Transcript of Hour 1: I'm Just Glad Mark Cuban Loves Talking (feat. Pablo Torre)

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This is the Dan Levatore Show with the Stugats podcast.

Pablo.

No, you can't do that. You can't do that if he doesn't have big news. You can't do that if he's just doing first take with Mark Cuban. You can't. No, that only happens with big news.

Apparently, you weren't listening an hour and 15 minutes in because I heard some pretty good stuff there.

There was not news there.

There was not- He's still donating even after he hates the guy?

All right, we'll find out in a second. I'm finally reading some criticism of Pablo Torre. This is from Jay Marriotti's Substack. Any investigation of Steve Ballmer should center on one dude, Pablo Torre. And then the subheadline is, once again, Torre is in a mess as he asks us to find on his podcast, The NBA Vetted and Approved Balmer's Deal with Aspiration, which suggests he's wrong in suggesting the owner was crooked. What is Jay Marriotti's problem with you?

Hello, Chris. Thanks for listening to some of the episodes. I really appreciate that, sincerely. Is J. Marriotti... I haven't read this yet. Is Jay Marriotti still blaming me for the cancelation of Around the Horn? Yes. Okay, so is there that? Is my question number one. Number two, for anyone who's wondering who is J. Marriotti, that's a fair question. You should Google J. Marriotti sometime and maybe just throw in the word stalk, just as a matter of just general guidance. You might want to see what he had been up to at some point. The third thing I love... So the Cuban thing is, I hate when Dan cuts to the core of me because, yes, me and Mark Cuban did some first take, allegedly, about my journalism. Really, it was arguing. I love it, though, because I want people to give me arguments so I can try and defend the work because I, frankly, want to make sure I'm not missing anything. And I've been asking everybody, what are your criticisms? What are your arguments? And the Clippers, we've seen what those are. They don't have any. Media Day did not have those. Leaks, typically, you get some good leaks from media sources of the team.

We haven't really had those either. And Jay Marriotti is here now. And so I just feel like, I don't know, maybe the story is over now. Maybe when you get to the Marriotti line, the story is actually over because I don't think he knows what he's talking about at all.

He is blaming you. Tori has done this on my former program, Around the Horn, the second ESPN show he allowed to fade off the air. And it's time his editors at The Athletic tell him he's leading the majors in strikeouts.

So a couple of cleanups there. I did not allow High Noon to get canceled. I was canceled. I feel like it's okay for a cancelation to be involuntary.

The second ESPN show he allowed to fade off the air.

I want to apologize to Tony Reale for doing the thing in Titanic that Jack and Rose did. I let him go. I took the door we were floating on, and I let him go. I allowed Around the Horn to go away. What was the other thing he was saying?

Why is he blaming you? I don't know. When you come on- I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? When you come on and say, Is he blaming me again for around the Horn? I didn't know he had been blaming you until reading this. Why is he blaming you for around the Horn?

I'm just glad he said it. I might be the reason why.

I've never talked to Jay. I assume Jay is thrilled. One of my favorite things about Jay Marriotti's Twitter account, which I have just looked up here, is that he inserts manually a photo of himself, like posing for everyone. I don't even care to make fun of him for the engagement on his tweets because that's its own. I hate when people do that. To me, it's just sad. Ignore the numbers. Just look at the photos. He picked a good one for this one. He's like him in front of a duck pond. I like that.

No, you say that that's the good part of the bio. The best part of the bio to me is that he writes in, E. Espn Ratings King.

Yes, that's right. You didn't know that, Dan? I did not know that. Did you know that, by the way, did you know... This is also news to the editors at The Athletic that they're my editors because they, of course, are not. They are, if anything, horrified to hear that. God bless our partners, but they are not editing these things. He just doesn't know. I mean, look, do we want to talk about how Jay Marriotti was the ratings king of ESPN? Or do we want to talk about the thing that espn. Com reported, which J. Marriotti has misinterpreted into something that I am baffled by in a real way, but I can go either direction on it.

Now, let's just talk about what you did this morning with Mark Cuban, because He has entrenched himself on this in a way that leaves him, I think, largely alone. Where are his supporters, first of all, before you tell us what it is that you and Mark Cuban did on the latest episode of Pablo Tori Finds Out?

Where are Mark Cuban supporters?

Yeah, who else? Who else is publicly against you when you keep throwing facts at people that are vigorously reported? I thought all of these people scattered. I thought there were a lot of people that confused me at the beginning, and it suggested that people just hate the media because a whole lot of people sided with Balmer at the beginning, and I was really confused by it. But since then, you've done so much reporting that I've seen no one but Mark Cuban still standing, and now Jay Marriotti.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's Clippers PR, it's Mark Cuban and Jay Marriotti. To give you a sense of what's going on here. And in fairness, a lot of people with Kawhi Leonard or James Harden avatars on Twitter. It's generally that. That's the dojo that I walk into ready to fight every day. And it's a bummer at this point. But in all sincerity, the reason I wanted to have Qben on the show was because I think it's really important, especially now, for journalists who do this work to defend their work, to be able to defend their work. It's just key to how you make sure that people are hearing about your work. But then it's also, I think, only fair to the people that you're investigating or reporting on. And so in this case, like Mark Cuban coming into the studio, into our dojo, as he called it a Dungeon, which is fair, that's windowless and small, but full of journalism, and in this case, two people yelling at each other. I'm so grateful he did that because we got to have, what I would say is is the most generously proportioned conversation about a complicated topic in which he got to say everything and anything he wanted.

And so that is what I wanted to make sure people heard, is that this is the best that people got, and so it was.

What did he say that you found interesting? What did he say that was different from what it is that he said before?

Look, I asked him, I think, the fundamental question in all of this, which I will ask everybody, and I ask Truly, NBA, Clippers, Balmer, everybody. Why was this deal never announced? And Mark Cuban provided a theory I had not heard before, which is simply that they had just announced a Red Sox deal at the end of March, and they didn't want to step on that deal. And then, I guess, they never got around to announcing the Kawhi Leonard deal.

They made plenty of other announcements, Pablo, but they just kept omitting Kawhi.

For some reason, it's hard for me to just objectively, of course, describe what he's arguing because I argued against it in the episode so lengthily. But it's just fucking insane. I'm sorry, it's just insane. You signed Leo DiCaprio, Rapper Dianek Jr. Mike, you signed Drake, and you're like, Look who we got. You spend more than four times all those A-listers combined on Kawhi, and you never announced it. And then you forget, apparently. You forget to announce it is basically what happens. The business changes, and it's It was just like you had months. You had months, and you never did it.

What's in it for Mark to just refuse to give an inch here? I mean, we know how difficult it is in these trying times for any man to admit when they are wrong publicly. But why does he simply refuse to make... We're not talking about grand logic leaps here. He is asking for you to acknowledge something that doesn't make any sense when you present him the evidence, but he just holds firm there, refusing to give an inch. What's at play here? He keeps trying to lead the audience on saying, Listen, this is good for the Mavs. I could just turn around and say, No, it's not good for the Mavs because there are a lot of people out there on the internet theorizing that, allegedly, this is happening all over the league and you don't want people poking around.

This is what it makes me wonder. The initial yawn on this from people is like, Oh, I hope nobody comes snooping around here because there are all sorts of suspicious things that rich people do to compete when you try to curtail their richness.

I'm asking Pablo to do something that Mark apparently refuses to do, which is connect the dots here. Explain to me why Mark Cuban is so entrenched in his position.

Should I do this, though? I should.

Time to throw away all journalistic credibility and get reckless. Guys, here is something we like to call reckless speculation.

You're good. This is not journalism. This is not mock raking. This is Pablo being asked for his opinion.

I think Mark Cuban is genuinely an internet brainbrained true poster. And I say that as an internet-brained true poster myself. I think he just is super, super online. He loves it. I mean, look, that's the generous interpretation, which is he just loves to argue about this. And even when I pointed out that he had written 17,000 plus words or whatever it was on Twitter about this, he then comes back and says, A lot of that was ChatGPT. So I'm like, all right, so okay, I mean, whatever. Milage varies on how much work he's putting into the Twitter thing, but nonetheless, he's super into it. The other part, which I raise in the episode, which I find very interesting, is more in the, I would like Mark to connect these dots for me, which is that something that he never told me, and I hate to step on the finale of the episode, but something that I established is that I did not realize that Clipper's co-owner, Dennis Wong, who was Steve Ballmer's college classmate, his best friend, has been described to me, the guy guy who put in money into Aspiration, despite all these disclosures, having never put money in before, in December of 2022, that guy who's been talked about ad nauseam.

I didn't realize that Dennis Wong lives in Dallas now. And in the episode, we basically play a series of things, clips, that Mark Cuban is in, in which they are done at these institutions, the Dallas Museum of Art, for instance, the George W. Bush presidential Center, both in Dallas. We reference the fact that he owns this pickleball team, the Dallas Flash. We do these references because at the end, what I end up asking him is whether he knows that Dennis Wong lives in Dallas and whether he knows that Dennis Wong is also heavily involved with all of those organizations I just namechecked for you in the last minute. Dallas Museum of Art, he's on the board. George W. Bush, Executive Center, Leadership thing. He's on the Advisory Council. He is a an owner, Dennis Wong is, of a Major League pickleball team that plays Mark's team, as well as the fact that they're on the board of governors together, have been for a half dozen years until Mark sold his majority stake in the team. So I asked him that, and Mark said... He laughed. He laughed at all of it. And so look, you could take that as he's genuinely ignorant of the other NBA owner who's not a Mavs owner who's in his city that is involved with these same organizations.

Or you could see something else. I am merely, Dan, asking a question.

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Don Levatard.

Pablo leads all of podcasting in reading while smiling. If you listen to ESPN Daily, he sounds like he's having the time of his life. Stugats.

Coming up next. I'm going to tell you the Savannah Bananas are changing face.

How do you know I'm Savannah Bananas?

How do you know I'm smiling?

That's how I find my vocal range. Sometimes I just say Savannah Bananas.

Savannah Bananas. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugats. Did you have a timeline in your head as to when there may be discipline in this? And then I guess another question is, is there a smoking gun that's still out there that you're trying to find? Because as someone who's not as invested, obviously, as you, it feels like the longer this goes, the less likely there will There will be consequences for all of this.

That is actually something that came up in this espn. Com article that J. Marriotti turned into some... Whatever the opposite of a smoking gun is, you guys can workshop that. What is the opposite of a smoking gun? I don't know. Cool pistol.

I don't know. A cool...

No, that is just another gun.

A rock? Right. It's a freezing bulletproof vest. The freezing bulletproof vest that Mark Cuban saw in that. Com article, or sorry, that Jay Marriotti saw that. Com article, is something that I think Mark Cuban is also rooting for, which is that this investigation, in that article, it was speculated for the first time I had seen, might not be done until after the 2026 NBA playoffs. And so you're right, Billy. The whole thing here, the whole game, which I keep on trying to say, why is it weird that Adam Silver said that he had never heard of Aspiration before? And then after I tweeted out the documentation for the $300 million contract, he then says to front office sports, Oh, I misspoke, in a way that is completely, completely incoherent as an excuse when you watch back the initial video. There was no wiggle room there for misspeaking, by the way. So then when this espn. Com article comes out, the one thing that it publishes is that the NBA had, in fact, vetted the $300 million deal. Not the Kawhi Leonard $28 million deal, but the larger Clippers thing. And my only real takeaway from just that bit of news, which I already reported I found the documentation, but nonetheless, let's go with it.

The only bit of news there is that, oh, the NBA did, in fact, expressly approve this. So why did Adam say that he had never heard of it? Maybe, again, he genuinely was ignorant of it, or maybe, connecting dots here, potentially, there was some other motive. And if the motive that everybody in the league is telling me is that they don't want to punish this to the degree that you're reporting is suggesting, then there are lots of just, yes, freezing bulletproof vests and smokes screens and whatever else to just get in the way of actual punishment. So is there a smoking gun that I am searching for? There are about a dozen that are out there. I just not ready to report those.

It just feels like, yeah, from the outside, if they wanted this to be punished, they could have done so already, and they're just slow playing this. And if the investigation is not going to start until after the season is even complete, the hope Which is, I guess, that the public forgets about it or just doesn't care as much, and then they can just sweep it under the rug.

Well, so the investigation is underway, but the completion of it is what the article said may not be done until after the postseason is conveniently done. The other big part, and Adam said this, by the way, at NBC, they had a big announcement about the NBA deal. Adam was asked about this. He said that there is, quote, no contemplation that the All-Star Game would be moved because the All-Star game is, of course, at the Intuit Dome this coming February. And so there's no contemplation that they're going to move it. And so look, you don't have to be Columbo to see why the NBA wouldn't want to derail the biggest party of the year, as well as the richest owner in the league, as well as the Commissioner of the league. But what I'm simply telling you is that that's how towering the implications of the story are. All of those things are ostensibly on the table, and that's the NBA in their fake justice system, says actually none of it's even on the table.

Put it on the poll, please, @LevittardShow. Is a young person required to come up with a more modern detective reference than Columbo? The reason that I say that is because, and this is charming about my parents, the last three Saturdays, they have texted me, Are you watching Columbo? Because evidently there's some marathon on Saturday nights. Do we not have a more modern detective than Columbo that we can be referencing there? Because I don't know. I'd go Sherlock Holmes. That's obviously not younger. What are the modern detectives that everyone understands here should be modern detective three? And also, Pablo, Do you consider yourself a muckraker? I'm not sure I know the definition even, formally, of muckraker. Billy, can you find me the definition of muckraker, please? Do you consider yourself Pablo? Would that be a term of endearment?

I think I'm a muckraker, I guess. I'm a muck and a muckraker. Muckraker is a compliment. What? I thought that was pretty good. I thought that was pretty good. Just changing two letters. I think that muckraker is a compliment. Look, I think it started with Upton Sinclair, I think, when he was investigating the meat factories of whatever, like Days of Yore. Trackcheck that for me as well, please, where Muckraker started.

Upton Sinclair and Days of Yore Which is the more high fluten of the sounds than Uptin Sinclair and Days of Yore.

I'm referencing Uptin Sinclair's The Jungle, I believe. There's that. Yeah, man, I raked some muck. What of it?

What is the definition, Billy?

It's someone who searches out and publicly exposes real or apparent misconduct of a prominent individual or business.

There you go.

I mean, he's a muck raker.

He is referring to the jungle from 1906.

Yes.

Uptin Sinclair, Days of Your.

Is Benoît Blanc a good modern detective?

Hey, you know what? Knives Out. Knives Out is a franchise where I will watch a zillion sequels to that. I'm all in.

Is that Daniel Craig's character in that? Okay. Can we play the Stat of the day music here? Because I've got an NFL stat of the day. Do we have an NFL stat of the day? I've got a different stat of the day. I don't want to do an NFL stat of the day, but I need an NFL stat of the day.

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That is a good NFL stat. I have a good Pablo Tori Finds Out stat, which is that today's episode of Pablo Tori Finds Out is one minute longer than the 2021 Bob Odenkirk action film, Nobody. Because Pablo takes a minute to get going, and now you got Mark Cuban there, and they're just arguing the entire time, and he's asking us, as he just did, to listen.

Munch? How about Munch?

I was going to say Munch. Munch is such a good one. I watched all the Munch episodes recently, Pablo. Also, there was a Munch movie. I don't know if you saw it. Very sad.

Wait, there's a Munch. Wait, Tony Shaloub? Is he?

He's still with us. Is that how I see it?

He's got a new show about bread.

Yeah, travel show on CNN.

Where he has-He's got a bread show?

Yeah, travels and has bread.

Yeah.

Amen. Why is it sad, though? Why was the monk movie sad?

I mean, do you want me to spoil anything for you? He's depressed. I mean, obviously, we know he lost his wife a long time ago. Now, he's, spoiler alert, possible ex-wife's daughter that she had at the end of the last season that we found out about she's moved on and she's doing bigger and better things. He's no longer detecting, if you will. So he's dealing with some bad thoughts. He sees some windows he might want to jump out of. It's a whole depressing theme throughout the entire episode. But they bring him back for one final case. Also another good detective, Hercule Poireau.

I think that Pablo might have the best of the references when he's saying Columbo. We don't have a… None of those are- Those are all better references. They're more modern references.

I've never heard a Death on the Nile.

They're more modern references, but do you think that they are more associated with Detective Re than Columbo and Sherlock Holmes Holmes, which are the established standards in this realm.

I mean, Munch is the standard now for, I think, an entire generation.

Let's put on the poll at Lebitard Show, Most Famous Detective, and put the four or five of them up there that you want to put up there in the interim. Let's play a clip from Pablo Torre finds out, and this is just a snippet of, again, an episode longer than the 2021 action vehicle of Bob Odenkirke, Nobody. They argued for 90 minutes, and in it, that point you're making, Mike, about Jalen Brunson, about Dirk Nowitzky, about what other examples might there be that Pablo can sniff around. This comes up between them, and they continue, I assume, to argue.

The question is, and this is truly not my reporting, but the conspiracy out there, Reddit, our buddy Bill Simmons.

When Dirk had that documentary and Cuban's Company bought it, and I would- Is this documentary?

. The theory here is that Magnolia Pictures- .

My company, they don't have it.

That's He circumvented the cap by overpaying to distribute a documentary about Dirk.

How he spent Iron Man level money on the Dirk doc.

Here's 48 million for your diet.

Who knows what he spent? How much do you think we paid?

Well, what we did was we checked with the producers of the film. To your credit, they poured cold water on the whole conspiracy. The head of the production company told us that your company did a $100,000 deal for US distribution rights. For how many years? Ten. So, yeah. I'm not here to say got you. I'm just here to legitimately say, if I find evidence- That's fine.

I appreciate you looking. You know what? I thank you. I thank you for just dispelling all the nonsense.

I called the producers. I appreciate it. Just to confirm, did the Mavericks circumvent the salary cap with Dirk Nowitzky in 2014? No. Very good. Do you think the Knicks may have circumvented the cap in taking Jalen Brunson from your Mavericks?

I don't know.

A different answer.

Yeah, I don't know. I just think there was a lot of play there.

Do you think the Knicks should be worried about an upcoming episode of Mark Cuban Finds Out?

That's behind to me. More power to JB, more power to everything. Was I happy that they only got dinged for a second-round pick? No. No, it should have been far worse, but is what it is. What do you make, Pablo, of the no and then the I don't know?

I'm just glad Mark Kevman loves talking. Genuine. What other part owner of an NBA team is just going to sit there and just rift on stuff? And even if you believe the rifts or don't, all I want is people to go on the record saying, Here is what I am telling you happened, and then I can continue to report it. So we tried to do some reporting on the Dirk stuff, and to his credit, the production team said they were paid nothing close to what was alleged, so that's useful data. The Brunson thing, I think Mark is more animated about that than me, it sounds like.

Pablo, the one thing I couldn't understand from Cuban on his side of things here is it seems like he's incapable of making any logical conclusions or even considering the humanity side of this. Steve Ballmer, a rich guy, can make a miscalculation. For that matter, considering sources, right? Every time you bring up the seven sources who might confirm something, he just dismisses that as, Well, they're just people who have their own thing. Why do you think it is that the Cuban is having such a hard time processing just the human elements behind this story?

I found it frustrating, too. I think there's, most generously, it's just a lot to keep up with. Maybe it's just hard to keep track of all of the sources and the documents. Less generously, I think it's because it's wildly inconvenient when you're saying, this is how I would have done it. And seven people, and then over time, nine people are saying, this is how it happened. And so look, the whole point of journalism, not to be on a high horse, is that it's not good enough to You need to talk to people, primary sources, who in this case were interviewed by the federal government, who over time are telling you with increasing clarity, here are documents, fact check them, here are facts, check them, go to the Clippers, See what they push back on. No one corrects anything. The documents turn out to be true. The guys that they pointed to in terms of the actual fraud of the business get arrested and plead guilty to wire fraud. It's just funny that a lot of what is being reverse engineered is from the documentation around the Department of Justice's own investigation. Key people in that investigation, key sources, are my sources.

Without saying more, because I need to protect their identity, I just look forward to the day when those sources may, in fact, feel comfortable enough to speak on the record with their names and their faces and their voices, because for the time being, the reason they're not has to do with the fact that we are not talking about Just in truth, like fun, random sports debate. We're talking about one of the richest men, 10 richest men in the world, being at the center of their accusations. So that's why they're not doing it. Plus the fact that there's an ongoing series of federal probes. Anyway, that's what I think. I also believe, though, that if you don't believe the sources, that's okay. Believe the documents. And apparently, mileage varies on that, too.

Put it on the poll, please, at Lebitard Show. Will you who listened to a podcast that promises, quote, an ongoing series of federal probes, end quote. Pablo Tori finds out, is the podcast. It is excellent, and he continues to chase this story because as J. Marriotti says, I tell him to chase people. Thank you for chasing people, Pablo. Continue to chase people.

Thank you for being my boss, and thank you for the money. We have another investigation, a different investigation, coming Thursday that I think is going to make people mad.

Is it J. Marriotti dies his hair? Because I have concluded mine.

See you later, Pablo. Thank you.

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Don Levatard. We didn't get to your guys as against the spread.

You're right. I don't have it against the spread because I wasn't prepared for this segment. You need an Ian in your life. You have actively played defense against me today in a way that has rarely been this undercutting. Stugatz.

Defense wins the Championship, baby. That's show business. This is the Don Levatard Show with the Stugatz.

We will get to Tony here in a segment. We are not going to do that here now because there's a limited amount of time here, and I wanted to talk about a couple of things from yesterday, not the two plays that I wanted to talk about from the football game, because that Béjon Robinson run doesn't make any physical sense that he would be able to break that last tackle while staying in bounds. His lower body must be stronger than anyone's in the league because that didn't make physical, physics sense to me that he did not go out of bounds, given that there was a defender with an angle on him and the sideline there. And also that Drake London play at the end of the first half was just magic. It was just great. But before I get to either of those plays from last night's action, I do want to talk about the baseball, and I want to talk about the baseball, not Blake Snell division, even though Blake Snell, what he's been doing over the last six starts, is something I have not seen from a pitcher. Before. Not Oral Hirschheiser, not anybody over the last six starts.

It's a soft spot for former Rays, I think.

I do have a soft spot for former Rays, but also Blake Snell is the best left-hander I've seen since Clayton Kershaw, who's not named Scouble. So the thing that I wanted to talk about, though, from the Milwaukee game, and what it takes to try to beat Blake's now, is a double play that has never happened in baseball and is funny, and I'm going to try and explain to the audio audience, because I heard Mike trying to come in here today and just understand what the play was based on verbal description, because verbal description makes it hard to describe what is a play that has no precedent in the history of American American baseball, which has more history than any sport we have. I'm going to try and explain this in just audio. Billy's going to delight in this play because he's already wanting to make a mess of my explanation. No. I said, Billy, I see you. Billy, I see you lean up.

He doesn't need to do anything to do that.

Billy, I've seen you lean in your chair.

There's ways of describing it with words, and there's ways it's described on the scorecard, and it could have played out differently on a scorecard to show how unique of a play it was. The fact that it ends up being on the scorecard numerically the way it's represented, I'm positive that there have been multiple instances where a game has been scored a double play with those identical numbers. Go ahead.

What do you mean? Go ahead and explain what it is that your-Numerically? Yes.

Well, numerically, you would go the person who receives a ball to the person who throws the ball to the person who ends the play.

I haven't heard any numbers yet from you. I've just heard... You explain Okay, it would go up probably 8, 6, 2 or 8, 5, 2, depending on who received it, who got it.

8, 6, 2, and then unassisted.

8, 6, 2, then the unassisted. Now, had it gone 8, 6, 2, 5, I'm sure that that is not a common double play because of the fact that at the end of the play, spoiler alert, the catcher decided to run down and touch third base. Well, that's what makes it more rare. It would make it seem like it could have just been a typical pop fly that was then thrown, cut off, and then there was a second out made at home plate on player tagging, which is not uncommon.

You want to try and explain this to the audience with words instead of numbers?

I just did with numbers. Well, I'm just the words, and that's why I'm saying the numbers don't do it justice.

The numbers never lie.

I don't know the numbers. I know you're 6, 4, 3. One, pitcher.

Two, catcher. Three, first base. Stop me when you want me to stop.

I want you to stop. It's like astrology. I'm just never going to take it in.

You don't ever do any scorekeeping You've never done baseball scorekeeping?

No, I'm a grown man who has sex.

You never got the shirt that says four plus six plus three equals two?

So you don't know. If I ask you the shortstop, what is the shortstop numerically? You don't know the number?

I assume that's a six because there's a 6, 4, 3.

Yes. So the shortstop is six, second basement is the four, and the three is the first base.

That's all I got.

Okay, so the third basement? You want to try the third basement? Nope. Okay. It's a five.

There's one number in between.

So this is the The play, the bases are loaded and a shot is hit towards center field. And you've heard me say that I can't believe the number of outfielders in baseball who are regularly stealing home runs. This is something that I'm watching It happened in baseball more than I've ever seen it happen. It happens every week. It's a really weird thing to watch when it used to be an incredibly special play. But Sal Freilich, excuse me, is headed toward the wall, and And as he jumps up at the wall, which is very far from first, second, third base, very far from home plate, it's going to be very hard if you're a base runner to see what's happened here because he jumps up at the wall, the wall, over the wall, the ball hits his glove, and it looks, unless you're close to it, it looks like he bobbles it and then catches it after it's hit his glove. But as he's out there, it also hits the wall. So So now it is no longer able to be caught because once it hits the wall, it is now not capable of being an out in his glove.

Correct. It's got to be an out on one of the bases. But you can't see that from first, second, or third base. So what all these runners have to do is go back to the bag and tag up and then go so they eliminate all the forceouts. But they don't know this. They think that this person may have caught the ball on the bobble. They're confused and now the Dodger base runners in a zero-zero game, in a game where the brewers know they're not scoring on Blake Snell. There will be no scoring on Blake Snell in this game. They're doing everything they can to stop the Dodgers from scoring a run, and they somehow do it Because the professional base runners, very good. The Dodgers are very good at the specifics of baseball. They don't know what to do with, I can't see what just happened out there, and I didn't see, and I don't see that this is a live ball because the ball has hit the wall. It looks like Freilich has caught the ball.

That's the part that's crazy, is all of the runners stay still for just a moment, and for him to not just keep the concentration to catch this ball, but to keep the concentration to catch the ball off of the wall when you can later see the confusion on his own face about what's happened, because I'm not sure he even realized that the ball hit off of the wall when he caught it. He's just trying to throw it in as fast as he can to the cutoff man. A perfect throw, which then allows that cut off man to make a perfect throw home to the catcher to get what is not a play that needs to be tagged, but a force out at home.

That's crazy.

That is this close.

A force out at home when that ball was at the wall doesn't make any sense.

No, you got to treat that as a sack fly if you're a base runner.

In all essence, you need to go back to the base, wait until at least a second attempt to catch that ball so you can tag up and score.

At the very least, it'll probably be a force play a second if you went out.

Roy was walking us through what he would have done differently this morning and how none of that should have happened. Yeah, it was bad base running.

Agreed, but agreed. That is not up for dispute, but I understand why the base running was bad, at least in part because of the confusion at the wall. But the idea that they then get another out at third base, that they got the outs at home and at third when the ball was going a home run. The first thing Freilich did is that would have been a home run if he had not had his glove above the wall. Now, he brings it back. It hits the wall. And what should have been a home run... How frustrated are you if you're this hitter? What should have been a play off home run is forever a double play.

And by the way, a grounded into a double play, technically.

No, I have a bone to pick with that situation. That is not a grounded into double play. That's how it's scored. I see that people scored it that way. You cannot score grounded into double play on a ball that's hit 400 feet in the air. It would be a fielder's choice, wouldn't it? You did not ground into a double play. No, it's not a fielder's choice because it ended up being a double play. No one got safe at first.

Right.

Put it on the poll, please, @LebitardShow. Joe, is there any way possible to ground into a double play on a ball you've hit 400 feet over the fence? Because there's not. And yet I just saw it.

It happened.

No, there's not. In front of your own eyes. No, there's not a way. No, there is not a way to ground into a double play on a ball hit 400 feet over the fence.

And ground into a double play in which the catcher runs to third base about 20 seconds after the ball was hit in the air.

The next thing you're going to tell me is that Kam Ward threw a game-winning interception for a shutdown.

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