So You Wanna Talk to Samson!? Cardinals free food! Replacement players? A question about Stugotz! (Episode 1421 Hour 2)

You

One of my favorite hours of the week is starting right now because we try to answer all

of your questions and you've made it impossible because you have so many.

You pick up the phone and you call 631-377-4869.

I give you credit and props.

The quality of your questions is getting better and better.

There's the occasional cray-cray one, especially my favorite is the one that goes for two minutes

and then you don't hang up the phone and you keep recording the gunk, gunk, gunk as you're

driving across some sort of bridge over the course of the next three minutes because you

don't hang up the phone.

But believe me, we don't pay by the minute.

Thank you for dialing that number 631-377-4869 for so you want to talk to Samson.

You could end up on the show because guess what?

It's time for so you want to talk to Samson.

What a segment.

What started off as a segment during the course of a show many years ago has now become

its own hour.

So you want to talk to Samson comes from a movie called Half Baked.

For those of you new to nothing personal and for whatever reason, there's still people

coming to the show brand new.

So thank you.

There's a movie called Half Baked.

There's a character named Samson and people want to talk to him.

It's my name.

Spell the same.

Ask a question.

Get to me on Twitter, David P. Samson, Instagram, David P. Samson.

Find me.

Whatever you want on the street say hello and ask me a question.

Have that happened, including Coco in Tokyo where there were several nothing personal

fans who stopped and said hello while there was a weird glance.

I forgot to mention this to you, Coco.

Like a side glance, one of the people said and this made me smile.

Has anyone ever told you that you look like David Samson?

I said, well, as a matter of fact, yes, because I am.

David Samson, oh, I really love your show.

Quick question.

So thank you for that.

First question.

This was on X.

DMs.

Because my DMs are open.

I happen to see it.

David, what's the deal with the St. Louis Cardinals and their new season ticket promotion?

And is it really possible that I can go to a game for $29 and I can eat anything I want?

That's really awesome.

Thank you for asking because you know me.

You know two things about me and you know how to make the show.

Number one, I love St. Louis.

Number two, I love people in St. Louis.

Number three, I love quarter pounders, which she's used to eat two at a time when I was

a child.

I don't really do that anymore.

I'm talking back in the Styrofoam case age of McDonald's hamburgers.

But there was a player who played for the Cardinals, a man of many talents, including needle

point.

And his name was Mark McGuire and he hit balls a very far away.

In St. Louis at Bustadium, there was a sponsorship deal brilliantly done with McDonald's.

That was called Big Mac Land.

Get it?

Big Mac.

Mark McGuire.

Left field, upper deck.

If you hit a ball into Big Mac Land, good things will happen except to your waistline

and to your carbohydrate, not carbohydrates.

God dang it, coca, 4869.

If you hit a ball into Big Mac Land, good things will happen not only to your waistline

but also to your cholesterol.

Then a new stadium was built in St. Louis, which is not all that new anymore.

And Big Mac Land lived to see another stadium.

Mark McGuire of course doesn't play for the Cardinals anymore.

Why does it interest me because that would normally be a place where people would want

to congregate when Mark McGuire played because if you can catch a Mark McGuire ball while

you're in Big Mac Land, that's pretty cool.

And there were a bunch of stuff they did with sponsorships, yadda yadda yadda.

The thing about the St. Louis Cardinals is that I always called them the best fans in

Major League Baseball.

The amount of red they would wear would blow us away as visiting teams.

We just loved playing there because of the excitement, the crowds, total lunacy.

It never occurred to anyone in Baseball that the St. Louis Cardinals would go through what

they're going through now, which is a decrease in broadcast revenue, a decrease in attendance,

a decrease in overall revenue that's led to a decrease in payroll, that's led to

a rebuild and a lack of being competitive.

There was never a problem selling season tickets.

There was always such a demand.

Well, that demand has disappeared.

So the Cardinals announced yesterday a new ticket package that's gotten a lot of attention.

It includes all you can eat concessions and a seat in Big Mac Land.

You get soda, hot dogs, popcorn, and more.

Why would the St. Louis Cardinals be reduced to doing these pedestrian season ticket holder

packages that are absolute P are related, fantasy, and don't do one thing for revenue?

Boy do I sound cynical and I don't mean to.

I don't mean to.

But all these season ticket packages, when they're announced that they put a few hundred

seats aside, we used to do it.

You call it something.

You get it sponsored.

If you can, you name it something, then you do a deal with your concessionaire to offer

a bunch of things to people who are going to overeat and don't care what their waist

size is.

And then you get to count them as season ticket holders.

And it's just a win-win where you get to point to a cheap entry point, which no one's

going to use really.

Then you get to point to the cheap food prices, which no one's going to take advantage

of anyway.

And all of it's done in order for you to acknowledge that, hey, we're trying here.

I really think there's only 7% of you that will smile at that.

Who will smile at that, please, please, we're trying here.

Is that not selling?

We're walking here, Dustin Hoffman, anyone, Bueller, Koka, the movie, nothing, crickets,

freckis.

Why does this interest you?

Well, the Cardinals ranked 19th in MLB in home attendance during the 25 season.

I don't remember the last time they were in the top 10.

I seriously cannot remember when the Cardinals were not in the top 10.

It must have been in my career at some point, but I sure as heckfire, don't remember it.

So what do you do?

You got to change.

And the Cardinals are changing.

And it turns out the Cardinals are just like your team and my team.

And they're going through a bit of a dip with the closed window.

So why not announce all this propaganda-filled PR crap?

Is it going to help their attendance?

Absolutely not.

The total number of seats, and this is what I love, not announced.

I'd love to get anyone who has information on the total number of Big Macland seats available

for this package.

I'll give you an overrun to ready for it.

200.

200.

I'll say 250.

250.

I'll still take the under.

All right, Koka, how about a voicemail?

Hi, David.

This is Patrick from Toronto, Canada.

I had a question about, if the baseball season is locked out next season, would major league

teams recruit replacement players, or is that entirely different than when they did replacement

players, like, I don't know, whatever years ago?

Thank you, wishing you good luck to you and your family.

And congratulations, Koka, on your award.

Changa!

Thank you, Patrick, and thank you to Jeff Blair, Kevin Barker, and the great people in Toronto

and that great show up there, Blair and Barker, who have just helped us so much in Canada.

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The chances of there being replacement players in Major League Baseball are the same chances

that I haven't stopped growing vertically, zero.

The reason why there will be no replacement players, you may go back and you may say,

well that would make sense.

Why not?

That's a great way to threaten a union.

That's a great way to break a union, just say you want to not agree to what we want,

no problem.

We are going to move on without you.

The threat of replacement players has been used.

The existence of replacement players, of those who crossed the line and we did a sit down

with Kevin Malar, we talked about it.

The concept was used.

It created such division within ownership.

It created even more problems with fans and media than having no baseball at all.

It created the actual strength in the union that, wow, these guys really can't do it.

It's like NFL trying to do replacement players.

You laugh a little bit because you don't want to watch the UFL, no matter what the rule

changes are.

You laugh a little bit because you don't really want to watch minor league players.

So wait a minute, minor league players, campier replacement players, they're part of

the union too.

You wanted it.

You wanted to be in the union.

Now you've got to live with the consequences of a union that only takes care of the top

part of itself and not the bottom part and believe me as minor league players, you're

on the bottom.

You know this and you know that it's part of a separate CBA and all the other facts.

But the point is you can't be replacement players.

So it's not being considered, it won't be considered and it will not have an impact.

In fact, if I were you and I were thinking about how this labor situation plays out, Patrick,

I wouldn't focus as much on post lockout teams recruiting replacement players.

I would focus on what's happening on the union side and there's going to be so much

time for us to talk about this because the union has such issues going on right now

that they may just strategize and say to themselves, it's not even worth it to be a union

anymore.

Much more on that as we continue our talks on collective bargaining, but you want to

get on the show, there's a decent chance if you ask me about what's going on with the

work stoppage, et cetera, that we'll want to cover it on a weekly basis because there

is activity happening.

When we tell you during the course of a show, when we talk about statements that owners

are making or statements that players are making, when we talk about Scott Borrass yesterday,

all of that is to set the stage.

It's like we're introducing you to the cast of characters.

We're explaining what their roles are and then we're watching them practice and then

we're going to watch them actually play their roles.

So right now, we're not even in spring training of a work stoppage.

Forget regular season, forget the postseason of a work stoppage.

In the life of a work stoppage, I like to say I'm nothing personal when it's early, when

it's mid-early, when it's late early, when it's mid-mid.

You know how I like to give you categories of when to panic during the course of a season.

When it comes to a work stoppage in baseball and the ramifications, how long it's going

to last, what's going to happen with the union, what will happen with owners, we are not

even in the early part of early early.

Voice mail please.

Hi David, co-cantee.

This is Robert Matt from Label province.

I have a question about the Las Vegas A's ticketing strategy.

So the A's will have huge personal seat licenses that could probably only be paid by say casinos

in the city of Las Vegas, which means that when it comes to A's games, those casinos

will be giving away a lot of tickets to their customers.

So then, how do the A's expect to sell a lot of tickets to tourists, like to make up

their numbers, when in fact those tourists can expect to have those tickets pumped by the

casinos, or is there some well thought out strategy behind that, so they can make money

off the casinos and off the tourists as well.

Just wondering, thanks a lot, bye.

Robert, that's back-to-back Canada, co-cantee.

I don't know if you realize that, Label province.

You'll probably say, I love Label province, Trébia, just sweet Trézyre, who you'll

probably like, pour vous de comprendre ce que l'huideur.

So what's he asking here?

It's a good question.

Do you remember the story for those of you relatively new to nothing personal?

This is probably in the beginning stages of the show, when I talked about the Marlins

and the possibility of moving to Vegas, and I gave you our Vegas plan.

When I went to Vegas, and you meet with Oscar Goodman, the mayor, and you talk to show

girls, and you get all excited, and then baseball tells you you're not allowed to move to Vegas,

so you can't move to Vegas, but you tell Vegas you are allowed to move to Vegas, but then

they tell Vegas they're not allowed to move to Vegas, and then you lose some leverage

of Miami.

Anyway, I digress.

Our strategy in Vegas is that it was going to be all premium seating.

Small ball parts, as it sound familiar, premium seating with some bleacher seating outfield

a little bit in the second deck for the local people in Las Vegas who, sorry to tell you,

the per capita income in Las Vegas, it is not a very wealthy place.

And so there are three shifts in Vegas.

We've got the graveyard shift, there are three hour shifts with casino employees who

are some of the biggest employers in town, and so we had the thought that we were going

to sell all inclusive tickets to casinos and have them prepay.

And if they give them a way to people great, if they give them to their employees fine,

they give them to their clients fine, if people show up fine, if they don't show up fine,

because our view is we want the revenue.

It's fun to plan front of a full house, but it's really not the end of the world at all.

So you're asking, will the A's in all that they're doing, and we did a segment on them

yesterday, I believe, Coco, but will the A's do deals with casinos?

The answer is yes.

The PSL is a separate issue.

That is a stadium financing strategy where you get your fans to pay for the right to buy

season tickets later, and then you take that money and you use it to put into the construction

fund because John Fisher is forced to spend so much of his money to build this nine-acre

piece of Sydney Opera House in Las Vegas.

Do you have enough people to buy PSLs for the A's in Las Vegas, the answer is no.

You go to the casinos and you ask them to participate.

If they don't want to do PSLs, you ask them if they'll do sweets, etc.

And you do it knowing very well that those are deals that will include a very high no-show

rate.

It's the same thing that happens with shows that happen in Vegas right now, where the

casinos have tickets and then they are either used or not used, sometimes they're given

to clients who still don't use them and there are empty seats that then get filled at

the end on site, a little hint, if you want to go see Cirque du Soleil, there's going

to be empty seats that don't get used by casinos.

And then you can access it because wink, wink, these shows may be doing a double.

You know the old double booking scenario, but in any case, I digress again.

Let me get back.

Do Major League Baseball or the Athletics Ownership have any concern about the makeup of the fans

in Vegas?

Do they believe that by casinos becoming core sponsors and supporters that all of a sudden

the people who fly into Vegas will then get comp tickets and that will stop the ability

of tourists to go and not hit the numbers?

And the answer, Robert, I'm sorry to say, is no.

When the presentation was made on the thousands of tourists who would go to a game, zero percentage

of that number, which by the way was made up, which by the way has no chance of actually

happening, but zero percent was based on the high rollers in Vegas.

The high rollers will fill up sweet tickets if they go at all, but funny enough high rollers

tend not to go to any of that.

They take the tickets or take comps and they give tickets away to people they're with

so the families can get out of their way or they don't take tickets at all.

They'd rather take some sort of plane rider discounts or whatever else they would take.

But the tourists, we're talking about the majority of people who come to Vegas.

They don't actually gamble.

They'll go in and throw a hundred bucks down or fifty bucks down downtown or they'll

walk into Belagio and put a bet down with twenty five or fifty bucks one time.

Those are not people will be eligible for free tickets as we've talked about they barely

get a free drink anymore.

And so the general crossover that you're discussing truly does not exist.

So there's no concern on behalf of the A's or of Major League Baseball.

So don't worry about it at all.

The reason the A's will not hit their projections will have nothing to do with the casinos.

Please.

Hey David Gaxx here.

Hope you're doing well.

I have a question about stadium ops for non league schedule events, concerts, outings,

whatever.

How do teams go about booking those?

Is it just a relationship you have with a specific booking agency or do you have to bid

against other stadiums in town?

And as a quick follow up question, if it is a bidding situation, have you ever prioritized

business over personal personal over business rather that you could make sure Springsteen

was at your park instead of at the AAA or a hard rock?

All this and thanks for everything and Coco, man of the people, we love you.

You get a shout out every question, Coco.

Is that is that how we decide what makes it into the show?

Is that one of those things that we say to say, should we just say it?

Should we just say the quiet part out loud?

I'm happy to do that.

If you would like your voice to be on nothing personal, you better show the award-winning

producer, Matthew Jenga, Coco, some love.

Duckie award-winning.

Will you put up that picture again?

Do you have access?

Do we have the equipment where like just like that, you can put up a picture, Coco, where

you can press a button and it's you holding your duckie?

No.

We don't have that yet.

We need a bigger audience.

We need more time, more equipment, more people, more producers, more directors, more

white ploy, riffraff, something.

I've delayed enough that you should have that picture.

Okay.

Can't do it.

I don't even know if Coco's listening.

Are you even there?

He's totally silent during the entire show.

I don't know if he's tired or if he's resting on his laurels.

I don't know what the hell is going on.

Hello.

Yeah, whatever, something must be broken like our relationship.

What was the question again?

I can't remember.

Oh, non baseball games.

Would I want Bruce Springsteen playing at Marlon's Park?

Yeah.

Bruce Springsteen would play in arenas in Florida, mostly in sunrise, not shocking giving

the demographics.

Sometimes a AAA, which is not called that any more and down to Miami.

But I would have great interest in having bands that I liked or people that I liked.

But all you need to know about me, which I know you know, is that, and we're not at the

end of the show, we may be.

I don't think we are, is that for me it is just business.

So when I'm approached and saying, hey, Joe Osteen will come to your ballpark.

And by the way, you are going to make a lot of money, which would be really amazing because

it's a non baseball event.

And that would be good.

I'm not a Joe Osteen guy.

The guy's an absolute fraud beyond comprehension.

Literally steals money from his parishioners.

Literally.

But man, can he fill up a stadium?

The guy's got more security than Floyd and Mary weather for crying out loud and just

as tight.

What did you say?

Flood.

Oh, Mayweather.

Why do I say Maryweather?

Was there a boxer named Maryweather?

It doesn't matter.

Can you edit that?

That's when I hear your voice that is Floyd, Maryweather, not Mayweather.

We're the other way around.

Just edit it out.

That's thanks for talking to me, Coco.

So the answer is that second part of your question, yeah, of course.

If it's somebody who I like, it's great because yeah, I'm there for rehearsals.

And then of course I get to see him in the clubhouse in the locker room and you get to get

to go to the concert and you get to enjoy it.

Am I a guns and roses guy?

No.

But you know what?

You do what you do.

When there were super Saturday concerts and those of you who are old Marlon's fans would

know what those are, of course I enjoyed having, you know, certain people perform

versus other people.

But how does that work?

Well we have a whole department who we hired and we had people in jar in charge of live

event booking.

There's all sorts of stuff that gets booked at a ballpark because the number of home games

forget football, which is only eight or now sometimes nine out of three sixty five.

Asian baseball, which to me was only 81 of three sixty five.

So the math was we have all of these nights.

We wanted to book parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs.

We were interested in employee get togethers where companies would rent space to have retreats.

We'd be interested in getting people on the field, off the field in different areas

of the ballpark.

We'd be interested in ticketed events, non ticketed events.

Why would we want all this stuff?

We wanted the incremental revenue.

There can be a lot more money in the smaller events, believe it or not, because often you're

taking a big risk in the bigger events or you're getting a set fee from a concert

promoter to basically a rent payment where you're only making, you know, 25 to 100 grand

for the event.

It doesn't sound, it sounds like a lot, I guess, to people, but in terms of your overall

budget of non baseball event revenue, it was not a significant number.

If you're willing to take the risk on an event and sell tickets yourself and pay the artist

a guaranteed amount, then you could make more and my view was in Miami at Marlins Park

where we tried to present ourselves as the middle venue.

We are bigger than the arenas, so if you want to get two nights worth of revenue for one

night of work come to us because we're like playing an arena twice.

If you do not want to sell out hard rock because you don't think you can sell it a football

stadium come to us.

So we always tried to position ourselves in the middle.

Two problems with that.

I thought it would have been easier to convince musical acts to condense two nights into one,

but they were always worried that if they were arena performers, that they would have

a better chance of selling out two nights based on scheduling at a smaller number than having

twice as many people come only one night and if you've got an issue, you can't go or whatever

the problem is, then that's that and they wouldn't like the embarrassment of an unsold

upper deck.

Secondly, there are musical acts who would have concerns about, I was going to say, what

is the word?

What's the word for the sound?

This cannot be happening live, but it is acoustics.

You nail the coca as always.

You are honest.

So artists would have an issue with the acoustics acoustics in a ballpark, not good.

If you've ever seen and Bruce Springstin is playing Nationals Park as part of his 20 City

Tour that starts March 31st and he's going to end it, I believe at Nationals Park.

The acoustics inside, if you've seen Rigley and Billy Joel at Shay and all the different

places you could have seen singers inside a stadium, it's not perfect.

So it is difficult to make a living as a baseball facility doing concerts and other events,

but it doesn't mean you don't have a team of people who both sell and then execute as

stadium operation people, those events.

So it is a business that every team pursues, no question about that.

Coca do we have another voicemail?

Nope.

We have a thank you, Coca.

It is a written question.

Hi, David.

Love the show.

Well, thank you.

I was wondering, have you ever been offered another job in MLB?

If so, what was it?

Would you ever want to get back into running a team?

I don't know why that is one of the most commonly asked questions of me.

It's like when you have a career and you've moved on to a, how come you don't want to

ask me, would you ever want to get back into Wall Street?

Would you have any interest in going back and delivering newspapers?

I love doing those things.

I loved being on Wall Street.

I loved running a business in Europe delivering newspapers, but it doesn't mean I want to go

back and do it.

The answer is that I would not go back and run a major league baseball team because I've

done it.

When I first left the game, there were teams with whom I spoke to and there were possibilities

where there were openings that I was considering, what would that be like?

I had worked for one owner and I had been in Florida for so many years.

What would it mean for my life?

What would it mean for where I'd live?

And I so quickly got an agent and got into media that I didn't really have time to fully

engage with these teams.

Now during the course of my career, the calls that I would get from headhunters were to run

teams in other sports.

And I came close a couple of times to leaving baseball.

Losest I ever came was leaving for basketball, but at the end of the day, I wanted to win

another World Series.

At the end of the day, it did not interest me to leave Florida.

I wanted to get a ballpark built.

I thought that would be way more exciting.

And I turned out to have made the total right decision.

I love the fact that I stayed with one team for 16 years after being with one team for

two years.

I love the fact that I got to have a career where I could win a World Series and lose

100 games and sign players and trade players and stink and be good and get an all-star game

and host world baseball classic games and just everything that I was a part of, I loved.

But the thing about a run is that all runs come to an end.

And if you don't realize that, then you're going to get very jarred when the run that

you're currently in comes to an end because, and I'm not talking about family health because

that's a run that should never come to an end, though it has, I'm talking about your

work life.

All runs come to an end.

And the thing you can't do is the thing I was guilty of doing as President of the Marlins

after winning that first World Series is that I chased the second so badly to recapture

that feeling.

You can't go back, it doesn't happen that way.

And so the answer is I wouldn't go back if I could because I don't want to because I've

done that and I love what I'm doing now.

And the last part of that answer is that you can't be good at this if you still want

to be that.

So many times you see people on the air who are interested in getting back into the sport,

they changes the way they talk about it, it changes the way they're willing to talk

about it because they don't want to offend anyone, they don't want to bother anyone.

I can't imagine that you are confused in any way that you think that there is a possibility

that the way we do nothing personal would indicate that I would have an interest in

getting back into baseball on the team side because I don't.

But thank you for that question.

All right, Coco, what's next?

Hi David, this is Jeff and Dan Gideach, the best friend you've never met, wishing the

best for your family.

You are infamous for having a staff member that was wearing the gear of an opposing team

fired.

What are you going to fire Skogots?

The metal art media can't continue to advertise and Dan Levitard's show is Skogots

when he's defected to the opposition.

And the show continues to tease his comeback, which we all know isn't going to happen.

David, it's time to do your duty.

Thanks.

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Why people have been waiting for me to talk about this for a while, huh?

Okay, let's do a coca.

Let's do it.

So a little background is that my name is David Samson, and I work with Dan Levittard.

I have a show called Nothing Personal with David Samson that has been licensed to

Metal Arc Media, which is a company that is owned and operated by Dan Levittard.

Approximately 20 years ago, maybe more, I was doing movie segments on the Dan Levittard

show as president of the Miami Marlins.

It was the Florida Marlins back then.

The only team president to do a show like that, which was total nonsense, and I loved

every minute of it, and we had fun every single week doing a weekly segment.

I have known Dan Levittard and Stu Gotts since likely my first couple of weeks in Florida

in 2002.

The question that you are asking, I don't know why you mentioned that I would fire people

for wearing the wrong jersey.

Of course, you're not allowed to work for Pepsi and walk around drinking Coca-Cola.

It's just obvious.

It's completely absurd to think that every team doesn't do what I do.

You don't see the president of the Marlins wearing a Cincinnati Reds outfit.

You just don't do it.

You don't see the general manager.

You don't see a season ticket rep.

You just don't.

That's just not how it works.

So I never understood why people thought that was so crazy.

Of course, you're going to fire someone who is wearing colors from another team.

But when you say that Stu Gotts has defected to the enemy, are you referring to a sponsorship

deal?

Are you referring to the fact that he is doing his own thing?

Well, that has been encouraged by Dan Levittard.

He is consistently said to Stu Gotts, hey, if you want to go out and you want to be your

own and do your own and be the name on the top of the marquee and you're ready for that,

then here do it.

I want you to still be a part of our show.

I want you to be safe and comfortable coming on whenever you want to, but you're doing

live radio, which you love.

You don't have the time.

So therefore you're not coming back on a daily basis.

Forget that.

You're not coming back even on a once in a while basis.

That's okay.

One of the ways we should all be judged is the way people who are below us rise and are

able to fly on their own.

That's one of the whole points of having people.

Dan Levittard and Stu Gotts were great partners.

Partnerships.

Hey, this was not even planned.

All runs come to an end.

That doesn't take away the beauty or the success of the run.

And when you say, why don't I fire Stu Gotts, that's not what I do.

I wouldn't fire Stu Gotts.

If Stu Gotts wants to do shows, I want him to succeed at the shows he's doing.

It doesn't mean that I don't want to compete with him.

It doesn't mean that I don't want to have better shows than he has because I compete with

everybody, whether they're teammates or not.

It's like franchises compete with each other and they're all partners.

It is completely normal to compete with your partner or to compete with your friend.

That is absolutely a part of business.

If you are looking for some sort of story and all of the acrimony and all of the anger

and all of the hurt and all the stuff you're going to have to get it from somebody else,

and whether it's made up or not, whether it's part of a bit or not, whether it's all show,

part show or no show, whether there is truth or complete falsehoods that are being promulgated

by those in and around the story or the industry in order to try to make somebody look good,

better, best or worst.

That is all part of the game.

It is all what we do every day.

Isn't that amazing, but on nothing personal, I give it to you just straight.

There's no bits.

You know exactly what I think about topics.

You may not know my political leanings fully.

You may not know everything that I'm thinking about because I'm presenting to you both sides

for you to consider, but you surely know that it's not a bit.

Now, when I go on Dan's show and continue to do weekly segments,

there are bits that happen as part of Dan's show because that's his show.

But when I'm with Pablo on Pablo Torrey finds out another metal arc media show,

that is not made of bits.

So you have to understand what you're watching and which show you're watching and why you're watching it.

One of the great things that you get to do as an audience is you get to choose.

You choose with your time your most valuable resource.

We would know if you were not listening to nothing personal or Dan's show or Pablo's show

because we wouldn't have good numbers.

And it's not about rankings because believe me, rankings can be fudged.

Oh God, did I just say the quiet part out loud.

When you look at sponsorship dollars, that is a far better way to look at the health of a show

than oh, I'm ranked number one, number five, number 50, number 100, number 200.

I'm not ranked at all.

That is not what is used in the business.

Sorry.

Frankly, I could tell you it's not even awards though it's fun to win awards.

And I like winning awards, but it's about the business.

So again, you're asking me whether I should, would, did, could or won't fire two gods,

not even something that occurs to me, not something that is part of me at all.

It is simply that all runs come to an end and they change how they look.

Of course, Dan's show has changed, evolved and grown like my show,

like other shows, like relationships, totally normal.

Next voicemail, please, Koka.

David and Koka, one Wall Street guide to another.

Pablo Lopez just went down with Tommy John after being shelved at the end of last season

for elbow soreness.

My question is, do baseball teams have end of year exit physicals?

And if so, couldn't they have picked us up earlier and accelerated usurdering rehab?

Thanks a lot.

Hi there.

Thank you.

How many times have I said that that I've gotten a fight with my team doctors and GMs?

Come on, man.

Now he's hurt.

The problem is there are, yes.

So we do.

So the short answer is this, Koka, or I forgot, what was the name of the person who asked that?

Did you not leave his name, Koka?

In any case, thank you for that question.

Pablo Lopez, we talked about the fact that he was getting Tommy John.

Remember that when we do exit physicals, which we do.

So what we do at the end of the season is that we have an injury report,

and I've explained and we'll do so again on that injury report,

is any player who has been in a training room.

And then what the result of that meeting in the training room was.

If you go in because you've got the crabs, we are going to take note of the STD.

We've got to keep track with one set of books of everything that goes on inside that training room.

So Pablo Lopez actually was, while he had been hurt and had some shoulder issues,

when we take a MRI at the end of the season,

which we would of a picture who had missed time and complained.

We would do the MRI not just of the impacted area of the injury.

So I'm out with the shoulder, labor, soreness, inflammation.

We're going to do an MRI of the shoulder.

We're also going to do an MRI of the elbow.

How come we didn't see the torn ligament?

Well, what we did see is a frayed ligament.

You'll hear two stories in baseball about Tommy Johns.

A doctor will tell you everything was fine and it snapped on one pitch.

You'll hear that.

You'll also hear from a doctor, you know, everything wasn't that fine.

It was like a rubber band, and when you separate a rubber band enough,

it all of a sudden starts to turn a different color,

and then all of a sudden you get little holes inside where you're pulling it,

and then all of a sudden the rubber band breaks.

Eventually, a rubber band like your tendon, it will break.

So I can't pinpoint the exact pitch that happened.

I can only tell you that it's over time.

It's a use injury.

So I would say to the doctor, man, it sounds like you're covering both bases.

Sounds like you're telling me it can be one pitch.

It can be after a full career of 20, you know, of 20 years, et cetera.

So what are you telling me here?

And what the doctors would say is we're telling you that you're screwed

because pitching isn't normal.

So we'll do an MRI.

We'll look at the elbow.

The doctor will look at the MRI and he'll say, yeah, it doesn't look great,

but there's no surgery required.

And so what are you going to do?

I raised my hand.

Why don't we just snap the sucker and do the surgery now?

Well, you wouldn't do that with people who already had Tommy John.

That's Pablo Lopez back as a minor leager to you wouldn't do it with older

players who you don't have many years left of control.

The only players I would create and force Tommy John with and I never did it

because no one allowed me to, but I would have is with the young players

given that Tommy John rebuild to get it out of the way.

Because every MRI is so fricking dirty.

So what happens is the twins know it's dirty.

They're still going to count on him.

Hey, we got to squeeze one another year.

Come on, we can pull, you know, Tommy John, those tendons are a lot like New York

closet space or your suitcase.

You can always fit one more article, but it's surely going to seem full.

There's another pitch.

Come on.

It's one more inning.

It's one more outing.

It's one more season.

Now I grant you a season is the equivalent of putting 10 winter coats in a

closet that's full or in a carry on suitcase.

It's not always possible unless you stand on it, sit on it and then have two

people sitting and putting the zippers in while using the extender, which is the

same on a suitcase as having the flexible belt that you say after a meal.

Look, I didn't eat that much and you forgot the fact that you undid your belt

completely.

So the answer is we didn't know.

So Paulo Pez comes to spring training and all of a sudden it's full rice crispy

time.

Snapcrackle pop.

He needs Tommy John.

So there's nothing that could have been done about that.

Believe me.

If there were, believe me, they would have.

I think we have time.

One more.

Coco, please.

Hey, David.

Love the show.

You're fantastic.

I would like to know what you're feeling would be if you had a player like say Stanton

that wanted to do the home run derby.

I am not a big home run derby fan.

I don't see the benefit to my team.

The guy could get a hundred home runs.

It doesn't help my team at all and risk injury just like to get your opinion on it.

Thanks.

Love the show.

Go, Coco.

What is that with everybody?

It's like saying, Hey, listen, I've had a great time.

Everything's good.

Go, Coco.

I expect to like hear that.

Now everywhere I go, I'm going to order a salad for lunch today.

And after I'm done saying, you know, cucumbers and artichokes and jalapenos and carrots and

chickpeas and go, Coco, I wonder what ingredient that would be.

I think it's like the sound of silence.

Why would I want my player to do the home run derby?

Well, Stanton did the home run derby several times, Justin Boer, Ozuna.

I love when our players did the home run derby because it's a bunch of poppy cock that doing

the home run derby does anything other than make you exhausted, which it does when you

do it.

It really is not correlated to more injury.

And the fact that you don't like it, why?

What can we do differently?

We've tried to change with the money balls and the different colored balls and we've tried

it without we tried it with time.

I'm not sure what you don't find exciting granted.

We could work on the camera angles for sure.

I miss the back, back, back, back, back, back.

All of that is true.

However, the concept of a home run derby, listen, they're even doing alumni home

run derbies, which is going to be amazing because you're going to see like older guys

get out there and swing so hard that they're going to blow out their T4 L5 S2 hit.

But it's still going to be fun because do I think that, you know, David Ortiz could

still hit bombs or Miguel Cabrera for sure would it be amazing to see Gary Sheffield out

in a home run derby just hitting laser beams with that bat moving around like it always

did.

Guess is there be maybe an answer to lighter maybe?

So what does it all mean?

It means that until you prove to me that there is a better alternate way to get you to engage

with a second night of activities during all star weekend.

So I can charge you not for one night, not for two nights, but don't forget the third

when we do the futures game.

You let me know what you would do differently.

What is it?

Give me a problem without a solution.

You want like an infield batting practice drill?

Would you pay money to come and watch people do that?

Now, frankly, you could pay money and go to a regular season game and watch a home run derby

which happens every batting practice when hitters hit home runs and sometimes they actually

compete.

But the advantage of the all-star game home run derby is that you've got players from

different teams and you never know what you're going to see.

Is it hard to attract all the top names every single year?

Of course, the NBA is going through it right now and MLB, everyone's trying to always

tweak what they're doing.

But the home run derby itself, it's not going anywhere.

Do I think Stan will compete in it again?

I actually do not because of injuries and the fact that he's already won it and it's

really not worth it to take the extra swings or to even do that during all star weekend.

And all the great up and coming young players, I would expect that you will see them in

the home run derby and especially this year as we head into bargaining and head into a

potential where next season may or may not, the Olympic season may or may not, I think

you'll see more people do it.

But the main reason it says, it's just business.

Thank you for all of these voicemails.

We'll be back tomorrow.

This is nothing personal.

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