, who do you think can, can get the ball further downfield?

Josh Allen throwing it or the punt guy? Reza. We'll find out. Yeah. Punting it. Might have to go back to Buffalo. Imagine that wind at the game that we went to. If it was at his back, how long do you think he'd be able to punt the ball?

Probably like, he could probably punt the ball literally out of the stadium. Yeah. In that wind. Yes. Three things. First thing on the punter, the, the reason he fell was because a lot of people thought he was going to out kick the coverage and that was the one theory why he fell. Also, back to Malik Willis.

The first time Malik Willis came into the national conscious was during that video that went viral of him giving his clothes to the homeless guy. Yep. So it could have been an amazing PR presentation from his team. People were already talking about him after the senior bowl. I was talking about him when his Liberty team sucked this year because I was not a big Malik Willis fan. I was like, dude, if you're going to be a first round pick, Liberty should win some more games.

Maybe Scouts, maybe they dug into that and they found out that the homeless guy was a plant. Yeah. And did their leg work and then they, they red flagged them and they're like, we can't use the first round pick on a guy that does this with a fake homeless person. Yeah. That's definitely what happened. Or maybe it was just that Hugh Frieze talked him up just so he could get a free ticket to Vegas this weekend.

That was funny seeing Hugh Frieze in Vegas. What are you getting into? Yeah, like, dude, you shouldn't be here. You and Dan Erlowski, the two horniest guys in football. All right. I'm going to give, I'm going to give the Jaguars an F. Is that okay? But you're forgetting they got another first round pick in Travis ATN from last year.

Ah, fuck. All right. So that doesn't count. You're right. That's a good call. They absolutely, that's a, that's a loaded draft now. Yeah. Because they have both those guys.

You can do the Texans. Yeah. I like Derek Stingley. You know what? I'm going to give the Saints an F. Saints F from Big Cat, Vikings F from me. Yeah. Big Cat or Hank, who's your F?

And there's no basis behind the F for the Saints. I think they just didn't have a ton of picks. There was someone who's, someone was like, look at what the giants are doing in this draft compared to the Bears. And I was like, yeah, dude, they have a shitload of picks. Yeah. Yes. You're right.

It's actually, if you look up and see who has the most draft picks, I guarantee you they just get higher grades just because they get more guys. The Jets had an awesome, I'm not saying the Jets didn't have an awesome draft. They had three first round picks. Like they should have an awesome draft. Do you remember, I don't know, this is one of those things I was on the podcast or when we came in on Sunday. I'm pretty sure Hank said that punters should be the number one pick.

Yeah. Yeah. After, after we bet on it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's right. I didn't, I guess I didn't factor in the out kick in the coverage. Yeah. I thought like you just want your punters to hit as far as they can, but

you can just tell them to kick it higher than the same game though. I was, I was, I was mind blown when I saw that two other punters got drafted before him. They might have better coffin corners. He might just be one. He might be a one trick pony. My F is the Cardinals. Oh, actually, you know what? Can I change them?

Because I actually know. Okay, fine. Fine. But I agree. Why do you not like the card? The Cardinals are basically creating a team where everyone is small and fast. Yeah. And in December, they're going to, it's going to be like,

why aren't the Cardinals good? Oh, I don't know. Cause they're all hurt and can't stand 17 games. No, that's the best part about the Cardinals. They are, they're the littlest guys. And he's Debo. Yeah. They do.

Yeah. Just to like counterbalance. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know what the Cardinals are doing. Makes no sense. What's your F? My F's the Patriots. I think the Bailey Zap pick is actually going to do more.

Zap B is going to mess with Mack Jones's head too much. It may have been a motivation tactic, but, you know, taking a quarterback. So I want to agree with Billy because I also don't like- Well, you're a water-ceiver. But, oh, wow. Wow, Hank. I mean, well, when did I become top of the conversation? You said picking a quarterback.

What are you listed as? I said picking a quarterback. Also, a quick fact about Sam Howell. What are you listed as? I don't play anymore. Offensive weapon. But you definitely said- Sam Howell.

Had the fastest throw at the NFL draft with 59 miles per hour. Wow. There we go. I love it. Throws it hard. QB1. Does he throw it too hard? Ooh.

Definitely not. I just scrolled. My official grade F is the Dolphins. You only had four picks. That's crazy. That is nuts. Four picks? Sounds like you gave out three F's.

Saints, the Dolphins, and the Cardinals. All good F's in my hand. I'm just going with the Vikings on this one. I just also scrolled Mel Kuiper. And you didn't give anyone less than a B minus. I'm also going to give the Cowboys an F. There you go. Cowboys.

Some more F's. Cowboys get an F. Second round of F's. You can tell it's so funny how cocked McCarthy is when he does these press conferences with Jerry Jones. Because Jerry Jones talks about the picks and he's like, yeah, you know, sometimes we go around the room and we get a group consensus.

Other times it's me that makes all the picks. Like Michael Parsons. That was my pick last year. And then Mike McCarthy literally says in the microphone, I don't even know why I come to these things anymore. He's like, nobody would. Jerry wasn't letting him talk. He's so dead, man.

He's dead. Hank, your second F. Yeah, we should just keep going around until everyone gets an F. The grades are the best. It's so stupid. And everyone just has such firm grades. Oh, I'm giving the Seahawks an F. OK.

Nice CF3 as well. Yeah. Seahawks are getting an F. They should have traded for Baker Mayfield. Like, I don't know what they're doing. So where is Baker Mayfield going to play football next year? I don't know. But like...

The Panthers were the spot that he had most rumors. And then they drafted Matt Corral in what, the third round? May fourth round? I can't remember where it went. It's crazy to think that Baker Mayfield, they couldn't figure out, like, what he was worth in the draft. And going, if you had asked us at the start of last year, what would Baker Mayfield be on the open market?

Probably like, I don't know, second round pick? Yeah. Something like that. That feels right. Now it's like he's a fourth or fifth round pick for Baker Mayfield. It's crazy. I don't know what, like, where's he going to play next year? I don't think that Deshaun Watson's going to play next year.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Roger Goodell is going to step in and be like, that would be awkward. It's me, Roger Goodell, champion of women everywhere. And we're suspending Deshaun Watson next year. And holy fuck, that would be awkward if Baker plays. And then Baker's not going to play, I don't think. Well, I think he'd have to.

I don't know. Because like, if he didn't play, it would be very bad, like, for his future. If he played and bowled out, that would kind of, you know, he'd set himself up. I think they're still going to try to trade him, but you're not going to be able to get anything for him. I'm going through, like, the mental rolodex in my head. What teams need a day one starter besides the Seahawks? I mean, the Texans have Davis Mill.

He's awesome. I guess maybe you wait till there's an injury. Yeah. Who are you going to say? Yeah, like a preseason injury. Yeah. I was going to give the Texans another F, because I think they need a quarterback.

Okay, nice. Davis Mills is fucking good, dude. I know, but I feel like it would have been a good place to get. Yeah. Well, who's your, Liam, who's your F? I really just want to get to a point where half the grades are Fs. Because that's, we need memes. Can memes, he's going to listen to this.

I'll go Jessa. Okay. We need a big list of our grades. And so it will just be all the only the Fs. Should we give out any A's? The Jets got an A in my mind because they had so many picks. A plus. Eagles.

No, I didn't say that. I'm giving the Eagles an A plus. Eagles A plus. Yeah. Eagles and commanders get A pluses from me. I'll give the Bears an A plus too. They got 11 picks. That's a lot of picks.

I'll give Panthers. We got the best quarterback in the 2021 draft. Yeah. Dude, you know what? Give everyone, everyone who we gave an F have our rankings out and have it just be only A pluses and only Fs. So whoever we gave Fs to and then everyone else gets an A plus. Yeah.

Except the, let's go with who would, who's the fan base that will get most? Give this, give the Steelers a C and then everybody. I like that. No, no, they got an A plus. Yeah. I give the, actually switch my Cowboys grade to F minus. Yeah. All right.

That's perfect. That's our draft recap. I think we crushed that. Yeah, that was good. Yeah. We, we, we gave you everything you need to know. The thing is you can't judge our draft grades until five years from now to see how that it actually pans out.

So it's also, it's by our metrics too. We, it's not our, it's not our opinions about it. This is the formula and the data that's telling us. My, my favorite part about the NFL draft, when it ends, every fan does the same exact thing because I did it this morning. You just basically search the internet till you can find someone who gave your team a really good grade. Yep.

Cause there are so many grades out there that like I searched high and low and I finally found someone who was like B plus A minus for the bears. I was like, all right, good. We're good to go. This feels good and just ignore everything else. Yeah. Nobody really knows anything about what's going to happen. So who cares?

Yeah, who cares? Except our grades are correct. Our grades are factual in nature. We grade on a curve too. Yeah. We do grade on a curve. Absolutely. Bell curve.

Dude, I remember freshman year I walked into a class and they, it was like, I think it was like econ 101 and they explained the curve the first day and I was like, I'm out. And I, I withdrew. I still don't understand the curve. It's like, it's just, you can't, like if there's 10% of the class is smarter than you, you can't get an A even if you get everything right. And it's bullshit. I'm not smart enough.

If you're in a really dumb class, then it's easy to get an A. Correct. But I, it was one of those classes at Wisconsin is like 300 people and I was just playing my odds. Like I am not top 10% smart here. I'm out of this class. You think if a professor just straight up gave like a 300 person class, if they gave everybody B pluses, do you think anyone would complain ever?

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. There's absolutely at least 10 people who would be like, I deserve an A. That's what I would do as a professor. Yes. Yeah. You're right.

You know exactly. What I would do would like on the midterms, I'd give out the midterms. It would be like, everyone gets a B plus than the 10 people that complain. I'd just be like, yeah, okay, you get an A. Yeah. And then everyone else is happy and you don't have to do any work. Yeah. Whoever complains just gets an A.

Yeah. Yeah. That's how it works. Yeah. That's, that's kind of how life works. It is. You just complain your way through. You can get, you know, discounts and everything.

Or like, no, it's true. Badges on Yelp. Dude, this is absolutely true. Like, like fucking whoever's ahead of a homeowners association. That's just the top complainer in the neighborhood. So start complaining more? No, because that person sucks. Yeah, we hate them, but then they get stuff.

No, it's one of those weird things in life where you see someone who's a total asshole who complains and it just, they have it in their nature. Like they'll, they're the person who will send back food at a restaurant. They'll fucking complain about an air, like they'll be up at the counter at the airline complaining for like rewards points, all these things. And you're like, that person sucks. But also they get so much free shit because they just go the extra mile of being an asshole. It almost becomes a game to them to see what they can complain about and win.

Right. And so then it's like every interaction with somebody in customer service, or someone who's just like in retail. It's like, I know I can get something from that person. I'm going to go do my performative asshole thing. And it works for them. It works for them. But then they're never happy with what they actually get.

They just like the feeling of winning in the complaint. I'm the opposite of the complainer where I like if, if they're like, hey, you can get a refund if you fill out this simple form. I'm like, nope, paperwork. No, thank you. Absolutely not. I'm out. No resistance for me.

If I'm if I'm like looking for a refund on an app and the the credit card number comes in where it's the horizontal bar and not the nice like dial pad style for me to put my credit card number in. I'm like, no, I'm sorry. I can't do that. How about how about when you get something and it like doesn't fit and you have to send it back? No. No.

Never. I just yeah. I just get completely like hit into submission by any retail establishment. My favorite. I get dominated by that. Yeah. My favorite is going to a place and and like buying clothes and they're like, do you need a receipt?

And I'm like, nope, because let's be honest here. If I don't like something, I'm just living with this decision. I'm not coming all the way back here. Yep. There's no chance. So yeah, don't be the complainer. I don't know how that has anything to do with the draft, but what how do people who complain about our draft grades?

I don't know the curve curve curve. Yeah. Cold complaining classes. Yeah. All right. Numbers. Give me a. Hey, you still haven't won this.

Six. Seven. I do six. All right. You want six? Yeah. All right. Hey, what are you?

I got seven. I'm going to go eight. 96. I'm going to I'm going to start. It's so funny. I'm going to start tailing. It's so funny that we do this every time, but we don't know like the numbers that everyone picks. We turn on.

Yeah. But you really pick six every time. Yeah. It hasn't been picked yet. All right. 96. That's one too. 69.

You know what I realized about 69? It's really the yin yang symbol. You just realized that? So it's like. Five. 24. Would you pick Hank? 57.

Ah. All right. Pete. I'm going to start boxing Hank in. The U.S. Navy also has trained dolphins. Love you guys. All set in. But I'll be stumbling away.

Slowly learning that life is okay. Stay up to me. It's no better to be safe than sorry. Take on me. Take me on. I'll be gone in a day or two. All the things that you say and reason level. Just to play my memories away.

You're all the things I've got to remember. You shine away. I'll be coming for you anyway. You shine away. I'll be coming for you anyway. Take on me. Take me on. I'll be gone in a day.

I'll be gone in a day. Take me on. All the things that you say and reason level. Just to play my memories away. You're all the things I've got to remember. You shine away. I'll be coming for you anyway. You shine away.

I'll be coming for you anyway. Take on me. Take me on. I'll be gone in a day. Take on me. Take on me.