SPEAKER_01 1:45

Welcome to the Hilltop Club Podcast. In today's episode, we are excited to feature Danny Foxworth, the host of two engaging podcasts. First up, At the Plate with Danny Foxworth, where he dives into spirited conversations with individuals about their beloved baseball teams. From the inception of their fandom to favorite players and memorable moments, this series is a treasure trove for baseball enthusiasts. Additionally, Danny hosts the Since We Last Spoke with Danny Foxworth podcast, a show delving into his personal Odyssey, childhood recollections, and captivating interviews with special guests. Tune in for a blend of sports passion and personal stories with Danny Foxworth. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Oh my goodness. This this right here, no lie, this is a dream come true. I've been such a longtime fan of y'all's podcast. Really? Like seriously seriously.

SPEAKER_04 2:37

Kev was like, he's been supporting us from the start. Oh I'm like from season one, episode one?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, because I remember when y'all had Preach Jacobs on. Because that's all. Preach is the homie. Yeah, yeah. Ever since then, I mean, it's been on. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

I just saw Preach uh Thursday night. He had an event at Nickelodeon Theater where he was like hosting. Yeah, and it was so different seeing him talk on the mic. He was like, Do I really need this thing? Okay, it's for aesthetics. All right.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, I appreciate y'all having me on, seriously.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

That's gonna be an excellent because I always like to say that when we have conversations with the quote unquote with the tribe, it's always fun. Yeah. It is very laid back. Our conversations that we have are very much related to what is going on with folks in the quote unquote millennial generation and just discussing our concepts of success and how we get to where we're going, but also just making connections and making sure that we have network and gives us a treasure trove of things to reach back to for information moving forward. That's the big thing about our podcast. We're regular folks. Right. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 3:36

Right, we're so chill.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, we aren't hitting you with any sensational taglines. We aren't trying to find or catch you with no oops moments or seeing if you believe something a certain way. We aren't gonna put nothing up on the gram or anything like that or the truth. Yeah, with no exposure. I love it.

unknown 3:49

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

I don't even know that any of that's true. We're gonna put stuff on the gram. See?

SPEAKER_01 3:53

I'm gonna dig into your brain. We're trying to catch y'all. So if you say anything crazy, that's on you. We didn't ask for it. We didn't ask for it.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

But um, I I couldn't find a lot of information about you.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Good.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

Right. I don't know if you like hiding your information or something. Kind of like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah, yeah. Our friend. Matter of fact, just on the show. We're at Link Studios um recording today. Um the proprietor, excellent gentleman, Mr. Holliday, took really good care of us today, made sure we had a place to come to down in our home away from home in Charleston. I can't lie, I've been down here for a long period of time before I moved back to Columbia. Of course, Tomia has roots down here. And Mike has always come down here to visit us, and we always have a good time in Charleston. Wherever, even if we're in the Goose Creek Somerville area, you know how people say when it's time to get near the area in Charleston. So, yeah, man, I love being here. I love coming to the studio. So if you need someplace to record, like you have a project, etc., that you want to work on, please look up Link Studios on Instagram.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

Lats and Road.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Latson Road, yep. And I'm not gonna give away all the details yet. But you'll be able to see those if you do look that information up, and it will take really good care of you. Great host here.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Great, great host, great host, podcast studio, great recording studio.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Seriously. All your all your audio needs. But outside of that, man, we should start off with the easiest question in the world. Who or what influenced you growing up, man? Where are you from, man? How did you get here? And why are we talking to you?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Well, the far as the uh where I'm from part, I was born in Charleston, South Carolina. I'm a Roper Hospital baby. Wow, raised in raised in a small town called Monk's Corner. Okay, about a half hour from Charleston.

SPEAKER_04 5:21

Family in Pinopolis.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Oh, see, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

All the way out there. I was like, what is Pinopolis? Pinopolis. Monk's Corner, basically.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah, we we out in the woods. There's a little small community called Long Ridge. Oh wow. That's where that's where the young the maturation process started for young Daniel.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Excellent, excellent, excellent. Now, how was it like you're growing out up out there? And I thought it was cool because I was listening to your podcast, so I know some of this information, right? The both of them. So you're out there in the country. Do you have any siblings? I have an older sister. How much older?

SPEAKER_00 5:51

She's three years in one day. Okay. Well, I like how you know that to the point.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Three years in one day.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

She's June 17th, I'm June 18th. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Did they plan this? I guess so.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

When your parents' anniversary at? When is the anniversary?

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Um December 22nd. December 22nd. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Gosh, you're looking at the watch, I'm like, all right.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

So, all right, so so you grew up there. Where did you go to school at? What was like your elementary, middle school, high school school?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Oh man, I started at uh Whitesville Elementary School. Okay. And great times. Great, great, great times. Is it still there? Yeah, it's still there. I always ask that because you know sometimes those schools will grow. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, Whitesville, I drove by there not too long ago. It's it's still there. I wish it was the way it was now, like it was back then. I mean, it was when we were there, it was just like nothing but trailers. I mean, it was it was the pits, but it's nice now.

SPEAKER_04 6:49

Kids don't know about them trailers.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Oh man, trailer schooling? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Yes, air conditioner hooking. I don't know rural South Carolina. Portables is like why would you build a new school if you could put 50 portables in the playground? Quickly.

SPEAKER_04 7:05

In the parking lot.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

In the parking lot, quickly. Easy. You can have your music room in there and everything. That's where my music room was at. When I was in Mullins, it was in a portable. I like the portable. Portable was funny. It's loud as hell. Are you from Mullins? Ah, see, this is what's so cool about this. You read this? I love the podcast. So my we lived in Mullins and Marion for a good amount of time. So yeah, this is why when you talk about small, I know you're talking about like nickels and backwards. You got your lake view and your ladders and stuff like that. Look, I'm gonna tell you a cool little story. P D. Yeah, PD, man. I'm gonna tell you a cool, cool, little, quick little sports story before we get into bothering about other things. Okay. My eldest stepbrother, rest in power, he's no longer with us. But I remember he told us a story. He was coming back home. He played football and stuff like that. And we were at the house in Mullins, looking at the field, just looking at the mice run through the little cornfield. He comes back to the house. He's all excited and stuff. I'm like, why is he excited? What's going on? And he's like, Y'all man, I just ran in. I ran to this guy, Raymond Felton. I said, Raymond Felton, what do you mean he just ran into him? He's like, yo, this dude is just playing basketball, just shooting in the dirt, just and just and I walked up to him and I was like, yo, what's going on? He's like, You want to play? And I was like, Yeah, I'll play with you. And he just started booming on me out of nowhere. He was booming and hitting all the shots, etc. Man, Raymond Felton was just at his house, shooting basketball, out in the country, on the dirt, pick up ball. Just like that, play the game with him. Whooped this behind, mind you, because this is Raymond Felton. But this was at the time when he had just finished up having the high school dunk contest in South Carolina stuff. He was just getting big or whatnot. And we had to think about it. It was like, that was really him. And he was like, yeah, he was just outside, chilling, no problems. This is what comes topic. Rural South Carolina is different, y'all. We be having some talent. We have some very skilled people, individuals, and they're extremely humble. He was not weird about it or anything after he whooped us behind. Almost like Prince, you know, offered him hospitality and everything after it was done, and they just came on home. Yeah, really. So I tell people like all the time, like I grew up, played sports with some very amazing people that I'm talking like top-level talents. And you just would never know that that's who they were because of how humble they were. So I always like to talk to people about South Carolina, about our rural areas and how we are raised. Um and so for you, just like being raised in middle school and high school.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

What high school did you go to? I attended Berkeley High School. But before I get into that, I want to say, just piggybacking on the Marion and Mullins. Yeah, yeah. I gotta give a big shout out to them because I did not realize how many black Foxworths lived in that region. Oh, yeah, this is a Foxworth town. That's why I'm asking. Yes, Foxworth City. Sorry to go on a tangent, but I started getting a bunch of friend requests on Facebook from other black Foxworths. And every time I accepted their request, they would DM me. Are you from Marion? Are you from Mullins? Do you have family in that area? I'm like, no, all my family's from the low country. Like literally, literally, all my like my dad's side of the family's from Monks Corner, my mom's side of the family's from Southernville and Ridgeville. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

So nobody near King Street or anything like that going up towards that way.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

No. Which was surprising to me. That was a mind-blower. I grew up with another, yeah, a bunch of Foxworths.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Um, you know, sometimes it's like one prodigal son or something. It's just like, you know what, I'm going over there.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Going over there.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

And a whole nother branch of the family starts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

But that's interesting, though, and that's that's a good point that you make. Again, some South Carolina information. We we uh did come out of a situation where we had slavery, etc. And because they always like to tease sometimes, sometimes your family name may not be a family name specific for you, but it may be another group of somebody else who named somebody a certain name. And so that's sometimes how that happens. But that would be interesting if y'all did a DNA test just to see. Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

But for real, like you really had those people.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

So you've never even been, have you ever been to Mullins before? I've been to Mullins one time. For what? Some things, some church related. I was about to say. Can I say this?

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yeah, that's right. I'm not gonna lie, those places I traveled to in South Carolina, those small areas, is because you went for church revival, Sunday fellowship service, and sun. Nah, literally, I've never been to these places before. Where are we going, Grandmama? We're going to such and such, because it's the first Sunday. Okay, so we get in that car right on there for first Sunday. First time I've ever been to this place. That's how it is for most places in South Carolina been to. Church.

SPEAKER_04 11:08

Vocational Bible school.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yep, vocational. Oh, I love vocational Bible school, though. The cookies and juice don't even get me started. I enjoyed myself. My fault. It was fun. I was in a small, like you're in a small side. That's how you go around. Like you meet people in church. Yeah. But all right, so high school, man. So you went, Berkeley? Yeah. You play any sports? Yeah. I gotta ask.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I was not athletically inclined. What? Yeah, I'm serious.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

What?

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Wasn't yeah, I was terrible.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Looking at their face, like, he's not lying. He's not lying.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

I'll go back to middle school. We used to have a basketball court out on the playground. Whenever we go to recess, like the beginning of the year, we'd pick teams so we could play pickup basketball. And like beginning of the year, I'd be either the first or second one to get picked for the team. And as the years as the year progressed and they saw my lack of skill, my name was lower and lower and lower down the totem pole. And it got to the point where it was like, all right, then you can run, you can run for that. Yeah, I can't even go stick in lots to you.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

You know, everybody listening with headphones and whatnot. Like clearly you go to the gym. Like you live, bruh. You lip bro.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

I live fork, I live a fork and spoon every now and then.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Good jeans. This is a good jeans. This is a good thing. But a sports fan nonetheless. Oh, yeah. And always interested in the in the the local, the small towns. Well, I see you got your mud dogs hat on. Trump's and river dogs. Yeah, and then I know, I know you know like every high school team in the whole down state. Yeah, dude, this is what we do. Oh, I'm trying to get the other stuff if I get into something.

SPEAKER_04 12:43

Right, he's getting information. Look at him.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

So, so yeah, so of course, we and when I say we, I mean my brother, Skip and I, we love high school sports. We love our college and professional sports. And specifically, growing up in the South, between North Carolina and South Carolina, even Connecticut, one of the things that we always did is play baseball. 100%. And what's so interesting about that, and then just growing up, is that that was our first sport. Our first love was baseball. We watched baseball 24-7, went to sleep to baseball, went, woke up first thing every summer. As soon as we knew, all right, summer is here. First thing we do, make sure our gloves are oiled, ready to go. Yes. And we're out playing baseball from sunup to sundown. Even to the point when we're watching League of Your Own when we're kids. We remember the scene where the young lady catches the ball with her hand, bare hand? We decided to challenge. We don't need gloves no more. We up here turning it. We up here turning, we up here turning 6-3 double plays, barehanded. How many fingers you been turning? Better men than me. I love hands that we go to stuff like that. We all out there doing. So we're like, no, y'all can't look like that. Was it a Disney movie? No, leave your own. It wasn't was it a Disney film? I'm trying to think about a Disney film. Maybe. But yeah, we were turning them, look, and people were looking at us, they were watching us play. They're like, yo, they ain't got no gloves on. What's wrong with these guys? And it's not like we didn't have the gloves, we bought the gloves and put them down. We want to look like the people. And so we grew up during that time. We were watching Barry Bonds and his prom with Pittsburgh. We were watching all these young athletic black, Hispanic, and white men play baseball. And that's what we want to be. We want to be baseball players. One of our stepbrothers, his name is Tony Clark, and you know he was a Tony Clark fan. See, this was so funny because his name match. And so, of course, yeah, yeah. I mean, we collected cards, we read the books, we had groups in school where we would just follow baseball and meet up every morning to talk about what we watched that night, who pitched, how well they did, what your favorite player was doing that you modeled yourself after, and we acted like them in school. This is what it was, right? And then we were talking about it, it wasn't until probably 2001 that we transferred from baseball into other sports, specifically basketball and football, mainly football first and picking up basketball. Because after Jordan left and my brother stopped crying about you all leaving, we could watch certain things again. We'll teach him about that later. But we we start watching other sports and like our love for baseball, it's not that like it just diminished, but we stopped paying attention to just baseball because we were playing other sports legitimately. So we were playing school sports. I was football, track, and I played a little basketball, but basketball really sucked. So basically football and track. Kevin was playing, he was doing soccer, and he's really was really good. State, all state, and et cetera. He's playing soccer. So he was focused on those things. And so our baseball takes time and it takes energy. And I always tell people, but I loved to still like on a Saturday afternoon, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna put the game on, I'm gonna relax to the game. Yeah, you relax to the game, like yeah, I'm gonna relax to the game. When we had some interviews, we actually went to an area near Charlotte to do some interviews. We actually had a really cool backdrop, yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. They were like, what, like between what's saying, what was I doing? I was out there watching them play. They're like, yes, I watched them. I'm like, yeah, this is good. We get we don't have to pay. We're just sitting here. We're watching the travel teams play. Yeah, and it was fun watching the travel teams, just watching the sport. And one thing that killed me was you're getting into like the 2010s, was them talking about the lack of diversity in baseball, and them being unable to find young athletes, specifically black and brown players, who wanted to play baseball from the states, and them having to go elsewhere outside to then bring in talent. And it blew my mind. And it was that it was at that point that I realized, oh yeah, I done forgot about baseball.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

So, what do y'all think that is?

SPEAKER_02 16:35

We don't have fields big enough to play stickball.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

That's what we played in in Connecticut. We played stickball. Why do y'all think that is this? Because you know, up north we had we play in the alleys. So you would get in an alley, stick, rubber ball, if you couldn't get a uh a real, and we'd be hitting and playing stickball. Yeah. But nah, that that's a good question. Like, why do you and I have to ask you this because you follow baseball. Um, I like your story about watching Nolan Ryan and his elder years, like, especially like how you became a uh a Durham West St. Arrangers. But now I get it, now I get it. It makes sense. Um why do you think that young athletic folk, and this is what I mean by like the athletes, because back in the day, the athletes, Deion Sanders, he wants to play baseball. Yeah. Why why are we not attracted to baseball? Athletes. And this is white, black, or because I'm talking even the white athletes, they're playing baseball. They're going out here, they they doing other things. They they playing football, they playing soccer, because you can play lacrosse, exercise other sports. We just don't baseball anymore.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah. I think I think it's a twofold thing. Number one, I don't think Major League Baseball really markets the black players like they did back in the 90s. And because I mean, it was nothing to see a commercial with Ken Griffey Jr. on it, or a commercial commercial with Frank Thomas on it. Come on. But now he's time to extend. Yeah, you don't you don't see that now. No, that, and then number two, the black players, they're getting priced out. Because I mean, baseball is an expensive sport to play, especially like equipment is expensive, then you got the the uh uniforms, you know, the gloves, the bats, that all adds up, and then maintenance. Maintenance, and then on top of that, you add the travel baseball teams. That's that's what we're watching today. Yeah, super expensive. Super expensive.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

What's a regular season now? 200 and something games?

SPEAKER_00 18:22

It's uh 162.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

What? And that's what you see.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

That's another thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

People are like, y'all don't play that many games.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

I'll try to explain. Well, you play back to backs and sometimes double headed.

SPEAKER_04 18:31

Well, I'm thinking about the wear and tear of my body now.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

No, it's it's most of the time. That's it. It's good. It's it's so funny. You don't you aren't dying. It's a lot of sports.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, it's a lot less strenuous than playing both.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Okay, okay. Or even soccer. Like you aren't going up and down a full 90 just running and running and running.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

It's chess. It's chess, it's a mental game. And then you do use your athleticism in spurts, and that's where you have the game changers. And this is what really kills me because growing up watching, I know athleticism matters. Why do you think the Negro League coming into um normal and was so big? It forced athleticism for everybody because you had your athletic players back in the day that weren't in the Negro Leagues, but they were out, they are outliers. Yeah. In the Negro Leagues, everybody athletic. You had to be an athletic player. And so, OSTs, you can't you have your Prince fielders, you have your 300-pounders, who will be in there slugging the ball, and they do their job, they get on base, and then we let the there's they're just direct hitters. They come in, they do their designated hitter, come do their job, get off on first base, right? But that's cool about baseball. Everybody can have a place. You don't have to say, I'm lifting 300 pounds on bench press, I can squat such and such to play baseball. No, the skinniest little pee-wee guy can go out there and he can be a great player in baseball. There's a spot for everybody on the field. It's an all-inclusive game. Okay. And that's what I always liked about baseball. I didn't have to worry about the fact that when I was little and I wasn't growing fast, I'm the smallest of all my brothers. I'm the I'm the the one that didn't grow the run. I could go out there on the baseball field and compete with everybody. And it was actually good too that I was small because I can run bases and round bases good, I can field well and etc. And I can play defense. And so when I look at it now and I'm just like, wow, so we have to go all the way over to Japan to get our best players. And I'm like, it's supposed to be America's pastime. And one crazy thing about it, and I want to see if this is something that you're thinking of that you think might be an effect on this too. There's a generational divide. And part of it is specifically in the black community, we have uh this group where we have an age gap. There are those folks that grew up watching the ascent of the NBA with personality and etc. Yeah. And the MLB, and I like that you said this, was with marketing, but they kind of became the NFL where the shield is everything. It's the MLB. You're on a team, the team has legacy. That's what you are. You're the team. You have a number on your back, but you may not have a what? A name. Yeah. And so for a lot of black individuals, you're like, yo, I'm trying to make a brand out of this because I want to make this something that will take care of myself and my family for generations. And I thought this was weird because in the 80s, yo, we had names. Yeah. We had blockbuster names. Yeah. Early night, blockbuster names. Even up to the issue with the steroid era. Don't talk about steroid. That's what the steroid era brought me back into the baseball basketball. It brought me back. That's what I'm saying. It brought people back into baseball. I'm like, you had names. And then I think part of it, and this is me analyzing stuff because of course watch baseball. I think the steroid era led to a an over reaction by Major League Baseball and the commissioner to make the league more how you say reputable again. Because they felt that the steroids kind of it's almost like right now with bay with basketball, they're talking about trying to figure out a way to change the rules so they don't score so many points. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah. Because it's it's hurting people's ability to enjoy the game because a hand check is a good thing. People fail to realize there's certain ways and style in which you play the game. Baseball's big for this, like the rules change really matter. The type of baseball that you can use. Yeah. Oh, it matters. What kind of bat you can hit with? It matters. And people like, what are you talking about? I'll like all these things.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

But when you talk about so many games, and that's why I just came back from a guy's trip, and all the other guys there play fantasy baseball. Yeah, fantasy baseball game. I don't know shit about fantasy baseball. Except for what I get from them. But the nuance of stats and baseball makes it so that like you really can sit there and nerd on this stuff and and it's the beginning of analytics. Yeah, really, really. Yeah, that's what fantasy baseball is, is it's about analytics, and now I don't actually care about a team. I just care about this list of people, and so I follow each of them. And then you you have more reason to follow more games when they don't actually matter, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah. And that's what I like. I I thought that was a that was a that's a good thing because we used to do that back in the day with just with the cards. Right. That's where it was collective. And then there were games that you would play with the cards. This stuff goes back to the 50s and 60s. And you played the games with cards, and we have our little bottle caps, and we would follow our little players based on how many points and stuff they made, and we look at our cards and we say, all right, based on this guy's percentage, what do we think we're gonna do? We do little kids. Right, this is essentially Pokemon. Yeah, right. Okay, that's how it was.

SPEAKER_04 23:13

And that's how that's so crazy.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

But we were kids doing this, so I'm like, all right, so where did the divide come from? So like now we don't do that anymore in our community because I mean we had a whole lot of think about it. Baseball's the only league that black people created sports wise in the US. Baseball. We never created a basketball league, never had a football league that was competing with any of the but the baseball league was.

SPEAKER_04 23:42

So where's the divide? When did it happen?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Uh is it I mean, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

I'm not a sports guy, but I am a marketing guy. Go ahead. This is why you're here. The NBA and the NFL started dumping in shitloads of money into absolutely everything.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

This is this is you ready? And this is what's weird. And remember, I was saying this is why this is why I was like, all right, something happened around 2000. Because you gotta imagine, Jordan was gone. Yeah. Right? And so that was a big dearth for the NBA. They had to bring him back, basically. That's how big of a dearth it was. The NFL, they had just had a change in the way in which the league operated with the Shield being the forefront of things, and them trying to at least say, Hey, we saw the NBA. They did this thing with this guy called Michael Jordan, and it sold money. So let's start trying to have some faces of the league, right? So mainly it started with quarterbacks. You had John L. Way at the end of the 90s, and then coming into the 2000s, we created this guy named Tom Brady, who I love. But we created this guy named Tom Brady. You had Peyton Manning and stuff like that coming out of SEC. And sorry, we got these faces that we're gonna now promote. And I guess in my thing, I really think, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna be angry about this. I really think with baseball, I think they really got angry at the steroid era, and they kind of blew up the ship because of what happened with the steroid era. Because remember the home run chase? And we were watching McGuire and Sammy Sosa and then Barry Bonds. Yeah. And people literally were tuning into the games. They didn't care nothing about the games. I know they're gonna be able to do that. They just wanna see if they were gonna hit.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I didn't care nothing about it, but I wanted to see it. Somebody's gonna be talking about it tomorrow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah. Are they gonna hit? Are they gonna hit? And growing up, like me watching baseball in the mid-early 90s, I wanted to know what the pitchers were gonna do. We're gonna get strikeouts. How good's the defense? Right. No, we need these people to score because we're getting eyes. And so I was like, gosh darn it. All right, so for like the casual baseball fan, do you think it's and they always say this chicks dig the long ball? Do you think the issue is that we don't have the long ball like we used to have the long ball? Ooh. That's a big thing. Yeah, that's that's a good point.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Man.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Do we need it back? Do we and what I mean by that is uh they try to change the the batting, the bats, and they try to change the ball change the ball to make it more conducive to squad without having to have people steroid. Yeah. Do you think that baseball, and this is gonna this is almost like sacrilegious to say this, do you think it's too boring for people to watch?

SPEAKER_00 26:06

I'd say for the well for for the m for the general populace, I'd say yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Because I know a lot of my friends that that aren't into baseball, that's the reason they always give me as the why. It's like it's just it's too boring for me.

SPEAKER_04 26:18

Well, how do y'all get excited? What is ex what excites it about it for you? What's exciting?

SPEAKER_00 26:23

For me, I love the fact that it's to me, baseball is like a game within a game. What I mean is like the pitcher and the catcher, they're trying to figure out the best strategy to get the batter out. The batter is in the batter's box, he's trying to figure out what the next pitch the the pitcher's gonna throw. Like, okay, he's gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 26:40

Because he can't see. Right. Yeah, he can't see what they signal him.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, unless unless he's a Houston Astros player. See, ah bang bang.

SPEAKER_04 26:48

I mean, he got eyes in the back of his head. He got eyes in the back of his head.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

No, there's been there's been a lot of people beating.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Technology. Baseball's look. Baseball is like this. If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

You gotta that's how I learned how to cheat was playing baseball. That's an interesting concept too, because that is the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

So they can, you know, you know what's going on. You know, so you're in the case.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

And they really do like try to map out each other's signs and isolate them so they can't.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

But you are supposed to do it live. You're supposed to look at it like learn because you play 162 games, right? And you're playing like two a days, and then you may even have like a series with a with a team, you may play three or four games in a row. You're supposed to learn it over the time, and then as you see them through the season, okay, all right, I see the call, I know what they're about to do. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

So get just like football, football's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

They're the same thing if you know, if if if my LeBron's really good at it in back pocket, then it means that's not true. If my gloves, you know, over here to the side, it means it is.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

So, you know, oh man, it's a good thing. Sometimes people are turning, sometimes people move their caps. They got different sides. And yeah, the thing is you also have coaches, you have coaches on the field that give runners directions as well. So as you're running base running, you know if you need to keep running smoother or if you need to pull up and stop at the base. They give you and that's what's cool. Like you said. Game within a game. But specifically, what I'm referring to is that the Houston Astros, they had this issue where they had trash cans that would be banged a specific amount of time so that they could tell people what pitches were coming because they had a camera set in center field watching the and you ain't supposed to do that. Yeah, the straight cheating. Look, and this is what's so funny about this. This is so funny. I say that, right? And I'm a Patriots fan, so we know a little bit about cameras and sign stealing. And so that was sign stealing, as they call it. So what would happen is all right, you got the curve coming, bang, bang, you just says bang out of nowhere twice. And they're like, okay, cool, got curved. Yeah, wait for it. And so they would sit on the breaking ball so that they can smash it.

SPEAKER_03 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

And so those are things that you understand, like in the game of baseball.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Yeah, you see, she liked that. There you go. They got it.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

They won a title from it. So say it. And that's my point. It makes the game.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

I don't watch baseball, but I would never have known that if you didn't say that. You see what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Yeah, yeah. But that's for me, like, like you're saying, things that make it exciting about watching the game. Or I like watching people hit home runs, of course. But I actually like the defense. Okay. I like watching double plays. I like watching, I love it. I'm telling you, because there's a certain amount of chemistry you have to have to get it done properly. Knowing where you're supposed to be, where the ball's supposed to go, the runners on the base, making sure you don't allow somebody to score because you don't throw it to the right place location. You gotta know where the ball is supposed to go before you get it. Watching somebody rob somebody of a home run. Oh, yeah. I like watching that stuff. Diving catches. I like watching when a pitcher goes in and is working for working on a no-hitter. Oh, I'm gonna sit there and watch the whole game now. Now my wife's just like, turn that off. It's time to eat. Not a little that's playing the background. You keep eating. I'm playing America because he's working on a no-hitter right now. We seem to get it. Because there's certain things that are hard to do in baseball that when you watch somebody accomplish it, it's amazing. So like you have so in other sports, you have these things you can do, and I always think this is funny with the NBA specifically, is that now they're trying to act, trying to act like baseball, so everything is a record, but everything's something new because they've been following stats now. So such and such is the first person to have a triple-double on his birthday.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

Ain't nothing special. Yeah, that's like these new holidays that be popping up.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

If you ain't pitching a no-hitter on asset, I don't want to hear about it.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

I don't want to hear about it.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Let's go, Doc Ellen.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

My wife asked me about that. She said, This man was high on drugs. He was playing. I said, Yeah, he was. He had a good game that but she said, was that like was he drunk up like steroids? I said, no, this is not a game.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

He thought he had another day to recover, and it was like, oh shit, I gotta get to the field. And showed up tripping balls, pitched the whole damn game, did not, nobody touched the pitch the whole time. Nah, he was in a zone, literally. Just yep.

SPEAKER_04 30:46

Oh, I got a quick question. If you guys were on the team and you had to play one position, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 30:51

I would love to play shortstop, but I'm left-handed, so that's that's not a question for me. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't work.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Imagine shortstop, no. Yeah, left stop. Again, baseball is there's specific things. Yeah. You gotta, yeah, so you're not gonna be on no shortstop, but that's a that's a that's the that's the cool position. It's like it's like playing midfield in soccer or being a point guard in baseball.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Like that's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_04 31:18

Yeah, basketball. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

I mean, I played left field in baseball, and now it was garbage. Seriously? I was so bad. Yeah. The arm strength or what? Just hitting. Just my in the no hitting, I was fine. Like I got the eye. Yeah, like I was second in, I was always second in the lineup. And well, until they moved me up to the next level, and they started throwing off speed pitches.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Oh, yeah, you gotta talk about this. I was listening to this, and I thought this was funny. But wait, wait, wait, wait. Can I ask you a question before I asked you about that change up?

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Okay. Why did you did you ever want to play third base? It was never offered, the opportunity was never offered to me. Wow. Because usually if you get hit in the left, I ain't even pushed third base. Yeah, I think it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

I always want to play, I want to play center field.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

I want to run.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah. Yeah, I want to run. But left field, that's five people.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah, I think my problem was tracking the ball once it got to my territory. I was like, all right, which way do I I don't know what I'm doing? Stop. It was one time I caught a it was one time I caught a ball that went in the left field, and I liter it was literally was a line drive straight to my glove. So basically the I didn't catch the ball, the ball caught me.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

What is it? You have hand-eye coordination, you're like No, you can hit.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

I mean, I can hit, but it was just the defensive part. Tracking, that's my that's my favorite part of baseball.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Like when the when the ball is in the air and it's coming my way, and I'm trying to gauge like where I need to be in order to catch it successfully. I had a really bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

You could kill yourself out there. Yeah. You can see people run into that fence not ready, prepared. That's oh, full on injuries.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

You'll be out for weeks. That's exactly what happened to me. You know, I'm I'm watching, I'm trying to emulate the players I grew up watching. All right, here's my hot dog moment. So it was it was during summer baseball camp.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

Oh, no.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

This guy hits a uh a line drive towards me in left field, and I'm running to the fence, and I'm thinking, all right, here's my Griffey moment. I reach out to catch it, and I'm the ball sails over me and I just backflip over the fence.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

It was a mess. That fence does not move. Yeah, your body will react. That stay in the same spot. And that was man, I'm not gonna lie, like as a kid, I was like, please hit it so I can jump up on the fence and grab the ball, right? I want to do that. Yeah, but no, the alright, so hand-eye coordination is integral when it comes to hitting.

SPEAKER_03 33:33

Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

But when it comes to fielding, tracking is everything. Yeah. So you have to be able to track that ball because if not, you're gonna end up with lots of black eyes. Oh, just pop hit you right in the face, right? Lots of black eyes, or you're gonna miss the ball completely. You're gonna underjudge, overjudge where you're supposed to go. So one of the best things, like I that's why I like playing field because I was fast, I can move quick, get to the ball, but I was good at tracking. So I would go get the ball. Sh man, I was good at it. I was real good at it. I loved it. Because you get to go catch and throw, catch and throw, catch and throw, right? Yeah, but you gotta have a good arm as well to play field. So that's why I like because I had a pretty good arm. I got power to get it down. Not Bo Jackson power, but I had good pretty good arm power. Bo Jackson was crazy. I didn't have to play. Bo Jackson was crazy. Bo Jackson threw somebody out.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Y'all remember when Bo Jackson had a had a cartoon?

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Prostars.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah. This man was amazing. He was different. He was Superman. He should have never played four.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Baseball was a little bit better promoted in the 90s, I think.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

It was. He should have never played football.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

Well, like you said, everything is politics. So like if it was a black started by black people, why would they keep promoting it?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:32

It's phased out. Phased it on out. They phased it.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

We got phased out on it, man. And I I think like, and with baseball, it's a gentleman's sport, too.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

And what I mean by that, playing the game the right way, I can't stand that. Say look, I think that's another reason why I think a lot of uh the younger black folks really aren't attracted to baseball because they see that as showing up, they see that as showing up your opponent. That's the unwritten rule in baseball. No swag. If you hit a home run, you can't show up.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

The most you could do is flip a bat and that still seemed considered bad. Oh, try to hit a home run, right? And swag surf to the front, to the first base and go around. No, you're supposed to No, you ready? Not a real penalty, but you get penalized from the media, the other team, even your coach will talk trash when you get back to the bowl. You jog that thing out around.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

And go ahead. Oh, I was just saying, like, the part of like the the model of how you come up in baseball, you might be playing minors for that's what I'm about to, yeah. And so then if you show it up in the minors, they're not gonna bring you up to the majors. But you gotta attitude problem. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yeah, that's what'll call it. Oh, and oh, but it's what also I was gonna say like if you show off after you hit your home run, the pitcher, he's gonna feel a way about it, despite the fact that he didn't do his job successfully, and he's gonna throw the pitch and hit you with it. Oh, you get done to quote unquote teach you a lesson, right? Oh, and that's fine in baseball.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

You can do that.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Well, yeah, now yeah, getting fouled on a basketball court is one thing, getting hit with a hundred miles an hour fastball on the shoulder is like oh, you can kill somebody.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

You get mad at me for being for doing my job. You should you should throw the pitches yourself for failing to do your job successfully.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

That always that always run me the wrong way.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

And that's why you'll see people clear a bench.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Yeah, don't clear a bench. You hit somebody with a ball, it's on purpose. Because look, I'm telling you, these guys have so much control on pitching. There's technically not a reason they need to hit you in specific body parts. I could see if they hit you on your foot, ball drop went wild, cool. But like stuff that goes directly at your head or to the mist. Yeah, that is on purpose. I play too much baseball. I know that that's not what's going on. That's like a mental. Yeah, you're trying to hit me. And just speaking on this, and I and I think this may be one of these issues, and I want to get on this is the length of time it takes for somebody to maturate in baseball. Way different from any other league. Yeah, you are not gonna have many pro players coming from high school going into the pros. It's not something that occurs. You'll have every once in a while have your two out of three every 40 years that can go from high school to a minor, a quick stop or college, and then go play Farm League to go, and that's still like a three-year process.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Um, for you, and this is what I want to tell them is like that the the changeup that you have from playing the smaller league going up into the Dixie Youth League, how how different the game was.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Yeah, because like I was in Dixie Youth, I could tear the cover off the ball because all they because all the pitchers were their main focus was to see how hard they could throw, yeah, how fast they could throw. Just kidding. But once I got to the next level, which was Dixie Boys, they're throwing all like off-speed pitches, curveballs, splitters. Skillful. Yeah. I couldn't do anything. I went from batting second in the in the lineup to going down to ninth. I swear to you, I don't think I made contact on a single pitch for about a month and a half. Oh, that hurt your confidence. It hurt, it crushed it.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Oh, Lord Jesus. My confidence was out the door. Because you can't, again, baseball, you're by yourself on that plate. Yeah. Yeah. There's nobody else there. They just watching you fail. And I know what you mean. Like, all right.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

It is interesting because your offense is totally solo and your defense is that team that you're trying to get that serendipity where everything lines up right.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

I love watching good dribble and double plays. But yes, hitting in baseball is one of the, it can be one of the most stressful situations. That's why people hate off-speed pitches. That ball hangs and drops. Yeah. Doesn't get you, because it's all about timing. And depending on your hitting um routine, some people's hitting routine actually sets them up for failure. Because they set themselves up for a specific timing that they're waiting for on a pitch. And if that pitcher's smart and they realize, and this is what he's talking about, strategizing that game that's going on within the game. You got a player that comes up and goes, okay, this is a slugger here. He has this thing does with his shoulder when he shimmies, and then he's ready to swing. All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna you literally strategize against this pitcher. So I mean against this hitter. So when he comes in, he has no chance and doesn't realize he has no chance. And he's just swinging that air every time, swinging that air, swinging that air, and he gets angry, throws it back down there.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Tremendously athletic. Tremendously athletic, yep. But you just you just got their tick down and got you. I got his read.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

It's just like Deion Sanders said. He said the hardest thing for him to ever do in sports was hit a baseball.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Everything else was easy. Yeah. He can return a punt for a touchdown, no problem. He can evade all 11 people on that field. But when it comes to doing that other thing, hitting a. What did he say? He said, he said, the ball is this big. He said the bat is this wide. You have to make those things contact. And then control where it goes, control where it goes. And this is what people don't get how skillful baseball players are. They can hit it where they want to hit it. Oh, yeah. Most of the time. They're hitting it when you see them hit, unless it's a pitch that they're behind on, like they don't get into the pitch. If they get good contact, they're directing that pitch where it needs to go so that the runners, the base runners, can get where they need to go. Again, this is strategy with baseball. That's why it's like playing chess. So if I have somebody who's on first, I'm not gonna hit it to third base.

SPEAKER_04 39:58

You're gonna hit it.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

I'm gonna hit it to where they're at so that they can get and I can get to where I need to go to. I can sacrifice myself so third can get in. That's it.

SPEAKER_04 40:05

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

That's why you have things like bunts and etc.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

So people don't know this though.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

It's a rich game. Why do you think they love it so much in Japan? Because they like strategy.

SPEAKER_04 40:15

So, like, what's the conditioning like for baseball?

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Die in the heat. Yeah, this is funny. All right, so conditioning, and he could tell, I mean, because he played, right? Like, tell him like what conditioning looks like. And I'll explain too, because I played too. It's not, it's not what it's not football conditioning.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

Well, for me, I mean, our conditioning consisted of just doing we basically just ran sprints. That's it, yeah. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

What? Oh, what did I tell you? You could be 305 pounds and be a professional. Baseball. Babe Ruth was not a small man. No, it wasn't. Have you ever seen this guy? All right, so very well-known player, Manny Ramirez. He came in and shape. He left out, oh, he wore the baggie and some baggie. It wasn't because he was trying to look cool. It was because he was his physique. But his skill level was there to play. He could hit, he can, he can um play defense well. It was just in his spot that he needed to be in. Um, even during the stairway era, you saw a lot of this, you saw a lot of huge third basemen. Third base, you don't gotta run nowhere. You're just holding that base down and you're doing it. That's it. That's all you're doing. And when you understand what position you're playing, you build your physique for that position. So most athletic positions you're gonna have are gonna be your fielders and that shortstop. Oh my lord, shortstop is a crazy position. Yep, you gotta fast twitch muscle, the ability to then fill in for the second basement and move around, come up for the pit. Like, you have to do a lot and you're thinking a lot during the entire time. You're calling shifts on defense. Yep. You're like shifts on defense? Yeah, there's shifts on defense. There's shifts in baseball. If you like, what? Yeah, you gotta call, like, so for instance, like we were talking about this is getting nerdy stuff now, just so they can hit it. Yeah, let's start out. So in baseball, when certain people hit, they have tendencies. Like you said, 162 games, you can pile a bunch of stats and information. You don't know where somebody likes to hit the ball based on their statistics. So what you do is you literally set the field up for them. So when it's time for somebody to come up, say, hey, this is a left-handed hitter. He likes to pull. So we're gonna shift everybody over to the right side. Oh, this person likes to push out this way because they're slugging. This is their favorite sweet spot. That's what he likes to do. The sweet spot. Yeah. Shift everybody over there, and we're gonna wait for them. This person likes to hit grounds, they don't have a lot of power, and so they're usually gonna bring people up so we can be ready for it. Even if you have the way that the bases are set up, say you're having you have certain people on certain bases, first, second, third, etc. You will then set up to be ready to run and turn plays. It's my favorite part. I love when you have two people on base, you got someone only coming to hit. I'm like, you see what defense is about to do. It's about to be fun. Because now you have a chance to turn a double or triple play. And this is where your baseball IQ has to be high. Because you have to know as soon as that ball's hit where you need to get it to based on the side of the field that you're getting it at, right? So that you can turn that play and hopefully get the outset you need to end and save your pitcher from getting yelled at.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

And they set defensive traps. Yeah. Oh, yes, they do. Yeah, they'll try to get you to put yourself out there a little bit and then close it back up. Bam!

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Get you. And so, and it another thing, too, is like cat and mouse game about baseball is just like watching the runners attempt to get steals. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 43:19

Oh, like they cheat halfway?

SPEAKER_01 43:21

They're trying to run and steal a base. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's this real mythical thing about stealing home plate. You'll never really see people do it because during there, you shouldn't. It doesn't make sense. Percentage is not high.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

So just first and second?

SPEAKER_01 43:32

First, second, third. I mean, not first, second, third. Second and third, second and third. Yeah, you can't steal. Don't steal first base.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

Look at that. What are you talking about? Why not? Well, why not? Like if the pitcher's got the ball and he's about to throw it to the catcher, right? Yeah. Oh, he can turn around and throw it to first base. Right. So you behind at second, you can go to third, but if he catches you at the side, then he okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

And it also depends on where the other players are. So, like, if you're on second base, I mean if you're on first base and you have somebody in second and they steal third, and then you want to try to steal second to move, and you have somebody hidden, you can get caught in between first and second base and get in what's called a pickle.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

Oh. This is what I'm saying. Baseball's so fun. What other cool words y'all got?

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Oh god, baseball got words that go back 100 years, man. It's a very old sport. So you're talking about something that's been around since the 1800s.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

And it was like a very local league sport that then got pushed national and became like this unified thing. But it everybody had, it was like soccer, everybody had their own set of rules at one point.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

But enough of nerding now. I get to bother you some more about what you like about baseball. So could you tell our audience a little bit about how you became a fan of the team that you are a fan of? Because this is a very interesting story.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Sure. So I've been a Texas Rangers fan since 1993.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

And growing up here, I mean, this is like deep in the heart of Atlanta Braves country. Oh, yes. Yeah. Come on. And the biggest reason why I root for the teams I root for is because I didn't want to pick a team that everybody else was rooting for. So I was one day my parents decided to uh put their nickels together and buy a satellite dish because where I live was so rural, cable wasn't available. So there was a TV station in Dallas. I can't remember the name of it, but every Saturday night they would have a Texas Rangers game of the week. And this was right around the time I became familiar with Nolan Ryan. Oh man. And, you know, he was a big deal. Yeah. Because I mean he threw like seven no hitters.

SPEAKER_03 45:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

And I had his car, and I looked at it back, and I'm like, this man had 5,700 strikeouts. Like that is ridiculous. Crazy. And he happened to be pitching that night. He didn't have a particularly good outing, but I'll tell you, the one player that made me a fan was Julio Franco. Talk about him. Julio Franco, that batting stance. It's like a set. I've never seen him. This was like this was right before Sheffield. Okay, yeah, good Sheffield. I've never seen anybody hold their bat like that.

SPEAKER_04 45:58

Wait, do it again?

SPEAKER_00 45:59

It was like this. I mean, typically they have the have the bat on his shoulder like this. I was like, man. And just tearing the cover off the ball. And he was a lot older than he wasn't there as a prime primary. So yeah, he was the man that made me a Texas Rangers fan. And this it's been a love affair ever since. Did you like the Rangers when George W.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Bush was?

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

Didn't it? That's the best job he ever did.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

I tell people this all the time.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

They won the back-to-back World Series.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Shout out to my dog Ron Washington.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Go ahead. Nah, man. Great look. I tell people I don't talk too much about that gentleman, but one thing I will say is he knows how to run a darn baseball organization.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

I'll give him that. Did a great job with him.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Great job with him. So I'm just gonna go my fault since he said it. I'm a Seattle Mariners fan. And I became a Seattle Mariners fan because, first of all, I was a fan of all Seattle sports, not football. So, basketball, baseball, Seattle fan, brother Tate, since I was a little kid. Sean Kent, Gary Payton. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Me too. Edgar Martinez. This is me, you know, Randy Johnson. This is what I'm watching, right? Jake Bunner. Yeah, Jake, come on. I used to be playing the little golden glove game. Like, wait, Drake Bunner. Then people come like, y'all really sitting in here playing this game? Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, this is fun. What's this wrong with Sean? No, this is fun, right? So that's what I grew up. I was a fan of. And then, of course, lost my basketball team. Sadly, they stole them.

unknown 47:21

They stole them.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

But my baseball team stayed. And the one thing that did make me sad about my team is that technically, like, Seattle Week became a farm league team for other organizations with bigger dollars. Yeah. And this is another thing with baseball is the money game. Money aspects totally different. You can't have inequality in baseball.

SPEAKER_03 47:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

And so, like, as our we would get these great players that would come in, and as they would develop, even like right now, I'm scared, we can't keep them. They will pay them money to leave. And so we lost a lot of our talent to other um organizations, specifically the Yankees.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

They really pay you to leave.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

Child, baseball is a good contract's an asset.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

They straight buy it out and move you over. It's like soccer. Yeah, I was gonna say, it feels a lot like European soccer.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

European soccer, yeah. And this is just so you understand because you gotta imagine, these folks, like you were saying, what the way that baseball works is you start from your your normal youth leagues, you play in normally high school, etc., may do travel team, you go to college, and then you're gonna play minor league. And then you got different types of minor league. You got your different, your triple A and et cetera. You may stay there for a while before you get the chance to actually get to the major league. You may be on a 10-year journey, eight-year journey, right? By the time you get to major leagues, if you hit that spot where someone thinks you are worth it, you're taking that money because you've worked such a long time to earn real capital. And so I can't even be angry at them when it comes to some of that. Because I understand, like, you worked so long for a payday. It's not like these guys coming out of high school, staying one year in college, going straight to the NBA, I'm getting paid $53 million. No, that's not happening. You paid your dues.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

You think that's a disconnect right there though?

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah, because a lot of these guys, you can't remember what you said, the cost. Yeah. The cost of baseball, yeah, upkeep, maintaining your equipment is so expensive that for you to do it, you have to have a really good family system backing you up. Why do you think Patrick Mahomes don't play baseball? Why do you think Russell Wilson don't play baseball? They were good.

SPEAKER_04 49:20

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

They don't play baseball because it didn't pay immediately. Right. And it's expensive. So they went to this sport that would pay them sooner.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

Well, then if you get an injury, oh yeah. If your career's over in your second year of the minors, like, well, that was a long waste. Long waste. Whereas, you know, the NFL, I might you can come back, you can do a comeback. Or, you know, three years ago. Gatorade's giving me a big ass check that they're gonna have an insured policy on it, and it pays out whether I get killed or not.

SPEAKER_03 49:45

Like, you know, I get killed or not.

SPEAKER_04 49:48

But what's the endorsements like for baseball?

SPEAKER_01 49:51

You got great endorsement. I would say this, and you see if you agree with me on this. I I think baseball endorsements are very consistent. Meaning some of these endorsements have been around before I was born and they're steady. So if you can get an endorsement, this is the big thing, if you can get one.

SPEAKER_02 50:09

That that's the thing, is I think the steroids are scared the hell out of everybody because you don't want to back a player that it comes out that all of these records they were smashing are now void. Ready?

SPEAKER_01 50:19

We've had this issue recently with my man Matisse ran into issues with steroids. Great player, he was on the front of the cover for MLB The Show. He sure was doing this. He he had wanting to play. And he had young kids wanting to play baseball. Yeah, because they mean young kids would tell me about it, like, yeah, he got cool hair and stuff like that. And they were telling me because I I fought like I have um folks that I work with, they have young kids that play baseball. Um matter of fact, I was telling my brother, one of the folks that I work with, her one of her friends, his sons actually get called up for the play for the Blue Jays pitcher left-handed. No kidding called up, and I was like, Yeah, you're left-handed, it's gonna be looking good.

SPEAKER_03 50:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Um, and her other son already plays minor league. But one of the things that they were like, yo, I like these young players out here. And she was just talking about how the kids like their haircuts, they'll get their hair cut and they want to go out and play, and they're so pumped about it, and then he got hit, pop for steroids. And now he has to sit out. And the Saint, like their their rulings and judgments on steroids right now are extreme, man. So you'll miss a whole season, depending on what you were doing, a whole chunk of a season. And what that does is now your visibility's gone.

SPEAKER_04 51:23

Down.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

That's a good point. Visibility is going. And so we lose like a lot of that that draw into the sport gets taken away. Hurt your feelings, man. Hurt your feelings, man. I was so angry at that call. They're playing my LB. I stopped playing it. Hurt my feelings. I just stopped playing it. I had my little player there doing his thing too. Stop playing with it. Gosh. But then again, like my brother and I was like, man, we still love baseball. Yeah. And I'm like, man, I'm still gonna watch it. Yeah, it's almost like the NFL. I hate to say this NFL when people are saying the cabinet thinks they don't watch NFL. Yeah. Sneaking my little game every once in a while. And turn it off when my wife comes in.

SPEAKER_04 51:53

One foot in, one foot out.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

It's still getting me, man. They still get me.

SPEAKER_04 51:57

So, how did you get into podcasting?

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Yes. So I was doing a series of guest appearances on other people's podcasts. I got a shout out the board meeting podcasts. Two brothers. It was two brothers, they were out of Columbia. Shout out to uh Gerard Gerard Rose and Mike Holliman. Nice. And I mean, they they're on hiatus right now, but they invited me on to do a podcast. First one I did was we did a Thanksgiving, we did a Thanksgiving plate draft.

SPEAKER_03 52:22

Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, that was that was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Yeah, so I got I got bit by the bug, and then they started inviting me back on their podcast to do more appearances.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

And I was sharing the link with my friends and stuff, and then they were like giving me a bunch of of good feedback, and they were like, so when are you gonna start your podcast? You got a bunch of you already did a slew of of guest appearances. I'm like, eh, not really my thing. I'll just I'm the lefty, they call out the bullpen whenever they need me, you know, just to keep it just to keep the baseball theme going. Yeah. But it was around 2022. The the I started getting the itch and to start my own podcast.

SPEAKER_03 52:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

And I was like, all right, I want to do this podcast, but I don't know what to do it about. So I mainly my my my thing was look to see what everybody else is doing. Yeah. Do something different. Smart. Like everybody's talking about current events, everybody's talking about like the hot button topics, $200 dates, what a woman should do for her man. Oh my lord. The podcast arena is rife with that. It really is.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

The checkout line at the grocery store is playing with what the podcast world is.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

That's what inquiry Cosmo. Go ahead. But I was like, I was on Twitter one day, and I started noticing all of my black friends were into baseball as much as I was, and then on top of that, I started realizing all of them rooted for basically like all of them rooted for different teams. So I'm like, the light bulb went off. I'm like, I think I might have something with this with this baseball podcast. So around September of 2022, I started reaching out to all my Twitter friends via DM telling them what my intentions was. I said, I'm gonna start a podcast, a baseball podcast, and I would love to have you on to talk about your team and like how you fell in love with the sport. And all of them said yes. I'm like, okay, I got something. So that's how I started that one. And then the other one, I just wanted to make it so like general, like general discussionslash childhood anecdotes, and just talking about stuff people can relate to for the since we last spoke podcast. Like I talked about losing a grandmother, I talked about getting a colonoscopy, I talked about it. Yeah, I mean, I I talked about how I deal with anxiety, yeah, and but at the same time, you don't want to beat them over to death with serious stuff. So I'm mixing, I'll mix in some lighthearted things too, just like the same two guys I was talking about, they had me on to do the the the draft, the Thanksgiving plate draft. They also had me on to uh do these tournaments. We did like like hip hop one hit wonder tournaments and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 55:01

So I figured I could put them against each other, they go on the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

Yeah, so I figured I would keep I like that idea, and I figured I'd keep it going on my podcast, and then I will bring them on my podcast to do a tournament. So we did a Wu Tang solo album tournament. We did a fast we did a fast we did a fast food french fries tournament, a snack chips tournament. I had two other guests on. We did a real world cast members tournament.

SPEAKER_04 55:24

Oh, wow. Oh, that's dope, man. This is so cool.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

Mother's Day. I had my mom off for my Mother's Day episode, had my dad on for a Father's Day episode. Just and it was so cool hearing their accounts of like hearing how they met and just learning a whole bunch of stuff that I wasn't privy to. Yeah. And you know, having had them back on to uh talk about caretaking for a parent that was suffering from dementia, yeah, and just give them their first hand account and the the amount of feedback I got from that episode. Oh, I can imagine. We don't get to talk about that. Yeah, because people hit me up like I'm going through the same thing. And this that pocket, thank you for putting that out because it was so informative. I'm like, man, if you know I found my lane. You know, if I can if I can help out one person that's going through this or a similar situation, I feel like I did my job. But it's it's been so much fun.

SPEAKER_04 56:15

That's good. He's collaborating with people, cross-collaborating.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Seriously, yeah. He spoke to somebody too that we know very well, Dr. Napoleon Wells. Yes, I thought that was so cool. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_04 56:26

We're gonna have to do an event.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Yeah, we have to do an event. Invite everybody to do it. When you're coming in and you're leaving out, you're like, hey, I know who you are, and I'm like, yeah, we know all these people. We have to. And it doesn't even have to be our event. I just want it to be an event where everybody can come together.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

I gotta give all the credit to the unofficial official mayor of Columbia, Priest Jacobs. Yeah, he's really the straw. Yeah, he really does.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

And if y'all have not checked out Soul House, yeah, man. Check it out Soul House, support local galleries. Please. Support local galleries that support local artists, yes, and events. You know, this is a big thing. If we want to have fun things going on, we gotta do them.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Yeah, we gotta do them for ourselves.

SPEAKER_04 57:05

So, do you have anything coming up that we can help you promote?

SPEAKER_00 57:08

I don't I don't have anything really episodes. Yeah, just my episodes. But you know what you gotta do, yeah. Yeah, we gotta do that. Yeah, so how do we find your podcast? Yeah, you can find my podcast on all streaming all streaming platforms. The baseball podcast is called At the Plate with Danny Foxworth. The other podcasts are called Since We Last Spoke with Danny Foxworth. You can find them again on all streaming platforms. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel, it's at Danny Foxworth843, and you can find all the the video versions of my podcast episodes on there.

SPEAKER_03 57:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Yeah. Oh, one last thing before we get off. My man from ABC4.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Dean Stevens. Yeah, yeah. How old is Dean Stevens? He's 60. Shut up! Yeah, that he looked good. He takes good care of himself. He does. He was telling a story about him at the darn. What was it, the All-Star Game?

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

And when he said what All-Star game it was, it was like 1980. Yeah, I was like, bruh. Wait a minute now. How did you do that? I'm looking at him, I'm like, no, because I've lived in Charleston for a while and I'm watching him on TV. I'm looking at him, I'm like, how old is he gotta be? Nah, that was amazing. I like I love that episode. I like y'all's conversation. And kind of broke. I'm gonna leave you alone after this, but how did you get in contact with this?

SPEAKER_00 58:16

It's so wild, bro. It was last year I made a tweet talking about my sobriety because I was I had just gone 19 years sober.

SPEAKER_02 58:24

And congratulations on that.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Appreciate you. Man, it'll be 20 years May 13th. I still can't wrap my mind around that. But when I made the tweet, he left a comment because he's also sober, which I didn't know. And then, you know, we were just follow, we were following each other on Twitter, and I mean it wasn't like buddy buddy or anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 58:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

He would he would just leave a comment or like a tweet once in a blue moon, and then all of a sudden, he hits me up in the DM one day. Like, I'm just it's like about 15 minutes before I'm about to clock out of work.

SPEAKER_03 58:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:56

And he just hits me up just on the humble. Hey, this is Dean Stevens. I'm in my car driving right now. Would love to talk to you. Here's my number. Big fan of your podcast. I'm like, wow.

SPEAKER_04 59:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 59:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 59:07

This is a brain. This is a pain to me.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

Hey, bro, you probably listen to the thing and just hit you up right there.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

Yeah, I'm like, bro, what is life right now? So I clock out, I sit in the car, I I call a number, and we talked for probably an hour. Wow. Wow. And he was talking about his favorite episodes. I'm like, bro, what is going on? This is I'm like, this is the guy I grew up watching doing sports on the six o'clock news.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

And he's listening to me. Yeah. I'm like, bro, which way is up? And so after we get through talking, he was like, man, you know, I'd I'd l I'd love to catch up with you. And then after he left the news world, he became the director of this program called Wake Up Carolina. It's just it's like a drug treatment facility in Monk's Corner. And he's the director of development there. And then one day he hits me up on, he texts me right before I'm about to go to lunch. Gosh, it was probably three weeks ago. He's like, I'm in town, let's do lunch. And I was like, all right, let's do it. And sure enough, we got lunch and we just totally we just shared each other's, we shared our sobriety stories, and then I was like, man, I gotta get you on the podcast. He was like, Only make sense, yeah. Yeah. So had him on. We recorded last Tuesday. And he was like, Well, I want to talk about the sobriety stuff, but I want to talk baseball too. I was like, well, look, after we finished doing it. That makes sense now. If we finish doing Since We Last Spoke, then we'll do At the Plate. And he didn't even, I didn't even tell him, and he didn't tell me that after we that after we finished doing Since We Last Spoke, we were going to do a wardrobe change. He was like, give me five minutes. I was like, all right, I'll give you a chance.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:56

He was prepared. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

I was like, man, we were on the same wave. We were on the same wavelength. I mean, he had his astrologes gear on the head of my ring. My dog. This is meant to be. No, I gotta start doing wardrobe changes. Yes. Halley.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:12

Yeah, so where can everybody find you on social media?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:15

You can find me on IG at Danny Foxworth 843. And you can find me on Twitter at Danny Foxby, but it's spelled a little different. It's F-O-X-W-R-T-H.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:23

Okay. Ah, excellent.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

843. Well, this is an excellent episode. I appreciate you being with us today.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:29

You're going to have to have him on your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

Yeah, I'm going to have to come on your podcast. Yes. That's that makes sense. Yes, I can come and nerd out about some baseball.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

So I don't think I had him. Well, I think I had a Mariners fan, but it was a one first. You were far in between over here.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:41

Yeah, you definitely got an interview. Who's Kevin's team? Huh? Who's Kevin's team? He with you on the Mariners or he's still.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Nah, he wasn't with me on no mariners. You know he knows Seattle. He don't like no Seattle. The main thing, he was just following Barry Bonds and stuff. He don't really do too much on the baseball like me.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:54

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

Not like following a specific team. I was crazy. I had problems. But yeah, I'm definitely going to get you on the slide, man. Please do, please do. But this is DJ and What with the Hilltop Podcast. I'm Mike.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:05

Tamaya.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

And our esteemed guest, Danny Foxworth. Thank you so much for being with us. If you're next to somebody that you know you love, if you aren't, go find somebody. Tell them that you love them. You appreciate them. And until the next time, peace.