Transcript of The Best of SBS: MLB Legends

You're listening to DraftKings Network. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I am very excited Excited that this man is in studio with me. I have known him since he is 17 years old. Since he was drafted. I was at his mother's house. His sister was making eggs, and he was just a young man trying to figure it out. He is now one of, if not the best in the athletes in the history of South Florida, one of the best baseball players ever, and a media tycoon and a business tycoon. You laugh at media tycoon, but I don't know a lot of people that got to work, especially after having some controversy at both ESPN and Fox at the same time. I don't think there's a lot of precedent for that. Thank you for being here with us, Alex. What do you regard in your baseball career as the happiest time? Be the best year, the best six months, the time that you were? Because it doesn't sound like any one of those years might be as happy as your best year now if you're slogging through it, trying to figure out what happy looks like.

I think I would say two. I would say when I got the call from George Steinbrenner that he wanted me to join his Yankee team and to come team up with Derek Jeter and Agreen very quickly that I will move in the prime of my career.

As the better shortstop.

Why? Just one thing- I'm saying that for you.

You don't have to say. But you were the better shortstop by the metrics, and you moved to third base. You went to third base because he's the captain and it was his team.

Well, and I think Derrick could be the first one to tell you that if he came to Texas, he would have moved to third. Respect is something that I believe in. I gave him my word that I was going to play third base and third base only. I just said, made it very clear, I said, If there's ever a conversation about me going back to Shortstop, I'm going to go back to Texas because I wanted to honor Derrick, and I didn't want any drama around the position. I went over and worked really hard at third base and became a suitable third baseman. I think George calling me over, Steinbrunner. Then obviously, 2009, bringing the World Championship back to New York for the 27th World Championship in one of the most franchises.

After struggling in postseason, in pressurized postseason. Sure. After year after year, you're one of the best players in baseball, and now people are accusing you of mental frailty because baseball is hard, and sometimes people hit 200 in a 14-game sample.

Dan, I don't see it that way. Again, this is where I think having some space from that time. The truth is, when you're one of the best hitters in a lineup, you get circled, and they come at you with everything they have. Sometimes the best thing you can do in the World Series, I think Gary Sheffield did a nice job of this, and Barry Bonds did, too, you got to just take your walks. Once I realized that it wasn't about me and it was about we, and it wasn't about what my stats were, but I would literally drive to every playoff game with Andy Pettit because he was my neighbor in Westchester. He would help me out, and he was this time a four-time World champion. He pitched game 6, which was a game 6 that we won. He pitched great game and handed the bottom of Mariano against the Philly's, and Victorino made the last out. Grombada Kano, Titek Shera, the Yankees, a world champ for the 27th time as Joe Buck said. It was incredible because it was like a master class from one of the greatest champions that I've ever met in Andy Pettit, where he would talk to me about hitting, pitch selection, what the opposition was thinking as they were facing me.

Then I would reverse it, and he would ask me, Okay, what do I have to do to beat the Angels, to beat the Twins, and ultimately to beat the Fillies? And Dan, it was some of the most enjoyable hour conversations, driving to the ballpark, no phones, just old-school conversations. And he really helped me become a champion.

What do you regard as the most honest, accurate appraisal that you can make of the relationship with Derek Jeter? It's a long time. It's complicated. I don't know what can be known or what can't be known. But when I ask you honest and accurate that can be said publicly, what happened there?

Well, I would just say that right now, we're in a great place. He asked me to go to dinner about a year ago, almost today, when his documentary came out, and we went to have drinks right near our home in South Miami. We sat down for a a lot of hours and had some drinks and talked about a lot of great things. But our history is rich and goes back a long time. We met when I was 16, and he was 17. We met at Marbleight Stadium, and he had signed with the University of Michigan. I had signed with the University of Miami, so we had a lot of commonalities. That's where his agent, Casey Close, who still his agent, was trying to talk to me before I chose Scott Boris. In that 30-plus year history, we've had some ups and we've some downs. I think the media was obsessed with our relationship in New York. It was a very meaty story in negativity cells and big names sell. And the Yankees sell, and the controversy around the position sells. It was a mega media story. He did a nice job of being super disciplined.

I wasn't as disciplined, and it created some noise. But through it all, what I remember is great player he was, good teammate. We won a Championship together. And now we're teammates again at Fox doing playoffs and World Series every year.

Were you at all surprised that that phone call came, that he wanted to just have dinner and drinks? Is it something that's unusual? Because this This plays out publicly. There's so much vanity. There's so much insecurity. I don't even know if you're a documentary. Well, if he's got a documentary, I got to have a documentary because I had a pretty good career, too. I don't know how much competition there is between you, and I don't know what your issues are with the media, like what the issues. I'm curious what you think is the worst thing about sports media because we can be parasitical.

Yeah. I think his documentary was fun. It was good to watch, but in many ways, up and to the right. There was a lot of celebration. Mine is going to be a lot of volatility, so completely different. More interesting. No. No. No. No. Volatility is better than just up and to the right all the time. Well, yeah. I think it's interesting. When I was at my first couple of years at Fox, then I got a much better understanding how the media works. In '15 and '16, I was still playing while I was with Fox. I said, Holy smokes. I wish, and this is an advice that I would give to all athletes that are listening, especially the young ones, I wish I would have done a media internship with Fox for a couple of years when I was in high school to then reverse engineer and understand how the media works. I played because I was an infant when it came to dealing with the media. I just came out of Christian. A few months later, after my high school prom, I was at Fenway Park as an 18-year-old when I should have been a freshman at the University of Miami playing quarterback and shortstop.

I was facing Roger Clemens completely over my skis. My knees were shaken. It was the first time I saw an upper deck. We had 400 people at Westminster, max, right? So it was a lot of growth. It was like turbocharge, and I just was not ready for that. I don't know if any 18-year-old could be ready for that. Maybe LeBron, he did did a great job. Kobe, these are all guys that I'm friends with. Tiger Woods came out early. But I think all of us that came out early, there is one common theme. We had some ups and we had some downs.

What came with money that you weren't expecting?

Freedom, eyeballs, jealousy, anxiety. Bill? Yeah.

Why anxiety? Why anxiety?

Why anxiety? Because, again, from the age of 10 to 17, when I became a millionaire and the mariners made me the number one pick in the country, and my mother and my sister, Susie, negotiated a $1. 35 million contract. I didn't have lessons in life on how to distribute, how to help out my family, who gets what, what to save, what to spend, what to invest in. This is a new territory for me. I was training to be a baseball player, and I was barely keeping up with that. If you think about it, most people, if they're lucky enough to make a million dollars, usually it happens with a college degree, after marriage, kids, maturity, and usually you're in the other side of 40. Here I am at 17 with, Here's a million dollars, here's fame, here's expectations, and then you got to go deal with it.

Jealousy, what did that bring? What does that look like? What is happening that is making you feel that jealousy goes before anxiety on something that money brought.

I just think the higher you go on the flag poll, the more people are taking a look at your back end, right? There's more chatter, there's more conversation. You have to be careful, spend a little bit more low-key. Things that you're not prepped for it. You saw it. You came to be a star very early on, and you have a much different perspective today than when you were in your-Oh, I didn't know anything.

No, I didn't know. I didn't know anything.

We're going and learning at the same time, and we're trying to do the best we can. Generally, we're good people.

But and what you're doing, though, requires your obsessive compulsive attention in a way that so lopsided that other parts of you I don't even know how functioning and balanced a human being you can be and great at sports the way that it took as much work as it did to be as great as you were at that sport.

A hundred %. I mean, the obsession has to be off the charts. Usually, when you look at the great ones that have done great things, you have to be obsessive. You have to work on it 24/7. You're thinking about it. It affects your sleep. You got to wake up and work out. You got to keep producing. It's just this whole thing about work balance, I've never seen one at the highest level be really good at that, too. Maybe that comes later on in life, but I remember my conversation with Kobe, conversation with Tiger, Jordan, Magic, LeBron. We've all had this drive that in many ways is probably not the healthiest approach.

Warren Buffett, too, or does he have something I mean, he's older, so does he have something that more resembles balance? Has he arrived at something that's different than that?

Warren Buffett is the most obsessive and most focused, smartest and simple thinker that I've ever met. He's a perfect example with Warren Buffett. He's a perfect example of the most obsessive, relentless, focused, unwavering conviction to what he wanted to do. His father would drop him off when he lived in Omaha as a young child. By the age of 11, he would drop him off every Saturday and Sunday in the library. He would spend all day there. And Warren read every financial book in the library by the age of 11, made his first investment around the age of 12, and has been obsessed ever since. And you do this, and Warren does this. I believe he's the greatest, smartest financial mind alive. He's in his 90s. He still goes to work five days a week. He said, My only adjustment, I used to read nine hours a day. Now I'm able to read three to four hours. And now he studies a lot on YouTube. But he's kept it simple, and he's kept it simple. And that's exactly what Jordan and others have done in their space.

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Hello and welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm excited about this guy. I've admired him for a long time. I've told him so for a number of different reasons. Two-time AL MVP. He's a businessman now. He has been great as a broadcaster, but his baseball excellence makes him super unique. One of five athletes anywhere that has a statue at both his college, baseball excellence, and his professional, baseball excellence and his professional baseball excellence. Frank, thank you so much for making the time for us.

It's a pleasure, Dan. Thanks for having me today.

You would have preferred to end your career in Chicago with the White Sox. No knock on Oakland or Toronto experience.

Oh, I love those experiences. Don't get me wrong. I'm so happy I had that experience at Oakland because it survived my career and probably got me to the Hall of Fame. Toronto was a great experience. You were already in the Hall of Fame. I just wish I had more to give to Toronto because that organization was first class. They treated me like a king, and I gave them everything I had. I just hadn't gotten old and my arthritis in my ankles. I just couldn't do what I could do early in my career. So hats off to Toronto. They were patient with me as long as they possibly could. Yes, I gave them average numbers, but like I said, once you set the bar so high, people are not looking at you to give them.

Stop apologizing. You're 40. You're 40.

Come on. I know, but when you set that bar so high, people can't understand you've been an average player. They can't.

Okay, you were close to 40.

Yeah. Come on. Give yourself a break. They still wanted big numbers. My first in Toronto hit 27 home runs and 96 RBI's for a 39-year-old. I mean, that's pretty dang good. It is pretty good.

They should be happy with that. Were you made sad by Oakland losing baseball or everything happening in Oakland at the end?

I'll be honest, it sucked because that fan base is tiny, but they support. They're screaming and yelling at the top of their voice every night. I understand it because it was time to get to that stadium. It's time to move up. And I think going to Vegas will be special It'll be a special moment for the organization. I do think half of that fan base still will support, and they will go to Vegas because it's a good time and it's close enough that they can get there, spend three, four days, go home, and it's drivable. I really feel Oakland having a big-time situation like the Raiders, like the WNBA team, and the Golden Nights, trust me, I lived in Vegas for 15 years, a special town, and they care about sports 24/7. They're going to be fine. I I just really feel the backlash is they lost the Raiders and they lost Oakland A. It's just going to be tough for the city of Oakland. I feel bad for it because I enjoyed the city of Oakland, and they survived my career. So yes, they were the best, smallest crowds I've ever seen in my life because it didn't matter.

The energy was unmatched.

You're a champion. So you're saying the time in Oakland was the most joyful time? I'm not saying necessarily the best time.

No, it was my favorite season of my career. It really was. I had a young team that re-energized me. Guys like nick Swisher, Bobby Crosby, Jason Kendall, Milton Bradley, who was crazy but fun. Who else I had on that team? Jay Payton. We just had a team of guys that just cared. Mark Ellis. I mean, those guys really cared about playing the game. It wasn't about money out there. It was about winning. And I had fun with those guys, and they just needed Mark Cotsey, who's managing now. Those guys were special guys, and that's why we played so well. And I To be honest with you, I think we could have got to the World Series that year if we didn't have that five-day layoff like these guys about to have to start the World Series now.

It's crazy, though, to say that that season was your happiest ever when you're a champion. Every time I ask an athlete, what was the most fun you ever had? They do some revision as history, and they say the year that I won the championship because they got the ending right. It doesn't mean that the whole year was fun up until the ending. It's crazy to hear you have a non-championship year as your most joyous year. But it makes sense.

Honestly, I mean, what Billy Bing does out there and what Billy Bing did that year, I've never seen a general manager bring guys up ready to perform. I don't care how young they are. They can come pitch seven innings, send them back down, bring another one up, bring a bat in who could do something to help us. We had a team full of that, and we had Ron Washington, the base coach, who made the game fun daily. I mean, I've never been around a coach. People are like, What's the magic of Ron Washington? Just think about this. I'm always the first guy there every day, and he's always the first guy there. Ron would sit there with his long white underwear, with his a cigarette, gets you going every day. What happened to you last night, Big Hurt? A boy stuck it till you. And he would run and laugh. But that's the motivation he provided on a daily basis. I had fun again.

A lifer, a baseball lifer.

I had fun again. And that whole clubhouse was like that. It was about winning. It wasn't about who's got the biggest check. It was about winning. And we didn't care about anything else. We had a lot of fun, and that's why we had a great team.

That's cool. Do you have a best Milton Bradley was crazy story? Because there are a lot Out of those. Yes.

There are a lot. I had a great one. Kid Mocker was sitting there in the seventh day of the one day. Milton had a bad day. He had struck out three times already. He walks off the field, goes up to the clubhouse. He said, I'm done for the day. And I was like, What, man? I'm done. I'm done. So he walks up to Clubhouse, took a shower in between the end. We were like, We have to start the ending. And no one was in right field.

He just quit.

He just went home. And Maka was like, Frank. I said, Ken, it's over. He's gone home. He took a shower. He's gone. He's like, What? So It was as long as in between the ending because we had to get off the bench, warmed up to go to get out there. And that was the funniest Milton Braille story of my time. He just quit.

He didn't quit.

He was just like, I can't help you guys today. I'm done. I'm done.

When I took a shower, went home. You're saying he didn't quit. He was just self-aware. He didn't have it that day.

That was unbelievable. It really was. I'm done for the day.

You're not even mad. You totally understand.

He gave you everything you had every day. He was a hell of a player.

No, he had a little more there. There was a little more required of him that he was not giving you at the end of that day.

Some days he couldn't get out of his own way. But I'm telling you, what a ball player who cared about playing a game of baseball.

Let's go back for a moment to what you were saying about being in an all-white high school and just how you grew up. I believe that a lot of people look at you and your physical size and imagine that a holy man reached into a crib and just gave you an assortment of athletic gifts. Amateur draft in '86, you go undrafted. I would imagine that right around there, maybe a little earlier, is when Frank Thomas develops, again, Observing from afar, don't know this about you, a work ethic that he would put up against anybody.

Yes, that really hurt me in '86, not getting drafted. I was the best player in the area, and six or seven guys in the area got drafted. I had no idea what happened. I was the biggest, strongest, fastest. I already had signed a football scholarship at Auburn University. I guess they thought, Back then, big guys like me didn't play baseball. Tied Then- Yes, they were like a football player playing baseball. I remember talking to the late Cam Bonfeu and Cam said, At the time, I thought you was just a football player trying to play baseball. I knew you could hit the ball consistently and hard, but didn't think you would end up being a baseball player. You already signed that football scholarship. We passed. I was shocked because they could sign me out of high school for anything. I would play baseball. But Pat Dye gave me a chance in football. They grew me up there. They worked my butt off. I got bigger, faster, stronger, toughened me up a lot. I tell people, Try to block Andre Bruce every day. As a freshman, going to college, and a man who was a number one draft pick in a draft, you grew up in a hurry.

You would have been a professional football player.

I could have played in NFL, but it wouldn't have been long. I mean, three years and out was not enough for me. A baseball, Pat Dye told me himself, Pat Dye retired me from football. He said, My team is four deep in every position. What I saw in the baseball field with you, he watched me for two straight weeks. He said, I've never seen anything like it from a big man. He said, Base could be your career. It could be 15 to 20 years. That's how long you could play at the next level with your size, strength, and athletic ability. He was right. So God bless him. Coach Dye made that decision for me. He kept me on a football scholarship. He kept me there. So nothing changed for me and my family. He knew he loved my parents. Nothing changed. I just played baseball.

You did get drafted in the first round after going to college, but going back to being undrafted, why were you undrafted? If you saw six or seven players in the- It was like 50, 60 rounds back then.

I had no idea what happened. I have no idea what happened. The man upstairs had a plan for me, and it was going to be bigger and better than coming out of high school because I never probably would have got that growth in the Minor Lakes. You think about the physicality of the SEC football, being in that weight room, lifting 300, 400 pounds, growing up. Baseball became very easy after playing SEC football for two and a half years.

What was the relationship in and around Bo Jackson there at the time?

Well, I didn't get to play with Bo, but Bo was a senior that year, and that's when he took the trip to Tampa Bay. I was supposed to play my freshman year with Bo. It was disappointing because I had lived in Columbus. I used to go over and watch him all the time. I had never seen an athlete like that. Never. His speed, his size, the wave, the tenacity. I had never seen anything like that on the football field. But I got to play Major League Base with him. I just saw him last week. He still gives me a hard time. But Bo is my guy. I don't care. I told him last week, I said, I love you, even though you're an a-hole to me all the time.

Why is he giving you a hard time? How can anybody be giving Frank Thomas a hard time?

He gives me a hard time. Just give me a hard time. Bo is Bo, though. Bo is a tough son of a gun. He really is.

But you're a Hall of Famer. You're the big hurt. What do you mean? I don't imagine anybody giving you a hard time.

Bo Jackson was probably the most athletic guy of our time. Football, baseball, could dunk a basketball, could do... I mean, if you see him hunt and shoot a bow and arrow, he could do that professionally. It's like the guy is gifted talent. I feel sad because I think we got robbed of seeing his greatness for a long period of time. But you saw him with the Raiders, you saw him with the Royals. Just a mix of talent that you'd probably never see again, that he could do it all. He really could.

Take me through now, you get drafted and you go to the Minor Leagues, and you're feeling how about things in the... You're obsessed, right? Because you didn't Can you really answer the work ethic question? There was nobody who was out working you, right?

That's second to none. My work ethic was crazy. I looked at like a football player my entire baseball career. I would go in, legs one day, arms next day, but it was intense. I wasn't blocking 300 pound linemen anymore. But I cared about physical because I felt if I'm physically prepared, every handout coordination, all that came easily for me. So that's what you saw with me on the baseball field. A guy big, strong, faster than everybody else, basically hitting a small baseball. And that's why consistently I could do what I could do.

But what was the level of obsession?

I was obsessed. First guy there, last guy to lead. But like I said, working out wanting to be great. I've always wanted to be great. I didn't want to be good. I wanted to be great. And that pushed me my entire career. And that's why I accept it, like I said, from the media, because they knew how obsessed I was. So they were happy to take jabs if I go 0 for 4 for a couple of days or over three, over four. What's wrong with Frank? No other players went through that. I remember Jerry Emmanuel as my manager. That was his out most of the time. If team is struggling, Frank's got to do more because he knew I accepted that. I was mad at him a lot of times, but he would do that, and that would just send the media right to me. What the heck is going on? You need to do more. I'm like, Okay, I'll deal with it. We had a couple of conversations about that. But hey, he felt that a great way to motivate the team and get the team going. All he had to say was, Frank needed to do more.

I had a good time doing it some days, and some days I didn't.

This is the part I don't get, though, Frank. I keep saying versions of it seemed like it was hard to be you, and you're not taking any of victimhood there. You're not taking the bait on that. No. Because I'm looking at it and I'm like, Man, this guy could use some positive reinforcement. It would be nice if this guy wasn't getting all the pride he was getting from the stat sheet, and it came from human warmth of he's being surrounded, but all you cared about was the admiration and respect of your peers, it would appear, and that you had.

The biggest man on the field. You look at Aaron Judge right now, and I watch it, I just shake my head. I mean, this guy has put up astronomical numbers a year in and you're out. And when he's in a slump, the world has stopped. He's not working hard. Something's wrong with him. What's going on? You look at his numbers like, Are you crazy? Are you crazy what this guy's doing? And I feel for him sometimes because I know he's going through that same thing, and he's consistently done it over and over and over. His numbers are ridiculous.

Have you explored when you say, I had to be great? Good wasn't one of the options. Have you explored what's happening there? How much does that have to do with your dad? How much does it have to do in the childhood? Is there some not good enough in there? What's happening that's making you someone, it's not okay for me to just be good. I'm going to have to be better than everybody.

Well, growing up with not having everything you really want and knowing to be better than everyone else on the field, you can always have what you want. You can always fit in where you want to fit in by being that guy. And it drove me. It drove me to be obsessed to be great. I'm sorry. I tell guys, I tell my son now, be obsessed with being great. And he is. It's crazy. Some days I'm like, okay, just take a break. No, let's go. That's where he is now. He wants to be great. So for little Frank, I'm coaching him daily. Hopefully, I tell people not to overhype your kid because I never want to do that. But what I'm seeing and watching him respond right now, I'm seeing this on a day-to-day basis. I think he's got a chance to be in a great one.

I betrayed a confidence by saying that you said on the way in, I just can't believe it, that he might be better than me. You probably don't want to put those expectations on him. I just couldn't believe you were saying it, though, because there are very few who have ever been better than you. So the idea that your son would be able to do that was a bit jarring.

Well, I teach the same way I was taught. He uses a line-to-line hitter, but he's a lefty-lefty. That's the difference. He'll be hitting 60% time against right-hand, 70% time against right handers. That's just what it is. I wish I got to hit lefties all the time. You're talking about the numbers I had. I probably would have hit 360, 370 if I had left-hand hitters all the time, like a left-hand hitter on against the right-hand pitcher. So watching him hit and watch him respond, I don't think he'll be the power guy that I am, but I think he between 30 and 40. But I consistently looked at myself as 40 to 50. And if they didn't give me that kryptonite inside fastball that far inside, I would have hit 50 consistently. So I tell people now, I watch the game and I'm like, Oh, these guys are complaining about a ball a little down over the plate or whatever else. If I had consistently got that ball out of the plate, there's never... That little box, that little shadow box there, I wish I got to got that ball in the box all the time for a strike.

I tell you that right now. It'll be unbelievable.

Your plate discipline was extraordinary. The idea of being great instead of good is as simple as I wanted things, and there was real freedom. If I could be better at sports than everyone else, I could have the real freedom of getting anything I want from life.

Yes, it's important. I tell guys, you just want to be great. I didn't second guess anything. I just wanted to be able to say, Hey, I'm on the table every day. And I did it for my family. I did it for my friends. I just wanted to be consistently great for the organization. I wanted to win. First of all, it was about winning because I never really lost in my life. Always high school champions, college SEC champions. When I got to the Major League, it was about winning. And I got to the White Sox. We were a dormant at the time. And within five years, we were a team everybody was talking about.

Winning the Championship, actually winning it, joy or relief?

It was sucked because I was injured. 2005, I played a little over a month that season. I had a huge impact. I had 12 home runs and 12, 13 home runs in 30 days. But I knew that team was going to win the World Series. That was the first time I looked at a team that had just as good as pitching as hitting, defense, relief. Everything was there. And I came back early. So I knew that was taking a chance of coming back refracturing an ankle. The doctor said I needed two more months of healing. But I told Herms not that year. I said, Herms, this team is going to win it. I said, I'm not going to miss this. I got to play on this team. And I ended up playing. And then the rest of the year, I basically was a coach. I really helped my teammates get better. So it was humbling after driving the bus for so many years in that White Sox uniform to be in a bus rider, the last down the stretch in the World Series. But it made me a better teammate. Like I said before, I watched guys sit on the bench all the time, didn't think much of it.

But it's hard to sit on the bench and not make an impact that you used to make in and watch success happen. So Osi and I talk about it all the time, but I think it made me a better man. It made me a better person, better man. And that next year, I went to Oakland, Hilled. I was able to do that because that year I helped coach, and I helped coach a lot of young kids. I helped get them better. Extra BP every day, we're out there working on things. Nick Swisher, he couldn't hit a change-up. I would get him out there early, make him hit every all over the shortstop head. And before long, he was starting heading change-ups. And not trying to pull a yank, he was starting to get line drives, hit 33 home runs that year. So like I said, I watched these guys. I had a lot of fun with those guys. And 2005 was really maturing and growing up for me.

Your son is now getting all the joy of that coaching? Oh, yes, he is. But you're not coaching any... That's where you're coaching. He's getting all of it. Yes, he is.

I help other kids around if they want it.

But I'm saying he's the one that's getting... What do you regard as the greatest things that you've overcome in your career? Like the- Injuries.

I tell people, and this is going to blow your mind, all the numbers I put up were done in 16 years. I had 19 and a half years I was injured three and a half years of my Major League career. And I tell people everything I did was within 16 years. So I look at my numbers for 16 years. If I had those extra three and a half years of playing, you're talking six something. It's crazy.

Frank, you're one of the all-time greats the way that it is.

I'm just saying people think I just played... I didn't play 19 years. I played 16 full years on the field. Rested three and a half years, I was injured.

So the injuries are just because my will doesn't help me at all here. Usually, I can will myself into- No, and football hurt me.

I had a bad ankle from football. That started there. I had ankle surgery out of high school, and then I had another scope job. So that hurt me down the line from playing football. So that's why little Franky was like, Dad, I don't want to play football. He's very good at football. He said, I don't want to play anymore football. He said, I want to play baseball only. So I'm here to up-coach, but I understand. Stand healthy is everything. If you can stay healthy on the field with great incredible talent, you can do a lot of great things in this game.

I don't think people understand how flatly inhumane, 162 games, and that travel schedule is. Can you explain, can the Big Hurt explain how much pain he was always playing in? Because once you're in at your size, once you're playing game 30 of a season, waking up in a different hotel room, there's just a pain you get used to.

Well, you start chewing Tylenol like it's tic-tacks and skittles. You know what I mean? But bottom line is, my first seven years, I didn't miss many games at all. I was playing 161, 162 consistently, and it takes a toll on your body. And that's how injuries happen. But I always felt I needed to be on the field. I don't care if I'm making a huge impact that day, but I'm taking pressure off the guys around me, and we got a chance to win baseball games.

But how much pain were you in?

I was in a lot I played many hurt days on the baseball field. But that comes with football. So my mentality was, if I got a job at the first, but I'm in that lineup, it helps this team win. So it helped, and it helped set a culture in our locker room that the biggest guy on the team who's doing the most damage normally is playing hurt. Other guys can't complain about themselves being hurt.

Hello, and welcome again to South Beach Sessions. I've got a lot of notes. I don't need any of them for this man. This man is my best friend in the world. He knows me like very few people know me. One of the things we're going to try and do around here is let you see more of my relationships with people who really know me and know me in the most intimate of ways. So I will tell Bouk Shambi in front of everybody. I've told him all of this privately. I love you. I respect and admire you profoundly. And I am wildly proud you because you have done with your life what you set out to achieve 30 years ago when you were more anxious about these things. So Bouk Shambi is with us. He's the voice of the Cubs and Sunday Night Base. Thank you for being with us. What do you regard as the happiest you've been calling baseball? Is it right now? Is it because of... I mean, you've got a town that cares about its sport. You have the admiration and support of the organization. You have genuine friendship relationships inside of the organization.

I can't imagine that there would be a lot that would feel better than where you presently are.

Yeah, it's great. I would say this is it. I love it. I love just the energy of the place. It's a special job. It matters. The baseball matters there, and it's cool, and it's still something that's important to me.

Well, explain to people why and how you love baseball the way that you do, because it's uncommon the way that you love this thing and love continually learning about this thing.

Yeah, I think that that's what continued my connection to it. I mean, we used to get into arguments all the time, and I brainwashed you some years ago when you would talk about- El Duque was clutch. I know. He was clutch. I know he was.

He was clutch? Every time in a big game, he would be clutch. Every time.

Happened all the time. Back in the day- Because he was Cuban. He would have conversations with Billy Beane right after Moneyball, and Billy Beane would be like, Man, Levatard really gets it. I would be like, No, he doesn't. I told him.

You would. You would tell me all this stuff. I read Moneyball myself, but you've known. I've told you this before. I believe you could be the general manager or manager of a baseball team. I do. No shot.

No shot. I mean, the level of aptitude that these guys have now is this beyond. I appreciate it, but Look, I loved as a kid, just the basic nature of the sport, playing it. Both sides of my family liked it. Dad's side was Philly's fans, mom's side, Yankee fans. Told this story a million times. My grandparents went away on a cruise. I was six, and I didn't understand what a cruise was. When my grandfather sat there, we're going to eat, we're going to gamble, we're going to dance, we're going to play shuffleboard. At the end of it, I looked at him and my only question was, How do you get the box scores? He said, You don't. I said, I am never going on a cruise. And editors, no, never been on a cruise. Not because of that, by the way, but I just haven't. So I just loved it. And then it was the sport I wanted to call. It was the one sport I didn't call in college. So as I mentioned, I'd go into the Marlins empty broadcast booth or a booth that was empty and call it into a tape recorder and then gave the tape to Dave O'Brien and then your buddy, Jim Fravola.

Then I went to Boise, Idaho, and off we went. Then I think as it went on, the sabermetric stuff, the guys like Rob Nier and Bill James interested me, and I got a chance to learn and understand and know more and more about the sport, and then you meet different people. There's so many smart, interesting people in the sport.

I knew baseball. I was reading Bill James' Baseball abstract with my grandfather when I in my teens. But the level of aptitude that you had for this sport blew me away because you were learning from all of these different vantage points, and you're very good at accessing information and combining it, and you're just an extraordinarily discerning person.

I liked getting a chance to learn all of the nerd type stuff and then go to the baseball people that had the eye to see things that I couldn't see. And then you'd come and form some of your own opinions. And that, to me, is still so interesting when people give you data, and then that I have the access to the baseball people on the field in the front office on multiple teams that are sitting there saying, Okay, but here's something you may not be thinking about. And it's just, yeah, you're just trying to be smarter.

But you're always forever curious, too. That's right. The fact that you have been at this now, what are we looking at? 30 years? Boise, Idaho was when? 96. How old were you? 96. Tell me about that experience, the Minor Leagues. You didn't have a long time in the Minor Leagues.

No, I did a short season A, but I landed in Boise, Idaho, and I was waiting, and I was like, What did I I do.

Left Miami for it. Yeah.

I did it for a half season. I mean, short season A is, what, 75 games. I came back. The year prior or That year, I was doing talk radio here in Miami, and I was also the Panthers' pre-intermission and post-game host on the radio, and I would travel with them. Then I would do my talk show on the road with Chris Moore. So the Panthers, Wayne Heisenga also owned the Marlins, and I basically connected with the guy that did the hiring, and the next year, they changed up the way the Marlins were formatting their TV and radio broadcast. And the fourth broadcaster was going to be a pre-game, in-game scores, post-game guy, interviews, and eventually it led to play-by-play.

But what was the Boise experience like? Because the reason That's overwhelming. The reason I asked the question is you're in your early 20s. You're on a career path that you could have been doing sports radio for a really long time and had that be a successful career, and you aggressively chose something that was both culture shock and I imagine financial shock and all other kinds of shock.

Yeah, there was financial shock. Holy cow. I wasn't good enough, and it was just too fast for me. I mean, I worked with a guy named Rob Simpson, who's continued to work in hockey. If you called Rob up now, he would say, Yeah, he wasn't that good. It just It was a lot. I didn't know how to do it, and it took time to learn how to do it.

Was it a hard decision, though, to make the decision you made? I remember the bravery in it, right? Because I thought, Well, he's established. He's on the correct path, but he's choosing something that matters more to him, is also more difficult, but it's something that he will like more than what he's presently doing and take more pride in being excellent at it.

It did not feel like a hard It felt like a just go jump in the deep end of the pool. I mean, my job before coming down and working at QAM, through a friend of a friend of a friend, I went and worked at a radio station in Bradford, Pennsylvania, WESB. I went there because at 22 years old, I was going to have a chance to be on the air. That's one of the things that's changed is the mechanism for people, the avenues for people to be on the air now, it's interesting infinite. Back then, it was harder to actually get up. So I did news, I did sports, I bored up the Pirates games, I covered school meetings, all that type stuff. I also was the Midnight to 8 Donut maker for one night at a top supermarket, which is awesome. Just one night? One night. And it was literally like splattering grease and like with the chopsticks. Five in the morning, I'm like, I could do this for a month, and I'll just put the money away by six. I was like, Two weeks, it's money. At seven, I was like, Okay, so one week, and I'll just come in and I'll get the check.

At 8: 00 AM, I was like, I'm never coming back here again, and I never went back. I'll date myself, but the joke is worth it for the people that get it. I had told friends because I needed to supplement my income because I went there to do all that stuff on the radio for minimum wage. That's what they paid. They paid minimum wage. I told all my friends that I was doing this, and so I had an answering machine. Kids ask your friends or your dad, whatever. They would leave me a message for probably 10 straight days at 11: 40 at night. I'd be asleep. They didn't know I quit. The message would simply be, Shombi, Shombi, time to make the donuts.

They forgot you only did it for one? I didn't tell them.

No, I didn't tell them I quit. I didn't tell them.

My bad. When you say that John Miller called you after you did a game, What are some of the other compliments you have gotten from baseball royalty that are moving to you that make you feel like you belong in the pantheon of the best to ever do it in our most historic sport?

Well, I don't think I feel that. Something like that just felt as surreal that he was reaching out like that. I guess I'm probably not comfortable to say in that spot.

What are you not comfortable about?

I'm trying to think of a compliment.

I'm just talking about people who have... Look, man, there are people you've admired. There's a craftsmanship to what you do. For those who don't maybe know the detail that goes into a three and a half hour broadcast, which is what you used to be doing before baseball sped everything up. But a four hour broadcast where you have to have this tapestry of knowledge and you start with a mess and then you to follow the game and make sure to fill all of that time in a way that's measured correctly, paced correctly, has enough interesting in it. It's a nightly work of art that, as you say, you never leave feeling like it was perfect. To have John Miller, who is someone whose style you've admired for a long time, who has a grace about what he does, to have that person call you after a thing that you've dreamed about for as long as I've known you. I know your heart's been broken in a couple of occasions where you thought you were going to call World Series games, and you didn't get the chance to call World Series games. To have all of that happen, you are now guilty of articulating an inability to feel feelings.

Sorry. The one other specific one that I can tell you was I remember I walked into Fenway Park, I'm going to say it's 2017, and I walked past Bob Kostas, and he was standing there with a couple of people, and he turned his... I know him at that point, but he turned his head and he saw me, and he almost ran to me and he said, John, I just want to tell you, I was listening the other night, and It was just incredible listening on the radio. Yeah, that's pretty amazing for him to go out of his way to say that. It was really meant a lot.

Oberman, too, who has an appreciation for some of broadcasting's finer qualities. Oberman is an enormous baseball fan. Huge baseball fan. Yeah, big time. But to have these people tell you that you're great at what you do, But truly, you must then know that you belong among the people who are great at what they do. Yeah.

I mean, again, I think that I'm trying to just find the piece of it inside of me. I guess, yes, it feels nice. I don't want to focus on that stuff too much because I think in everyday life, when you need the validation of other people or another one back to our original stuff about just therapy and peace in your mind. When you need other people to get your perspective, you give your power away, and it's really dangerous. When you need that, and I have that, I want to articulate my last point. When I did standard sports talk radio, I wanted to convince people. I really did. I wore it emotionally at times in a way when they wouldn't be convinced. I think that letting go of needing someone to... The one thing that I've been lucky about is... I'll say this. I feel like this is probably more what you're looking for, and that is, look, man, I don't love my body. I struggle with a lot of different things in the workspace When I leave a broadcast and I think I had a really good broadcast, I don't need it to be told to me from anyone.

And if 200 straight people came up to me and said, That stunk, more often than not in my heart, I'm like, Nope.

That's how I feel about writing when I've done it correctly, that it doesn't matter. It's why it's the most fulfilling thing to me, professionally, writing well, because to know that when I've met my standard, if it's not unimpeachable, at least I have the peace of knowing there's nothing you can say to me. I know this was good.

But you suffered it.

You suffered it. Well, that's the only way it would get like that, though. It's not you have to... I mean, maybe all of this stuff comes... Have Have you met a broadcaster? Have you met a baseball broadcaster who makes it look easy, and it was actually easy for them that they just get in front of the microphone and they didn't have to do all the 30 years of craftsmanship that you had to do?

Yeah, but there's a pain that I inflicted on myself. I can't sit here and tell you that guys like John Miller or Joe Buck suffer it. I can remember you having the conversation, and different guys are different. You've asked Poznansky about- He loves writing. He loves writing. Then I'm blanking, is it Gary Jones? Who's the guy? Gary Smith. Gary Smith, who's Probably the best takeout sports writer, takeout long-form storyteller, I don't know, the last 40 years?

Wouldn't start writing until he had talked to at least 50 people.

But he didn't suffer it. I've listened to you. You asked him. He didn't suffer it.

He did not suffer it. There are very few I have met who do not suffer it. Many say the same thing Hemingway says, which is it's as easy as cutting your wrist. But I do envy the ones who don't have to suffer it because I've always tied it to my process. It's why I've not been able to write a book. The idea of it is too daunting to me to sit down and choose suffering at this point in my life. But if it's the most fulfilling thing, can I possibly have it without the suffering?

Yeah, no, I'm with you. I don't want you to write a book either because that means I'm going to get phone calls at 3: 00 in the morning and I'm going to be proofreading again.

That's right. Those were the glory days. One of the few ever trusted with The ability to proofread. It still stings me that you didn't like that Edger and James cover story that I wrote for ESP in the magazine. Still hurts in the places where I'm vulnerable. You just didn't get it. I'm sorry. You're not. You enjoy holding that over me. Can you tell us a little bit, though, about where it is that you thought the path was most difficult for you, professionally?

Again, I think in the early stages, I really thought to myself, I'm not good enough, and I don't know how good I can get at this. So I think that there was that. And now I'm talking about being a baseball radio guy. It didn't come as naturally. So you focus on the knowledge, et cetera. But when a play is happening in front of you, there are different things, and there's timing, and there's flow, and all the knowledge in the world and the ability to tell the story, if the timing and the flow isn't on point, and if you're not describing what you see in a really good way, then the rest of it's moot. I wish I could tell you when it started to feel like I got this.

It did happen, and you've lived there for a while. As far as I can tell, it's been... I feel like since you left the Marlins, you don't necessarily suffer the overpreparation stuff. And that was how many years ago?

Yeah, my last year at the Marlins was 2004. So, yeah, sometime after that, sometime after that. But I think, yeah, it took a while. And I tell you, the other thing is, Mike Ryan and I We were talking earlier about just the... About you and I possibly doing a show together back in the day, and that I was chasing my dream, my passion to do play by play. But one of the things is that I got more comfortable later in my career just doing me. I'd always talk about to young guys, what's hard is you got to get comfortable with the mechanics. But what you're trying to do is take what you're like on the air and take what you're like off the air, and you want them to be as much the same thing as possible, that you're willing to make the jokes and say the off-cuff thing that you think isn't supposed to be the domain of play-by-play. And so I didn't think... I felt like I got better when I turned 40 because I got just a little more comfortable with who I was on the air and that you're really getting me.

And so I do think that one of the components of the connection to baseball and baseball fans is every day. But I do think the way people react to me is in part about that I'm able to bring authentic me to the air, and so they feel like they know me.

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