Transcript of Local Hour: Up To Snuff

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Shadow Show.

Shadow Show.

Shadow Show. Shadow Show. Shadow Show. Shadow Show. Shadow Show. Shadow Show. Shadow Show. Shadow in it. We've got some significant baseball stuff happening. Billy told you you shouldn't have waited this long to start the World Series. This should have happened on Wednesday or Thursday or another day when they had the stage to themselves. But before talking about that, I wanted to ask the group, Tyreek Hill so excited about Tua coming back, said the phrase, and it was a bit incongruous for me, Start up the effing band. I think of that as a phrase from the 1920s or the 1930s. I don't know where it is that it started. I think there were musicals and movies. He's using a phrase from 100 years ago, I believe, when he says, Strike up the bleepin band. Did you guys know where that came from, or were you surprised to hear him say that? Did you understand what he meant?

Definitely understood what he meant because it's been a cliché my entire life. I never thought about the origin because I thought it was so old-timey that it was pretty obvious.

Okay. I was just surprised to hear Tyreek Hill use that phrasing. Not surprised that he would be very excited after going to Indianapolis and seeing everything about the dolphins being totally constipated offensively. And he's just basically telling you, Never mind about all our backup quarterbacks, I can't wait to breathe the oxygen again of having two up play.

Is it fire up the band? Because you said start up the band. Sometimes, well, Sean Michael would tune up the band. Oh, tune up the band. He hit somebody with sweet chin music. I have a question for everybody here. Clarify this, because usually when I watch the Dolphins, it's on a secondary TV or Red Zone clips. I thought this player was good, but correct me if I'm wrong. Does Jalen Waddle stink? Maybe. Is he bad?

He's QB dependent.

Well, because I've seen Troy in there, too, and I've been like, All right, this is going to be the game where he breaks out, and it hasn't happened yet.

Does he stink? He has moments. He has lots of drops. If you hit him the wrong way, he'll miss lots of plays. Then he'll come back at the end, and then he'll have another play, and then a couple of drops.

When you say hit him the wrong way, how do you- Hit him at all, really.

If he gets hit, he then will sit out a plays.

So injured Gabe Davis.

Good elaborate.

I mean, am I wrong? That's it. Am I wrong? He does get injured, but not injured.

Injured, Gabe Davis?

No, but he's not injured. That's pretty cutting. But he's not injured to the point that he missed his weeks. It's injured that he'll miss drives and then come back from said injury. So he's either a miraculous healer or...

He does have the body type. Who said that? He does have the body type to me when I watch, I'm like, Yeah, it probably hurts getting tackled for that guy.

He's got 100 receptions in his rookie year, 75 the next, 72. He's got 1,000 yards over every season he's played. Six touch downs, eight touch downs, four touch downs. He's a good player.

Look, I think that you did it.

That arrow is pointing down, dude.

It's early to point the arrow down. It points down, as Tony said, I thought that he had the analysis that was most efficient. Billy had a lot of noises. I don't know what many of them meant, but when Tony said, which would make him injured Gabe Davis, when Tony said, quarterback dependent, you don't really want your wide receivers to be that. I don't want Lazard if all the... The only production I'm going to get from Lazard is if he's playing with Aaron Rodgers.

I would never want healthy Gabe Davis.

I really thought that was a cutting comment that Billy wasn't willing to... Who said? Injured Gabe I didn't say injured Gabe Davis. I wouldn't dare. No, you didn't.

It was Billy and Tony.

It was definitely Billy and Tony that said that.

Who said that? How dare that person?

I'm certainly not a UCF.

I don't know what you're talking about. You didn't say it.

Don't say injured Gabe Davis.

That's too far. After it was He said your contribution when the show was thrown to you was to make a noise that nobody understood, whether you were confirming it, whether you were confused, whether you were disagreeing with it. Mike got it. I cosigned.

There you go.

This is the Dan Levatore with the Stukas podcast.

Today's episode is sponsored by DraftKings. Stay tuned because you'll hear more about DraftKings and all it has to offer throughout the show. Draftkings, the Crown is yours.

I know that people are fired up today and want to talk about Rams, Vikings, because the NFL gave us a little something on Thursday that's even a little more disorienting, which is, oh, we thought that the Vikings were one of the good teams, and they are, but the Rams can also be one of the good teams if they are perfectly healthy and both of their wide receiver are in, Stafford could look like the champion that he is. But before we get to that story, I wanted to ask the group what interest level there was on everything that was leaking out yesterday involving Kawhi Leonard and Kawhi Leonard's trainer suing the Clippers, because I I thought this was the biggest story from yesterday in sports. I also thought that the last 10 years of this player and the ingredients around this player have made it so bewildering that Stephen A. Smith, who's bouncing between Hannity and doing the first take thing that him and Skip Bayliss birthed all over sports debate television, called him the worst superstar star in sports ever. And I have that commentary on first take, and I'm looking at some of these lawsuit details, and I'm like, Well, wait a minute.

If they totally screwed up this guy's body and somebody who was actually caring about him since he was in college, was trying to help get his body right, and now he's suing the Clippers when it's a person who was also involved with everything that was happening with the Spurs and that medical condition. You've got the quietest superstar we've ever seen in sports, leaving the Spurs under suspicious circumstances. And now you've got his trainer with the Clippers turning around and saying, Hey, I didn't agree with his care. And Kawhi Leonard is viewed as somebody who, when we saw him play, he's the last guy who took down everybody as just one guy. Everything around him has been super teams. He started with a super team as the third or fourth best player on it. He's a multi-time champion, and he's been the number one on one of the champions, and LeBron only feared him when he was on the Spurs as a young player. This is a great player who has been damaged by his medical care, and I don't think anybody in sports cares.

He ended the Durant Warriors. I don't want to say ended the Warriors because they ended up winning another title afterwards. But he did so with one of the greatest individual efforts while never having two feet off the ground. If you watch that, it's crazy. It's so much old man game, and it's just like, I'll doll on my body when I need to. Really a perplexing superstar, not just because of his public persona. He's not really the type to force his way out of a place, you would think, just on the surface of things, he did so. What I'm confused by is it seems like all this terrible treatment that he got that made him force his way out of San Antonio just kept following him. He forced his way out of San Antonio, but he just re-ups with Los Angeles every chance he gets, even though the bad treatment, apparently, allegedly continues.

Chris Haynes in his tweet, he's talking about unsafe and illegal treatments. What the hell does that mean? What are we doing? Illegal treatments in going to Germany and getting stem cells? Is that illegal here? Is that what they're doing now to him to try and get his knee back up to snuff? What does illegal treatments mean?

Can you help me with up to snuff? Because you're saying, what does illegal treatments mean? I know what up to snuff means as a term. I don't have any idea what the snuff is. I don't know what it means to be up to snuff or what it means to be down to snuff, in the middle on Up to snuff? I don't understand that phrase.

Up to snuff meaning meeting the required standard of snuff.

Okay, but why is it snuff? That was my question.

How about we Google what snuff is?

But do you guys put it on the poll, please, at Lebitard show. I guess that's the question I should have asked. I don't know what snuff is. Well, that's the question I should have asked. Instead, the origins of the phrase, does anyone listening to me, does anyone within the sound of my voice know what snuff is? Anyone. I'm not talking to the shipping container. I'm talking to anybody in the universe because I don't feel like the shipping container has any idea.

We're working over time here. Fingers are all over keyboards right now. I think the issue is we totally have a great understanding of being up to a certain level. But when that standard is snuff, we don't know what snuff is.

Snuff is essentially dip or chewing tobacco.

Why would something be up to snuff?

I'm also on that.

Okay. Well, this is what happened with Tony. We're going to feature Tony today. We got a Tony's Top 5. We got a Tony tonight. Tony is going to be featured today because it's getting crowded around here. There are fewer days, fewer seats for everybody. It's a very competitive environment. But one of the things that's been built around here, and Billy, you've noticed this, is that since Carl got here, all of a sudden, the people who used to be producers are talent. They don't have to produce. They have to be talent. They have to talk at the mics, they have to... I hate that phrase talent, but it's not producing the show. But when I ask a group of producers, Hey, what snuff? Usually what I get is some diligent research from five people. At the moment, what I'm getting is a confused Tony being bombarded with both that and where does the phrase, Strike up the band, come from?

Also trying to find that. I can't find that either.

You're throwing a lot of stuff at us. Everyone's got computers searching, and you're really upset with the process. I'm back here. I got eyes on everything. Everybody's process is good.

I'm just saying I used to have producers, and now I have talent. One of the things that ends up happening is I throw, Strike up the band at you, I throw snuff at you, and the answers come back ricocheting rapid fire. That's generally how that one works, especially when Stugats isn't here.

I mean, if you want to take the class behind the scenes, I'm putting the finishing touches on a new bet the house. I was making sure the levels were right. That's what was going on there.

It was actively producing.

Make sure that what is said is heard, and it's a whole rigmarole. I had to I pulled his elbow. Yeah, he said, Dan Siny, and I plugged in and I was like, Yes, sir?

I'm trying to read the details of a lawsuit that you didn't bring up during the production meeting and then dropped on us at the very beginning of the show.

Yeah, well, because I wanted to see what you guys were finally up about. We're ready. No, you guys have a lot of things that you want to talk about. We're up to snuff.

The earliest evidence we've recovered of the phrase is an 1807 London newspaper in a text now that partially readable, because it's not fully readable because it's 1807, you know how it is, asked a young lady if she would have a pinch of snuff, and in the negative, I don't like that. What is this?

That's the best undervedge. That's facetiously, absurdly.

Suppose you're up to snuff, but the phrase seems to have its literary...

Okay.

We've gotten to a point that if it's based in 1807, I'm like, I'm just going to avoid that.

This is Miriam Webster's fault, Dan, by the way. It doesn't even make sense. I want somebody else to read it.

Strike Up The Band, by the way.

You're not a woman.

1927 musical. George Gershwin. Miriam Webster, Two Men, Not A Woman.

It was a joke.

We don't explain the jokes around here. I think one of the funnier jokes around here is that we just discovered someone who reads more poorly than Chris Cody. I think Tony- No, no, no. Trust me, Dan.

No, that's impossible. Dan, trust me.

Oh, no.

I read eons better, and I have vocabulary eons better. I don't think that's the measurement. I don't think that's a problem. That's a bad example.

I think- Wait, is it Zinn, a snuff?

Yes.

He knows the words. That's not what they mean.

I know what a snuff film is. No.

I think that's what it is. That's different.

No, really not helpful. Eons, I want you- I think it's Elon.

Now, I'm going to look that up, Dan, and be right.

No, don't look it up. Don't I'm not going to look it up. I want to ask you without looking it up what you believe the measurement eons is.

Eons is a measure of time that is infinite into the future. If I say it in the terms that I was saying it, my reading, comprehension, and readability is eons further than where Chris Cody is currently. So again, using the words correctly, but you want to just make me out to be some- But you said eons better, which is a little- It is.

But further is different because It's distance.

Yes. Time is not generally a measurement of distance.

But it's also a flat circle.

Decades are.

Across the decades. The problem is that I believe that what alerted me to your reading, and it may just have been because Billy more successfully undercut you than he usually does with a comment right beforehand, a joke that was funny. Did you struggle with facetiously? Did I hear you say, What is that word? I don't know what that is because you were stumbling into that word. Roy smiling here. Roy, away from the fray, above the fray, up to snuff. Roy is smiling because he is laughing at your pain here. I just want to deconstruct facetiously Were you scared of it?

No, I wasn't scared of facetiously. The issue is, as Mike is looking on my shoulder here, what I'm reading is a highlighted portion of the text. Let's blame Mike here. No, I'm saying Mike- I'm being a supportive partner here in this back row. No, I'm saying Mike, you're looking over and you're seeing what I'm reading is what I'm trying to explain. As I'm doing that, there's many ellipsises, right? Where I'm looking at, I'm like, Okay, partially readable, dot, dot, dot. Asked a young lady if she would have a pinch of snuff and on dot, dot, dot in the negative, he facetiously observed. The sentence doesn't make sense in its structure.

You're applying so much pressure on him that he can't take the time to read this, even though he's eons away as a reader. He's got to do this on the fly, and you got a surprise ellipsis. It could throw your whole game off.

How about four of them?

Billy has been surgical when he is listening to the show and not producing something that may or may not be played later and may or may not be something that was once promised as a weekly feature that we haven't done for three weeks.

Well, there's an explanation. We'll get to that in the setup.

There's a reason. Okay.

I look forward- You'll be happy to know that, Dan, these waveforms are looking air tight.

Thank you.

I look forward to that explanation. The thing that I wanted to ask you, though, because you are so very good at undercutting Tony, you had a great idea. You were very efficient with all of your anarchy there, fast and sharp when you were listening. A read-off with pressure on both Chris and Tony would be really funny. I am with pressure to read because once you start placing the expectations of this, I believe Tony to be more confident than Chris here. I believe Chris will fall apart here, but I also believe that Tony shouldn't be more confident than Chris here.

What is that supposed to mean? What is I'm not supposed to read it. My money would be on Tony. Thank you. The thing is the ellipses. You just throw them in there, you don't have your ellipses glasses on, and then all of a sudden, boom, blinds you. You can't read.

I want Chris to read the exact same paragraph that I just read, and we're to do it side by side to see where he lands on this.

What I will tell you, and this is why it generally is helpful to be either a producer or talent, generally speaking, that difficult Wikipedia type of reading needs to be done for the first time before you're doing it on air. You have to process that it's confusing, that it's going to have a lot of shit in it. In fact, we have Stugatz's. Roy, you can find this. Stugatz, when he used to be the one who was looking stuff up around here, and I think he had an incident with Muay Thai. He had an incident reading about it because he didn't know how to read exactly what it is that you're talking about there, Tony, where it's Wikipedia, where there are a bunch of sentence fragments helping you on origins, but they're not sentences.

They're pieces of sentences from 1807 London, which obviously makes it eternally harder.

That's right. I don't know if eternally is used there, Karina. Eons harder. Yeah, probably eons harder is what we want to go with there. Find what it is that I'm talking about because the time that we have, most famously, Stugat's reading poorly on the show, is him trying to read something like this. But when Billy suggests, Tony, having a read-off, the only reason that I don't have the confidence in you to beat Chris Cody is only because once we stack pressures on top of this and breathing on top of you on reading, it just becomes more difficult. I think I'd have trouble under those circumstances.

I think we can test his reading and also invoke the world of sports because Aaron Rodgers had a press conference the other day where he used some big words. If you are truly eons away, then you should be able to read this easily. Okay. Go ahead. There's a quote.

I'm going to read this quote here. Okay. Okay. Thankfully, we're not to the denoument of the season. There's still a lot of time left.

It's important to- You skipped two words to the denoument. That's not what I said? You just skipped two.

You're in trouble here, Tony. What's denoument? Start over.

Start. You know the words. I'll admit, I don't know that word.

The origins of this term come from the military den. The literal sense of the term, that is a day spent in field maneuvers, is now little used. The first reference we have for that meaning is from 1747. In scheme, a quick men of war. These periodical interviews.

Let me just stop you.

That's exactly what I was trying to read here. Yes, thankfully, we're not to the denouement of this season. There's still a lot of time left. It's important that we all stay as sanguine as possible. Wow.

Eons.

How about stop throwing interceptions? Like, enough with the big words. Complete passes to your team.

What I thought when I heard that press conference that he was just being with friends and they told him to see if they could sneak a couple of words into a press conference. Like that he was doing... He wasn't trying to say something there that wasn't funny or to appear smarter than he is, was he? Oh, him?

Never. Did you see the other clip from Monday where he was asked in so many words, he asked, How do you keep this team together? And he was like, number one, don't listen to you guys. Number two is accountability.

You could do a bit of a Simpson's episode on what is happening to poor Stugatz's jets this season as they to just, game by game, week by week, please Aaron Rodgers more, however it is that they can please Aaron Rodgers, while being in the same position right now that the dolphins are in.

I was chastised. The glares that I got in this studio.

It was for me. It was for me.

Yes, you were your beloved Aaron Rodgers.

I thought he was going to be somebody who, at the very least, wouldn't throw interceptions, as he's always been. I didn't expect him to be great. I didn't expect him to be able to move around in the pocket. I did expect him, because he invented it, because he changed the sport, to not throw interceptions.

As he ages, though, he's always been careful, even when he was at the elite, but he's taking fewer risk. It's a shame because I think he's at this stage in his career where his arm is still good. You can still put a lot of zip on that ball. He's got playmakers on that team. Give you guys a chance. If you're going to throw an interception, make it be 40 yards down the field. And he's just not doing that anymore. And again, the math has all changed. There have been two people north of 40 to put up really good seasons. Tom braided did it routinely. Brett Farve historically had an outlier with Minnesota. We can't hold quarterbacks however great to that standard because it's physically impossible, almost.

Let me explain to you how and why it is I got this wrong. For those of you who are interested in the oral history of this show. Tom Tom braided so disproved for me, something that I thought was a physical certitude at quarterbacking, because Max Kellermann fell into the same hole. He looked at all of the quarterbacks who had ever played, and he said of Tom braided at 37 or 38 Like I did, how do you measure in eons depreciation of somebody who's in the same uniform and you know how great he is and you don't think to the human eye, you'll be able to discern the Every quarterback before Tom braided at 37, you can bet on. It's a sure thing. It's a sure thing in sports. The decline begins now. But then Diana Tarassi over here and LeBron James over here and people playing into their 40s. Maybe the science is different. Maybe the medicine is different. I got it so wrong on Tom braided for so many years on what was supposed to be his sure thing decline that I'm like, Okay, athletes can now do this into their 40s because whatever, they go to Germany and get stem cells and either dope their blood or just change their blood.

Allegedly illegal treatment. Jeremy, what's the latest on the Kawhi stuff that we were looking up?

Trying to read through this lawsuit is pretty crazy. What his trainer is alleging is that basically in the transition from going over to the Clippers, which seems like there was some illegal recruiting from all the way back to when he was with the Spurs, the Clippers promised that there would be a plan on load management as to how to handle Kawhi. And then after repeated injuries, including a torn ACL, that it seems like the Clippers rushed him back from. Then what he was told was a sprain within his knee of a ligament that turned out to be a torn meniscus. The Clippers continued to play him and continued to play him. And despite plans made with Shelton, who was his trainer, to load manage and make sure that Kawhi was ready to go throughout the season and ready for the playoffs, If you guys remember last year, Kawhi played 68 games and then completely broke down. And what the alleging lawsuit says is, We knew this was going to happen. He played through injuries he shouldn't have. And now, when I filed a formal complaint, I was dismissed. And so that's where everything goes from there.

I don't know how interesting the audience finds this because it's medicine, it's minutiae, and we like arguing about the easier things in sports. But the last 10 years of Kawhi Leonard's career, I believe him to be a hugely willful human being, his body has been broken and his relationship with the Spurs was broken. Who the hell does Kawhi Leonard trust when the people who are making money off him in the commerce of basketball, and there's a fight all around him on load management, when he can't trust the doctors, can't trust the team, can't trust his body, can't trust anybody. And a guy who at 21 made LeBron James look over his shoulder at the free throw line and be like, Oh, bleep, this guy's coming back in the game. You haven't seen it from LeBron before since. It was only one guy in the sport that we ever saw that with LeBron, where we all watched him- It was Roy Hibbert. Look over his shoulder. No, that was in front of him.

Perplexing. Yeah, there was one guy behind him and one guy in front of him, and they do not really compute. That's right.

Roy Hibbert in front of him had LeBron working on floaters and hook shots in the practice gym in the looking to change their entire offense because of Roy Hibbert in front of him. But behind him was him looking behind the free throw line and going bleep because Kawhi Leonard was coming back into a game. I've seen very few shows of respect bigger than that one. That guy's career, after he leaves the Spurs with a broken relationship that was about the medicine, all shadows, all in the dark, all needles, all away from our eyes, and he says nothing. Superstar who says nothing. We're left to the mystery of what's happening there. Goes to Toronto, beats the closest in beads ever going to be with his body, and whatever the sport does to his body, beats him on a bounce, takes out the warriors because they were injured, but is a singular player who is playing on nubs. All of us are watching him, Old Man game when he's not Old Man. Clearly not Old Man in that series also, Clay Thompson's body falls apart and Kevin Durant's body falls apart because keeping the body right in that sport is hard and requires all sorts of cheating through needles and masks and everything else, whatever it is that these people do in the shadows when we're not looking to keep playing.

This is fascinating to me, and I'm not sure how fascinating it is to anybody else, but it's not because of what happened yesterday. It's because of the last 10 years. This guy is an all-time great, isn't going to be regarded as an all-time great because his last 10 years haven't looked the way they should, and now his trainer's got a problem with the way that his care was handled, because I'm guessing it was careless. I'm guessing it served the business first.

What's amazing is that it says this dates all the way back to 2017 when those first injuries with the Spurs happened and Kawhi was seeking the medical treatment, and we all saw through the media that the Spurs were unhappy. This lawsuit alleges that the assistant GM of the Clippers at the time started reaching out to Kawhi and his team, then putting in motion, trying to get him to the Clippers. This was after he had already signed a five-year extension with the Spurs. So it's not just the modern in the last couple of years mistreatment of his body that becomes a part of this story. It's also the potential tampering allegations with the Clippers. It's a really layered and fascinating lawsuit.

It bummed me out so much because I don't believe that people are going to care because everything's now moving so fast. Sports every day, what do I get today? What happened yesterday? And argument television is so huge that instead of the conversation around Kauai being the detailed things in this report, you get Stephen A Smith on television shouting yesterday, as always. He's the worst superstar anywhere in sports. And when I put those two things next to each other, I was like, Man, that sucks. If you're Kawhi Leonard and you're quiet and you don't trust anybody and your body has been broken, I will say it again, resume of an all-time great isn't going to be regarded that way. It isn't going to be regarded that way because the doctors fail him, the media fails him, the teams fail him, the commerce fails him, the fans fail him because they're not going... The general biases that surround the superstar on load management is that guy doesn't care. I'm sorry, no one's going to tell me that Kawhi Leonard won a championship that way on nubs for knees, not caring.

The crazy thing is, too, you think of the economy and the commerce of sports and how you're going to get the best doctors from wherever they live, bring them over to your team so that your players are 100% every season. It seems like they didn't do that.

It seems like it happens everywhere. It's only the best doctors if the interest of team and player are aligned. They cease to become the best doctors when they're compromised by the biases of the commerce. What's in this lawsuit is the business leaning on Kawhi's trainer.

The sad part about Kawhi in particular, getting the reputation of worst superstar or load management and ruins the game is He's a guy who's load managed because of actual injuries happening to him. He's missed games because he's hurt, where all across the league, you have other superstars who are load managing with the idea of either, Let's get the playoffs, or, Let me make sure I'm at full strength all season long, or whatever it is. Those are the guys that actually maybe you can criticize for load management. This is a guy who has just simply been injured.

More than that. It's why it's super interesting to me. He's ground zero on load management. And what I would say to you is he was actually hurt. And now when Bede's like, I'll see you in the playoffs.

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Don Lebatard. 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 championships, baby. That's show business. This is the Don Lebatard show with the Stugatz.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel battered by the amount of sports there are. I don't know what happened after the pandemic. So basketball and football come back, and tonight, the MLS Playoffs begin. Enter Miami against Atlanta United in Fort Lauderdale at 8:30. Also the World Series at the same time, and I'm sure an assortment of college football games as well, and whatever it is that will grab your streaming and gambling dollar. But Taylor Twelman, for long time now, has been a face and voice for US men's soccer. He's also the lead analyst for Apple TV's MLS coverage. I talked to him at the beginning of this, Taylor. It's been super interesting, the excitement, the enthusiasm around Messi and Miami. And now all of a sudden, the team is every bit as good as you would expect if it had the best soccer player in the world still. But because it's behind a streaming paywall, I have found that Miami, some parts of Miami can't quite get to what it is because some people are broke and can't afford a streaming service. I'm not kidding. I heard for them because you don't think it matters.

But I believe Messi's greatness is being kept behind a paywall, and so it's not free to all, and it makes it a little harder to reach the MLS playoff.

A wonderful spot you've put. Apple TV's Taylor Twelman.

No, it's a great spot. And by the way, Dan, I got a gift for you. Tonight's game's free. You don't need a subscription to be on Apple TV. So there we go. I cured your problem. 8:30 tonight, 7:30 pregame, Apple TV. There you go. Anyone in the world can watch it.

Taylor Twelman. Look at this. If you tune in at 9:30 AM Eastern, you will find Taylor Twelman solving poverty. He just gave us-But now you need TVs, though. Freedom.

Yeah, you do.

Taylor-no, you don't. You don't need TVs. You can watch it on your device, you can watch on your iPad, you can watch on your computer. I feel like it's Christmas with how many gifts I'm giving you guys right now.

This is a man with answers, Dan.

It's freedom. He's giving gifts and freedom. And Messi has been so amazing, Taylor, that I can't help but think, and I didn't think this at the beginning, but when you go hat-trick in 11 minutes and when you're the first team in league history to have 20 goal scorers and they miss a lot of games, it makes me believe that they're playing against part-time plumbers.

They're not. I'll give you that much, considering One of the players that they're playing against may bring in 25, 26 million. I'll let that just simmer out there for the universe to think about. Here's the thing, Dan. He's the greatest of all time, right? And I was listening to you guys in the previous segment talk about Tom braided and how he debunked father time. Luis Suarez is arguably the best nine, the best center forward of his generation, 37 years old. He scores 20 goals this year because he's playing next to the greatest of all time in Lionel Messi. The fact that Lionel Messi missed 15 games and still had 20 goals, 16 assists. He was doing this two weeks before in World Cup qualifying for Argentina. So, Dan, when anyone like yourself wants to bring up the quality of Major League Soccer, and I don't think it's that bad of a statement, I remind everyone he's doing this in World Cup qualifying against the best that South America has to He debunked every theory we've ever had. My father played in the NASL. I've heard time and time again stories about Pelé, and I have to pitch myself every single time because I grew up thinking, there's nobody, Nobody that's in that conversation.

I'm telling you right now, Messi's trumped that. Messi is everything in better than anything Pele.

Taylor, I can't believe what I'm about to say, okay? But I saw Pele when he came over with the Cosmos and was supposed to be the old broken version of himself that actually did make soccer matter in America because we couldn't believe we had Pele. The fact that Messi is doing this at this age on every stage he plays on, I don't think people understand that in this era of expertise that we live in, that tonight on television, you will get Ohtani over there mastering baseball in a way we haven't seen before, and you will get Messi mastering soccer in a way we haven't seen before. For free.

For free, by the way. For free, Michael. It's interesting, Dan, that you bring up O'Tani, because my grandfather played 19 years pro-baseball, 11 in the majors. And he talked a lot about this aura of Babe Ruth, We're watching Baybrooth. Now, who knows whether or not Ohtani ends up pitching ever again, considering he's the first player to ever have 50 home runs, 50 stone bases. You guys know all the numbers. But how ironic. Tonight, Yankees, Dodgers, the best rivalry in baseball, and we are going to see Lionel Messi, Suarez, Jordi Alba, and Sergio Busquets. We have to name them. They're generational players in and of themselves. Chase glory, Chase history, Major League Soccer. I think we're going to be talking about this 10, 15 years down the road because I don't know if we ever see Ohtani, and I'm pretty sure we never see Messi again.

Taylor, when you select hotel rooms on the road, because yours looks out of 2050, it looks, as I would have imagined, a Perfect. Hold on, Dan.

Hold on. Dirk Diggler is here. Hold on. Hold on. What's it? We're good. I'm just borrowing his room. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

It's clean. It's an antiseptic room, and it seems like it's a room from the future. Are you very meticulous about how you select your hotel rooms on the road?

I am. And if I blink three times, please send help. I cleaned the room just for you, Dan. Just for you. I wanted to make sure that it was properly cleaned before you throw me right under the paywall bus as you did.

Your grandfather played with Dimagio and Bera. How great was story time with grandpa?

And replaced by Al Kaelin.

Yes. By the way, that's the truth of the matter is, you can hear the Yogi Bera stories, and I've brought some of those great sayings into my broadcast just to see if anyone knows who the hell Yogi Berra is. But then when your grandfather says, Yeah, I was traded for Al Kaelin, and then the Yankees moved on for me because some guy named Mickey Mano was coming up through the minors. Yeah. And then You pitch ran for Eddie Goodell, which is the only thing that he's remembered for. Yeah, it's story time was fun. I'm not going to lie to you.

Taylor, I want some expertise outside of the sport from head injuries and what concussions can do. What have you made from where you're watching of what's happened with Tua when you can speak uniquely to the difficulties that can be inside the head? Soccer has a lot of this where people I don't understand that there are plenty of concussions there, too.

Yeah, I think, Dan, for your listeners to understand where I'm coming from, Junior say, I was a real good friend of mine when he was playing for the Patriots. We lived in the same building. We carpooled together. And I saw before I got my concussion, the impact of what post-concussion syndrome really is. I didn't know it at the time. I now know it having run a foundation. I'm scared for two of them, and I'm going to just be honest. I'm scared. I think the words that he used, the love of football to the death of me, all of that, I'm just scared. And all I ask for, actually, all I pray for and hope for for him is that he's asking the right people for non-committal advice on the football part and just as a human being. But we are on October 25th, 2024. And Tua cannot say that the information is not out there. On August 30th, 2008, when my life changed forever and the goalkeeper punched me in the head and my career ended, there wasn't the information, Dan, that we have now. There wasn't the people and the doctors and the understanding of what this really does to your brain and what you can do.

So you can't claim ignorance and saying it's not out there. I will 100 % support Tua, and I will 100 % respect the decision. But there is no way now, knowing what we know and knowing where we're going, that I can't sit here in this camera and tell and tell your listeners and tell the world that I'm not scared, because that would be disingenuous and I would be lying to you. The last two or three concussions that he has had, that last one was a very innocuous hit that had very little to do with impact and everything. And we saw the reaction. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm nervous.

How do you walk the line between being nervous and scared and also being an athlete who's publicly respectful by not telling another athlete to retire? When it sounds like you would advise him to retire, but you want to support another athlete?

It's the best question, Dan, because I still have teammates that wish they would have told me in those six to seven games that I played after August 30th, 2008, I was complaining about double vision and vertigo and headaches and migraines and taking pills and do whatever I could to try to feel better. They still have this sense of regret. I can promise you this, having spoken to people around the Dolphins It's people have had real conversations with Tua. On the other hand, you've got to allow that adult to make his decision. Dan, we know that smoking causes cancer. People still smoke cigarettes. So it is what it is. You've got to respect their decision. You got to give them the right information. If I had the right information on August 30th, 2008, I would 100 % make a different decision than I did in the moments. Tua has that information now. But now, as As an ex-athlet, Tua, if you're going to play and you're going to go on in, you better play. You better play, because if you go in there at all scared, it's even going to make it worse. I just pray that he's getting the right treatment and he's making the right decision based on something that he doesn't regret down the line.

And I will 100 % be rooting for Tua, not for the success on the field, but more so, surviving on the field, because this is a deck of cards I'm not sure he really wants to play with.

I'm transitioning now to Emma MLS. Historically, the postseason in MLS has been interesting. It's never really chalk. You can always count on upsets. However, Inter Miami set the record for points in the season, and they are pretty overwhelming favorites here. Now, MLS probably wants chalk here because in the Western Conference, you potentially have a Western Conference final of El Trafico, even though Olivier Giroud hasn't scored in MLS. He's still a major star. And in the East, which is what I want to see, which is Columbus versus Inter Miami one more time, because League's Cup match was a brilliant match, one of the matches of the season. Are you low-key pulling for chalk here, Taylor Twelman?

I think globally, Apple TV and anyone that has been watching and paying attention to Major League Soccer for the last six to seven months, Michael, 100 %, they won chalk. I'd argue Miami, Columbus, that regular season game that won Miami, the Supporter Shield, was the best regular season game we've had since 2014. And the reason why is you've just got two distinct styles. You've got the star power. You've got Columbus in the center for Kutcher-Hernandez. Any other year, other than the year that Lionel Messi has, he probably wins MVP. He still may because he's going to be the only, I would say, competition for that award. And then the Galaxy I don't see play in LAFC, El Trafico, in the Western Conference final. I think if it goes chalk, this is a playoff 2024 that people will be talking about for a long time. You've got names, you've got stars, but you've got quality players all across the board with the top four seeds in the playoffs. I love surprises. I love the Underdogs, but I love the Yankee Dodgers, and I love the fact that it went chalk finally in the World Series. I think chalk in Major League Soccer this year would be rightfully asserted into something that everyone will be talking about outside the paywall.

The MLS playoffs begin tonight with Inter Miami against Atlanta United at 8:30 PM. Taylor is always great. Last question on your way out. Quantify it for me empirically. How could this have gone better for Messi, for Apple, for the MLS to have Messi stormed through this in a way that is top of the world excellent? What is everyone rooting for here, and how could this year have gone better?

The only way it could have gone better is Danny, he doesn't miss 15 games. He misses five. And I honestly... Over 90 minutes goal contributions, he blew a record out of it. He's the only player in MLS history to play a thousand minutes and average 2.14 goals, assists per 90 minutes. Second place was Carlos Vela at 1.4. My point is, if he didn't miss 15 games, Dan, are we talking about a year where he had 35 goals, 35 assists? Probably. And so that is the only way it happens. I think to put icing on the cake is that if Inter Miami wins MLS Cup, I think the conversation and the story, and quite honestly, the cover of Major League Soccer 28, 29 years in will be a number 10 in pink because he opened the doors and the eyeballs to the global world of what Major League Soccer is. But the only way it could have got better is that he did miss 15 games. And I think Apple would like to see an Inter Miami in MLS Cup, MLS Cup here in Miami, here in Fort Lauderdale. I think that would put the icing on the What a reinvention of the end of his career, right?

Because we all thought he was the best player in the world, but we can argue, Ronaldo. But to have him conclude as like, oh, my God, he's a winner, when that's all we had on him before. We could accuse him- Dan, it's over.

It's over. Ronaldo doesn't have a say. It's over.

I know it's over, but what I'm saying, it wasn't that long ago that we... Well, you probably would have, and I probably would have, but most people wouldn't call Messi a winner. They would have said that, in fact, they would have done the same thing to him. They do all around sports. He didn't win the World Cup. Not really a champion.

Yes. And he wins the World Cup, and now he's still winning trophies and still playing in World Cup qualifying. I know he has said the 2026 World Cup is a long shot. I'm going to tell you right now, if he's playing the way he is, no way does he miss that World Cup here in United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Taylor, always good seeing you. Thank you, sir.

I'm going to go clean my bathroom.

Hey, everyone. It's Mike Ryan. So I'm hearing that you still haven't entered the DraftKings' Weekend Observation presented by Miller Life, Prediction Pool. Let me ask you, what exactly are you waiting for? You don't want to guess how many times two gods might swear in this segment. There are so many things that are on the table for you to play along with us. Just go to draffkings. Com and make your predictions, and then listen to Weekend Observation, presented by Miller Life on October 29. And check your scores. You and a friend can win a trip to Miami to hang out with us at Playing Against For A Thursday Night football Watch Party on November 21st. And also, you get to see a taping of the show, and you get to see firsthand what the shipping container may smell like. So don't wait anymore. Just come on down. Com. Play for a free shot to win. Thanks to our friends at Miller Lite. Must be 21 plus to enter. Eligibility restriction apply. Voidware prohibited. See drafkings. Com for details.