You're listening to DraftKings Network.

This is the Dan Leviton Show with the Stugatz Podcast.

After a crowded couple of weeks, after a crowded 20 years right now, it's just me and Mike Ryan in a room talking intimately, not the normal show. I want to reveal some things I have not revealed and talk about some things that I have not talked about. The impetus for it is seeing a story this week that I'm guessing not a lot of people pay attention to, not a lot of people care about. Marvin Jones Jr, steps away from the team to tend to personal family matters. He puts on Instagram something in black and white, something poignant, something artful of him bowing his head, it looks like during the anthem, and saying goodbye to his team and Detroit. He writes, I just want to say that I have so much love and respect for the Ford family, the city of Detroit, my teammates, and coaches. To be brief, I'm stepping away from the team to take care of personal family matters. Although this was no easy decision, I cannot be the person player that I need to be for this team, as well as tend to my family from afar. This organization has been amazing, showing love and support for myself and my family over the years, and this time is no different.

For that, I'm appreciative to my brothers and coaches. I will be rooting for you every step of the way. This is the year. Go get it. Love and respect to all, Marvin Jones Jr.

That's a nice statement.

An hour later, the lions waved him.

Shouldn't they?

Yes, but he needs to step away for a moment during a football season. They cannot wait for him to step away for a moment. Maybe he needs weeks, maybe he needs months. But right now, he cannot do his job, that job, a very difficult job, and have the life balance that he needs.

I'm sure this was all discussed between the organization and.

The market. But I'm also sure that it's an enormous decision that's hard to make. He's 33 years old. This probably ends his earning, his ability to earn, the bearing and the grieving of who this person used to be. Now, maybe he's got career ahead of him, but he has to go 10 to family matters, and they will convince you in that military school that the family that matters is the one in your huddle. You have to be there for them. And he's had to make a choice. He's got to make a choice. Be a part. Keep in mind, Mike, the Lions have been bad, worse than anybody in football for 40 years. This is that they made both of their best players quit. That's their legacy. Their third best player had to go somewhere else to win a championship. He has been giving his body to this cause and this team. And this is the best team he's ever played on. And it's probably the best Detroit team that we've ever seen.

Yeah. Have you watched Marvin Jones.

This year? He hasn't.

Been very good. He was awful. He was awful in that opening game of the season where Cedarius Toney took... He was a fast switch energy drink player of the week that week. And he made Marvin Jones's life a lot easier because Marvin Jones was atrocious in that football game. And in saying that statement, the first thing that ran through my mind was him saying, I can't be the player that this team needs me to be right now with what's going on in my life. And a lot of that made sense because at the age of 33, he's had a very nice career, very nice career in the NFL. At a receiver at that position, it's hard to get to the age of 33 in the NFL. And if you watched him this season, he very clearly fell off. Waving him was probably something that was going to happen anyways, especially when you look at that.

Receiving court. I'm not blaming the Lions for waving him. My guess is it's something of a mutual decision. My guess is it's one of the hardest decisions Marvin Jones has ever had to make.

Let me be clear. I have a fair amount of empathy for whatever it is he's going through. It seems like it's serious. But all I've known from Marvin Jones this football season is he has not been a contributor.

But I want to talk about some of the humanizing parts of this and where it is that he reached me when you said he hasn't been the player that he was.

Because-.

What? 33. It's impossible to be. But also when you have this other stuff going on, this is where it reached me given what my last couple of years have been. Like Marvin Jones has had two or three seasons that are either close to 1,000 yards, around 1,000 yards, but he's making a decision that his family has to be the priority. We talk all the time about they tell you in football that it's family and faith and then football, but that ain't the order. Yeah.

Is there a bereavement list that players can be put on? It seemed as though that was a retirement statement, not I'd like to come back at some point this season's statement. And if so, I understand from a CAB perspective why this move was made.

I don't think the audience necessarily knows. When he writes the sentence, This was not an easy decision. How much goes into, he is the economy around him. He is the place where money gets made. Now, future earnings, he's got to make the choice. As soon as I leave, it's the possibility I won't get back to that level.

Yeah. Again, I want to be very clear. I have empathy for Marvin Jones, but if you watch him this season, future earnings were not really there for the young man. They weren't. I understand this conversation would be different if it were Marvin Jones of three years ago.

All I'm doing in setting all of this up is to talk specifically about what my last couple of years have been like in a way that I have not been able to talk about it because the doing of this has become more difficult because of the things that I'm about to tell you, which I have not, never mind, shared with the audience. I haven't shared some of these details with you or the people closest to me either because of what must be in play when you're saying, I have to go be with my family. Now, of course, this is happening because he's diminished, and of course, he's being waived because the lions can waive him. They put him on a bereavement list if he.

Were better. Yeah. To be fair, we don't know what's going on with his family. It seems pretty serious, serious enough for that statement to go out there. I don't think it's fair to assume if people in our audience are doing this, that this wouldn't be a statement that would be put out at the peak of his career, too.

The leave of absence when you have to work. The leave of absence when you need to get your head right and you need to say that your family is the priority, but sometimes you cannot leave because it will affect too many of your other responsibilities that way. Under other circumstances, if I were not running this company and this company was not in need of what we do daily, that does not stop, that is an endless grind, I would have, at this point, gone away for a long time. One of the reasons I admire John Stewart, and I'm so upset by what happened with John Stewart in Apple is John Stewart, at this point in his life, doesn't have any reason to care about making something good the way you have to 80 hours a week to make that show as good as it was, the only reason to do it is because of how much he cares. You do it because it's important that you grow and use the platform correctly and keep being somebody.

Who- Are you talking about an external pressure that's being put on you or an internal one? Because you obviously, you're a co-founder in the company, and you have the support of the company very clearly to take all the time that you need.

Yes, but I don't feel like what we do that everyone can be led to care the way that we need them to care unless they are also seeing that I care the same way, that I am not mailing in this thing that is for all of us, meant for all of us. But let me just get to the portion that I have not told you about and where the difficulties reside in doing some of this stuff. When the umbrella is personal, family matters. Whatever it is that Kyle Lowry has been going through for two years, whatever Tom braided is talking about when he says, I'm 45, shit happens, life happens, and unexpected things in life that you had no way of knowing how to handle. So the last two years of this and my performance and my confidence and why we're in Hollywood right now trying to get a different feeling for me with the doing of some of this as I am in a great deal of pain and grieving now, hurting more than I have over the last two years because my brother is gone. But what was in my two years that I'm going to explain to you in the audience now that is some of the mental health conversation that doesn't get touched about, even though we're talking about mental health more than we ever have, and even though it feels like everyone's getting bombarded all over every day with anxieties that don't have a lot of precedent.

My brother had a cancer in his brain that undiagnosed for a long time, was making his behavior erratic, where you saw that he was there a lot of the time, but sometimes some stuff couldn't be placed, and this is before we knew that there was cancer in his brain. I'm doing things like chasing him at two o'clock in the morning through the streets of Miami Beach, trying to keep an eye on him to make sure that he's not a danger to himself or to others. A couple of different times, I had to have him in a way that damaged our relationship. I had to have him Baker acted because I thought he was a threat that he might end up in a situation that wasn't him, that just wasn't his behavior. One of those times, we're breaking into his house when he is not there to remove the weaponry because the police are going to have to go in and we don't want him to pick up something. They're warning us, the police are warning us that if they go in, that things can go wrong during this. I've got that happening over there. Also at the same time, and I'm hesitant to talk about this because I haven't told my father that I'm going to talk about it.

But during this, my father... My father was on a medicine that was also making him behave strangely. I was headed to go pick him up to take him to a psychiatrist. I get a call from my mother that they are at the hospital, that the paramedics, that the firefighters found a 78-year-old man hanging from a balcony, an eighth-floor balcony, that if they hadn't helped him then, I would have been pulling up to go help my father. Out. He would have been on the pavement.

All this is within the last few years?

Yeah.

As your work-life is dissolving.

Right. Well, yeah. It feels like everything's falling apart necessarily.

You know you didn't need Marvin Jones as the on-ramp. Don't live a tard. Do you know.

What a razor is, Dan? I do not know. I don't know what a motorola razor is. You don't?

No. I bet you you had one.

I did not have one. Really? Let's walk.

Through your.

Phone history. What phones did you have? I never had a motorola razor. Let's go backwards. I did not have a motorola razor. What was your first phone? Not a Motorola Razr. Telegraph Machine?

After that. The Motorola Razr, Dan, was the one.

That was.

Really, really thin that it flipped over, but it was as thin as a razor blade.

That's why.

They called it.

The Razr. What is a Telegraph Machine? I don't know. They had one in.

Down Abbey. Stugatz. The Titanic stop. Has sunken. Stop. John Jacob. Stop. Is missing. Stop.

You think that was my phone? You think that my first phone was the Titanic's emergency signal?

This is the Dan Levator Show with the Stugats. But it's.

What made me think about it today, and it's what made me think about because I haven't thanked you. It feels like South Beach Sessions. You handing me the tissues.

I'm bad with all of.

This, by the way. Yeah, I know you're the worst person in my entire world to be discussing this with.

I'm terrible with this.

I wanted to explain to the audience why I'm doing this, why we're coming to Hollywood and meeting with these creative people so that we can build something that is different and that satisfies us creatively and that honors all the things that my parents were trying to build of a life for me here. As I come with my wife, I don't have kids. This is the family that we've raised around here. We're trying.

Something- You do have kids. You do have kids. I think that's why you were working through it. You have a big family. You have Sugarsas, your child. I'm your child, Billy. Now your children have children. You felt the immense pressure to keep going into work. But also part of that is work was an escape. The creative outlet brought you peace at times. And it also sometimes, depending on how shows went, compounded what was going on at home.

But also hard to do well under those circumstances. The reason that the entree was Marvin Jones is because I identified with the struggle of like, What do I do? What do you do when you have all of these people you care about and a responsibility to all of them?

It falls all on you. And yeah, a lot of that stuff I knew you were going through at the time you would try to open up to me. And again, I'm very bad at this. And I felt what was needed was just to be your fun house, the fun sandbox, and also just push this thing forward. And I think that there was a realization, I hope, with our audience, as hosts are also entitled to age with grace, and we know that we've been around for a very long time. I do think that there was, and I hope you felt it, a huge amount of support and understanding when you delivered the news about your brother over the air, which by the way, I'd known that we were close, but I'd discovered truthfully that your brother had passed on from you on the air, I think that a lot started to make sense for the listener. My hope as a producer of this show for however long sitting in this chair is you went through some stuff that will change you forever. Change you forever. On top of that, you're older, you're a different person than you were.

We're all very different than we were when we were at ESPN. We're better in some respects, we're worse than others through whatever prism you may view that. Let's just say the Reddit prism is what I'm saying.

Well, I have none, and I had to check out because of what my last two years are. I've always found criticism hugely constructive, hugely helpful. Our audience knows what's good, and we're not meeting that standard. But all of that has gotten so cruel. And because I'm in a diminished confidence state because my temperament isn't right day to day to do this. I have had to totally check out on criticism that used to be helpful just because it was hurting me for the first time.

Same, and I think what was going on there... What was going on there with me is the same thing that was going on with you is that years ago, the criticism would not get to me as much because I was way more confident in what I was doing and that I knew better. Now, I still feel that way to a degree because I'm a narcissist.

Well, but I've never lacked confidence doing this. And the last couple of years is the first time that's happened.

But I think it's understandable.

I mean, it's understandable if you're me. It's not understandable if you're listening to this and you want the show to be exactly what it's always been. And here your host is falling apart and doesn't know if he should even be at work, doesn't know if he should be with his wife taking care... Just an avalanche of things arrived that there's no.

Handbook for. Yeah. And with that came the realization that the show has to evolve. Because if you've listened to the show over the course of the 20 years that we've been doing it, the show has reinvented itself from Before Hawk to During Hawk to After Hawk, from when Hawk put his name in thein the title to ESBN and video integration to the pirate phase to where we are now, which is a unique position for us as we've partnered up with another startup company, and in many respects, some of our startup growing pains compounded one another. We've struggled. I know I have with the lack of visibility because there is a value in just being on mute on a television as you're walking.

In.

An airport. Yeah, there is a value. I do find myself getting jealous, and I do find myself consuming perceived competitors and looking at rankings and seeing where there's a dip there and looking at some metrics and saying, Oh, there's a dip there. What can we do? What can we do about it?

This has knocked out some of the comments. The last couple of years has knocked out wherever it is that I was competitive on this stuff. I really have gotten to a peaceful place. I know you're not there, but I've gotten to a peaceful place on the idea of success is being able to do it hard stop. Like being able to do it well, being able to do it happily. But in this climate where all the seeds are disappearing and we are uniquely positioned to have a very good opportunity to be able to do this ourselves for ourselves for a long time. And that to me, I've learned it later in life that where I was competitive, it doesn't serve me anymore.

Right. I think for most of our show's history, we were always a scrappy underdog. And then after we got the draft Kings deal, it's like, okay, well, we won. How do we do this now that we've won? And yet we still had obstacles that we had to figure out how to navigate. But now the obstacle is, as we've all gotten older, as we've all changed, as we all have had these heartbreaking life experiences, is where do we go from here? The answer for the last month has been Los Angeles. Your brother spiritually wanted you to be out here. Part of the reshaping of our show is these partnerships and these people, these mentors. The company has mentorship programs with Mike, Sherron and Adam McKay, and realizing that we don't have all the answers and realizing that we want to be that cutting edge creative show. Look, I've noticed where we've dipped in certain places. I've seen creative things systematically get stripped away from the show as the main thing has just been out this content and just being replaced by dudes. Thankfully, fewer dudes and more women than most of the people in the sports media landscape.

But still, generally, dudes talking into microphones. I look at the lay of the land and I see part of my take is dudes talking into microphones and they're younger and they have a unicorn talent over there and they're really damn good. A couple of years ago, I used to be like, Yeah, we can go toe to toe, but I realize we have to be different. Pat McAfee, charismatic dude, really energetic, really fun. That dude's talking into microphones and he's doing it on the platform, an even bigger platform than ESB and afforded us. So where do we win? We win by being creative. But it's hard to be creative, especially for you when you're dealing with everything that you were dealing with. I think I speak for the audience. So many times, be it a mosque or even at the airport, someone came up to me. Or I just saw a video of Lucy at USC, and one of the students at the tailgate was thanking you for just being there for them. I think that that resonates even more now with how honest you've been with the audience and that you were being there for them when you desperately needed someone being there for you.

Thankfully, you had your wife, you had this show. But I don't think anybody could really step up to the level that was required given what you just shared.

I will say to that audience that one of the reasons South Beach Sessions is going to get better and more vulnerable, and we're going to be coming out here to make sure that that property has the voice and the platform that it needs to talk most honestly with people. But even though it has been noisy and a confidence test for two years to see and hear the audience notice with some anger that the show isn't what they've wanted it to be, and maybe not these last two weeks either, because I know any time- It's a different show, no problem. Anytime we throw change and unrest, it gets... It's such an intimate medium. We're friends in your head. We're dragging a lot of people through bad and bad work, bad jobs, where we're half of the... They want the show. They expect the show to be a certain thing.

Yeah, the L. A. Shows feel like they've turned into a poorly dressed sports reporter.

The most poorly-dressed, and also the proportion here that makes a little person-.

Yeah, I'm not so happy with this where you look so much smaller. I know you've lost.

Some grief. It's why Mike, Sherin, and Adam McKay are such great mentors. They're like, With lighting and everything, you can make it so that.

Somebody- I tower over you in some of these videos.

Brad Williams, a little person, looks bigger than I am in some of these videos. But our audience and Mike, this is what I will tell you. I've said this before, and I don't mean it to be to toirapy, but I do believe that is an authentic different media thing in this competitive media landscape. The thing that we have that no one else has, no one else has, is that the people whose loyalty is tested, even with the battering the show has taken over the last two years, their loyalty, because they ride with us from there of we know what this thing is about, what it tries to be, what it is efforting to be, and it's an honest version of itself. The loyalty is at least in part because they believe that they know what this thing is and they expect this thing to not disappoint them wherever it is, on issues of the day, on how strong the product is. They expect us not to mail it in and go Hollywood and stop caring. And I'm here to assure you the reason that I'm sharing this with the audience right now through the unrest of what I imagine, Mike, I imagine that our show is being met very poorly.

I don't know this over the last two weeks, but just with the experience that I have of people generally don't like change unless it's immediately good. And change doesn't tend to be immediately good. It takes a minute. The loyalty of our audience has buied me there because I think it's unusual the amount of times we get from the people listening to this right now who say, Thank you for dragging me through that bad time in a way that brought me something that felt less bad. I will say that the job has done that for me, even at times when I've been thinking, I need to step away from this for a while. I need to go take care of-.

And It still think you should. I still think that you should. But I share the same concerns that if you step away, what becomes of us? But the criticisms from the audience, while they're more than amused to why I take them while I take them more personally than I ever have because of my own lack of confidence, it's still a driving force in realizing, now this is an acknowledgment. Some of your criticisms are true. The show isn't what it once was. Quite frankly, I don't know if it'll ever be that again. And the pressure that I personally feel is someone that found themselves back in the ERP slot. And during the course of the finals, I was half in, one foot in, one foot in my other responsibilities for MentalArk. And while you were away, I was just looking at metrics and realizing, okay, this is quantifiable, the lack of confidence and what it is that we're doing. Because sometimes I don't know if something's good while I'm making it. Sometimes I do.

I generally tend to know. I generally tend to feel like if it meets our standard, it's probably pretty good.

How is this going?

I think it's honest.

It is honest. Hopefully, the audience takes it to heart, seeks it out. Hopefully, this serves as an explanation as to why maybe some of those doubts about us have crept in over the last few years, and we're giving voice to it that some of them are true, but we're trying to reshape what it is that we're doing, and once again, reinvent ourselves in the face of challenges that we've never had to before. Trust me, leaving ESPN, doing a show the very next day with a company that I had to alert, Hey, well, how do we have internet? That was pretty challenging. We've always found a way to persevere and navigate these difficult spots. But I can readily admit that right now, I think that this is as unsettled ground as I've ever been on around this show because you've been dealing with stuff that is very clearly weighing on you.

It's scary. It's also invigorating and it's fulfilling when you get the shared laughter with people you care about of having done it well. I do agree with the original critique, though, that I didn't have to spend six minutes talking about Marvin Jones before I got to... My judgment's off, Mike. My judgment's been off.

For two years. I was prepared to go to Dwight Howard. I'm like, Where is this? Marvin Jones? Where is this going? My first reaction, because I had bet on that game, I was like, That guy stinks.

I'm trying to humanize him. And all you're doing is… I was trying to figure out whether it cost you money or hurt you in a suicide pool. That's terrible.

Or fantasy. No, I just watched. I was locked in. I'm like, Oh, this.

Guy's bad. Why is Dan trying to make me feel bad for Marvin Jones's personal family matters when I know he's got five catches this year for 35 yards?

Don't live a tart.

I am mortified to say that it wasn't but 10 years ago that I didn't even realize that I went one time to Ron McGill Zoo wearing accidentally my mother's shirt. Stugatz. Not realizing that I had buttoned it. That's impossible. It's not impossible. It was one of the most air-headed things. It seems ridiculous for everybody involved. I was much leaner at the time. I don't want to make my mother- That's impossible. 285. That's also impossible.

This is The Don Levator Show with the Stugats. I guess the reason why we just had the last two segments. I got to stop crying.

I have to stop doing that.

That was reserved for Kugler shows.

I have to stop doing that.

I know that you're genuinely going through something. You know how much I love you, and I value that you love me and the audience that you're going to share this in front of... How are the camera guys feeling about all of this?

It's awkward. It's pretty heavy. It's awkward. Yeah, they haven't... They must be so confused because we've done a couple of South Beach sessions while we're here, and all they've seen me do is cry. So it's just I'm the crying journalist.

But the ultimate reason why we had the last two segments that we just had was I had a plan for today's show, and it was a great segment that was done with Mike, Sher, and Dan. It was about sports phantom and how a team can grab hold of a city. When you have that beautiful relationship where the team takes on the identity of the city and the city loves the team, it's this galvanizing force, and it's an amazing thing. Hooray, sports is why we love everything. We taped that last week to air today, and that team and that city was Philadelphia and the Philies.

I believe we should still air that just... No. That's just the reason. I believe after this segment, we should air that just so that people can laugh the way that you've been laughing for a week since we taped this segment. I will tell the audience this. We have no segments in the bank that waited this long. Mike asked me to do something that was evergreen for a week later, and I decided to talk to Mike, sure, about one of his favorite subjects, baseball. I decided to try to get Mike interested in baseball again. The only thing that got him interested- You succeeded. Yes, I succeeded. But the only thing that got you interested in baseball again was the Arizona Diamondbacks did not have a bigger national fan than you rooting for that content to get killed because me and Mike Shore were gasbag know-it-alls about clearly, Philadelphia is going to make it to the world series.

Right. You're not the only gasbag know-it-all in this equation. I was too. Right before that segment, I'm like, make sure this is Evergreen. I have it slated for Thursday of next week. Just make sure it's Evergreen.

I think we did this after Philadelphia went up 2.0 in that series, and the decibel levels in Philadelphia were being quantified as some of the loudest ever heard in a baseball stadium. Yeah.

And you baseball, you sure baseball experts were so certain that the Philies were making the World.

Series- That the segment would hold up for.

A week. Yeah, that you didn't heed my warnings and yet just powered on with, When this airs, Philadelphia is going to love its baseball team even more. We're probably downplaying how much Philadelphia loves its baseball team. And me, as someone that doesn't really follow baseball but knows historically, the playoffs are pretty unpredictable. And pretending like you know what's exactly going to happen in that sport seems like a misstep. And to see you guys be so sure that the Philies would make the.

World series- That the segment would hold up for.

Seven days. It wasn't even about the Diamondbacks or the Philies anymore. In fact, rooting for the Diamondbacks was counterproductive to what my content strategy is.

Because- You were rooting against having to do less work?

Yeah, well, trust me. I think I speak for the audience and myself. The mic that they want to hear from is mic sure, and his time is limited as there's no more strike. And we decided to use one of those precious 12 and a half minute segments on something that could not air. And I was actively rooting against it because fuck you, baseball guys.

All right, let's talk about this part for a second, because baseball has been great this year. I tried to tell you earlier this season, I'm like, Mike, they have fixed it. Baseball is fixed. They've shaved an hour of fat off the sport. And now you can just marvel at the skill levels that you are seeing. And so you tuned in the other day for one of the few times this season. You noticed that Dusty Baker was in one dug out and Bruce Boachie was in the other. And you're like, I didn't miss anything. Everything's the same as it was 20.

Years ago. On a related note, I've seen the draft results of this Abu Dhabi Baseball League that's going on, and it's Pablo Sandoval and Bartolo Cologne. And I think I may get whatever extra innings is for Abu Dhabi because I'm like, I recognize these people. But what ended up happening as this game was going on is I'm going up and down the Sunset Strip to Lemmys, Hawks, and the Whisky, the Go-Go. I'm asking them to put on this baseball game.

Just so that you can laugh at me and Mike. Just so that you could root for the Arizona Diamondbacks to take a lead. Just so that you can hear this Philadelphia crowd that we were talking about not only turn on their team, but in a silence that showed clear and obvious fear. The decimal levels were really low because they spent many, many innings knowing they were going to turn on the heart of.

That lineup. Come game six, the best fans in baseball that love this baseball team, had left the stadium early. Were booing. Yeah, and game seven. They always prepare. They greased the light posts for riots in Philadelphia. They were so mad and they come off so angry and upset with this baseball team that just a week ago, you were so sure was going to make the World Series. I turned on all these CDs down the Sunset Strip actively rooting against the Philadelphia Phillies. I recognized one of the pitchers that I was watching was someone that you said is the greatest reliever ever or something like that, Unhitable and all this.

That's right, Alvarado. How did he do? For the Philies, yes, he gave up two heads to sacrifice, fly, or run. I don't understand how anyone ever gets a hit off of this person.

He's no Paul Quantral.

Let me explain a couple of things to both you and the audience, okay?

Yeah, because explaining baseball to me has been a winning proposition.

What I'm going to explain to the audience about your joy in all of this is the sport of my youth, the sport that I have loved the most. It is quantifiable and clear at FS1 at ESPN that they've done all of the tech metrics that need to be done on what people want, minute-to-minute viewing habits, and baseball is not being covered. Even though you had two game sevens, and I'm telling you that Astros Ranger's season was amazing, amazing. Garcia is like a Cuban player for my lifetime in terms of how much swagger he had and how he controlled that series with 15 RBIs. But baseball is being covered very poorly. An awful announcing showed that on the day after one game seven and headed into another game seven, from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM, none of the shows talked about baseball. It was only basketball and football because basketball and football are the metrics that people care about. And so I've been trying to convert you, someone that I know has this ember flickering somewhere in his heart from 20 years ago. And the only thing that summon you is being able to turn on the television and laugh at, me and Mike Shearer were talking about how changed Philadelphia was.

You need to run this segment, I think, at this point just so people can laugh about it. So how changed Philadelphia was, what a great environment it was to have Harper and Castellanos represent the Philadelphia every man. And then in the sixth interview of game six, they're booing, they're leaving by the seventh and eighth interview. And then the funniest thing to happen in that series is all of the interviews of fans leaving the ballpark as they leave the ballpark. The most exciting environment any of us have ever seen in baseball, and they have turned on their team angrily and thankfully, not violently, but clearly with a hostility that would get to anger given how Philadelphia is past is about sports thing.

Your bravado and confidence in Philadelphia didn't just exude in that segment. But afterwards, I'm like, Yeah, thanks, guys. After we wrap the segment, thanks, guys, because I think they were up like 2-0 at the time because it's baseball. They can very clearly lose the diamond bags. And you guys doubled and tripled down. We're these great baseball guys that know everything. We've watched all season. There's no way that is happening. There is none whatsoever.

It's one of the reasons baseball is that great. All of the great teams got knocked out. And instead, you have a World Series that everyone is now telling me that no one cares about because both of those teams lost 100 plus games two.

Years ago. Tell that to Rod Barajas. I'm pretty sure he cares.

This is the only joy you got from baseball. You had in.

History- Yeah, the games.

Weren't very good. No, wait a minute. The Rangers and the Astros, the Road team always won. I didn't see that series. They won all.

Seven games. I saw it on X people. You don't know what I'm talking about.

With Garcia?

I have my buddy, Master of to Zatian, is a ranger, and he said that I'm now his second favorite Cuban. I don't know what that means.

Okay, let me explain to you what happened in that series, what you missed and what you did not care about, because it included Dusty Baker doing something I have never seen, which is he was ejected and simply refused to leave. And everyone in baseball looked at each other and was like, Well, what do we do if this is the case? Because no one ever.

Refused to.

That's a great move. What do you do? He refused to leave.

I'm not in disguise like Bobby Valentine.

No, he's just standing in the dugout, but they're.

Trying to- Icing.

The pitcher. But not only icing the pitcher, successfully icing the pitcher because El Teuve hits the home run. This was after Garcia had been plunked on purpose because he's too showy in a playoff game, or it looked like he was on purpose. The Astros claim he wasn't. Dusty Baker refused to leave the field because he's saying he wasn't.

Does it look like he's too showy or is he too showy?

I mean, he's about as swaggering, as arrogant, and on home run as anyone. He's a Cuban baseball player. Yes, he is that showy and he creates unrest. But again-.

Probably deserved it.

-15 RBI in that series, though. Fifteen, including all the ones in game six and seven that end up deciding the series after they plunked it. He sends Dusty Baker into retirement. One of Dusty Baker's last acts is simply the anarchy of, I'm not leaving the field. You rejected me, but I don't respect your authority to kick me out. Now, what are you going to do? I would like to see that extrapolated to the end where you have a near 80-year-old man being taken off physically by security in a baseball uniform.

A couple more baseball questions that I have. Has Bruce Boachie's head gotten any bigger?

I mean, it's always leading the league and surface area. There is no one I thought Clint Hurtl made a run at him for a while.

This may be a really dumb question because there was a time where I was deeply passionate about baseball, and you'd assume that I might know the answer to this. How often has someone taken three different baseball teams to the World Series?

Well, it's not just that. Dombrowski's a legitimate Hall of Famer, a legitimate... He's the Philly. Wait, the- No, he's not getting there. No, but he was right there to getting the Philly.

He's with the Philly?

He's.

Constructed the Philly. I had to say Dombrowski knows how to spend money.

Yes. A lot of people spend money.

When I was weighing what I wanted, and you know what won out, which was me being right always. But it's like, okay, well, if I'm not right and Mike, Sherin, Dan get to be cocky baseball guys, even though I made them sweat, which is pretty good a win in its own right. The fact that I can make fun of David Samson for two teams that spent close to two billion dollars to get to the World Series was also appealing to me. I was in a proverbial no lose situation.

You have to give the audience the segment somewhere. You have to. Even if.

It's not- YouTube-exclusive.

Even if you have.

To- Danny, let's put that as a YouTube exclusive with a subtitle. This was recorded when the Philies were up to zero. Dan and Mike repeatedly turned down warnings for Mike because they thought.

They knew so much. The context is Mike told us right before we started talking-.

And don't.

Talk baseball. -this needs to hold for a week. One week. You never.

Do that. I specifically said don't talk baseball.

In the history of the show, we have never done that where something needs to hold for a week. Yeah.

No way I watch this world series now, unless you and Mike sure do something arrogant, which he's in tomorrow.

So probably. Okay, well, we have to figure out something to do because Chris Mandog-Russo threatened to retire the moment that Arizona won the series. Now he says it's just from radio, and now he says it's not at all.

Yeah. Howard Stern is making him dress up in a bikini, I think. Who can you do that?

I will do that. I will do that.