The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 574 - Rickey Henderson - Part One

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine baseball great Ricky Henderson Sources Tour Dates Redbubble Merch   Mindbloom Factor  

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Now I know that you do hate... You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is an American History Podcast for each week. I, Dave Anthony, read a story to my nemesis. Garth Reynolds. Who has no idea what the topic's gonna be about? I'm hot, babe.

Let's start. Whoo. I wouldn't call what I just had to sit through as hot. What? Five minutes of mustache ride songs? Yeah. That's right. If this is, it's morning.

It's a nobody, nobody needs, nobody needs whatever it is you are doing in the morning. You're telling me you ain't got cash to ride upon my lip rash. Mustache rides come on, won't... No, don't start the song yet. We're just getting good. If you got some cash,

you can sit upon my mustache. And called it, quote, his jam patch. Jam patch? I'm the fucking hippo guy. Dave, okay. My name's Gary. Let it go. Wait.

Is it for fun? And this is not gonna come to Tickly Clock, guys. Okay. This is like an ad on a five-part coefficient. My room's a place. Now hit him with a puppy. You both present sick arguments. Don't sleep, don't hip-hop.

That's like no hip-hop. Actually, partner. Hi, Gary. No. Nice to see you done, my friend. No. No. Roder, Roder in the car.

All right, I just, I'm gonna end that. I'm gonna, just let's not do this. Do what? The podcast. Why? It's a matter. We're having fun. You're enjoying yourself.

I can tell you're having fun. A hundred inches of snow in five-distant passes on the Sierra Nevada mountains this week, or this couple of days. It's fine. I like the one where like my mom's like, well, it's good because you need the rain and the water. I'm like, yeah, not like this.

I'm like, this is like, we would love like a regular climate instead of just like, it's almost like God's just like, you like snow, you like rain? You want it, you want some goddamn rain? I like that. Garret, we are brought to you in part by Factor and of course you of all people are like, what is Factor? That's not something I said.

I'm aware of what it is. Oh, then what is it? Why don't you tell me? Well, it's a meal delivery service. Oh, really? Yeah. So let me guess, they bring meals to your house and they're really delicious.

Well, Garret, first of all, you skip the grocery store. You don't go to the grocery store. That's not where you order Factor. Okay. The attitude? You skip it. The attitude is the issue for me. You skip the chopping?

You skip the prepping? No. Cleaning up too. It's a meal. You don't clean up after you eat this? Factor. No way that's their promise. No, no, no.

And a guy, yeah. Okay. Factor. Squaller guaranteed. They're fresh. They're never frozen. They're ready in just two minutes. All you have to do is heat it up and enjoy.

I've had it. So the fact, we could tag team this instead of you, sort of. Well, I'll tell you why. But you're kind of sending me a little bit. It's delicious? Yeah. It's full of flavors,

which is part of the delicious thing. Yeah. And there's a lot of good vegetarian options. I know this. They got Keto, Keto, what do you say? Keto. Keto. Keto?

Why are we gonna put an extra E in there if it's Keto? Because, I mean, we've all decided we're gonna pronounce it like that. I don't. You should be part of a society and just deal with it. I'm not part of the Keto society. It's just like how in England,

they call aluminum aluminium. Well, that's why we should go to war. Vegan and veggie options, calorie smart, protein plus options on the menu each week, right? And then it's prepared by chefs. Then dieticians come in, they approve it. That's the job I want out of this, too. That's what I have.

That's actually my job. Wow. Yeah. I don't know if that's a good idea. Well, I needed to make some extra money because you're taking too big of a cut. Relax. And each meal has all of the ingredients you need

to feel satisfied all day long. So you get your whole day out of it. Yeah. And they have 34 chef-prepared, dietitian-approved. And then they have six non-chef-prepared ones. We recommend avoiding those. Those ones are really weird. One of them was just a handful of receipts.

That's not, yeah. And I was like, it said it was, it just had handwritten spaghetti, question mark on the front. That was an ad on the site for something else. Oh, OK. Yeah. And then you can replenish your snack supply also

if you enjoy the snacks. Yes. So look, you tried two factor meals. And you know what they don't talk about? Easy to just stack in a fridge. Is it? Yes. How many did you stack in there?

I just don't. I'm probably like seven. They don't talk about the stackability of factor. But go ahead. What was your question? What veggie options? Yeah, which ones did you enjoy? There was a great macaroni, green beans.

Macaroni. But yeah. Oh, listen to you. You're taking them. Are you doing the song? Maca macaroni, sit on it. Is that right? It's not OK.

I would maybe reach out to them and see if they're. They enjoyed. They were like improvised with the foods we make. Sure. So I'm trying to think of the thing I had recently, which was, oh yeah, I had the salmon, pesto salmon. And it has green beans. Should I be my mother reacting to what you just said?

Green beans. That sounds lovely. Or as they call them, hair coal. Oh, that sounds lovely. Hair coal. Oh, I love salmon with pesto. And then there's a little bit of cream spinachy business in there. Oh, I love a bit of spinach with cream.

Yeah, it's really happening. I recommend it. So what did I do? Not much. You're going to have to, oh, I lost the last page. So yeah, I never recommend it to anybody. So it's so easy. It's just I like the easy part.

Yeah. I like the easy part. Yep. And tasty, obviously. Head to factormeals.com slash dollop50 and use code dollop50 and get 50% off your first box. That's code dollop50 at factormeals.com slash dollop50 to get 50% off your first box.

Yeah. Gareth, we are also brought to you by Mind Bloom. Sweet, sweet. It blooms you mind. See what they did? What a time. Mind Bloom, of course, ketamine, therapy, business experience. A lot of people have a hard time with anxiety and depression.

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Yeah, it's great. And people are having a hard time finding a therapist out there right now. And people are like, I'll just exercise. Look, there's a little bit more to it. You can try all that stuff. You know, why not meditate? Why not do a better diet?

But there are also more options. That's a great option. And sometimes you need something to unlock your brain, which is exactly what I would call this sort of thing. New way of thinking, seeing the world. So maybe a guy to ketamine therapy, that's the thing. Yes, I'm into it. It's the leader.

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I think that's the. That's what they've asked us to say. They have. Dave, I am not only a huge part of this podcast, I'm also a traveling stand-up comedian. That's right. I do stand-up comedy. And I have shows.

You can go to garethrenolds.com for all show information. But real quick, let me run you through them. March 13th, they'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That's coming up. Then March 13th, they'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. March 14th, they'll be in Indianapolis. March 15th, they'll be in Louisville. March 16th, they'll be in Columbus.

March 17th, they'll be in Dayton. March 18th, two shows in Perrysburg, Ohio. March 19th, Cleveland, Ohio. March 21st, Lexington, Kentucky. March 22nd, Richmond Heights, which is St. Louis, basically. March 23rd, Kansas City at the Comedy Club of Kansas City, where I love it. March 24th, 25th, Des Moines, Iowa.

March 26th, the Omaha Funny Bone. And then April 12th, they'll be doing a crowd work only show, which is a blast. April 12th at the Tacoma Comedy Club. That's April 12th, crowd work and a film. It's going to be a disastrous joy. April 13th, Spokane Comedy Club. April 14th and 15th, they'll be in Bozeman, Montana,

last best comedy. Then May 5th, I'll be at the Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. May 18th, they'll be at Stand Up Live in Phoenix, Arizona. July 12th, New York Comedy Club. July 13th, Stanford, Connecticut, New York Comedy Club. It's a weird name. And then they go to gearthrowns.com for all those tickets

and information. I'll be driving a van. Now that has a sliding door. You want me to open for you? I already have that all set. I already have that all set. I'll be there. Yeah, I already have that all set.

I'll do tight 10. I've seen your tight 10. It's not tight. It's a sloppy loose 10. Do you not like it when the audience laughs? No, not before me. No, no, no. And we should also mention we have another podcast,

which is called The Past Times. You can listen to it on that. We have a guest, we go through an old newspaper, and David, we have a Patreon. Patreon, I think it's slash the dollop, where we do chalips. We talk about small, little, weird things going on, like politics and stuff. The stuff that most people vilifies for.

And then we do quizzes, which are the greatest thing ever. Right? The quizzes, where you quiz me on things we talk about. They're pretty great. It's like I'm defusing a bomb each week. It's a real nightmare. But that's all fun stuff to listen to. And all right, here we go.

Three, two, one, action. Date, Anthony. December 25th, 1958. Year of our lorry. J-Town. Stop. Price. Oh my God.

It's one of those things, it is the Streisand effect. I should just let them go and not say that, don't say that. The horses are out of the barn, David. I know. I know. Well, yeah. The wise men are out of the manger. People are now all over America seeing Jesus in a new way.

I do, I will say we have a Christian bump. And that's not just what the priest has. We'll be right back. We'll be right back, weird. Oh boy, yeah, this is the old version. Okay. This is the Old Testament. So what happened was my computer did not sync

with my file here. Okay. And I had it back up and that also didn't work, which is very interesting. I sent it to myself and it reverted to the old version. Well, just start sending them to me beforehand. So I said December 25th, 1958. I'll try to remember the first couple of paragraphs.

Ricky Henley was born in the city of Chicago in the back seat of an Oldsmobile. Nice. As they were driving to the hospital for the baby to be delivered. That's always got to be strange. Yeah. I wonder if you feel relief in any way.

I bet, well, I know. I mean, if it's coming out, it's got to be, I mean, I've like, you know, you know what it's like when you got to go to the bathroom and you're trying to make a problem. It's absolutely, I would never recommend you compare having a baby with going to the bathroom, especially if you want women to ever like you.

To our female listeners, I empathize with the miracle of childbirth. I've had to go to the toilet before. Oh, interesting. I don't know why, why am I the bad guy? I get it, I'm saying. Okay, so it saved different documents. Okay, we'll go with this.

So did you find it? What's going on? I found the beginning and then it just cuts off, whatever. We'll just go with this. Okay, this is jazz, baby. So his mother's Bobby. His mother's Bobby? His mother's name is Bobby.

Okay. And before she could name him, the hospital processed the birth certificate. So he was just on the birth certificate. It's boy Henley. Wow. His father? What, yeah.

Yeah, okay. And you're now, there's no take-backs? No, I think that's it. You're stuck. They're like, sorry, it's ink. You're like, but that's not. Your name's boy. And meet girl Andrews.

His father, John, leaves when Ricky's two moves to Oakland. Okay. Ricky then lives with his grandmother in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, until he's 10. Okay. And then the mom takes all the family. So he's got five brothers, takes them all out to Oakland.

Okay, where the dad is. Nice. But there's definitely not a strange man. Oakland was a place- There's not a strange man? There is a strange man. There is a strange man. Oakland is a place where, you know,

a lot of people were fleeing the South. A lot of people are like, there's more hope out here. Of course there wasn't. There's more redlining and everything else. But they arrive in Oakland. Very negative man. Yeah. Oh boy.

So they arrive in Oakland, Ricky's 10. He has an Arkansas accent. So he's getting, you know, shit from the kids. Right. He talks weird and all that. So he becomes a little self-conscious about how he speaks. Okay.

So for those of us who aren't familiar with the Arkansas accent, Dave, can you- How do you do? Let's get us some fritters. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. So now we're all seeing it very clearly.

Yeah. Now the lucky thing for Ricky is, which is the great equalizer, the thing that gets rid of a lot of your, the issues that kids make fun of is athletic talent. Okay. If you have an athletic talent, everyone's like, okay, I don't care what he's doing.

Right. And Ricky has a shitload. Okay. Okay. What? Everything? Yeah, pretty much. Wow.

Boy, you really played freeze tag, great. What? I had a tee, I just found ghoul, I just thought it made a fendin'. That's cool. Well, when he's in eighth grade, I think it's eighth grade, he's 5'10", and 175 pounds.

Sweet. Sweet God. So he's me. He's a little bit bigger. Oh, man. He made an immediate impression playing football. That was his love. The other big athlete in the area,

Fred Atkins said he decided to test Ricky to see how good he was. Quote, he hit me so hard, he knocked me into a tree. So yeah, so he was just a beast. He's a cartoon character? Yeah. Okay.

So this area, Oakland, West Oakland churns out professional athletes. Sure. Frank Robinson, Kurt Flood, Bert Russell, Lee Lacey. All the bigs. It's because there's red lighting in Oakland. Okay. The whites flee this area.

Sure. West Oakland becomes overcrowded. The ghetto, the whole, you know, the stereotypical America story. Author Howard Bryant, quote, a staggeringly deliberate process. Let me, may I jump in quickly? Go ahead, sir.

Because someone who adores this great country, best country on earth. Best country. I don't, no, no, no. You're going against that. And I don't enjoy it. So if we could, let's have fun. Let's do a story.

And let's kind of take some of the political attitude out of it. Can we make it a little more, you know, just enjoyable for everybody? Nope. As the, and will you sign off on the fact that we live on the best country? You enjoy Florida.

I live in Florida part of time. Okay. Yeah. A lot of my time is spent in Ebor City. Yep. Yeah. Ebor City? Yeah.

Where the Ebor's are? Yeah. Yeah. You know, those, those snouted Tampa Bay people. Yeah. Where the Ebor's. Yeah. So all the kids played in a place called Bushrod Park.

Okay. Nice, nice park. Oakland Raiders practiced there in like the early 60s. So there's a lot of, obviously it's West Oakland. There's a lot of friction between the locals and the cops. Okay. White cops. Yeah.

Sure. The Black Panthers come into existence. Nice. Around this time to fight back against police, you know, pulling over and, and beating up and doing their thing. And it's nice that, that did get solved too. Yeah.

That's gone. Baseball is the main sport. Okay. And Ricky was a good baseball player, but he didn't really like it. Okay. What's his name again? Ricky.

Well, his mom meets another guy. Okay. Paul Henderson. There we go. And Paul, he takes that name. Ricky. Ricky Henderson. He was adopted and Paul Henderson.

So Ricky becomes Ricky Henderson. Mm-hmm. Okay. Football's his game. Not, not baseball, which he doesn't really like. He goes to Oakland Technical High School. He's insanely good at football. Sure.

He's very competitive. Local Lloyd Mosby, who went on to play pro baseball, said, quote, ping pong, he had to win. We played dominoes, he has to win. No matter what it was, Jax, he has to win. Talk to anyone and those stories will be consistent. Ricky's, Ricky always had to win. Like, connect four each, guess who, we know.

But I mean, one would think that you'd be like talking about like, I don't know, like stick ball or basketball, but instead you're like, dominoes, he's got it. Jax, win. I mean, he was in, he loved playing. He's just insanely competitive. It's like in the last dance with Michael Jordan, where he and the security guards play the game

where you throw the quarter up and close to the wall. And he's like putting like, it's just like, it's the compulsion will never end. And I mean, Finn's like that. It's that athletic thing. Oh. So Ricky was sure he would be a pro athlete when he was 13. Sure.

So he starts just, he's like, I'm gonna be a pro athlete. That's what I'm gonna do. From then on, he expected it. School was annoying to him. Sure, I get that. He was very good at math, reading was very difficult because the words were jumbled. Hmm, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know either. I wonder what that is. Certainly nothing you'd ask the kid about. Yeah. Was he ecstastic? A school counselor said she would pay Ricky to play baseball. So.

Who's this counselor? Well, she's a woman who lives there. She wants to keep kids out of trouble. So she's like. We want to sign you. So she does this with all the kids. Quarter foot. Pays them?

Quarter for a ride. You imagine a time where someone working at a school had enough disposable income to bribe the kids. But so it was a quarter for kids. Oh, so she's not, right, okay. For a run at stolen bases. So she's not like thousand bucks. No, it's not that much.

Take him out, Ricky. Ricky said, quote, I'm about to make some money. It feels like maybe a bad precedent in the long term, but I'm sure her heart was in the right place. But soon he was making enough to eat lunch and after one game, she owed him $5.25. Jeez. That's just a quarter of a dollar.

So she's like, all right, so we need to renegotiate because this obviously, I'm getting screwed in this. So we got a mortgage the house. Oh yeah, what happened? Well, Ricky is really good. I ended up paying a kid a quarter for good sporting deeds and he's just done so much better. And I have to tell you, I have sold Grace.

What? Grace has been sold. She was the weakest of the three and yes. As the youngest, she had the least chance of survival. You can't just sell. She's sold, but Ricky is really good. He's not our child. Well, no, but I've signed him to an overall.

So. Well, still have the pictures of her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, sure. Yeah. New baseball coach comes into the high school. Okay. He was the school's driving instructor. Nice.

He knows absolutely nothing about baseball. Well, now see, you're going to go faster if you take a car. So he shows up the first day and he picks the varsity and JV teams the first day without watching them play. The first day? He just points and goes, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. And he puts Ricky on the JV team and Ricky said, quote, and Ricky said, quote, you must not know who I am.

I'm driving. So there's no fence between the JV and varsity fields. They're back to back. So Ricky. He's just plowing. No, so his answer to this was on that first day was to run and catch the balls hit the center field for both teams. Wow.

Wow. When the varsity team was hitting, Ricky just went up and started hitting and when he was done, the coach put him on varsity. All right, you're right. No, yeah. Some people say I should probably start watching you all before I'm making these large sweeping judgments.

But all right, you made a good point. Now, as a football player, he is known all over the Bay Area. Even pro pitcher Mike Norris, who was on the Oakland A's at the time, went down just to see Ricky play football. OK. Because he's like, he's like incredible to watch. He's a phenom. And because he's so good at sports,

his teachers are just passing him without learning anything. Nice. He meets his. That's like me with drama. Um, just getting in trouble with people or just being a particular problem. I was so great as dogberry in much ado that they said, you can't let this kid thrive.

Which is why I had a plethora of options when it came to university. They were lining up. Did a lot of monologues, too. You're looking at Elwood P. Dowd and Harvey. The lead. Hello. Yeah, no, I know.

Yeah, hello. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He meets his girlfriend, Pamela Palmer, when she was doing stats for the football team. They're still together today. Wow. Ricky and Fred had a friend. So Ricky and Fred are tight because they're

like the big athletes. They have a friend who is a Batboy for the A's. So they hang out there sometimes. His younger brother, the player's called Hammer. OK, who's younger brother? The Batboy. Oh, their friend, the Batboy's younger brother. He had a younger brother named Hammer, who eventually.

I did not realize the Batboy had such access to like getting people in. Hey, leave him alone. He's with the Batboy. Let him be at the club. Come on, get back, you guys. Bottles up. You with the Batboy?

Come on. You three, let's go. Set him up. Come on, set him up, boys. He's got the Batboy here. Batboy. Yeah, the player's called the younger brother, Hammer, and he becomes MC Hammer.

Oh my god. Yeah. You didn't know that? That's the story. You didn't know Hammer? No. Yeah, he was hanging around the A's all the time. Wow.

Yeah, when he was a kid. But so Ricky would go there and hang out, but he sees himself as unequal with the pros. I'm still a little fixated on the MC Hammer fact. I'm not going to lie. Right. OK, so he's hanging out with the pros. Ricky's like, I am going to play.

So these are my peers, not like in awe. Right. One, Reg Jackson was on the team who was just known as Reggie. So Ricky started calling himself just Ricky. OK, interesting. And then he never forgot when he asked Reggie for an autograph and Reggie said no. Wow.

He never, never let it go. Baseball scouts start checking out Ricky a little bit. High school now? Yeah, we're in high school. Everyone, everyone thinks he's going to the NFL. And scouts don't see a baseball player. Right. He's built like a football player.

Right. He also batted right and through left. And they, there's all these things in baseball. They just decide that's not going to work. Why? That has, it's irrelevant, isn't it? It's, it's totally irrelevant. But they just decide.

Your brain's all knotted up. You ain't got a right brain. You can't be doing left stuff if you're left and right. You understand? We don't have the equipment to accommodate your bizarro swappy mind. Yeah, you've done some weird stuff. You're doing a lot of weird.

No brain is like right, left. Brain can't handle it. That's why the brain is only one side. Yeah. You understand? If you actually watch me play, I'm doing very well doing that. Yes, but, and you are great. But you understand that when you're hitting one side

and you're throwing a nut, you understand how complicated that's going to be for us to map out the actual game. Where are we going to put you? Right, left field? What are we going to give you? Two bats? It's all bizarre.

We don't have the budget to accommodate someone with a mush mind. You stupid boy. OK. Your brain's all straight. I'm going to play football. Yeah, football. You can't play football.

I just run. How are you going to run left if you think it right? You ever done that? What are you going to do? Have two right shoes? I don't want to be around you. You're probably going to put mittens on your feet and the cleats on your hands.

Think of it. What are we going to give you, a left-sided lace football? Think of how weird that's going to be. I'm thinking about the mittens and the cleats. We're going to put laces on both sides of the ball. How are you going to drink Gatorade out of both your hands? I'm still thinking about the mittens on my feet. Yeah, that sounds good.

Well, Nike's doing a big mitten thing. A mitten? Oh. Yeah, Nike mittens. I love that. Yeah. Nittens. Nittens.

Put your goddamn hand down. By the way, you should be using the other hand to high five. You stupid man. So yeah, there's all these things in baseball they do that with. They just go, nope, that can't work. That's cool. Yeah, it's fun.

So they just immediately wrote them off because of that. But there's an A Scout because he lived there. And he saw Ricky Lot and he's like, that guy's a baseball. Hey, don't you shower at the stadium? And you're hanging out with Hammer? You're hanging out with Hammer at the stadium? When the main Dodger Scout, the number one LA Dodger Scout, came to watch Ricky, Ricky struck out in his first two

at bats and the scout stood up and said, I've seen enough and left. How in baseball? Because I don't watch a lot of baseball. But two at bats to fully form an opinion, I guess maybe on stance and stuff like that by how much he missed the ball, but still. I have talked to baseball.

That guy was just like, I'm not very invested in this. I've talked to baseball guys and they said, I can tell if you're a baseball player within two minutes of how you move. OK. So that's just what they think. Like, that's their mindset. Not what you would think about Ricky.

As soon as the guy left, Ricky at two monster home runs is next to a bats. So essentially, the Dodgers lost out on Ricky Henderson. You must be gutted. Because the scout was lazy. Yeah, it crushes me, you know, my team. Well, that supper, three or five minutes. I see y'all later.

I'm going to a place where you can do all you can eat spaghetti. So pretty much only the A's scout was hot on Ricky. And so he gets to know Bobby and Ricky. At 17, Ricky told the scout, quote, I want to be the greatest base stealer of all time. OK. Don't you think? Because there's that story of Tom Brady.

He goes up to Robert Kraft after they drafted him. He goes, I'm going to be the greatest decision this franchise ever made. I've been a lot of athletes say stuff like that. It's just we remember there's some great ones. I don't know. I know. I don't know about that.

I bet you Vinny Testaverde was like, I'm going to be the greatest thing that ever happened at this sport. I sure think Martin Grammatica was like, you'll never forget me. I definitely think there are some. Like, there's a huge problem with people trying to become pro athletes, and then, especially

in baseball, and then not being able to do it. And then their life is just crushed. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. Yeah. I'm a mess. So a scout tells the scout tells Daisy, because you got to. Nobody goes up to him and is like, I'm going to be pretty OK. I'll probably play two years, and then that'll be it.

There's a ton of guys that are like, God, I hope I can just get in there. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot. There's a lot. Yeah, for sure. So the scout goes to Daisy, he goes, draft this guy high. Now, people don't know if you're from, I'll show you.

A draft is they pick players coming out of high school and college. Right, OK. Pick players coming out of high school and college. What do they make the decision? The kids are just available, and then they have an order. The teams go in an order based on what they're. But what's that?

Yeah, records were the last season. I see worse to go early. Worst go first. Right, right, worst go first, yeah. So it's a very chug, chug, chug, chug. Right, it's socialism. But we pretend like it's not what it is. Pardon?

OK, so I talked to you earlier about this. Can we keep your little political stuff out of the episode? That'd be nice. Some of us are trying to broaden the appeal. For some reason, we try to make things all equal in sports. So he's like draft them, draft them high. The A's are like, well, we, because so each slot

gets a certain amount of money. OK. And like, you're drafted number one. Right now, you get like $6 million or something. Wow, imagine that. Yeah, I know, it's crazy. So he goes to the A's, he says this, and the A's guys, these are like, we can give him 10 grand, which

means draft much lower. So the scout, who's a black guy who had played baseball, who's from Oakland, is like, well, this is just blatant racism. Because teams would often try to sign players, they still do, for less than their worth. They try to get away with it. And they target kids from single mothers.

So if they find out a black kid from Oakland has a single mother, they're going to target him because they know they can low ball and tell the mom 10 grand and she needs the money. Right. And they would say this out loud. Well, that's not. And that's what's great about.

That's what's great about the freedom. That's a really good. It's just really great to be able to just say it loud and proud. So even though he loves football, Bobby is worried that he would get injured playing football because in baseball, you go into what's called the minors. It's a professionally. You don't get paid that much.

But it's a professional minors. What, like for kids who go in caves? No, it is a lower level of sports. We try to work up through the minors to get to the majors. Right, right. Right. Yeah. Baby baseball.

Baby baseball. Yeah. Now, and now there's no system like that in football. So in football, you go to play for a college for free. Oh, nice. For four years. You don't get any money. Oh, nice.

Yeah. And then if you survive, you're drafted. But if you don't, then what do you? What have you got? You fucked. Oh, you lost over. And you just got an education injury, maybe. Which is a shitty one.

Usually you didn't actually try. Right. Yeah, right. Because they just pass you. Right. OK, yeah. It's fine. Glug, glug, glug, glug.

Yeah, so she's worried he'll get injured playing football. Also, he doesn't have the grades to get into college. So he would have to go to a junior college first, two-year college first. So baseball is immediate money. He's drafted with a 96th pick overall and takes the 10,000. But he never forgot that he had been lowballed. Right.

Yeah, it seems like he's got one of those memories. Going in, he's like, well, they're already screwing me. Right. So Ricky is first sent to play in Boise. Your shirt, this is on your shirt. Got it at an airport. And the woman said, when you wash it, wash it inside out. Ah, that's the kind of advice you get in Boise.

The manager there was 27 years old, and he had zero problem with Ricky's flashy style. OK. And the running manager told him to steal bases as much as possible whenever he wanted to go, just run. Right. He teaches Ricky the things that you need to know to run on a pitcher, the little clues and stuff.

It's like a whole science. You just got to watch the guy and study him, and then you know when to run. And so I mean, it's so when he's looking at you, don't make a move. Yeah, he's clocking you right there. He's going to see what you're going to do. No, I think that's when I run.

No, no, no. What he's going to do is he's going to start thinking about throwing the ball. Yeah. He's going to get comfortable. And that's when I stay. That's when I stay. That's when you move.

No. Yes. Listen to me. This is complicated. He's looking at me. Listen to me. He's looking at me and I run. No.

No. No, that's when he's looking at you. Yeah, that's when I go. No, he'll get you. Terrifies him. No. I run at him. No, you do not run at him.

OK. Now what you do is he'll be looking at you, studying you. Then when he turns his back, don't open a beer while I'm talking. Here we go. Then he'll turn his back. Then he's starting to think about throw. That's when you go. Think about that.

Stay. When you think, no, shut. Listen, when he's looking to throw, that's when you go. When he's looking at you, don't try to get to base two. As those are the, that's the, that's, now that's, you're going to remember that, obviously. Sadly. When he's looking at you, don't go to base two.

When he's looking to throw, that's not when you go. When he's looking at you. Don't make it sound like that. It doesn't seem like you have one, so maybe I jiggle it. So Ricky does very well. He's quickly promoted to the next minor leagues. He's now, he's an A-ball and Modesto. OK.

Gorgeous. After two months, he is projected to break the league's stolen base record. Wow. In May, he's playing the A's or playing the Giants. OK. And the. Garbage franchise.

Well, this is the Modesto A's playing, though, whatever. Probably Las Vegas Giants. I was trying to hurt you. I know. They're losing 22 to 7. The A's are. Yeah, but they keep stealing, which is unwritten rules, unspoken.

You don't try to steal when the game's over, because you're patting your stats. Considered selfish, blah, blah, blah. So the Giants catcher, Wayne Cato, is furious. And he's very loud about it. He's screaming on the bench. He's saying all this stuff. So the unwritten rules are baseball polices itself.

That's the idea. Some things are very frowned upon, like when one team is way ahead or behind and people are stealing. There's a bunch of these rules you're not supposed to do. Consider patting the stats. It's showing up the other team is what they say. But it's also a way for these white guys

who control the game to keep their boring stiff game in place. Yeah, I was just going to say. And keep the flair and the flair that dominated the Negro League out of baseball. Yeah, also, it's exciting. It's exciting. It's fun. Yeah.

Right. Now, again, I don't want to get political, but that's a bit shitty. I mean, it essentially was their way of keeping people of color out of baseball. It was like a, it came from like, you know. You're playing, yeah. Pre-integrated baseball is this is how you play.

Stodgy, sort of boring. So the two teams, the gentlemen's game. That's right. We don't do this. It's a gentlemen's game. What are you thinking? So the two teams meet later that week. And Ricky steals seven bases, which

is the single game record for all pro baseball all the way to the top of the ball. Yeah. There's a lot of trash talk. He's stealing more bases. Bramble, bramble, bramble, bramble. A lot of trash talk. Ricky really enjoys the trash talk.

Kato keeps yelling from, Keto, by the way. Keto keeps yelling from the A's dugout, just screaming at them. I like that they're like the catcher. He's a non-starting catcher, obviously. He's a starting catcher. Well, when they're batting and stuff, he's over there yelling. Oh yeah, right. He never stops yelling.

Wait, he's on the A's? This guy's on the Giants. OK, all right, sorry. But there are guys, you'll see. So after the game, Ricky said, quote, we figured he needed to be taught a lesson. So this is a giant reversal of what is, right? So here's a team of young, there's

some younger black guys who are stealing and running. It will. And he's saying, you need to be taught a lesson. When their whole thing is, you need to be taught a lesson. No, the white girls say, you're the one who gets the lesson. Bramble, bramble, bramble, bramble, bramble, bramble, bramble. If anyone's teaching a lesson, bramble, bramble, bramble, let's all teach it, bramble, bramble, bramble, bramble.

So sportswriters start to notice, Ricky, they start writing about them. The Modesto B starts a daily little square called the crime report of how many bases they steal. Oh, wow. Ricky breaks the league record in August. He breaks it off a catcher named Joe Madden, and he wins league MVP.

Wow. So Ricky has a weird batting stance. Sure. You're supposed to go in there. The gentlemanly thing is you go in and you're standing. So the way this strikes on it is it's arguably whatever. It moves around a lot, but it's between your knees

and your chest. Basically nips to dicks. Nips to dicks. But you don't crouch. You're not supposed to crouch down into a tiny ball, makes him insane. But he had this weird fetal position. He leaned back, and he did like this weird, crouchy thing.

So you had to throw the ball in this perfect little spot to get a strike, but that perfect little spot was exactly where he could fucking crush it. I feel like I could do it. And I could shrink it so tiny that you couldn't even pitch us like they'd be like, well, this guy, he's the most walkable batter ever. Well, the problem is is that most guys can't hit that way.

Right. But he can. Right, yeah, right. So they're mad about it. Right. Of course. Well, they are, Dave. This is a gentleman's game.

There's the rules, and then there's the unwritten rules. There's the rules, and then there's the rules where you put a blacklight on the rules and you see the other rules. Yeah. Yeah. A pitcher said, quote, the guy is impossible to pitch to. His strike zone is about 10 inches deep.

He drives me crazy, and the umpires too. So now the A-Zoner, who owns all the franchises we're talking about, is Charlie Finley. He is a extraordinarily well-known cheap asshole. OK. He had built a dynasty in Oakland in the early 70s, but then free agency happens. And that's.

And free agency is when players can, after a few short years, can now sign to any team they want. Before that, it was like you had, you were stuck with that team. They owned you. Forever? The first person who signed your contract owned you. You could sell it to other teams,

but they, you were, even if the contract ran out, they're like, now you're still here. Wow. So that's gone now. That ends in the mid 70s. That is crazy. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, your career sucks.

You live here. Your mind. Oh, yeah, they could just fuck with guys. I guess that's what happened with Archie Manning. Yeah, yeah. So in 1978, Ricky is sent to double A New Jersey Indian. So he goes up a notch. OK.

The ballpark is horrifying. Buck Showalter, quote, that was the shit hole of America. Nice. The lighting was just five lights on one pole. What? So players could barely see the ball at night games. I kind of want to, if you know when you go night balling, it's hard to, yeah, that would be like exciting almost.

Well, nothing has been more terrifying in my life than when Finn, you know, started throwing like 60 plus and he would want to play catch. And then it would start to get darker. Yeah. You're like, I'm going to die. Makes contact with the ball goes deep left. You can't see what's happening right now.

And probably someone's trying to look for it. You can't see much. I can sort of see some reflectors on some of the athletes' shoes unable to tell what's happening. Men are storming around the bases. It looks like it's going to be an in the park grand slam. Maybe it's out of the park. It's hard to tell.

Honestly, right now I can't even tell if there's more than six guys on the field, but everyone's there. And the ball's thrown. The ball's thrown. Comes out of a black cave. I can't see anything. That's right. Grandpa's dead.

So he wins MVP. I already said that, right? Yes. So he, this is a terrible place. He's away from his family for the first time. Finley is so cheap. He puts them in hand-me-down uniforms. But he tells the staff to take care of four players.

And one is Mike Norris, who was having problems in Major League Baseball, and they sent him down here to work on his stuff, like figure out his pitches, work on it again. Because there's always little tweaks you can do. So he comes back down to like, I'm just going to throw the ball and work on it. So Ricky's one of the chosen guys here.

And Finley makes sure they're treated well, those four guys. So you guys are getting new uniforms. Don't tell the others. These are the only uniforms without meatball stains. We're actually going to wash yours. These are washed uniforms. So the new Jersey manager is a guy named John Edward Kennedy. He's a white guy, played for 12 years in Major League Baseball.

He didn't like Ricky on site. Now, Dave, why? How? First of all, a Kennedy. That's crazy. I know, right? A John Kennedy. How would, how, how on site would he not, let's,

Isn't it interesting? I'm just curious what it is about the aesthetic of Ricky that makes him on site is the quote. He had, he had big, strong legs. Like he had like running back legs. He's like a centaur. That might have been it. That's what it is.

Yeah. Well, no sense. Get him a pan flu. No centaurs playing for us. All the black players on the team thought he just resented the fact that black players were entering the game. Oh, come on, come on. The game, the game had been integrated for a while.

But for years, black players weren't drawing attention themselves. And this was like the second generation, I think, of black players in baseball. And these guys had grown up in a different time. They, they're from Oakland. They'd seen the black panthers. They've seen Muhammad Ali.

The originals weren't comfortable. And these players are maybe a little more comfortable. And that's making the white owners a little more uncomfortable. And they're a little more like, this is a fucking show. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

So how many times do we have to walk you through all the unwritten rules? Like, Jackie Robinson has to literally behave himself in the worst, yeah, the worst behavior. He has to remain a gentleman one hour years later. And they're like, no, I'm going to do my shit. I'm going to do my shit. When that man cleaned you, you swore at him.

You don't understand other. Let me show you the unwritten rules. So, yeah, like I said, they've grown up watching the Panthers in Muhammad Ali. And Ricky idolizes Muhammad Ali. So some have style and flair. Some of these, these players. New Jersey is Ricky's first real taste

of an angry white dude resistance. Right. The unwritten rules are, as I said, rooted. Unwritten rules is just an amazing term for how you disguise the kind of racist edicts. It is such a complicated thing because I do get the stats thing. I get like, I get the stats thing. Like if the game doesn't matter, they put in worse pictures.

Like it's a whole different thing. I kind of get that, but also like, OK, so you're protecting the stats of what? Well, old white guys. So it's a total like, you know what I mean? Unwritten rule one, don't be black. You have not read these? Good golly.

So this guy is not not pleased about these players drawing attention themselves. Which by the way, if you're an owner, it's like it's so amazing to watch the conflict of race versus money because like if you're an owner, you'd be like, well, yeah, that's like people are going to be interested in that. And that's going to make you more money. But they're like, I don't want that kind of money.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So Ricky said, quote, Kennedy was a redneck, one of them, a real redneck. So he's just saying flat out this guy's a fucking racist. Redneck's like, how dare you characterize a group of people based on just one what that is?

How dare you? That is, do you know what it feels like to be lumped in with a bunch of people? Yeah, I do. Well, it hurts. No, I know. Yeah, because you look at us and you think, oh, they all do the same thing.

They're drinking moonshine. They're all named Bubba. They all got overalls with one snap on them. They're chewing hay. They're just playing a washboard on the porch. You have any idea what it's like to have someone just decide you that just based on appearance? You're literally holding a washboard.

Yeah, because I'm a few to halfway through playing it. Bubba, get a gun. What's up, everybody? This is Gareth, not Gary from The Dollar Podcast, the show you're about to listen to. Listen, I would love to invite you to see some stand-up comedy I'm doing on the road. I'm all over this great nation of ours.

Be part of the Gareth Army or the Garmy, as everyone's calling it. Everyone's calling it that. Don't look it up, but everyone's calling it that. Monday, March 13th, I'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. March 14th, I'll be in Indianapolis. March 15th, Louisville, Kentucky. March 16th, Columbus, Ohio.

March 17th, Dayton, Ohio. March 18th, I have two shows in Perrysburg, Ohio. March 19th, I'll be in Cleveland, Ohio. March 21st, Lexington, Kentucky. March 22nd, I will be in St. Louis. March 23rd, I'll be in Kansas City. March 24th and 25th, I'll be in Des Moines, Iowa. March 26th, I'll be in Omaha.

Then April 12th, I'm very excited to say I'll be in Tacoma, but I will be doing a crowd work show. I'll be filming it, so I really want people to come out to that. That's April 12th, which is a Wednesday. Tacoma Comedy Club, Washington, come on out. Then April 13th, back to regular standup at the Spokane Comedy Club.

And then April 14th and April 15th, I'll be in Bozeman, Montana at Last Best Comedy. Also Los Angeles, my home city kind of, whatever. May 5th, Friday, I'll be at the Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. Then May 18th, I'll be at Standup Live in Phoenix, Arizona. More shows coming like July 12th and July 13th, I'll be at the New York Comedy Club.

One's in New York, one's in Connecticut, it's wild. Then I'll be in Pittsburgh, July 15th, and that's all for now. Go to garethrenalds.com to get tickets and information and join me, be part of the Garmy. Everyone's calling it that, quit pushing back. So the other thing about all this is, to be a black guy in baseball, you had to be better.

Right. Like you can't be equal to the other white guy, you have to be better than the white guy. Quote, Ricky, quote, we already knew how they felt about us. You had to be great. No blacks on the bench, no black guys backing up. You had to be a star.

Right. I didn't realize until he said this, but you think about when I was a kid, I was like, oh right, all of the guys, so there's their specialty players. So there's a guy who comes in and just hits in the ninth inning, there's a guy who just backs up second and short, like they have these very specific

positions, they're always white guys. Right. Always white guys. Right. Right, yeah. So it's integrated, but it's not integrated, right? It's the 80s, they're definitely not there, you need to. No, I just thought maybe Luke was here locked out,

but he's probably just lost in Burbank somewhere as usual. No, that's unexpected. No. We couldn't open the van door this morning for those, for those of you listening who are watching, we couldn't, I'm taking the van today to go on those dates that I promoted and we couldn't get the sliding van door to open or shut.

Yeah. So Luke just took it to a place, and the guy I think was basically like, you mean open it like this, and then Luke was like, cool, can you check the tire pressure and then I'll be, I'm my merry way good, sir. So one time Ricky doesn't run hard to first base. So basically he hits a ball in the air,

it's gonna be an out. Right. And so he slows it. Why wouldn't he run if it's up in the air and the bloke catches it, what's the problem with it? So the idea being that if you hit a popup and the guy drops it, you'll be safe, right? Oh, really?

But also like I watch games now, and if you hit it to certain players. Yeah, sometimes they drop it. Sometimes they drop it, but usually, but you can tell who the good players are. So if they hit it to that player, it's an out. Right. Like if they hit it to another player you go,

this could not be an out. That's how it works. Greasy hands, Henry, under it, getting ready. You can see the oil dripping off the palms of his hands. I tell you, Jimmy, we've been telling him to take off the grease for years, but he loves the grease. He insists upon it, he's the Sicilian superstar, and he's just covered in oil.

So, he, in this game, he doesn't run out the ball and then he doesn't take him out of the game immediately, Kennedy, he waits until he takes his position and then calls him back. Makes a show of it. So it's a show, it's a humiliation, right? He does that a couple of times. So in Kennedy's mind, he's teaching Ricky

how to play baseball the right way instead of making him a better player, which is what the previous coaches did. The previous coaches were like, I'll show you how to do things. This guy's just like, I'm gonna show you how to play the game the right way, and then you'll know how to play the game.

So he thinks he's making him a better player by enforcing all these rules and breaking him. They're breaking him. I can't emphasize this enough. The white coaches were trying to break the spirit of the black players, and then they could play the game. Remind you of anything? It's me and you.

Me? No. No, I'm not the political voice on the show. I'm a very, I keep a pretty blue sky vanilla Jack. So Ricky's not alone in this. He's doing it to Norris. Norris is an MLB player who's just down working on this stuff. So during one game, Norris is getting hit hard, but he doesn't care, because he's not,

he doesn't care about the score. He's trying to work on a specific pitch, and they're hitting it, and Kennedy's losing it. He's losing his fucking mind. And he takes Norris out of the game. They get into an argument. After the game, they get into a fist fight in the showers. Shower.

I should say shower, they had one shower. So this is a tight fist fight. Can't put a cock back to pop him, and it got Jesus. Out of the soap. God damn. All right, a few two-eyed issues with each other. Get in that one shower and fight it out. It's shower fight time, boys.

Come on, boys. Only one will survive. So a few days later, Ricky comes home from a road trip. His apartment's been robbed, and he's fucking done. He's like, I can't, this place is bullshit. Well, he's been the one stealing all the bases. How does he like it? Thank you.

He calls his mom, and he's like, I want to play football. I'm done with baseball. And then. I wonder if that robber had any clue the ripple effect of the robbery. I know, right? Yeah. Brad doesn't even know.

Yeah. Finley, then he then calls Finley. And he can do this because he knew Finley from when he hung around as a kid. So he has a relationship nobody else has with their owner. So he calls him, and he goes, I want to add a New Jersey. If you don't take me out of here, I'm quitting baseball. And the next day, Kennedy calls Ricky into his office.

I understand you have an issue with how horrendous everything has been. I understand you don't lack racism. Is that what you're telling me? Well, there we go. Quote, I heard you talk to the owner. The owner tells me my instructions are to leave you alone. And that was that.

Ricky now knows how much power he has. That is awkward, too, when it's just like, because Finley was probably like, look, leave him alone, asshole. Don't talk to him like that anymore. And then he's like, so I understand you have a problem with how I'm talking to you. Well, he wanted to be known that I know what you're fucking doing. Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly. But that's like the conversation. I don't want to avoid this. Yeah, this is what I didn't want to do. This is what I was calling him. Just shut up and leave me alone. Yeah. So I'm not supposed to talk to you about things anymore, huh?

Well, don't worry about that. That's not going to happen again. That's why I called you in here to talk to you. So in a game around this time, Ricky, so he hits a ball. So this is scorekeeping in baseball. You hit a ball to a guy. Right.

If the guy catches it and throws you out, you're out. You don't get a hit in the stats. It doesn't count as a hit, even though you've hit the ball. Yeah, if you hit it to the guy and he drops it, that's known as an error. You also don't get a hit in the stats, because that guy could have gotten you out, but didn't. You should have been out.

But I've hit the ball. Yeah, but you hit the ball to a guy. Yeah, but he didn't do his part, so. But that's on him. In the stats, you don't get a hit, because you actually didn't do your job. I did do my job. He's not caught it.

I've hit the ball properly with the right spin on it so that he's unable to catch it. Well, now there's a guy called the scorekeeper who decides. If you hit it so hard, he couldn't have caught it. Let me guess, he's white, too. So Ricky does that one day, hits it to the guy. The guy throws it over the first baseman's head into the stands, and the scorekeeper marks it as an error.

And Ricky is on the field pointing up at the scorekeeper telling him he's wrong. He's like, I made it to the base first. It wouldn't have mattered. Right. So the scorekeeper's like, I'm not used to this interaction, to be quite honest with you. Well, it's a minor league team.

So the scorekeeper's also like, he does the laundry, he does all kinds of shit. Sorry, I was sewing numbers onto the jerseys. So he's a guy Ricky knows really well. So later, he's in the box scoring the game and the phone rings, the outside line. And he picks it up. Hello?

Quote, Jimmy, what in the fuck are you doing to me? What? Ricky had run about 650 feet to Kennedy's office during the game to call the scorekeeper. He stole the office? To call the scorekeeper. And now he's demanding the scorekeeper change it back to a hit. And Kennedy's there like, boy, Kennedy's not there.

Oh, he's not. No, he's everybody's playing the game. Right, Ricky. The guy's like, um, Ricky? So he is freaked out afterwards. He talks to both managers and both managers are it should have been a hit. Jimmy, how did Ricky get 15 home runs this game by your count?

So he changes it back to hit. And he tells Ricky and Ricky says, quote, man, fuck you. It should have been a hit already. Wow, you're welcome. Are you OK? OK. So Ricky is now getting a lot of press. And he asked Norris to read one of the stories.

And Norris realizes Ricky can't read. Oh, wow. So Norris then teaches Ricky, helps Ricky learn how to read. Right. And he said in about three weeks, he picks it up. Wow. Ricky's very smart. Good Lord.

Ricky's like got a baseball brain that you would die for. Like he's genius. So with Kennedy off his back, Ricky starts doing this thing that he's always done, which is talking to himself more. Ricky? Ricky talks to himself. OK.

So he'd always done it a little bit, but now that no one's like. Giving him shit. He's doing it louder. Right. Norris heard him talking to himself in the dugout. And sometimes he would talk to himself in the third person. Oh, wow.

That's even more. Is there another Ricky on the team? Leave me alone. He would sit back. Ricky, you got to do better. I'm trying. You're better than me. Norris said he heard him say, quote, come on, Ricky.

You know, Ricky, don't play that shit. Ricky, you know that. Fastball can't beat you. So he's kind of talking himself up and talking himself through it, what's going to happen and how things work. It's happened. There's athletes who do that for sure. Ricky, the third person's a fun rink.

The third person's a fun rink, but there's definitely athletes who do that. So he starts sliding into bases differently also because he's scared he's going to break his ankle. He runs. He runs first, right? Like he's playing a guitar solo. He goes ass first.

Oh, man. I love that. Like legs spread. Woo! Yeah! Jesus, Ricky. Ricky's doing the why. Ricky runs so fast that he is scared he's

going to hit the base too hard with his feet. So he starts sliding head first because then you can touch the base and kind of move around it and do different things. So one time he slid on his. Tuckus. Well, his abdomen and there's a belt buckle there and he stood up and he was covered in blood because the belt buckle just scraped him.

Ricky's died! Ricky's been hit! Howard Bryant, quote, his uniform looked like a crime scene. Oh, my God. After that, he started landing on his. The idea that you got to wear belt buckles while playing a sport? I know. Yeah, it's crazy.

All right. Now the cummerbund. So he started, he started landing on his chest instead. Chesting in? Yeah, he's chesting in. I feel like lose the belt, you know? All right, let me unsheathe this sword. I don't know if I'm going to slide with it anymore.

He's also like, he's not a big drinker, he's not doing drugs. He eats really well. He only lifted weights for his arms. The rest of his body was natural, natural athletic. I was hoping he's just going to turn into some sort of like. Just a huge arm guy? Like there's the guys who shoot oil under their arms.

Yeah, there's like those fake biceps where it looks like someone's just a regular guy and then there's two bowling balls in the bicep. He's all like the fourth. It's good. It's oil. He's fine. He would always point at his body and say, quote, this is my castle. This is my museum.

It's not really your museum. It's Ricky's museum. Well, it's your castle, I get it. It's the Ricky's museum. This is the Hall of Ricky. So you keep different old things like a history of your body? Yeah, there's the Ricky relics. In your body?

Let me take you to the East Wing. OK. Let me show you where the security guards hang out. And? This is the dumpster. OK. And yucky. This is what you think's in a museum.

This is the big attraction. So if you're thinking about museums, you think security guards dumpsters? Yeah, well, no, first of all, there's the Ricky relics. Right, the relics. There's the antique. Yeah, sure, the antiques. Is that what you're going to call the museum stuff?

Antiques. You know the antiques? Oh, god. All right, so look, we found a buyer. He's a fucking idiot. So Ricky starts the next season in triple A, triple A ball. So he's moving up. Triple A ball is the last one before the majors.

Right. He's in Ogden, Utah. He doesn't think he should be there. He's like, I should have skipped triple A. I should be in the major leagues now. So he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder that year. The A's manager is like, you can get the major. He's like, you can get more playing time.

I don't want you sitting on the bench, which is what would happen. But the A's are fucking bad, because the Finley won't pay free agents time is here, and they are a terrible, terrible team. Finley actually suspends the best player on his team for asking for more money. Smart.

Smart. It's good. It works both. It's good in two ways. Yeah, and those are. That it upsets your best player, and that's it. All I thought you said there were two. Huh?

Two, I thought you said there were two. Yeah, there are. Yeah. Yeah, now your best player is upset. Long term. And then on June 24, so a couple months into the season, Ricky has called up to the majors. He gets the minimum salary, which is $17,500.

The A's are a mess. During a game, the manager and an outfielder started arguing in the dugout, and the player picked up a bat and started swinging it at the manager trying to hit him. Nice. Security had to be called, and it was a double header, two games back to back. So for the rest of the day, security

sat on the bench in the dugout between the player and the manager. It's fine energy, fine vibe, for sure. It's totally fine. Maybe can you imagine? And now he's swinging the bat at him, and he's missed the manager's head by two swings. The security guards are out there now.

They're sitting on the bench. The player was sent down to the minors after the game. OK. For what? I don't know. They don't talk about it. We'd love some insight into what happened. In July, the A's go to Boston.

Dennis Eckersley is a pitcher on Boston, and this is the first time he ever sees Rick Anderson. So Rick, he had this thing where he would walk up to the plate so slowly, the slowest thing you could ever see. And then he'd look up and down his bat, and he'd just tap it a few times. And this is his first year. This is a rookie.

So you're not supposed to do this kind of shit as a rookie. Yeah, right. This is something they might let you do when you get older. But as a rookie, they're like, no, no, dude. No, get up there and get in the fucking box. 15 minutes. So Eckersley said, quote, my first reaction was, look at this motherfucker.

Who is this? First two at bats, Eckersley makes sure to get him out. Third at bat, Ricky gets a hit, and then he steals second. And Eckersley would later say, there was no point in trying to keep him on first. What's, quote, what's the use? Fuck it, just take the base. After three games, Eckersley didn't

think any catcher in the league could stop Ricky Henderson, and he also noticed that Ricky, when there was a strike called, Ricky would tell the umpire that was wrong and say, get your shit together. Every time? Like most times, most times there was a strike. He's like, no, man, that's not what we're doing here.

You need to work on yourself. Like he's just like, he's just like non-stop telling people. I called it a ball. Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. So the A's get a new manager. OK. A gentleman named Billy Martin. Oh, god.

Callback. Pretty soon after, Finley sells the team to the owners of Levi's blue jeans. Nice. Walter Hoth. All right, so you're all going to be playing in denim. Hope everyone likes denim. All right, there you go.

Look at these, huh? Ever heard of a button fly? There's no way. There you go. They didn't think of that at some point. Tight. Let's get real tight with it. There you go.

Boys, we're going to be called the Dungarees. All right, we're the Oakland Denims. There we are. So Ricky signs a new contract for $30,000 a year. OK. Now, the major league stolen base leader is Lou Brock. He had just retired the year before. 938 stolen bases in his career.

He has the record. He also has the single season record, which is 118. The American League record is 96. So those are the three records Ricky can beat. There's 182 games in a season. So whatever. Oh, sorry. Right, 162.

Whoops. Aaron, we love you getting involved, but when it's correcting Dave, we don't love the energy. Oh, no. Yeah. I didn't know we'd do this. Dave, go third person. Dave, don't like that.

There you go. Yeah, see, Aaron? You see what you've done? He's triggered. So Ricky wants those records. As he said when he was 17 years old, I'm going to do that. He loves stealing bases.

In April, Ricky stole home and broke the catcher's ankle. He stole his home. Slid so hard, he broke the catcher's ankle. Wow, OK. If Ricky got on first, it's basically a run score. So is second to third harder to steal? It is, right? Second to third is much harder to steal.

Because the catcher has a shorter distance to throw. Yeah, so he's able to. He, yeah. He would steal second, third, and home. Probably annoying. It's kind of stuff you see in Little League. Yeah, right. Like, a kid gets on base, you're like,

that kid's going to score. I go to a lot of Little League games alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know. The energy there is crazy. I'll tell you, let me tell you what it's like when you go to a Little League game alone, and someone asks, which kid is yours?

Yeah, it's OK. And you say none of them? Because you're making them uncomfortable. Yeah, they are so weirded out by it. What are you wearing? What do you mean? To the game? Yeah.

I'm just a shirt that I've written on. What does it say? I want to be papa for the most. We got to stop you. You shouldn't do this. Number 69 on the back of the jersey? No. That's for comedy.

Absolutely not. And then you know what else I have are those AMFM headphones with the little antenna on them. They don't make them anymore, but you can get them on eBay. Yeah, I'm sitting there, fanny pack. I'm eating a bunch of gummy worms. Someone comes up, they go, which kid's yours? I go, none of them.

And the parents are such, what is it with you baseball parents? You're so like, you get weirded out. So easily that you're an uncomfortable human being. Why? Because I'm eating gummy bears. Well, there's a lot more to it. There's 69 on the shirt. The whole the whole thing actually is bad.

Are you wearing what's your pants? Are you wearing pants? Yeah, of course I'm wearing pants. I'm wearing shorts. I'm wearing shorts. Yeah, I'm wearing shorts. I'm wearing shorts where you can see the pockets hanging down. OK, let's not do this.

The whole look is right there. We're going to not do that anymore. And I'm on one of those two-wheeled little thing of a jiggies, the little balance thing. What do you call it? Segway? Yeah, yeah, I'm on one of those little things. All right, down there, bunch of gummy worms in the fan pack.

AM FM headphones on. I'm wearing the glasses that are glasses, but you can flip them down to get sunglasses on. I got this mustache. And then you get someone goes, which kid's yours? This is what I don't like. When they ask you, they already kind of know the answer. And you go, none of them.

And they go, woof. And you know what I mean? It's just like, it's the energy. I'm there. I'm a fan of the sport. I know. It doesn't seem like it. I don't know.

Go to adult games. Go to college games. Nah. Just no? No, no way. The game is different. Aaron held your kid. So in like five years, Gareth will be coming to your kids

games. I'll go with you. I don't like the tone. I'm there. I'm just hanging. I'm hanging. I'm the guy smoking one hitters in the porta potty. I'm the cool dude.

OK. Yeah. No. Nothing you've said is cool. A fanny pack full of gummy worms ain't cool? No. OK. How long are you in the?

I live at the park. I've been living at the park for about a year and a month now. Sometimes when I get tired, I have a pillow from home and I lay in the stands. Yeah. Also, I should say I'm loaded on gin. OK. OK.

Go ahead. Ricky made the All-Star team. His Ricky year. He drove fans crazy. So if you remember the Billy Martin episode, Billy Martin drove the other team crazy. Yeah. So Billy's teaching him that.

And loves it. It's Billy Ball. That's what Billy Ball is. So Tiger's manager, Spark Yannison, is furious when the A's steal home in two consecutive innings. It's just not something, I guess, it's against the rules. I don't know.

And the second one was a triple steal. So all the players ran at once on all the bases. Wow. That's embarrassing. After that happened, the catcher went into the dugout and destroyed the water cooler with a bat. We don't deserve hydration. Ricky has stolen 50 bases on July 27.

He's very aggressive. He's very annoying. Quote, I try to make the pitcher look at me and concentrate on me. It gives the batter an edge. Totally. I mean, if you're the pitcher and you're like, this guy. You can tell.

As soon as the pitcher is focusing too much on the guy, like he's probably going to give up a hit now. So he just he's trying to make a make a mistake. So he's built like a like I said, he's built like a football running back. Someone asked him about his slide. He said, quote, you ever been in an airplane? You see how an airplane lands?

That's me. I'm like an airplane. So it's a chest down, arms out. And isn't it true that he went? And like I said, he takes forever to get into the batting box. It's he's just enraging pictures and catchers because again, there's a white guy unwritten rule. And now this guy is doing fucking everything the opposite. Right. And they called the Bill of Whites. A magazine ranked him as the third biggest hot dog in Major League Baseball. Third biggest hot dog. What? Showboater? Yeah. Okay. Managers are now complaining about his crouch stance saying he shouldn't be allowed to do that. Right. Knees to nipples. But there's no rules. You can stand any way you want.

Right. So Billy sees himself as a... They should probably start writing some of these rules down. They're unwritten, man. So Billy sees himself as a players manager. He hangs out with the players, he drinks with them afterwards, sometimes gets in fistfights with them. He's a regular man of the people. The ones he liked anyway, hung out with. So he could not connect with Ricky. He loves Ricky. Ricky will not give him anything. Ricky's really great in the clubhouse, but he's sort of apart from the team at the same time. He does not give any deference to veterans. You're supposed to walk in and thank them for their service. And then you have to carry their bags. There's all the different fucking things that they're supposed to do. He's not interested. He walked in, he's like, I'm as good as the best. That's in the dugout. To be fair, it's called the team. So it seems like... Also, he is as good as the best, though. Right. Like, if you're one of the greatest baseball players of all time, top five, you walk in and you're like, right, so you're not as good as me. They're not. Right. What am I supposed to carry the bag for myself?

He's just not in awe of any of them. So players could only steal when Billy told them to. You can't just run when you want. Interesting. Every manager gives you the signal. Some managers say, do what you want. That's very, very rare. OK. So with 30 games left in the season, the A's have no chance at the playoffs. Uh-huh. And Ricky has 66 steals. What's the record? 80 something? 97?

I think it's 96 for the American League. OK. So Billy wants to get in good with Ricky. He wants to get on the inside. What an amazing dynamic, right? For the manager, he'd be like, I've got to kiss this guy's ass. Like, do you want to, like, kick it with him so bad? Like, I just... Ricky, you do whatever you want. Do you want to manage? What do you want to do? What do you say we go hang out? So Billy turns him loose. He's like... Whatever you want to do.

So he steals with no restrictions on him, he steals 34 bases and breaks the single season record in the AL in that month. Wow. Yeah. So over whatever it is, five months, I think the season is, is it five months? Six. Six months? Six months, he steals... It's the attitude. Six months, he steals 66. One month, he steals 34. Right. And Billy's just like, that's cool. Get beat, somebody.

What do you say, champ? That's good. What do you say, huh? Am I the only one who wants to watch some TV at a slumber party, a two-man slumber party? We have so much in common. But other teams are furious. Sure. Because it's amateur shit to steal when it doesn't matter. Right. It's just not done. Selfish to go for a record. They can't believe what's happening.

Right. He gets another race. Now he's making $185,000 a year. There we go. He gets an endorsement deal with a Japanese sports equipment club at Mizuno. Free equipment and $1,000. Okay. Pretty good deal. The guy who says, you know, a lot of people think Ricky was dumb, but the guy who negotiated

that contract was like, he's one of the hardest people I've ever negotiated with. Oh, really? Yeah. Ricky, Ricky's very quiet around sports writers. Some players like Reggie Jackson. Reggie Jackson's doing like a Muhammad Ali thing. He's talking endlessly about himself. He's talking in that. But Ricky is like, I'll just show what I do on the field, which is weird, right? Yeah.

It's like a juxtaposition with what he's doing. Yeah, right, right. But boy does he show. Yeah. He's funny with his teammates, but he's self-conscious about his speaking ability, which he picked up when he was a kid. Right. Coming from Arkansas. Right. Also, he doesn't want to be the butt of a joke by using the wrong word. He's very self-conscious

of like, I'm not that great at speaking. When he's dyslexic, too. When he's very comfortable around people, it's fine. Right. In the dugout, he has a good time. But he still is known to misspeak and say a word that's off or whatever. Sure. And now we're talking about writers.

Right, yeah. So with sports writers, he sees them very literate. They're very smart, so he doesn't want to be mocked, and they're all white. All of the sports writers in the 80s are white. Sports writers. Right. Sports writers. Sure enough, find out later, the Oakland beat writers secretly had a t-shirt made mocking something Ricky said, including the grammatical and phonetic errors.

So his fear. Yeah, his real. Was completely real. Ricky, what about how it intimidates you? So he sensed it. We have merch. He sensed it. He also was like, if you're a black dude from Oakland, why in the fuck would you ever trust

a big gaggle of white guys? Right. I find that to be a bit racist. The only guy on the team kept at arm's length is Billy. Oh, Billy. I mean, Billy's just like looking at a window when it's raining. What would it take, Rick? I just want to be a friend.

I let you steal every base. Whatever you want, Ricky. You forget the part, and then he picks up a gal and a whiskey. Yeah, yeah. He's like, Ricky, I love you. So Ricky says he doesn't want to get too close to a manager, because if he gets released, then it's just like a relationship break. Nice.

I can kill him. Wow. Like so. Hard of stone. Billy talks to Norris, and he's like, please, please get me in with Ricky. So look, I have feelings for one of those guys. Why doesn't Ricky like me? It's something that doesn't like you.

He just. He won't hang. He doesn't. He's not a hang. He want to drink whiskey with him and kick it. Yeah, yeah. Is there anything I can do? Does he want to manage?

No. Does he want to wear my clothes? No. I can get him a car. He doesn't need a car. He's got a car. I just don't do anything. I know.

I got his face tattooed on my shoulder. Do you think he'll like that? No, it's weird. It hurt. It's weird. I know. Holy shit, it's big. It's very big.

Yeah. It's kind of back to shoulder to neck. Yeah. The guy did a bad job. But I don't know. It looks like MC Hammer. Well, look, I can't really see it, honestly, myself. It's strange.

But if I flex my neck, it's sort of. It's terrible. It's a bit like. No, not at all. Well, I don't know. I've done literally everything I can. I've actually been leaving chocolates in his locker. Yeah.

That's not going to help. I've left him a couple notes. Ooh. From your secret to manager. And there's just, I don't know. What is it? Yeah, it's not. I don't know.

I'm just begging the guy. I know. I just would love to have it. I think if, does he like movies? Yeah. I'd love to take him to a movie. What is he like? Has he seen Pinocchio?

I think so. Oh my god. I'd love to see it with him. I'd love to go see Pinocchio with him. You ask if he'll go see Pinocchio with me. Okay. Please. Yeah.

We could cancel the doubleheader. Okay. Whatever. Yeah. We could just, anyone could sit in and just manage. Okay. I just would love to do something with him. I just, you know.

It might be that this is too much. Is it too much? I think so. I think what has happened is that I feel him withdrawing. And that space, that distance is too much for me. So I'm trying to make up for it by meeting him in the original space we were in. Yeah. And the further that he goes away, the closer that I get.

The finger. I slept in his hedge. The thing where he came in the locker room the other day and you were wearing his jockstrap. Yeah. On my head. I was not good. And I said, best friends, do this. What about that?

That wasn't good. He didn't like that. No. That was weird. Do you think he knows it was his? Yeah. It says Ricky on it. Right.

Yeah. I wasn't sure if he, I mean, I know he, okay. Yeah. Oh god. It's so hard. Just. I'll talk. The role of a manager trying to BFF with someone on your team is so awkward.

It really is. It doesn't happen often enough and it's just really strange in a way. Yeah. It is. And all I want to do is just be his buddy. Be his pal. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. All right. Let him know I'm down for whatever. Yeah. Sure. I'll make a cake. I'll eat a cake.

I'll do whatever he wants. It can be cake related. It can be outside of cake. We can do anything. We can clean the grass together. Okay. That's not a thing. I would love to brush my teeth next to him.

Okay. Ask him if he wants to sleep here with me. That's weird, but I have sleeping hats and I've actually got a set of pajamas made specifically for him. I'm not helping. I want to share a bed like the Three Stooges would. This is not helping. Okay.

I'm just saying there's options. If he wants to shower, I'll shower. If he doesn't, I won't. What does he want though? It seems like the more space I give him, the more that he enjoys it. And that's, he's driving me nuts. Yeah. My wife is just, my wife won't even talk to me.

Sure. All I talk about is Ricky. Right. Ugh. God. Just. I'm freaking in love with the guy. So he does talk to Norris and Norris does talk to Billy and.

Talk to Ricky or Billy? Oh, sorry. Ricky. Okay. And, and, and so Ricky gives him a chance. Thank you. Thank you. And him and Billy start hanging out.

This is so fun. And then they start drinking together. There we go. Is that it? I told you to be a good team. And in short time, they're close friends. Love you. And in Ricky, Billy sees one of the greatest players ever who can play Ricky, Billy's way.

Right. Billy's style of baseball. So there's a very specific moment when Ricky became the favored one that all the players noticed. So they, they went out drinking as a team and then they got back to their hotels and it was like, you got to be at the ballpark in like three hours. So they're all crazy hungover. Which is just crazy.

Yeah. For a manager, Billy. All right. We got three hours to do this. What? So they're all hungover. They're sitting there. And the thing about Billy is Billy loved food.

He knew every, every chef in town. He had a personal chef at the ballpark. Coaches always ate great. Players did not. So one night, so they're there in that morning and they're all starving and the coaches are upstairs just chowing. And Ricky finally yells, I want some food. And Billy says, quote, you want something to eat?

Come up here and get something. Not the rest of us. Unheard of. Right. He never did that. So Ricky grabs food and all the other players are like watching him eat and saying, that's your daddy. He's your daddy now.

Waffles. So Billy and Ricky do everything together. Even quail hunting. Billy. I mean, for Billy. Ricky is going to sound crazy. Will you fucking marry me? Like he's just like, oh, everything I ever wanted.

Hey, Ricky, what do you say we go quail hunting? Ricky said, quote, he treated me like his son. That man did everything for me. So that's like a father. They're turning into father-son relationship, right? It's montage time. Yeah. So the next season, the A's build an ad campaign around Ricky, right?

He's their guy. But that season, Billy's drinking really becomes a problem. Okay. Drunk Billy like to fight players. Yeah. There was labor tension also in the league and the owners are still mad. The players got free agency and they're trying to do little tricks to reel it in. Sure.

And on June 10, 1981, the players go on strike. At the time, Ricky leads baseball in. Walks, steals, runs, and he's the second best hitter. Okay. The strike goes on for 50 days. They start back up with an all-star game. So they're like, we're going to take the best players, have them play a game. Okay.

They do not pick Ricky to be one of those players. Weird. He's offended. Okay. Why? I don't know. Something about. The next month, one of baseball's top writers calls Billy the new Willie Mays.

Calls Ricky. Rick. Sorry. Sorry. It would be amazing if you could call Billy. Yeah. This whole guy. The guy who's wasted.

Willie Mays. So Peter Gamm calls him the new Willie Mays. Who is considered to be the greatest baseball player of all time. So he's now been compared with the top. The A's go to the playoffs, lose to the Yankees. Ricky leads the American League and runs, hits, and stolen bases. So he's now a star. He's a bona fide star.

He's one of two front runners to get the American League MVP. The other guy is a teammate. Okay. And Billy said, well, Ricky's the best player in baseball. Nice. So he throws in his, you know, weight. The other guy's like, no, you're my coach too. Come on.

There's a reason I never asked you to go shoot quail. All right. You're good, but you know Ricky. I know. Everyone, have I ever asked you to get in a hammock with me? No. Nobody wants that. Has any, have I ever let you eat the upstairs chili?

Ricky has. Do you think about that? Have I ever gotten in the bubble tub with you? No. And then when I was sitting in with you, I said, must be something I ate as a good goof. No. Well, I have with a Ricky. I get it.

You like Ricky better. You think? What was the tell? So the MVP award goes to a relief pitcher. Okay. Which to guys, you can hear Aaron over there. That's insane. Like, nope.

If you don't know baseball, you're not going to understand this. What is he explaining to me? They don't play every day. They come in every, you know, a few days and they, they pitch an inning or two. That's way less than Ricky's. Ricky's playing, you know, six days a week, nine innings. And this guy plays three innings. In congruent with reality.

It is. It also went to Raleigh Fingers, who other players called Raleigh the Vulture. Wow. Because Raleigh would come in. You're supposed to save the game. You're supposed to protect the lead. He would give up the lead. And then the other team, and then his team would score the next inning and he'd get the win.

Interesting. So it's like stealing the other. Okay. So players nicknamed. All right, Raleigh. Get out there. Here's the game. We'll figure it out.

You got it, coach. Ricky comes in second and, and he still needs Billy's permission to steal. Wow. So he's, he's got a, it's a grudge. He's got a little, he's frustrated against everything. Everything. The next year, the A's are really bad. Ricky wants to break Lou Brock's single season record of 118 steals.

And the A's offer him a one year, $350,000 contract. And he says, no. Wow. Times have changed. So that means it goes to something called salary arbitration where the team makes the case, the player makes the case, and then the arbitrator decides who was right and how much he's going to get paid. It's weird.

And that could be rough because the team now has to say why he's not that good. Right. That lawyer's like, I don't love it. Ricky wants $535,000 a year. Ricky wins. But he does not forget what the team said about him. Right. In that arbitration.

Oh yeah. Right. And it's strictly. Because they have to kind of like basically. Yeah. They've got to talk shit. Yeah. Right.

And it's strictly business, but they have to like be like, yeah, he's not hitting his name. And Billy's like on the other side, like, I'm sorry. Ricky, I'm sorry. Ricky, I'm not. So the age gave him a large, signing bonus check. Okay. So like whatever, a couple hundred thousand dollars of that upfront or whatever.

It's six figures. That's all we know. A little while later, the A's accountants are looking through their accounts and something's out of whack. And the accounting department starts freaking out. Okay. And then someone realized Ricky had not cashed the check. Interesting.

And they call him and he's like, yeah, man, I got a frame on my wall. It's not a $1 bill from your first restaurant sale. He's like, it's my first really huge check. Right. And the point is I cashed that. Do you understand? I got it on my wall. Yeah.

But you probably want to cash that at some point. But he's also thinking, well, if it's on my wall, I'm not spending it. It's like his being like, oh, I'm saving that money. Right. It's in the bank. Not realizing, I don't think he knew that checks are void after six months. Sure. So anyway, they get him to cash check.

We'll give you a duplicate to put up there. Suckers. After 49 games, Ricky has 50 steals and Billy tells reporters he's going to make a priority to get Billy the record. Ricky. Ricky the record. God damn it. I love you.

I love you. And we all love you. Billy has been driving everyone crazy for years, but now he has this unstoppable base still. It's like the most evil combination for unwritten rules, guys. Right. Managers are complaining about his batting stance, saying it's unfair, pitchers are complaining, catchers fucking hate him.

They want to hurt Ricky. When playing the Angels, when he's in the batter's box, the catcher jumps up and gets in Ricky's face and just starts screaming at him, get out of your crouch and hit like a fucking man. Amazing. Isn't that incredible? They're nuts. They're mad because he's figured out a way to work the system and you're fucking mad

at it. Like a knuckleball pitcher. You're not like, pitch it like a pitcher would. Like there's things. These things happen. It's the evolution of the game and like, you know, people, like, quit shooting three stuff. Curry.

Don't get like a real player. The entire system is set up to do what he's saying. Like a man, which is to fuck people out of, of playing well, essentially unique stuff. Yes. And this guy's fucking. He's also screams, uh, stop working the umps, stop complaining about strikes after the catcher. Haven't you ever read the rules that no one could read? After the game, the catcher said, quote, if he doesn't learn to button his lip, he's

going to get punched out. So they're, they're literally talking about punching him in the face now. Ricky's also constantly talking at bat saying, quote, come on, Ricky, he can't beat you with that. Is that, is that all he's got? I hope he, I hope he better hope it isn't. Oh, he better hope it isn't like he's up there saying that shit. So it's driving them fucking nuts.

The catcher's hearing that and just being like, once catcher rip Dempsey walks out to the mound to talk to his pitcher. Now, as a batter, you're supposed to just sit there in the box. Yeah. Instead, Ricky follows him out. Interesting. And is behind him because he wants to hear what the catcher's going to say to the pitcher. That's certainly not allowed.

It's allowed. It's like a player. There's no rule that says you can't do it. Okay. So now he's using the unwritten rule. They're like, God, that one is damn it. What? Talk about an unwritten rule.

Yeah. You're not supposed to listen to what they say. What are you guys talking about? My ears are burning. What did you say? Hello. Two coaches and an umpire almost had to tackle and hold Dempsey to keep him from killing Ricky, but Ricky's like the more mad you get, the easier it is for me.

Yeah. I'm totally in your head. Ricky also doesn't seem to care about people's names. Interesting. He either forgot them or he just didn't learn them. Sure. You, uh, you see the same people in major league baseball because you go to the same cities.

You go into the same staff. It's all the same. He never knew umpire's names. Like one way to ingratiate your stuff in the umpire is to walk up and go, Hey, Eric. Yeah. And then you go, but he'd walk up there. The umpire would be like, Ricky, and to every single umpire, Ricky would say, quote, Hey now, how you doing?

Good, good, good, good. And then he'd get in the baddest box. So he'd ask him and then answer. Hey, Ricky, hey, you. You good? No. He also called all the umpires blue, which makes umpires mad. Hey, blue.

On August 27th, 1982, Ricky breaks the record, 122 stolen bases. Wow. They stopped. Four, right? Yeah. Yeah. In one game. Yeah.

He went over it. They stopped the game and Lou Brock is there. He comes. I love that. That's always fun to me. All right. Here's the guy. You just.

Not the second best. Especially when you have to go like for a few games. If you're that guy, like he might break at this game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just retired. Yeah.

Now, this was against the Brewers. The only person on the Brewers who acknowledged that he had done it by shaking his hand was the second baseman. Hmm. After the game, the Brewers manager said, quote, we treated Ricky as if he had no stolen bases. Nice. Cool.

You got. No, you guys look better. Yeah. Yeah. You look good here. Thank you. That's right. Think we tied him a pretty good lesson if you think about it.

Actually in Milwaukee, we refused to acknowledge that that it's one of our unwritten rules. By the way, we have a guy slide into a beer every home run. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Ricky had to see some of the 130 stolen bases, but finishes 10th for MVP. Once again, a relief pitcher finishes ahead of crazy. Every time it happens, he's out of his fucking mind.

He doesn't stop talking about it. He cannot handle that. That happened. Wow. Now Billy gets fired and the A's then signed Ricky for $800,000. He's now a star. He's doing commercials. People are always looking to label Ricky, selfish, arrogant.

The style makes him mad. Ricky doesn't separate winning from style. White, these white unwritten rule guys separate winning from style. Right. Yeah. It's not. You're stylish. You can't win.

That's in there. You're not winning the white way. Right way. That's right. That's right. These are the guys who drove the satchel page out of satchel page, right? So Brian, the writer of, Howard Bryant, the writer of the Ricky Anderson book, quote, the black fans and players knew that pitting charisma against winning was false, often

racist choice and a way to punish the black players for playing with black style. So one night, an A's pitcher is throwing a no hitter and Ricky, he's out in left field. He's made five outs in the game, the old fashioned way, catching with two hands. Sure. Oh no. Right. This one. I think I know this.

The last out is hit to Ricky. So it's the last out of the no hitter. A no hitter. A no hitter is a very big hit. What does that mean? It's when you get every single batter out and nobody gets a hit because of the state state from earlier. Yeah.

Nobody gets a hit. You can get a walk. You can't. A perfect game is when you don't give up a walk also. So it's a no hitter. Balls hit to Ricky for the last out. Hop fly, head out of Henderson. Ricky, quote, it started off in Oakland, just trying to be like Willie Mays.

What was the pitcher's name? He pitched a no hitter for us. Years later, Ricky does not remember the pitcher's name. Good Lord. Quote, it wasn't, it wasn't nothing I created. I just had style. So he just does this in the moment. That's crazy.

He snatches at the ball as he swung his glove down to his side in one motion. So it's like he's swiping it and bringing the glove down and then smacks the glove against his hip. Oh wow. People are so fucking angry. Because it's like you are risking, like for your showmanship, you're risking that the ball could come out. Well, that's what they think, but that's not.

He caught the ball first, quote, you think I'm going to risk that? It's basically an optical illusion. He just made something look cool, but he catches the ball. He makes sure he catches the ball and then begins the motion, but it looks to them like he's swiping. Trying to like toss it to the ground maybe or something. It's called the snatch. Wow.

It's amazing. I think he's like, these people are here to see a show and it's organic to him. He's like, this is a big fucking moment. Also, did he catch it? He did catch it. So there you go. It's a big moment. It's a really big moment.

So he knows all eyes are on him and he's like, well, I'm going to do something special too. Right. I love he doesn't remember the pitcher's name. Isn't that great? He doesn't. It becomes a signature catch after this moment. Sure. And now across the country, kids want to do it and coaches are losing their fucking minds.

Well, to be fair, kids are probably like, whoops. You know, what's very funny is we were all taught to catch with two hands. Two hands? Yeah. You bring up, you catch it with one hand and then you just kind of sense it. You cover it. Right. You cover it.

The ball goes in your mouth and you cover it with the other hand. Right. They don't teach that anymore. Now they all teach catch it with one hand and be prepared to throw. Right. So Ricky was right. In a way. Sure.

History smiles upon him. Yeah. The next year, the A's offer Ricky $950,000, a huge offensive number because there's baseball players, top baseball players making $1 million. And they have offered him $50,000 less. It's like a double slap. Right. He's been the first guy to steal 100 bases in three straight years.

So they go to arbitration and the A's are like, he doesn't have enough homeruns. Stop. And they win. Permission to, really? Yeah. Permission to whisper to the judge. Don't really feel like saying it out loud. That's not how this works.

Permission to pass a note to the judge. Okay. There you go. There you go. Can you just read it? But rather not. Can you just read it out loud for the record? Permission to whisper to the judge about a note pass.

Yeah. Okay. So we're trying to keep it on the DL because we don't want him to know what's going on. So if possible, I don't want to read the note because the note says that he's not a enough homeruns. And we think if that hears that, that's going to piss him off. Okay. For the record, they don't think you're hitting enough homeruns.

But it's but that up a D. It's not, there's no secrets into arbitration and permission to time travel. So Ricky's fucking livid. Most players don't let arbitration business bother them. It's just business. Ricky takes it very personally. Right. Shows up to spring training the next year.

He's not happy. Refuses to talk to the press. Then the manager, new manager makes a new rule. A player was not allowed to take a day off unless they talked to him directly. A paper reported this was from the press or from practice, from a game. Okay. Okay. The paper reports this rule is all about Ricky.

The manager believed that the season before Ricky kept taking day games after a night game off. So it's a short period of rest. That's what he assumes. This is not actually true statistically. It happens sometimes, but it wasn't. So this is what. That's actually very, very, it's actually very, very common to take a day game off after

a night game. Sure. Players, whatever. It's unwritten rules, if I may, not okay when he does it. I don't want to say war. So this becomes part of Ricky's reputation. His reputation. It's written in papers.

There's no quotes around it, but it's like fact. Teams are very good at using reporters to push a narrative that will hurt a player's reputation and then end up saving them money and free agency. Yep. And reporters are happy to do this for the team. God, I just can't think of a version of that in today's journalism. No, there really isn't any. Where someone carries the water.

It certainly didn't happen. It didn't happen recently with Politico and Pete, not get, not get, not get David. What did I tell you? This is not a politically made, I can't ask. Back to the sports. Come on. Chop chop. Chop chop.

Chop chop. It's an unwritten dollop rule. We don't, we don't interject, inject, oh God, I need Aaron, can I get an IV? I am not doing okay. So this new manager, after he's made that rule, he says the A's need to go back to the pre-billy days. So he's essentially saying Ricky's not the focus. Okay.

It's, Ricky takes his personal attack and he comes out and at the beginning of the season just starts single handedly destroying teams. And then a big writer does a story on Ricky. Manager in the story praises him, but Ricky would not talk to the writer about baseball. Ricky would only talk to the writer about losing arbitration and his shitty contract. So the article paints him as very difficult, unselfish, very unprofessional. You mean selfish. Uh, sorry.

Yeah. Selfish. Very unprofessional. Um, his stats, obviously, say otherwise, worst of all, the manager had brought up Ricky's main competition for stealing bases in the major leagues, Tim Reigns. He's like the other guy that can steal a lot. Quote, Tim Reigns understood it more clearly. What a crazy thing to say.

Ricky hasn't yet. What a crazy, that's like so. It's the unwritten rules. It's so crazy though to be like, like your basic, what you're basically saying to some extent is like, I mean, basically he's like, I'm going to sacrifice like our best player just because I'm offended by the style. Yeah. So he is, he's, he doesn't care about the baseball.

He cares about the unwritten rules. He's there to take Ricky down. What race was the manager? It's weird. He's white. We're not getting into a bad jibba. So he's basically saying Reigns is a better baseball player than Ricky. Ricky is obviously not happy.

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder why. But the team immediately starts losing under this manager and he is fired. Peter Gammons puts out a nice lie and says, Ricky had undermined him and had once refused to hit third because quote, his mother told him he was a natural lead off hitter. So this guy is just fucking Peter Gammons, just fucking lying out of his house. He's a very famous sports reporter.

Yes, he is. Is he still around? Yeah. Yeah. All these things stick to Ricky. Sticky. Sticky. Sticky Ricky.

The manager comes in and says, Ricky, be Ricky. And he is. He gets in the next All Star game. He's a big, he's a sex symbol. He's in Playgirl's Men of Summer Hot Nude Pictorial. You did one of those too, didn't you for podcasts? Yeah. Yeah.

You have what they call pod bod. Hot pod. Yeah. I got a hot pod bod. You got a pod bod. Hot pod bod. Yeah. Hot pod bod.

If I may, sir. But now here's the problem. The A's suck. They need a lot of players. One way to get a lot of players is to trade your best player. So they trade Ricky for more players. Billy Martin has been working with the Yankees again. He's like a special assistant.

Please, please, please, please, please, may we get him? Please, my best friend. My best friend with your quail. Yeah. He keeps telling Steinbrenner like, we got to sign this guy. He's the real deal. He's the real deal. Yeah.

You just have never seen me happier. Do you know what laser tag is? Boy, Ricky does. And so he's traded to the Yankees. Comes in in New York. He has the Billy. He has this reputation as not being a team guy. And then he meets the New York press.

Done. Boom. Boom. That's the end of part one. God damn. It's funny because it's like, I know who he is. Bear. I don't know a lot about baseball.

I barely. I mean, he's so renowned that I know his name. I just didn't know the level. I am. I was. I'm a Giants fan. Yeah. Crosstown rivals of the ace.

Right. Obviously, I love the Giants. Yeah. Could not get enough of Ricky Henderson. Interesting. Growing up like. Yeah. That happens.

Yeah. He was just incredible. There's certain players. We used to have Barry Sanders in the NFC. You'd be like, good lord. Yeah. Yeah. They're so good.

No. This guy's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, there we go. Next week's part two, we promised that Dave's going to try to keep some of the politics out

of this. It was a little heavy handed at times today with some of the unwritten rule stuff and don't really like the kind of racial stuff you're kind of toying with in this one. I think here at the dollop, we believe that anything that happened in the history of this country, it happened and we need to get over it and we need to just move past it because it's really uncomfortable for certain races in this country to think about it. And let's have respect for them, even though they took most of the stuff. We'll be right back after this dollop.

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What's up, everybody? This is Gareth, not Gary from the dollop podcast. The show you're about to listen to. Listen, I would love to invite you to see some standup comedy I'm doing on the road. I'm all over this great nation of ours. Be part of the Gareth army or the garmy as everyone's calling it. Everyone's calling it that. Don't look it up, but everyone's calling it that.

Today March 13th, I'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. March 14th, I'll be in Indianapolis. March 15th, Louisville, Kentucky. March 16th, Columbus, Ohio. March 17th, Dayton, Ohio. March 18th, I have two shows in Perrysburg, Ohio. March 19th, I'll be in Cleveland, Ohio. March 21st, Lexington, Kentucky.

March 22nd, I will be in St. Louis. March 23rd, I'll be in Kansas City. March 24th and 25th, I'll be in Des Moines, Iowa. March 26th, I'll be in Omaha. April 12th, I'm very excited to say I'll be in Tacoma, but I will be doing a crowd work show. I'll be filming it, so I really want people to come out to that.

That's April 12th, which is a Wednesday. Tacoma Comedy Club, Washington, come on out. Then April 13th, back to regular standup at the Spokane Comedy Club. And then April 14th and April 15th, I'll be in Bozeman, Montana at Last Best Comedy. Also, Los Angeles, my home city kind of, whatever. May 5th, Friday, I'll be at the Dynasty Typewriter

in Los Angeles. Then May 18th, I'll be at Standup Live in Phoenix, Arizona. More shows coming, like July 12th and July 13th, I'll be at the New York Comedy Club. One's in New York, one's in Connecticut, it's wild. Then I'll be in Pittsburgh, July 15th, and that's all for now. Go to garethrenalds.com to get tickets and information

and join me, be part of the Garmy. Everyone's calling it that, quit pushing back.