The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 450 - The Cocaine Pirates

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the early 80's Pittsburgh Pirates and some of their best fans.SourcesTour DatesRedbubble Merch

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bilingual American history podcast and each week I sourdough toast eater lover of dolphins maker of homemade pasta Dave Anthony reads a story from American history to his friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about seemed hard for you to get to friend there. There's been a lot of stuff that's gone down and I don't think there has been. I have that's true. I have an emotional response now that comes up in me from all the abuse. What are you talking about that I have. That I have. What are you talking about. What are you talking about. This is like this is like the Trump and Biden debate. I'm trying

to talk and you're just interrupting me from all of the comparison. Happened again from all of the abuse that I have received from my lie. He's lying but he's lying. People don't know what goes on behind the scenes and we've interrupted each other the same amount of times. We've interrupted each other the same amount of times. I wish they did so they would understand. The hurt that I feel and this guy with this guy wears a mask to everything. This guy's overdoing it with masks because a fucking loser. I am in an abusive podcast relationship and I am asking for help. I coughed in your mask. I keep coughing in

your mask. What is your. It's terrible. I'm coming after you finally. I will take you down. I've been coughing in your mask. Yes. Yes. Yes. I treat it like a hanky every time I've got to have anything come out of an orifice. I just put it. I put your mask to it. Jesus. I just not a fan. You're right. And called it quote. His jam patch. I'm the fucking hippo guy. My name's Gary. My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come with Tickly podcast. Okay. This is like an up five part coefficient. Now hit him with the puppy. You both present sick arguments. No sleep down hippo. That's like a hippo.

Action partner. Hi, Gary. No. I sleep down, my friend. No. No. Roder. Roder in the car. 1952. Year of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dale Schiffman was born in Baldwin, Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh. In high school, Dale met a classmate, Kevin Koch, and their mutual love for baseball quickly made them in several best friends. Okay. It's already a great story. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. It's baseball. It's fun. Towards the end of high school, Dale temporarily lost interest in baseball and got into quote, beers, sigs, and slicked back hair. Yep.

That's right. Yeah. That's the phase. The trio, the three best things that you can have. Also, when you call them sigs, that's how that's how you know you're a player. Kevin was actually scouted by the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds and the Pirates had him pitch an entire batting practice. But in the end, nothing came of it. And right after high school, Dale and Kevin both joined the Army. Okay. So from baseball dreams to the Army. Yeah. As it should be. If you can't make a professional sports team, then you should probably go kill people in Southeast Asia for no reason. Yep. That's what they say. Yeah. It's like a

doubleheader. That's right. So they were there for a bit. Well, they weren't both there for a bit. Dale did a tour in Vietnam, but the war ended before Kevin got out of boot camp. So while they were in the Army, Dale got back in a baseball and he played on a high level minor league team while he was stationed in Fort Devin, Massachusetts. High level minor. Yeah. I assume a double A or triple A. Okay. All right. In 1979, Dale and Kevin started playing in Pittsburgh's very competitive softball league on a team called the High Rollers. Okay. We all know about very competitive softball leagues. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Where the

pitcher every now and then goes over arm and everyone's like, all right, come on. We're not doing that. Let's all settle down. Jimmy. That's what I want. No over. You know the rules. It's still soft. Yeah. It's the same ball. What if you hit Bert? He already lost one eye. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Dale was a pitcher. Kevin was an outfielder. They're both very good athletes. They played three or four times a week year round and through the High Rollers, Dale and Kevin were introduced to cocaine. Well, Dave, the High Rollers, indeed. Yeah, that's right. Great. Kevin. Kevin, quote, everyone we hung out with at the bar

and from our end of town, everyone was into cocaine. All right. All right, Dave. You're talking 1979. It was just like cocaine was everywhere. Yep. So this is just a working... And the truth is that part of why it's bullshit is because it would just be great to still not know that cocaine was not a good thing to be doing recreationally. Yeah. Because then we could still just all be doing a ton of cocaine. But now we're like, no, it's bad. So now you know. Yeah. Are you a cop? I just keep talking. Okay. I would love to do a bunch of cocaine through my nose. And what I'd like to do is what I call the walrus. That's where I put $2 bills. Could you

speak a little more into the microphone? I like to do the walrus, which is where I put a dollar bill in each one of my nostrils. And then I double barrel a line. So I just sort of go, you know, one of those. And I call the walrus obviously because they resemble white tusks. I like to do cocaine like that, but I will smoke it too. I don't want to make you think I'm not going to smoke the cocaine or look, we're just a couple of guys chewing the fat. Yeah. I don't mind a speedball every now and then. That's when you go arm. Can you sell me some cocaine? Well, uh, yeah, I mean, I guess I could, yeah, absolutely. I could sell you somebody. How much do you, how much? Yes. Yes is the one word.

Like I want like five grams, five grams is good. And that's great. I have someone's going to knock on your door in a minute. Great. Great. And great. Yeah. Go ahead and have that cocaine ready. I have the cocaine ready. I'm currently on cocaine. If I'll be, if I'm being honest, I have cocaine in my stomach and that's not just from snorting it. That is also to transport it. So, uh, it's the winter of 1979 and the Pittsburgh pirates announced open auditions for their first ever team mascot. Oh dude, when you said auditions, I thought you were going to say like for players to play. And I was like, I don't think they call tryouts auditions like, all right boys from the top, get to the mound and get dirty on this one. All right. Remember

what I like to see? I like to see a wind up and then a throw and then give them a little sass on the way back. Rounding first, rounding first and we look confident as we slide into second. Two, three, four. So, uh, this would be the auditions were for the Pittsburgh pirate parrot. For the parrot? Yeah, that's their mascot, the parrot. They don't have a pirate? Yeah, that's, I can't, I don't understand it. They should have a pirate. I went to a school or our mascot, I went to high school, our mascot was the parrot. We, I mean, the pirates, we had a pirate. It's not hard. It's a pirate. It's in the name. Yes. And that's why you don't, you don't do like adjacent characters. Like, no, it's just insane. You're the pirates. So you have a pirate.

You're not the pirates. So you go, and what would a pirate have? What are the accoutrements? Oh, that's it. A parrot. There we go. Okay. So they're auditioning a parrot because whoever's in charge is an idiot. So the pirates director of promotions, quote, it has to be someone who, well, the way I, I put it, who's slightly insane. That's the guy we're looking for. A guy or gal. Well, the, okay. Now, this, you do not want to make that the top credential you want on someone's resume. Yeah, yeah, you've done it a bunch, but are you out of your mind? All right, let me ask you this. Would you put this peanut butter in your ear? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I put it on my eye, on my eyes, on my ear, and then I'd scream. I'd scream for like 10 minutes. All right. All right.

Settle down, pal. We're just having a conversation here. I was just seeing if you put it in your ear. All right. Now I once threw a spear through a dog. This guy is straight to callbacks, sir. Just make sure you leave your paper and then don't leave because we're going to do callbacks after this. I love everything I hear. That guy's unbelievable. Did you hear what he did to his dog through a spear in it? That's the right mentality. That's the right mentality. So a friend of Kevin signs him up for the mascot audition. And Kevin had just finished welding school and was about to start his first job, but he figured, you know, he should just go to the audition as a joke, right? See what it is. All right, look, either I'm going to be a professional parrot or a welder.

Let's let God take the wheel. Pittsburgh sports at this time are, you know, really soaring. The Steelers have just won their third Super Bowl in five years. The Pirates look like they can win a World Series. It's all like it's the whole, the city's pride, right? They're all excited about their sports teams. Yep. The audition was February 23rd, 1979, and Kevin brought Dale. A local newspaper wrote there were, quote, several dozen unemployed actors, frustrated entertainers, singers in the shower, publicity seekers, and almost certifiable crazy baseball fans. They're around. Were any of them totally out of their minds there? There were. No, I mean, you'll see. There were around 100 mascot hopefuls there. Each got a five minute audition.

Five. What the fuck? Are you five minutes? How do you not shave that down to two minutes after your first 10? You're like, this is brutal. Yeah, it's got to be a long five minutes at a time. All right. And then what else would the parrot do? You have three and a half minutes. So for his audition, now Dale has now started working as a freelance photographer. So he pretends to be paparazzi and he chases Kevin around the field, you know, fake posing and stuff. Is he in a parrot outfit? I don't know if he's in a parrot outfit. I couldn't find that in any of the sources. Because I wonder if like, because remember when you used to go on commercial auditions and like they would have like, you know, if it was like for a Carl's Jr. burger,

they would, by the end of the day, you'd get there at like 430 and there would just be this ragged beat and kicked around like half eaten burger that you would have to be like, okay. Yeah. Like, but at least you had a prop. So I wonder if they're, but my guess is that you're probably, you're probably just acting like a parrot. I think I bet you anything he's just acting like a parrot because too much turnaround. Yeah. Yeah. So the judges after that had Kevin dance to a disco song, which is even weirder. I mean, just having like, remember now, you're a parrot, Kevin, you're Kevin met, you're a parrot bit more of a parrot. It looks like you dancing and you're quite talented. This is not how a parrot would two step. Okay. Don't forget, repeat

some of the things I'm saying too. I don't hear a lot of repetition. So he does well. He's a good dancer. They enjoyed him a few days later. He gets a callback and he makes it into the final 10. Gee, I mean, I love how they're American idling the parents for the next trial. He wowed the judges with his dance moves and impressed them all with his sports knowledge and knack for impressions of local celebrities and people. So he does, he does local feels like we're going off script a little. He does local impression. He's like, you know, Jimmy down at the end of the bar at PJs. All right, this is Jim. Yeah, this is Jimmy. Yeah, the closing time yet. That sounds fantastic. Now remember, as a parrot, all you'll really need to do is run around like a

shithead. Okay, so I'm gonna do another one. This is, you know, that dog dog that got hit by a spear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's unbelievable. That's great. Thank you. Now all we've asked you for is one more serious monologue. So just something dramatic. Again, you'll be mainly running around and messing with the players and you'll have a big parrot ass and you'll be shaking that. But we just want to make sure we have someone who can work on all the levels we might have to hit. What? Why did he have to die, Jim? I very quickly. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. What play is this from? It's from Old Yeller. Okay, great. Oh, there's a very, it's a lot of, it's a dog theme with you, which I don't hate. Okay, continue. Why did he have to die? I know he

was sick. I know it. We could have just saved him. He saved me. He did it for me. Parrot. Wow. Oh, wow. What a punctuation. Unbelievable. I have amazing news. You're making it to the round of eight. There's only nine more rounds. For the next tryout, as I said, he wows the judges and he's off with the job. Okay. Kevin was very excited, but he was also worried. He knew that Pittsburgh sports fans notoriously hated mascots and cheerleaders. Yep. None of the city's professional sports teams had either and he's only getting it paid 25 bucks a game. And Kevin said, quote, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. Wow. That is crazy. It's about $67 in today's money. So it's a shit job. By the way, though, that's what, like NFL, what they pay the cheerleaders. Oh,

it's terrible. It's abysmal. But you get the fan experience. Yeah, they tell the cheerleaders for exposure, which you're like, how much exposure am I getting in Kansas City? Yeah. And you know, this is 82 games. So he's just not making that much money, right? Jesus Christ. Yeah. So they sent him to spring. But again, all, all he eats is seeds. That's right. So. So he's sent to spring training in Florida to get ready for the regular season. That is Dave. We're already hitting a lot of insanity. That's insane. So when he arrives, they put him out on the field in his, in his uniform, his mascot, what do you call it? A mascot outfit. And he's, he's standing in the outfield and he finds himself standing next to MLB greats, Dave Parker and Willie Stargill.

Okay. Now, when I'm a kid, these are two of the biggest baseball players. So he's just standing next to two of his heroes, right? But he's like a parent. And he, he, he looks at all the, the, the fans in the stands, which is again, it's small, it's spring training, it's practice baseball. And he says to Parker and Stargill, quote, man, I am really nervous. This is crazy. I wasn't expecting this. And Stargill and Parker just laugh and they say, man, wait until the regular season starts, because that's going to be like 50,000 fans. So I, can you imagine if at spring training, a mascot comes up to you and is like, I'm fucking nervous, huh? This is the big time. It's like, I'm sorry. What are you talking to us? Are you talking to us? It's just so insane. So,

but now he's, he's, he's feeling like he's part of the team that he always wanted to be a part of. It's his dream in a way. Sure. Sure. Sure. So they didn't give him any specific routine to do. You know, the team didn't, he was just improvising and trying to come up with stuff he would do regularly, but keep it fresh. And it didn't take him long before his mascot crazy antics and his, he just had like a fun, lonely nature to win over the players on the team. Okay. Kevin becomes friends with the players. And when the season start, he has his own changing area and shower separate from the team, but he starts hanging out in the clubhouse all the time. It's okay. And okay. Okay. Okay. Sure. Surely there are some players who are a little like,

this is pretty weird. So, well, this is considered to be the best clubhouse in all of baseball. It's just, it's like the end. Well, I mean, they have a separate, they have a separate parrot facility. That's right. Obviously things are pretty good. Sports Illustrated called the clubhouse quote, traditionally has the loudest, trashiest mouth, the loosest and most uproarious dressing room in baseball. So the pirates are really good and they win the division that year. And on the last day of the regular season, outfielder Mike Essier slaps Kevin high five as they celebrated in the clubhouse and says to him quote, nice going parrot dude. Oh wait. Okay. Now is he, is he as the, is he as the parrot then or is he

himself shirtless and they're celebrating he's so he's he's like a player. Yes. And and they're calling him parrot dude. Yes. A name. What did he say to him? He said nice going parrot dude. Nice going like he had something to do with it. He also had a good season. Yeah, for sure. Sure. The pirates went on to win the world series. The victory was away in Baltimore, so the mascot couldn't be there. But Kevin went there as a guest of the pirate organization. So he's there. Sure. Back in Pittsburgh, obviously the fans go fucking crazy. They're all in the streets quote, 120 arrests throughout the city, 10 dog bites from police canine patrols and countless streams of toilet paper and debris left behind three typical typical baseball win town. Yeah.

So the team, the team loves what Kevin did in the season. Okay. And now he's become a bit of a local celebrity in Pittsburgh. During one game he drove a mini replica corvette around the stadium while a bunch of I don't know what I don't know who's on the mopeds but a bunch of people on mopeds follow him. And then he spontaneously just on a whim decided to drive out of the stadium onto the actual street. That's not street legal. And then he drove over the sixth street bridge. What? The whole time he kept quote shaking his parrot head and yelling at people. And then the cops. Yeah, I'm waiting to hear that word cops. The cops stopped him as he pulled up in front of a local disco but they didn't give him a ticket quote. The policeman asked for the

parrot's autograph and gave the motorcade and escort back to the stadium. So he illegally drives a tiny corvette in a parrot outfit. The police when they get him ask him for an autograph and give him presidential treatment back to the stadium. That's right. Okay. Okay. So okay. Sure. Sure. Great. On average on average Kevin lost about six pounds per game from sweating in the suit. How much did he weigh to begin with? He's going to be wasting he's nine. He weighs nine pounds now. He's actually weighs less. He weighs less than most parrots. I actually don't think he was that big. I think he's just in a suit and it's Pittsburgh in the summer. It's also when you have as someone who wore these costumes for about five or six years in the summer you a lot of it can just be

water weight where it is just like it's it's pure sweat coming out of you. So you can I mean that's how like UFC fighters drop weights, you know. Yeah. That's what wrestlers do. Yeah. Yeah. During one particular instance, it reached 135 degrees inside the suit during a game and Kevin lost 13 pounds. Oh my god. I had some days where I was like I'm going to die. I remember one time I had to be Darth Vader in a bowling alley that it's air conditioning broke and and I did almost pass. I had to like go outside for a minute and like take the mask off and be like so dreams. He passed out twice during that game in the suit. That's the best thing when you just see a mascot collapse out in center. I'm not liking his new

stuff. I like the Corvette thing. This new stuff seems a little lazy and derivative. But you know, like I said, they loved him. The GM said if he kept it up, he could soon be making 40,000 a year as the mascot. Okay, tease. The the San Diego chicken had just gone on strike and settled for 100,000 a year. Yeah, no, I remember the chicken strike. That's right. I wish I could explain to people in other countries just how popular the San Diego chicken was. I now see I don't fully remember like I mean, I think I know he kind of looked like a cockatoo more than a chicken. No, he looks like he looks like a chicken. He looks like a chicken. Okay, he looks like a chicken. There's a lot of there's just it's just it's just even for baseball

even for baseball. It's a lot of fouls. Okay, I'll let you I won't erase that. Thank you. Kevin was making extra money also doing appearances at malls promotional events. He's even doing weddings and bar mitzvahs. Oh, my God. What the hell? That's right. And today Joshua is a man. He's a man. A friend described Kevin as quote young single and taking on the world. Yep, through the eyes of a parent. Now speed in the 70s and early 80s was really big in MLB. They had bowls of speed. There were greenies and reds red. I think was a liquid, but there was a big bowl of greenies. Sure. And when Kevin was coming in, if he looked a bit under from, you know, partying or whatever, the players would encourage

him to take speed and drink some coffee before he put on the yep. That's right. Parrot. Just do some amphetamine. A speed it up mascot. A speed parrot. Like remember when he was nervous? Like he was nervous at spring training recently. And now he's like, man, I don't even know how I'm going to do it. There's like, do some speed. So, so now Dale Dale was, uh, he's a sports fanatic. He has season tickets to the Steelers, the penguins and the pirates and pretty soon Kevin introduces Dale to the pirate team. And soon Dale is in. He's hanging around. He's there all the time. Dale quote, I got to stand out there and right field with my heroes. A few would even invite me, invite me to meet after the game and have a beer. Life could not have been better. Okay. So Kevin and

Dale are now hanging out with the players and they're all in and everyone's friends. A friend of Dale's quote, Dale doesn't want to grow up. All he wants to do is have a good time. Now Dale's having trouble finding consistent photography work, but he feels like validated hanging out with these famous baseball players. Sure. Yeah. Everything's great. Yeah. Quote, hanging out with athletes made your pride go up. It made you feel like somebody even if you were really a nobody. Now one of the guys on the team, Rod Scurry, made his major league debut as a real leaf pitcher in 1980. And pretty soon Kevin Scurry and Dale were all really close. Okay. Kevin and Scurry were best best friends. Oh, so often when Dale and Kevin were partying after pirate games, they would

run into pirates at, you know, different bars and stuff. Kevin quote, Barra or somebody would say, Hey, do you guys party? And then one thing led to another and the players found out that Dale could get stuff. And that's how it kind of snowballed. Literally, they started doing cocaine. Okay. Okay. So now, so now the pirate mascot you've hired is your portal to booger sugar. Yeah, basically Kevin and Dale from their times of doing blow when they were on the high rollers, they've got connections. So they're like, Oh, I can get blow. You want to do blow? Let's do blow. Yeah, you're professional athletes. Why don't we do a bunch of cocaine together? Soon, the players are starting to just call Kevin to see if Dale can get blow before games

for the party afterwards. Scurry and infielder Dale Barra called the most now Dale Barra is Yogi Barra's son. Oh, gosh, okay. And if you don't know, Yogi Barra is because you don't know baseball. Yogi Barra, one of the all time greats, 10 World Series victories, three most valuable player, but also known for his quips that are just sometimes a quote. Yeah, he's a quote machine, right? Yeah. Yeah. With with Dale around so much, Kevin started becoming less of a middleman. Dale started Dale was scoring it from local guys he knew and he'd sell a grammar grammar to it at a time. And he cut it because he would take some. So right to cut it. And most of his deals start happening in quarters around the stadium. And they never ran into Pirates

management. And that led Kevin to think that management knew what was happening. It was just avoiding it all. Okay. Wow. It's even I mean, the I even the term, even though it's sports related of pirate management, just doesn't sit true. You can't manage pirates. You expect they're going to do whatever they want. Never. That's right. They're pirates. Guys, guys, relax. So so pirate players now start calling Dale directly to have him deliver cocaine to hotel rooms for themselves and players who are coming into town and visiting. Oh, so that is that is sportsmanship. That's nice to see that you're not going to you're not going to ice out other players to to get chocked from you just because they're not on your team. You know, it's all about sportsmanship.

You all play for the same thing, which is just the experience and give back to the fans while you're coked out of your brain. That's right. Kevin quote, I remember some of the other teams all of a sudden started to get involved. They'd say, how can you get your buddy to do this or that? And I called Dale and he come down and we'd party with just about everybody. It was pretty bizarre. It was pretty out of control. We would be in clubs every night drinking and stuff, but it was like, Hey, let's all get together because of cocaine. Oh, that's so now they're just doing blow with tons of baseball players. Right. Just great. Even though Kevin was trying to back off a bit, he still found himself delivering cocaine to various baseball players when Dale wasn't

available. Quote, I couldn't say no. What are you going to do? It's almost impossible to say no. These were your heroes. Guys, when you were a kid, I still remember sitting down with Willie Starchel going, I remember your first game, Willie. It was in 63 at Forbes field. I was like nine or 10 years old. And he's like, all right, let's do a bunch of blow. Can you imagine if you're like the manager being like, so we think the parrot's dealing cocaine to the team. We got a drug pair. Just FBI agents rushing out of the field and tackling the parrot. I want my lawyer. My lawyer. And as someone who, you know, I had comedians I was a fan of and, you know, a few years later, I'm hanging out with them doing drugs. I totally get this. Oh, yeah. 100%.

It's a great way to normalize your heroes when you're like, Oh, yeah, you're dicing too. By 19. So by 1982, blow is a huge part of MLB. That's what the bee stood for. That's major league blow. Major league blow. First baseman, John Milner was snorting up to seven grams a week. Oh my Lord. With, and he's doing it with players like Scurry, Barrett, Dave Parker, Lee Lacey, quote, it was so common that the first thing Scurry and Barry thought about prior to the season's home opener was making sure someone had called Dale for easy game delivery. All quotes are by Aaron Skirball. And I'm not going to say the title of the book, but unless I say otherwise, all quotes are by him. But given away the title,

I can't do that. It ruins the whole story. Okay. So 24 year old Kevin Connolly was a heating and cooling repairman who met Scurry through his girlfriend's friend on a double date. Okay. Pretty soon, pretty soon, Connolly and Scurry are doing blow all the time together. But Connolly is a repairman, so he doesn't make that much money. And the cocaine lifestyle is pretty hard to maintain for a, you know, heating repairman. So Connolly decided he had to quote, find somebody that had cocaine, get it at cost and sell it. Okay, great. So much. Right. So great. Great, great, great. Soon Connolly was buying a quarter ounce and splitting it, keeping half and selling the other to Scurry. And then Connolly met more players who wanted cocaine, but then a

quarter ounce wasn't enough to keep up. So he started buying a quarter kilo. And then a quarter kilo wasn't enough. And his cocaine purchases get bigger and bigger and bigger. In 1983, Scurry had cocaine dealers all over. He's got Dale, got Connolly and Dale, Dale's not around, Curtis Strong in Philadelphia, Shelby Greer in Philadelphia. So he's branching out and meeting more and more cocaine guys. Good, good. Before one game, Scurry snorted a gram and pitched a shutout, so he started to believe blow was an important part of his game. Oh, no, to have to snort a gram before every time you pitch? Jesus Christ. Because you were just snorting a gram before you pitch? How could you? I can imagine snorting a gram. I can't imagine being like, I have to

do a gram before I pitch. Like the, like the, the routine-ness of it. So. Good Lord, you're poor apart. Yeah. So the more cocaine the players wanted, the more Connolly needs to score it. So he starts flying to Miami to buy two kilos of coke for 40 grand, and they smuggle it back to Pittsburgh. And this is all just to get cocaine to the players. I mean, this is a lot to go. And he's a heating and cooling repairman. Yeah. Okay. So the job, they're like, you need another two weeks off to go to Miami? Yeah, that's right. So the guys who sell them the cocaine teach them how to smuggle it. Quote, the cocaine which came in a large chunk was placed in a plastic bag. The bag was then

placed inside of another bag and dipped in mustard. And this package is placed into another bag that had coffee grids in it. So we had three bags going, then we just sewed it into my jacket, and I'd walk through the airport. Well, yeah. But if they find any, you're like, Oh, I like to eat coffee and mustard. Connolly started to just love the rush of smuggling cocaine more than actually doing blow. That's tough. One time he's at the airport and there are several police dogs and their officers standing and riding his path. So instead of deviating and changing and going around them, he just walked straight through them for the thrill of it.

Well, I will say in that situation, you don't want to turn around, you know, you just got to be like, keep going. I remember once when I was, well, whatever, never mind. Now back at home, Connolly needs help because he's, you know, going through so much cocaine that he invited an old friend, Tommy Balser, to help sell, quote, Balser. You want an eight Balser? Could be Balser. Let's go with Balser just so it doesn't sound terrible. Connolly recruited an old friend, Tommy Balser, to help sell, quote, Balser was more like a secretary. All he was in charge of was watching me. He would write down who we owed money to stuff like that. So basically, he, whenever he gives out cocaine, then Balser writes it down

and then they try and get the money later. Right. Right. Right. He's got a bookkeeper. So yeah. So Connolly sold at high end Pittsburgh clubs like heaven and baseball players were notorious for not paying for the cocaine, especially scurry. And Balser hated it when Connolly gave out coke without getting money because then he'd spend days chasing down these baseball players and get money from it. Right. They were making about $13,000 a week. My God. Most of it, almost all of it went to parting women and giving baseball players deals so they could keep hanging out with them. So they're not actually making making money. It's all going back into whatever they're doing. Right. Right. Right. Right. It's cocaine socialism.

It's just all so they can hang out with baseball players. Sure. Yeah. Of course. Can you imagine flying to Miami with coffee grounds and cocaine and mustard taped and sewed into your jacket all so that you can be like, so what was it like when you had, when you missed the bunt though? Is it weird when you miss a bunt? The Pirates, Dale Barra and John Milner found another dealer again, another guy who only started dealing cocaine because he met a baseball player. Jesus Christ. I mean, they are starting an industry. Robert McHugh was an accountant in a Vietnam vet and he moonlighted as a DJ and he called himself Ravishing Rob. Yeah, of course. You know, I remember him.

He had just started using blow in 1983 and he started sharing it with Milner and then selling it to Milner. So again, it's a guy who's doing blow. He meets a player. He starts doing blow with the player and then he's like, well, I can sell it to you because he can't afford to keep just giving the player cocaine. Right. So the Pirates are like stimulus program for the cocaine industry, but none of the jobs they've created are giving anyone sustainable incomes because of how much free cocaine they get. And again, the gateway to this was a parrot. That's correct. Okay. By the middle of 1983, the nightclub is seen in Pittsburgh was drugs, women, baseball and

partying. Kevin was a celebrity as sort of the Pirates team member. At one point he told the player a woman at a club had asked him to fuck her while he wore the pirate parrot head. Oh my goodness gracious. What sort of bizarre splash fantasy is this? And what does that say to you when you're like over my head? It's kind of like a part. Okay. Wow. Good Lord. Maroc, are you coming? Maroc, are you coming? The Pittsburgh Post Gazette wrote that Kevin was quote, the sort a mom would like her daughter to bring home an earnest yes, ma'am kind of guy, but with a bit of a devil in him. Yeah, he's dealing

cocaine to the MLB. Kevin quote, I pretty much had carte blanche wherever I wanted, like owners of a nightclub or whatever. I'd come in, they get to know me, I would get the keys to the VIP room. It was pretty crazy. And he said he was just able to have sex with whoever like he was like part of the Pirates and he's a bit of a celebrity. So I'm the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yeah. So yeah, so he's that's amazing though. It's amazing. But his crazy lifestyle affected his performance. Sure. Men in a good way. USA Today quote, Kevin's many antics at three verse stadium were legendary from singing at second base with umpires to popping wheelies while flying over the mound

on a motorcycle. So they essentially just put like cocaine in a parrot costume. Yeah, I think he's doing speed and cocaine during games and all the time and just going fucking batshit crazy people like where's he come up with this? It's like, oh, he's on hardcore narcotics. Hold on. Jose is doing some crazy shit in the closet. Okay, sorry about that. Just had to be a good father. You wouldn't understand. That's right. So Dale's also having a really great time. He isn't making really money. He still split rent with two roommates, but he didn't care about money. He just wanted to have fun and hang out with baseball players. Oh, and he was also at this point becoming addicted to cocaine as was scurry. Dave,

I'm not going to lie. I was starting to think that there might be some cocaine problems going around the pirates. One day Connolly came, comes home and scurry is at his back door. Now scurry was supposed to come over after the one hit some dingers friend. What brought you over here? They'll want me to pitch you. Scurry is supposed to come over after the pirate game to buy some grams. So he was expecting him, but he's early and Connolly asked scurry what happened with the game and scurry said, ah, fuck that shit. They're assholes. And then Connolly was like, all right, I'm going to go clean up and he takes a shower and he comes out. And when he comes out, scurry is sitting on the couch watching the

game, waiting to buy blow. And he's like, and that's what Connolly realized the game was still being played. And on the TV, the announcer said, quote, I wonder why scurry isn't warming up. He's a healthy scratch for some reason. We're not sure where he is right now. You're like, uh, because now he's be at the game. Yeah. Well, now he's so into cocaine that he's blowing off his job. Literally professional. Yeah. Yeah. Major league baseball player to get cocaine. Yeah. We understand scurry is a healthy scratch trying to buy some chach. Understand he's over at someone's house right now, trying to score some of the devil's dandruff. And then we'll probably make it back to the third inning. It's a common problem for the

Pittsburgh Pirates this season who have found themselves in some real cocaine hot waters at different times. This is a team fueled 100% by cocaine. And you can tell it has many pitfalls. Two down. Full count right now. Other other pirate players are running into problems. Another dealer had called Dave Parker at four a.m. asking for help getting Barra out of his house because Barra had been there for hours searching through the dealer's belongings, hoping to find more cocaine. Wow. I mean, also the idea that you're Yogi Barra's kid and you're treating someone else's apartment like a picnic basket that has a pie in it, but you're looking for cocaine. On the field, Barra started falling apart. Sports writer Bob Herzl quote Dale Barra couldn't

perform the simplest task. He was picked off first base with a three and no count on the batter. So people don't understand what that means. It's something that you learn when you're eight years old. You don't get you don't hang off the bag when there's a three and no count and you're on first base. It's just you just like you get taken out of a game a 10 if you did that. Scurry is now falling asleep in the bullpen during games. Good. Good. I mean, the you're doing too much cocaine when you're exhausted from doing cocaine and sleep like the whole thing is it's a stimulant. So if you've like you're overcoking so much that you're like, I got to sleep during the game. It's like, that's the one time we need you to be doing your cocaine. Popeye,

this is your spinach snorted. During one game, he fell asleep between 20 and 25 times. Oh my God, that's nodding off. That's like that is like seriously dangerous. Before another game, while in the outfield for batting practice, he fell asleep standing up. What he's like a horse now he's done so much cocaine that he has like a horse sleep regimen. What in is happening? Oh, shit. Scurry's game was also rapidly declining in 1982. He pitched 103 innings, but in 1983 only 68 and he had a four and nine record. Okay. To deal with the pressure and anger of the fans because Pittsburgh fans are not at all forgiving. I mean, Dave Parker was doing great and they were throwing batteries at him. So he starts doing cocaine to deal with the stress

of the fans not liking. Sure. Okay. That'll help. That's it's always been a really calming effect it'll give you. Oh man, I was stressed out and then I did a bunch of cocaine and now I'm calm. Yeah. No, they say if you want to calm down and be less anxious to do just a lot of blow. Well, that's why Ray Leota at the end of Goodfellas is so together. That's right. So Scurry is not doing seven to nine grams a night and spending 500 to a thousand dollars. Oh my God. So, so people start distancing themselves from them. They're like, okay, this guy's out of control and he started to show up at Dale's house in the middle of the night looking for blow. Kevin quote, I never saw something overtake somebody like it did Scurry. He had no control. So in 1983, the Pirates finished

in second place. And but because left handed pitchers are so rare, they keep Scurry hoping he'll improve for the next season. Right. But between seasons from doing blow, he loses 20 pounds. Oh God. And then the season starts and in one game, he came in to protect a 63 lead in the fourth. A six to three lead. Right. Okay. Six to three lead in the fourth. He threw eight pitches, none close to the plate, walks two batters, and then the team loses eight to six. And then he just snorted like all the white powder that's in that weird sock that's on the mound. He was like, After the game, Scurry said quote, the plate was jumping. I was wild. There's not much more to say. That's good. That's there's not much more to say. He comes to camp. He's like, I'm right handed now.

Oh God. So teammates decided to make it harder for him to get blow. So we're stapling your nostrils. Well, they start leaving the doors open in the in the hotel room so they can all see if he walks by or if anybody else walks by to stop him from going to his room. Okay. Okay. So so in a Los Angeles hotel, Scurry had his dealers stitch the blow into the webbing of a baseball glove and sent it to his room because they would get free gloves all the time from people like people give them gloves to like, you know, people who make gloves. So no one thought a glove coming up through the, you know, hotel bellboy was a thing. Right. But inside of it, he had stitched all the cocaine. Wow. So that is, I mean, that really is amazing. So while his teammates always

asleep the night, he just stayed up all night doing blow through in a glove. He was just like, someone walked in. They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Who makes the cocaine glove? What company's doing that? That'd be an amazing ad that only cocaine catchers meant. So one night he flips out and he calls his dad while he's in some sort of cocaine madness. And his dad calls pitcher Don Robinson, who is in a room down the hall and Robinson goes to check on him. And Scurry is destroying the room saying there are snakes and cameras in the TV and wall. Everybody get in here. There's a bunch of snakes. We got to help him overly supportive. That happened to my sister. She had a roommate who did math and she said the same thing. She started tearing the place apart because there were cameras

and snakes everywhere. So there's cocaine scattered all around the room. Well, the snakes probably bit into a bag of it. The pirates managed, you know, through their ways, obviously, keep the legal authorities out of it. Scurry had snorted 15 to 20 grams over two days before he snapped. So that's just end of scarface. That's just constant. That's just like every breath is snorting. Like, could you imagine how much work it takes to snort 20 fucking poor sinuses? So doctors believed he was having a cocaine induced psychosis, which is very rare for snorting cocaine. Actually, you know what drug it's most common for? No, a psychosis induced marijuana. I was going to guess that, but it seems so wrong. Yeah. Well, there's a lot. There's a lot of times

there is like, it is a catalyst for like, you know, like, I know that like my cousin is schizophrenic and I don't believe this is the reason, but his parents do believe the reason is because of a pot. But I have another I have another couple people I know discovered they were bipolar through episodes of, yeah, just too much pot. Yeah. So the team makes him go to rehab. The team makes because, you know, obviously things are not great. And so this is all forced upon him. Here are the headlines in the headline of Pittsburgh paper, quote, Scurry asked for help admitted to drug center for rehabilitation. Wait a minute at the drug center, they take away the drugs? Other papers, quote, Scurry with the help of old friend and fellow Pirates pitcher Don Robinson

had walked into Chuck Tanner's office admitted his problem and asked for help on his own accord. Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Pirates GM, quote, I'm proud that he came to us seeking help. Captain Bill Maddock, quote, it takes a big man to step forward the way he did. So they just built this fucking bullshit story. Right. And the reality is, is he flipped out and they made him go. Yeah, right. He came in here and he said straight away, he's got a bunch of snakes living in his stomach and he wanted to die. And I knew what that meant. It was time to go to the drug center. Now all the all the guys who are giving the players drugs now are freaking out. Right. And Barak calls Connolly and tells him to stay away from Scurry because he'd gone nuts.

Scurry has put in a rehab for 28 days. So what are those? Not a lie. It's not a lie. Yeah. His parents go to visit him. Mom, quote, I was very disappointed in the rehab center because I felt they were treating him as a big league star and not as a drug addict. We were greeted like we were coming to a big party. Well, that's a good vibe for a rehab facility. Right. That's what you want. Hey, welcome. Before we go to your son's room, do you guys want any cocaine? We don't want to do it around him. We do do it around him, but we don't want to do it around him with you here. Does that make sense? By the way, in his room, we have a bunch of cameras and snakes. Okay. Right this way. He's down the hall. He's two R. He had a pitching mound in rehab so he

could stay in shape. Okay. Just keep the focus on the right stuff. What in the world? When he got out, the pirates immediately had him hold the press conference and he told the press he had OD'd three times in 1983. So now the FBI was interested. Okay. They had already learned of connections between dealers and scurry and Barrett. So there's like a West Virginia case. They heard a connection. So they're hearing different connections between the team and the players. Okay. They had a recorded message that they got from an unknown pirates player trying to buy Coke when they were in Huntington and it was from a bar that was owned by pirate Don Robinson. I'm looking to score some Coke. Oh shit. It's a giveaway.

So they bring Dale Barrett in for an interview and he doesn't give anything up. He just doesn't say anything. Okay. And then they talk to scurry. Who squealed? Oh gosh. Wow. He named five people he bought it from. Dale Connolly, Shelby Greer, Jeffrey Moscoe and a guy named Curtis in Philadelphia. And he named five pirate players who used cocaine. Dale Barrett, Dave Parker, Lee Lacey, Lee Mazzulli and Jim Bibby. But Bibby had never done cocaine. Right. That's cool to do that to Bibby. The FBI started interviewing more players and doing surveillance of the dealers. But being baseball season very hard to get the players. Right. Okay. Because they're always on the move. They go into other cities. It's just a whole thing. So they keep going at Barrett.

He refuses to give up anyone. And then agents got the green light to give scurry immunity. When they go to talk to him, he's clearly back on blow. He said, quote, I'm ready to tell you what the story is. There's a network of drug dealers servicing the National League. You have cocaine on your nose. Yes. See, that's what I'm talking about. Yes. But we're a little look, there's a bunch of my pocket. This is what I'm saying. Yes. But you've been doing it is what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah. There's guys give it. Yeah. We're buying it from other guys. Well, Jesus Christ, we're trying to give you some immunity. You need to stop doing it and be our guy. I love it. Yes.

I don't think I love it. That's incongruous. The plan we had. Hey, I have an idea. We open change bank. No, no, no, you were not. No, all it is is a bank. No, it's a bank where you get changed and it's not a good idea for you to give them four quarters. That's not why we're here. Look, we are. Everybody needs change. We are looking. Everybody needs change. We are looking to break up the drug ring around the Pittsburgh. There are the coolest monkeys. What do you talk? Okay, listen to me. You just do not. We here's what I'm saying is we start a monkey farm. That's not what we are. The goddamn we make monkeys. We are not going to make make monkeys. We release them in Pittsburgh. And then the whole city is a monkey city and people are like, I want to go to a monkey

city. And we fucking and we make we just make so much money. Listen to us and listen to us clearly. All right, we want you need more blow. I'm going to go get some more. I have a whole pile in my room. Go get it. I'll talk to my partner for a second. We need to get a copyright on that change bank idea right away. That is a great call. That is I've been in so many times where I've needed change. I wish that change thing was not a direct quote. What's from my friend. My friend on cocaine in high school. Oh my god. Oh my god. Change. Dude, we make a dollar a week. We're rolling in it. You don't even need a vault because it's so many nickels. So so like I said, the FBI is interviewing more players. Bear is not giving people up. And then he and then scary just starts

talking. He he he names Curtis strong, who's a Philadelphia caterer who started selling cocaine to the pirates. Anytime the Phillies played in Pittsburgh and then started just coming to Pittsburgh to sell cocaine. He drops the dime on a guy named Shelby Greer who traveled the team and sold blow. But these again, these are all guys who are fans and then started selling blow because they want to hang out with the players. There's more surveillance. Phones are tapped. The FBI starts making connections. Connelly's house is searched. They found nine ounces and then they went to Belzers and they found two ounces. And then at this point, the U. S. Attorney, the FBI tells U. S. Attorney what's going on. And the U. S. Attorney decides the way to handle this

is to give all of the pirates players immunity to get the drug dealers. This guy's top notch. The best in the biz. Scurry was the first baseball player with immunity to appear before a grand jury. At one point, agents were with Connelly doing a deal in Florida to get his supplier. Okay. Okay. An agent realized they had a huge bag in the back of the car with SWAT written on it. So they're about to do this deal with this guy that got being a snitch. And then the guy's like, shit, what if he checks the trunk and they look in the trunk and there's just a giant bag and says SWAT. SWAT? So yeah. So he's like, what the fuck? I got to get this out of here. So there's a police subdivision like a hundred yards away. So he grabs the bag and he runs to the subdivision and tells

a cop, quote, this is going to sound crazy, but I'm an FBI agent and I'm right in the middle of something going down. Can I leave this bag here? Have a good day. The cops like cops like, I need ID. You can't do that. And he's like, I don't have ID. I'm undercover. So he has the cop call FBI headquarters who verify who he is so he can leave the back. Meanwhile, a much easier thing to do is just be able to go to scurry and just be like, will you snort all this? But then also if you're the guy who's in on that and you're snitching, you're like, maybe we shouldn't do this because you guys don't really have your shit together. You guys seem really bad at this. And you took a bag that said SWAT on it. So after all that, the supplier showed up and he had almost none of

the cocaine he said he would. So it wasn't the boss they were looking for. In November 1984, Curry, sorry, scurry called Dale and told him the players had given him up and he should leave town. But Dale was like, I just haven't been selling. I'm not a big jugular. I'm selling like an ounce here to a gram here or two to hang out with people. So he's just like, I'm going to stop selling into players and that should be it. Right. I'll just stop. Quote, I wasn't getting rich off of it. What dealing amounted to was that I was essentially getting mine for free. Right. And hanging out with baseball. That's all he's doing. Right. A couple of days later, Kevin called Dale and said he wanted to buy some blow. And Dale hasn't seen Kevin in a little while, but

they're still really good friends. So Dale goes over to his house and he sells him two grams for $200. And right as soon as he finished the deal, Kevin looked like he was going to burst into tears because Kevin had been offered immunity or jail. Those are his options. And he was wearing a wire. So Kevin's a free man because he turns in Dale. Quote, it was the worst feeling I think I ever had in my life. Everything had just bottomed out at that point. It was horrible. I did something I didn't want to do. Yeah. On November 9th, Barra was subpoenaed and granted immunity. And he finally talked. He gave up the Pittsburgh Hangarons who had supplied cocaine and two players over 140 pages of testimony from Barra. He was coked up for that. Great. Yeah. Greer's house was raided in January

1985. Dave Parker, John Miller, Lee Lacey testified. They all gave up more of the guys who were giving them coke. Greer told the FBI Dave Parker was actually the middleman for all major league baseball teams and that he organized almost all of the buys. Now, it turns out Parker was the entire National League's Pittsburgh contact, but Parker already had immunity. Okay. So, I mean, essentially everybody who's important is getting immunity or everyone who's like an athlete is getting immunity. And then all of the people who really were kind of caught up in the middle of this just kind of fan experience are now being looked at as the prizes to bust. And they're not like, none of them are like, you know, I mean, they're all doing it. They all became huge dealers because

Scurry just his nostrils combined into one huge sinkhole in his face. And most of them aren't even huge dealers. They're literally just selling to the players and not really other people. Right. But I mean, any big deal they do is like they're giving it to Scurry. Yeah. May 30th, 1985, seven indictments were handed down. Now, Dale is absolutely terrified. And then he calls a friend who's an attorney and the friend says, quote, look, no way the FBI is going after you, you, Nicola and dimers. They're going after big time coke dealers, the big fish. So the next day, Dale's house is raided and he's arrested. Okay. Not a great time. They put him in the back of a car or maybe a van. And on the way to FBI headquarters, they stop and pick up

another suspect to transport on something totally unrelated. And he gets in the van. And he says the Dale quote, Hey man, did you hear about the guy they got with 111 counts? And he's like, 111 counts. That's crazy. Well, what's his name out to be Dale? Oh, shit. What? He was like, no, I had never heard of that. I didn't know you could get 111 counts. Yeah, apparently it's just some dickhead guy named Dale. Poor son of a bitch. I mean, our situation's probably pretty grim, but at least we're not that Dale guy, 111. Connelly had two counts against him and he turned himself in. Later, he would say working with the FBI was quote, a blast. Mm hmm. Sure. Right. Sounds like someone got immunity.

The sentiment to bars and didn't make him pay for drinks. So he's going into bars, he's drinking for free to try and get people to, you know, incriminate themselves. It's so nickel and dimed at this point, though. It is. It's so small. I mean, it's just like, no, it's, it's terrible. It's just ridiculous. It's just like they found a lead. They gave everyone who would have probably been important immunity. And now they're like, Okay, well, now we have liaisons to the Pittsburgh Coke scene. Let's just break that up a little bit. Shelby Gray was charged with 10 counts. Thomas Bowser with two counts, William McHugh with 13, Curtis Strong with 16, Jeffrey Moscow with 12 counts, Kevin Connelly

with two, Dale, 111. He was charged for every home game. Oh, what? That's not how it is. How do you chunk it into that? That's not like your honor. We're actually going to go with, we want to do the baseball counts and it's a full count is what we have. You're lucky we're not doing it by innings, you asshole. No Pittsburgh pirates were charged. Of course. Pirates get away with murder. The pirates quickly slammed the case for being a ridiculous result of Reagan's war on drugs. The Pittsburgh press wrote, quote, they got seven fans who shared Coke with players. No one remember the names Dale Strong, et cetera, in 10 years, except the prosecutors who used them

to get the point across about being tough on drugs. Now only Dale is denied bail because they believed he would try to get revenge on Kevin. Okay. The pirates immediately fire him as the mascot. I mean, the idea that he was still an employed parent mascot at this. But you know, Dale, we've hung in there with you, but it's just you have 111 counts. It's a lot. Well, that's Kevin. Oh, sorry. Okay, right, right. But Kevin was immediately an outcast, quote, after wearing the wire, it was like from having every friend in the world to having nobody at all, completely nothing. I felt like Judas. Well, that's because you're Judas. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what, you know, when I'm,

I entrapped my best friend, it really turned a lot of the cocaine players against me. Not sure what it was. They seemed paranoid. I don't know. I don't, I'll never know. Something changed. The weird thing is, is when we were doing cocaine, we were so fucking tight. And then all of a sudden, something changed, something, something happened between when we were all doing cocaine and having fun. And then it's right around the time when I wore the wire for the FBI and entrapped my friend. And I got off that a lot of these guys just, they changed, man. They changed on me. You know, that's part of the thing about these athletes. One day there, your best friend, you're doing coke out of each other's butts together. And then the next day,

they just won't even return a call about cocaine. It's, wait, how are you doing, how are you doing cocaine? We would do it many different ways. We do it through straws. We would do it through, through money. We would, you know, lines, whatever, we would do, do it off tables, do it off, we'd do it off some women. We do it out of each other's butts. We would do it off of a lot of times. Wait, wait, wait, no, that last one. The, I don't even remember what the last one was. The butts. The women. The women, the butts, yeah. Oh, the butts. Yeah, yeah, we'd do it out of each other's butts. Yeah, so we, and we would do it, we would do it, yeah, we would, I mean, we would prefer to do it out of each other's bottoms. And, you know, and then, and then all of a sudden,

you think you know guys, right? Because you've, you know, you've done all these things. You've, you've, you've, you've done, you've done, you've done cocaine through your nostrils, and then you've snorted it through each other's butts, which is not easy to do. And, and, and, and then, and you think you're friends, lifetime friends, lifetime pals, you go through something traumatic, where, where, and all of a sudden, something changed. Something, something different. Something, I don't, I don't know what it is. I'll never know what it is. I will never know what it is. I will never be able to find out what it is. They won't tell me. They won't even talk to me anymore. No, it sounds, it sounds really confusing. It's very confusing. If you're me,

you're just sitting here going, okay, guys, how about an answer? You know, and we can fix this. But, but they won't, they won't do that. They just, you know, they're just, who knows? I don't know. I, I, I, I'm, I'll be fine. I will be fine. You know, I don't need, I don't need them. But they need me, because I'm the only one who could. But, like butt holes, though. Yeah, butt hole. Yeah, you would snort it out of there, and then we would also teach each other how to snort it through there. It's called surfing. But yeah, I can't, I can't, for the life of me, I just, I would love to, I would love to be able to sit down with them and talk for a minute and just say, hey guys, what's up? What's new? What happened? And just have it out. But instead, I'm

just, I'm just, I'm sitting here with a head full of question marks over this, this mystery. Yeah, just sounds really weird. It's insane. Everything that we did was normal. And then everything recently has been insane. No, that makes sense. Yeah. So, okay, let's do this. Let's do some bumps out of each other's bungs. And then let's go see a movie. Let's go see that Star Wars movie. Or the Return of the Jedis. It's around that time. Let's do that. So Dale's view of the situation is different. Quote, here's Rod Scurry and Dale Barra and the boys, and they're out playing a kids game, making millions of dollars. Here's my friend, the pirate parrot, go in all these clubs and join himself after he wore a wire. And here's me

sitting in a jail cell. I mean, he has a really great point. He does. I mean, has anyone ever been fucked over by a parrot more? Maybe Jimmy Buffett, but that's it. Connelly got two years. He thought he would get reduced time for working with the FBI and going into bar, but no, no, no, reduced time. Well, by the way, that's a deal you make before you go into the bars to entrap people. You don't, you don't come out after you go, all right, we got six of them. Now, let's negotiate. I believe I'm operating from a position of weakness. I'm ready to talk. As he was sentenced, he was crying saying, quote, you better check those papers. Something's wrong, man. He ended up serving 21 months.

Blazer got 18 months and he served 13. Greer got 12 years, but served two and nine months. Strong got 12 years, served four. McCrew got 10 years, but he died after one month. Moscow got four years, served 18 and Dale got 12 years and served two in a federal penitentiary. When the judge was sent, sentencing Moscow, he criticized the U.S. attorney. Quote, according to the pre-sentence report, Moscow's financial condition is as such, he lives with his mother, he's on welfare, he has no automobile, the car is in his mother's name, he has a person alone of four or $5,000, no assets, $2,000 borrowed from his sister. All right. Now, is this the lifestyle of a drug profiteer?

Objection, I'm not that big of a loser. Everything he said is pretty good, but I don't like the way he framed it. I will pay her back and I make half of the car payments. Thank you. The defense rests. None of the baseball players face any legal repercussions. They were barely even any punishments handed down by baseball. Some were suspended and then the commissioner put them on probation and said, Barra and Scurry continued using cocaine in 1992. In 1992, Scurry's mother got a call from her six-year-old grandson who said his dad was fighting imaginary snakes in the yard. These fucking snakes. Oh God, are there cameras? I'll be right over. Are there cameras? Are they being

filmed? That's an important question. Can you imagine like the second that you're like that coked up again and you're like, oh no. What is it about this cocaine and these goddamn snakes? Stay over here, Charlie. I'm going to fight some serpents in the yard. I've done this before. Don't worry. Stand back. You might see some blood, but that's okay. So his mom calls the cops. Cops come. Naturally, they pin him to the ground and of course, he stops breathing. He died a few days later being taken off life support at the age of 36. The cause of death was a cocaine induced heart attack and a brain hemorrhage from the cops. Oh, well, I mean, at least there was a time when we acknowledged that they were asphyxiating people

instead of just complications from falling. Yeah, is that asphyxiation or do they just beat him? I mean, it sounds like they just punched him in the head, right? Yeah. I mean, a brain hemorrhage. I mean, well, I'm sure that, I mean, brain damage can also come from a lack of, you know, so I don't know, but okay, but either way, it's like good policing. Yeah, this is why there's no reason to have a cops in that situation. It's a guy freaking out. You need mental health workers. That is so goddamn true. And I know we say that, but that's the exact example of it, where you're just like, yeah, this is a guy who is not of him. He's not himself. He made some bad decisions. He's fighting snakes. So you need to go, yeah, you need to just figure out the person

who would actually be helpful rather than the people who exacerbate. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like 2% of calls actually deal with violence and almost like 95% the cops aren't needed. We just don't have the right system. That's why people wanted to fund because it needs to go to other places. So anyway, unless you want to keep hearing about autistic kids being killed by cops, maybe we should do something else. So today Dale says he's oddly grateful for the experience because jail helped him turn his life around quote. Here I am married a great job three wonderful kids. Kevin moved out of Pittsburgh after Dale was sentenced in 1993 looking for Kevin. So he heard Kevin or Dale was looking for him and finally met up with him. And but Dale wasn't upset. Dale just wanted

to forgive him and unburden him and Kevin said this helped him kick his drug habit and he remains clean. Well, Barra was immediately after all this happened traded to the Yankees because his dad was the manager. But then George Steinbrenner notoriously insane owner fired his dad 13 days after he got there. He kept doing cocaine for years. And finally the family had an intervention and they said none of us his brothers and his dad they said none of us are going to talk to you again for the rest of our lives unless you stop doing cocaine. And he stopped doing cocaine that that day. That's good. I bet his dad had some real zingers in that intervention though. So Dale when he was arrested quote I wasn't doing anything a whole lot different than the players. But why were they given the

chance to have full immunity to walk and then continue to play. Well, it's obvious because yeah look the FBI and the police and this is originally why the police were created. They're there to keep the class system in place. They're there to our entire system is set up to destroy the poor and and and keep the rich and the well off doing fine. If they did random stops in high and middle class neighborhoods they would get so much cocaine and drugs that it would be insane. I mean when I was you know I grew up in a rich area. I didn't have much money but I was the guy who sold drugs and split it and this is what I did. I did this exact same thing these guys did. And if they stopped any of my friends coming home from school or whatever we would have all

all the time been busted for drugs. No but that's what they do in low income neighborhoods. They just stop and frisk and search and you know prove that and then go see. We told you but it's like no it's not it's not it's not just that area. Yeah it's where you're going. Yeah well as usual everyone hang in there. Yeah please try your best. Try your best. Love you. Not you them. I'm not talking to you. I love you guys so much. Screw you Dave. Let's stop. The main source for this episode Aaron Skirball the Pittsburgh cocaine seven how a rag tag group of fans took the fall for Major League Baseball.