Transcript of Dan Le Batard is Petulantly Arrogant | Hour 1

You are listening to the Dan Levitan Show in partnership with the DraftKings Sports App, now live in all 50 states.

This episode of the Dan Levitan Show is presented by DraftKings Sports. DraftKings, the crown is yours.

So the helpful researchers of this show have just gone deep into the databank to find what some of the people were saying when it is that I lost my Hall of Fame vote and, uh, Bruce Houlihy of ESPN Cleveland wrote at the time, instead of Dan Lebatard Is Highly Questionable, a more appropriate name would be Dan Lebatard Is Petulantly Arrogant.

P.A. would be the name of the show.

The baseball writers got really mad at me, thus proving my point that they're a sensitive group of gasbags who didn't like very much the idea that their power would be questioned in a way that made them prickly. Let's get the sound, please, of a mean yodeling here so we can hear some poor yodeling.

Yodel-ay-hee-hoo!

Let's get an example here of Damashek yodeling so we can get an example of poorer yodeling.

Snow White. Yodel-ay-hee-hoo-ree-lah-ree-lee-oh!

And now let's get Price is Right's cliffhanger. Yodel-ay-hee-loo-ree-loo-ree-oh! Yodel-ay-hee-loo-ree-oh! Yodel-ay-hee-loo-ree-oh! Yodel-ay-hee-loo-ree-loo-ree-oh!

I feel like Dave's been to many an Oktoberfest festival in Pittsburgh where they were playing this kind of music and they were dressed in lederhosen and shit like that.

So in other words, you apologize for attacking me because I was pretty close. Pretty close.

I didn't attack you, Dan did.

Play his again. I want to hear it. Dave's.

Glorielio.

It's pretty close.

You want to Jerry Orbach it here, Dan? Say when you're wrong. Remember talking to Swayze at the end?

You think that I'm wrong after listening to what it is that you did against what it is that Cliffhanger does?

I don't know what language they're speaking when they're yodeling, but I think my impression was pretty spot on. Glorielio.

Is that the kind of yodeling that you guys think of when you hear yodeling? Not Dave's, but like The Price is Right yodeling? Because I always think of the yodel-ay-hee-hoo. That's like the generic yodel, right?

Yep.

Yodel-ay-hey-oh, booyah, yodel-ay-hey-oh, yodel-ay-hey-oh. He just brought up a great question though. Is it Swedish? Like, what is—

Swiss.

What is the language? That is the language.

Swiss Alps.

I like that Amin has cast himself as the expert on this. Well, no, that's a more generic form of yodeling. What do you know? You don't know what you're talking about.

You are giving off real expertise here.

Because I know about yodeling?

You don't know about it. That's the point.

Let's have a yodel-off.

We just did. We just did. And I won. He did. He did. In retrospect, he did. It seemed like he won.

Why did he win?

Just, it was closer to what The Price is Right's version is than you were.

I never said I was doing The Price is Right.

But that's the only modern version of yodeling that we have anywhere in pop culture.

Put on the poll, Juju. Is yodel-ay-ee-hoo—

No, that's not yodeling. Ironic or otherwise, yodel-ay-ee-hoo is not yodeling.

Tuh, not ho.

Yodel-ay-ee-hoo.

Tuh, see, at the end, not ho.

That's what a movie character does in the '40s. Yodel-ay-ee-hoo. That's not what yodeling is.

The English word yodel is derived from the German word Jodelin, but you probably don't want me to say that, Dan.

What I don't want you to say is that the root beer is the greatest of the jelly beans. It's just obvious. There's just no one who agrees with that.

That's not true. That's just— look, you can threaten ice on me, you can't lie right to my face.

No one thinks that, Jeremy. No one thinks the root beer—

There are dozens of us, Dan. Jeremy's had a thing about root beer for a while. He like drinks diet root beer all the time. He's got a thing for root beer.

Root beer zero.

I love Root Beer Zero. Yeah, zero sugar root beer. Uh, the root beer Dum Dum is the best of the Dum Dums. The root beer jelly bean is the best. Anything root beer, it's a great flavor.

No, we all know that the best flavor of jelly bean is the butter popcorn.

What?

That's right, butter popcorn.

You're gonna call ICE on him, or—

It's not as bad as yours. It's offensive, but it's not offensive. Butter popcorn is offensive. It's still offensive. If I wanted butter popcorn flavor, you know what I'd have? Buttered popcorn.

Right.

I don't need it with candy. I don't— it's not— I'm not searching for it. And I also want— if I want the butter popcorn flavor, I want it with salt. I don't want it with jelly bean that does not give me salt but gives me sugar. Imagine going to the movie theater, having butter popcorn, and pouring sugar all over your butter popcorn. That's why that's also offensive. Can you get for me the sound though from our friend Jason Bonetti? Because I want to put in front of people A couple of examples of play-by-play well done. Baseball allows you more room, certainly more room than hockey. Hockey has no room to do this. Basketball has very little room to do this. Football is too sacred to do much of this. But baseball gives you the room where Jason Benetti can do play-by-play that is silly. But also, I want to, to play for you some play-by-play in color that I think somehow is better than Benetti's. And I rarely think that any play-by-play or color is better than Bonetti's. But let's just start the bidding with Detroit Tigers announcer and friend of the show, Jason Bonetti.

I will just use shampoo for the shower, the whole— just use shampoo only. But no soap on your body?

Sometimes, you know.

No way.

Just use shampoo.

I can't believe you're serious right now. Yeah, it's just a lot easier to just have one product. You don't need like 10 bottles of different stuff and ointments and potions. Nobody's asked you to use ointments or potions. I didn't know they were different. Where are you on this, Damashek? We've talked about this before. Greg Cody has no problem using shampoo in the pool as his means of bathing, and Damashek has made the argument before that all soaps of all kinds are the same.

Yeah, make some room in the garage, we're overflowing with all-purpose soap or shampoo, and do I need to say or? No, because they're the exact same thing. Shampoo and soap equal each other. You're a dupe if you don't understand that until year of the Lord 2026. Come on. And don't get me started on conditioner.

Your quality of life is worse by choice.

Conditioner is the real ruse. That's the real— and how you know it is, because about like 10, 20 years or so ago, they used to have conditioner in all the hotel rooms. And then they realized, wait, we tried to pull this bit on society and they're buying the shampoo and this is going— we had soap, but then we had shampoo. It's soap. For your hair, and society bought it. Wow, let's see how far we can push this thing. Conditioner now. Now this further helps your hair part of your body. And then people tried it for probably a generation, and then they're like, what are we doing? Why am I putting conditioner in my hair on top of the shampoo? And then they said, boy, we got a warehouse full of all this conditioner. Nobody's buying it. They're on to us. Well, We better figure out a use for it. Then they started putting the conditioner in with the shampoo. Damashek doesn't use it at all. No soap. Soap's the way to go.

You only use soap?

No, I mean, listen, I'll dance. I'll dance for everybody. I'll use a little shampoo here and there, but I have no problem using the body wash in my hair. That's fine. There's no reason you'd need to shampoo. What are you, Prince?

What's worse, shampoo as a body wash or body wash as a shampoo?

I have a number of different questions before I get to this play-by-play that I believe to be better than Jason Bonetti's, and I do not give that compliment very often, but I don't think that conditioner is a ruse, as Damashek says. I believe that the conditioner, when I put it in my hair, feels different than anything else I put in my hair. And also, it does indeed seem to make my hair feel much softer than just shampoo does.

Whatever you're doing, it's working, Dan.

Look at that.

So wait, you are conditioning on a daily basis?

I'm not conditioning on a daily basis because I do not— no, I do not condition on a daily basis, but I do shampoo on a daily basis.

So I had this situation happen to me. We have two bathrooms at the house and then we bathe the baby in one, and then my wife, who took a bath in the other, took the soap out of the bath. So I go in as normal as I usually do, bear as Dave Dameshek, walk in, start doing my thing. All of a sudden I look, there's no soap. I'm like, what do I do here? Shampoo only. So I had to use shampoo as my soap for one night. Dan, I was slick as a dolphin.

You can't get it off you.

Can't get it off me.

Like, that's happened before. We're like, oh, I ran out, let's use what I got, and it's just like it won't wash off.

I've used shampoo as soap if I don't have soap, but I would not use conditioner as—

it's like a killer whale, Dan—

as soap because it would make me a porpoise. I feel, and I think Amin can agree with me here. The conditioner situation is two Americas.

Two Americas.

Two Americas.

I don't use conditioner. I'm sure Amin doesn't use conditioner. It's not— I don't think it's a Black thing.

Well, Dan only uses it apparently on special occasions. I don't know what requires— I wouldn't say no. Oh, you know what? Tonight I'm feeling special. Conditioner it is.

Not every place that I shower has conditioner. And so it's not on special occasions, but I would like to ask the question here, revealing my ignorance of two Americas. You and Amin men also don't have very poofy hair like me or Damashek. So is that not one of the things involved? If, if you guys were to grow out afros, would then conditioner be something that you would like a little bit better than in your present skull state?

So I, you know, remember I had my hair growing out a couple of years ago, right around the pandemic. Uh, I don't use a conditioner in the shower, but like there's a leave-in conditioner I'd like for the curls to pop and all that stuff. But I— that's not what I think we're talking about, right? In the shower, the thing that he's talking about that you pump in there and you're like—

it's sort of the same thing though, whether it's leave-in conditioner or conditioner from the shower, it's not a great deal different. Like, you can wash it out, but you don't seem to even know what I'm talking about with conditioner in the shower.

Now that's what you're talking about.

Hey, uh, the hair, uh, I think Damashek has this wrong though. Shampoo does not leave your hair as soft as conditioner does. It simply does not. That's not— I'm not making that up. That's not a illusion. That's not because big conditioner has me fooled with their warehouses full of what you're saying is unused conditioner that they've now had to throw into shampoo.

Now you sound like Aaron Rodgers.

Whoa, wait, hey, whoa. Dan Levitar.

No one would—

Oh, le, le, oh, le, le, le, oh.

PJ.

Oh, le, le, le, le.

Dave Demacek.

That's pretty good.

This is the Dan Levitar Show. Thank you for leading me to the segue of Aaron Rodgers, because I did want to actually address something from that conversation that he threw out there, because I have been informed that the criticism of me was louder than I experienced it at the beginning. Wherever it is, both our audience and others are mad at me for not talking more about the Diana Rossini situation. And I saw that among all of the things that Aaron Rodgers listed in his grievances that got a great deal of applause from many people. I think the top of the list on getting applause was the idea that Aaron Rodgers was doing on ESPN's network criticism of ESPN. I think that's the greatest applause that he got from a certain segment of the population. Then second greatest was him just going after Fauci. But one of the other points that he made was that ESPN didn't cover at all Rossini and Mike Frabel. And one of the reasons that I was silent about it, or most silently about it. Beyond just my friendship with Diana and beyond thinking it would be enough to reveal to you guys, hey, I've got this conflict here that I'm gonna be biased, I'm gonna be transparent about what my biases are, and think that it bought me something.

The chief reason that I did not talk about that at all is you guys go ahead and give me all the examples when the mainstream media is covering the infidelity of coaches. Throughout the history of time, like, I thought the rules changed right there. Everyone was okay where the internet changed all of that. This happened to Tiger Woods. Like, Tiger Woods was like, hey, I can behave like Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan in private, right? No, not anymore. You can't. Not once your, your car gets hit with a golf club by your wife. All of a sudden you're going to get, uh, you're going to get all of the coverage that comes with this happened in public, and therefore we're entitled to dissect your marriage in a way that we never would have before because that's not how we covered athletes. Go ahead and give me all the examples you guys have of infidelity bodies of coaches being something that's covered in the mainstream media, which made it then something that you— you weren't covering it because it was Vrabel. You were covering it because it was Rossini. And the journalism is something that makes it different.

The conflict in the journalism is something that makes it different. But the place where I recused myself was I'm not going to be commenting on pictures taken by the New York Post when my friend is still denying that this is so. Not until I get more information. I have two examples: Patino and Petrino. So both of them have public incidents beforehand. Petrino wrecked his motorcycle and had a fellow employee on it, so the police were involved. Patino's involved details that everyone enjoyed because they were sorted, and it was an action that happened in a restaurant and involved also a whole scandal involving abortion and a whole bunch of other things that people enjoyed eating up. But even as you have a couple of examples, they're still outliers. It's not not generally something that we've done as a standard on how we covered things. And I'm sitting out the idea of like, nah, man, you fine, have at it. The internet has changed the rules and the internet's going to have fun with this. But I understood why ESPN sat that one out because it's not something they've ever covered before.

Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's sorted. It's diff— this one's different obviously because of Diana's presence in this. It's not just guy cheats on his wife, it's guy cheats on his wife with someone who is tasked with covering the sport. And the reality is, when you think of the— this is a media story more than anything, right? And I don't mean media story like a media makeup, but like a— someone on the media beat would cover the story very— yeah, like that would be the main coverage. So someone, Andrew Marchand, right, for The Athletic, or was it Ryan Glasspiegel, right? Like someone like Does ESPN even have someone on that beat? I don't believe they do.

I've said since the beginning, and I have been the arrogant, self-appointed ombudsman for ESPN while at ESPN, but one of the big arguments I was having there was we'd really buy ourselves something at ESPN if we covered ourselves the way that we covered others. Like, if we kept covering ourselves the way that we covered others, I do believe there would be value in that. They never agreed with my assessment on that. But this isn't— like, we can frame it under that. It's convenient. I mean, like, it is the umbrella under which we would hide, hey, it's because of the journalism element. No, it's not. It's because the standard's different for women. Like, it's not— the journalism element is a nice rationalization for covering it differently, but it allows us permission to go after Diana because the standard is different for women on this. Freibel still hasn't gotten the, the same. Diana still hasn't talked. Like, she still hasn't. I don't even know what's going to happen with what she's going to do with the next steps of her career. And I don't know what kind of advice she's getting on the next steps of her career, on whether it is that she should lean into this or not.

But let's have the original conversation that Aaron Rodgers— Aaron Rodgers got a great deal of applause because what he seemed to be presenting on ESPN that no one was presenting on ESPN is look at this hypocrisy that ESPN won't cover this story. It was strange to hear him do it because a number of different reasons. But whoa, you did that to Vrabel. Really, Aaron Rodgers, you did that as a quarterback for an NFL team. You did that to an NFL coach. Haven't seen a whole lot of that in my lifetime on television or in football where a quarterback invites, hey, cover Vrabel a little bit more on this opposing coach. But the idea, Tamasek, that this is something that should be covered in the mainstream because because the internet has changed the rules as I sit here losing, losing the fight by the way, but continuing to say, hey, are we going to keep the standard we've had around here or not? Are we going to— oh, we're going to lower it? Okay, because the people want it? Okay, we're going to keep— okay, we're going to keep lowering it. Can I keep fighting the standard?

No, you're— no, you're, you're petulantly arrogant, Levitard.

All right, I, I hate to start talking because I may not stop for another 97 minutes here, but I will jump in. First of all, the irony of a quarterback, as you say, In an age when we know everybody's significant other, we know everything that happens. Aaron Rodgers has been married for more than a year now, right? We're not— we— no one has met his wife. Are we supposed to dig in on that as well? How deep are we going to go into Mike Vrabel, how his marriage is impacting his coaching with the New England Patriots is kind of the question. And that is the sort of rational response ESPN could have, right? They could say, what, we're going to cover somebody who doesn't work, a journalist who doesn't work at ESPN?

Infidelity is the first stop on, I didn't think this was something that we covered. Like, I just didn't, I did not believe that the mainstream media treated as a conversation topic on any of the debate shows, on any of the news outlets, infidelity is fair play.

Well, the other thing is too, I have to say, Dan, I'm sorry, I mean to get in the way because you were talking about it last week, Dan. And I wanted to jump in on the idea of, you know, how far can Kyle Shanahan kick this thing down the road? And does he owe it to anybody? Is he required to be more forthright? Forget about the local police and otherwise. Do the Niners and does Kyle Shanahan owe it to anybody? And I really do think the force of what Pat McAfee is doing at ESPN has basically taken us back about 60 years. It all starts with Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell being willing to go there with the most famous person on the planet about his religious conversion and him being anti-war and all of that. That gets the ball rolling. Pat McAfee has instituted successfully— listen, sports are supposed to be fun. Let's not talk— we don't need to talk about anything else. So then that makes it awfully ironic that Aaron Rodgers uses that platform with Pat McAfee to then go at everyone. Where, where's the journalism? It went out the door with, with this new version of ESPN.

That's where it went, man.

One of the things that always happens in our conversations around ESPN is people hear whatever it is that I'm saying critically, and it's simply the idea of they are the standard setters and I'm hoping to protect the standard they set it. And I like I like where it is and how it is. They said it, and I like it selfishly because it benefited me a great deal. But that's where the standard was. And I don't think it's wrong as a business to choose in the modern age to actually put down your sword on, hey, we're going to be about social issues and just say, let's make sports fun and a little dangerous, but not in the dangerous places that you want it. I don't actually object to that in any other way rather than to point out, hey, you realize we're lowering the standard here. We set the standard one place and we're changing it. If you're good with that, you're good with that, but I'm less good with that than you are, and I'm going to keep repeating to you guys, know that you're changing the standard.

Speaking of changing the standard and lowering the standard, the show may contain errors, and we have a giant oversight from the first hour, which is that we forgot about the yodel kid from Walmart, Mason Ramsey.

No, I don't know what I do.

That's the modern Yodel.

You don't remember that kid? Oh my God, Mason Ramsey.

You don't remember?

This is, this is showing your age, Damashek.

Showing my age? It did. It happened a few years.

He was the most famous kid in America for a good week and a half.

So how does that show my age if I was around?

You're not paying attention. You're clearly not paying attention to what's going on in the streets.

So now I'm senile?

In the street?

I don't even know what you're talking about.

You know about those Yodeling Streets?

Why you give me the stink eye, Dan?

I'm not giving you the stink eye. I don't want to look at Jeremy.

You're side-eyeing me. Oh, okay.

No, no, you're misreading. You're new here and you're not around here as much as you need to be. I don't— anytime we lapse into Jeremy doing that, I can't look at him.

Dan, I'm going to help you here. I'm going to rescue you. There was another incredible play-by-play call, this time from a Phillies auction winner. So he paid to get onto the broadcast. Dan, he was incredible.

We are headed to the third inning. Phillies on top 2-1, and we're pleased to welcome Louis Kolb from Medford Lakes, New Jersey. He is our Phillies Fantastic auction winner. He, uh, outbid the competition to, uh, spend an inning and do some play-by-play in the booth. And Louis, welcome, glad to have you here. Thank you, Scott. It's a thrill to be here. It's a lifelong dream to be in the Phillies broadcast booth. So here we go, Painter with the first pitch. To Ortiz. It's in there for strike one call. Philz with two in the bottom of the second to take the lead as we start the top of the third. Now Painter delivers, it's bounced foul towards the Phillies dugout, and they count one and one. Phillies winning the first two games of this series, one more to go tomorrow night, and then a three-game set with the Blue Jays over the weekend. Now Painter delivers It's a check swing. It's a called strike 3. He got him. So Ortiz down.

And Louis, uh, you spent your life as a firefighter, police officer?

Neither of those things.

Just guessing.

I've been a substitute teacher in recent years for Nita School in Lakeland. There's a pitch that's lined over shortstop, a base hit for Dylan Cruz, and he reaches first base safely with a one-out single.

He's got to be a ringer. That— there's no way this guy walked off the street. First of all, his voice is exactly the kind for radio baseball.

It's perfect. And it, uh, you know, I think that Hank Azaria has been around a great many hugely talented Hollywood people, and the entire character of Brockmire that he created that is his favorite of all the characters is because the baseball affect is so ridiculous that you can say anything like a baseball broadcaster and be talking differently than any other human being has ever talked. Down levitar!

DJ Laz is playing gulo in the background, my pitbull.

Here's Dave Dameshek and he's like, hey guys, Pittsburgh, uh, all right.

Everybody's like, I was watching Who the fuck is this guy?

Dave Demacek.

He goes, what TV is the Penguins game on? Who the hell is this guy?

This is the Dan Levatar Show. One of the funny things, I don't know if you guys, uh, man, now I'm in too deep. Um, Hank Azaria, because he came on our show and very innocently said it that it was hard to get Knicks tickets and that he was in a booth that was scraping the roof of Madison Square Garden with Aaron Judge and Jeremy Strong, an assortment of legitimate celebrities. MSG got mad about that and punished Hank for getting, uh, in, you know, in the headlines because the New York Post immediately took that he said something about Taylor Swift being in the front row and turned it into something that was a controversy that caused Hank real problems. And he blames me. And I'm like, think, you've been an adult and a celebrity for 40 years, okay? You've got to know that in the modern age some of the things that you say are gonna get aggregated just because you're a famous person. And his response— and he was right about this— he's like, I should have said it as Brockmire. If I just talked to you as Brockmire in that ridiculous baseball voice, no one could have aggregated it because it just would have been obviously cartoonish.

That was exceptional. Obviously somebody should hire that person for real.

And the like, I thought it was going to be like, well, maybe he's a substitute teacher, maybe he does some of the, the school games, but it's like neither of those things.

No one— back to the—

no one talks like that. There's no one who speaks that way.

Amazing.

So, uh, this is a WIP just auction winner.

Somebody got the chance, somebody paid to be on the broadcast, and this guy was like, all right, this is my one shot. I got to pay whatever it's going to take for me to get on this broadcast. I know I'm going to kill it. And then he did exactly that.

And if I'm like the play-by-play guy for Phillies radio, I'm pulling that plug immediately. Like, as soon as he sounds like this and is actually describing the action that way, I'm going like, no, absolutely not. We need— who do I need to talk to to get this guy out of here? Because I'm going to lose my job.

Neither of those things.

Uh, get the guest bookers on it to see if they can find this person so that we can talk to, uh, this person. Uh, but what I'm expecting generally when we get auction winners, or for example in this Pistons tryout camp, when you pay $250 for the ability to just try out with an NBA team. I mean, what are you shaking your head about before I've even delivered to the audience what this is?

Delivered to the audience, but just know the audience now knows Amin has an objection to how we're setting this all up.

Okay, well, no, you set it up. You're already objecting, so you just— you set up the idea that there are people who can pay $250. If Tony had known about this, he would have been flying to Detroit to try out for the Pistons. But when people do stuff like this, I don't expect them to be exceptional like the IP auction winner. I expect them to look more like the fat guy who rolls in, is like, yeah, I want to be a Piston for a day, watch my crossover here, I'm just gonna foul people and I'm gonna run out here with my shorts. This is a real NBA tryout? Well, no, it's, it's people who paid $250 easy money for NBA court.

Okay, so first and foremost, this is not for the Pistons, it's for the Pistons G League affiliate. This guy, this guy looks ridiculous.

He's fat and his number is 182.

Big shorts on too.

Huge shorts.

Nice steal there.

So, so this is for the Pistons G League affiliate, which is a small operation, and one of their big revenue-generating things— that's not just them, it's every G League franchise. This has happened for over a decade, maybe even 20 years. They do this thing where you can pay money and you show up and you go through a tryout. And in the history of this program, like I said, every G League team does this. There's been one player who actually made it from paying $150 to being an NBA player and actually signing not just a minimum contract but then going on to sign another deal. You remember Jonathan Simmons?

Yeah.

Played for the Spurs and then the Orlando Magic. That guy paid $150 to try out for the Austin Spurs. Yeah. So while you guys laugh and giggle, this is a real thing. This is a real thing. Having said that, I really like the vision of him trying to hit it ahead. It's just like the pass is a little lazy, but like, I, I saw what he's trying to do there.

You saw the vision.

It's an easy way for teams to steal money from hardworking folks is what they're doing. You gotta give me at least a chance. Hey, we're gonna take one guy out of here, make sure.

I go the other way, you know, Akron now is letting people design plays or full football drives and all of this. I like the spirit of this, but we're not going far enough. Teams that are out of it in Major League Baseball should allow someone in the stands to play right field for a half inning.

How?

Why wouldn't that be great, Dan? I know that it, uh, it then renders the, the sport a little unserious, but that would be— that the, the stands would be full if you promoted that. You might get to play one half inning.

The ultimate combo. I'm gonna turn this $250 into $20 million.

That's what Jonathan Simmons did.

I just remembered that the reason he like came up was because Kawhi got hurt and he played in place of Kawhi for the Spurs, and everyone was like, they don't need Kawhi.

They got Jonathan Simmons.

Damashek has a good idea here. You guys were obsessed with the Jonathan Simmons story and weren't actually entertaining the idea. Teams that are out of it— and he did answer his own question when he said, well, it would render the sport unserious. Like, that was the answer to the question. But if you're— if you are the Kansas City Royals and you're just running around out there in a uniform because the other major league teams have to play against somebody, Everybody, if we made the right fielder just a fan who won an auction, that would— the stands wouldn't be full, but it would make baseball more fun than it presently is. If you just had a random fan in the outfield and they look like number 182 out there with his shorts down around his knees and his underwear hanging out and flab in all the wrong Disagree that the stands wouldn't be full.

Eddie Goodell, you know, Bill Veeck, the owner who was a wild card, he put a little guy in the batter's box and he walked on 4 pitch balls. Eddie Goodell.

Guys, go ahead and get me please some black and white footage here of Eddie Goodell because I saw that Tony didn't have any idea who it is that Damashek was talking about.

It's not Roger's brother?

But for those of you who do not know, he works hard. Bill Veeck was a cartoonishly carnival type of owner who did all sorts of strange things. And then his son Mike Veeck ended up popularizing minor league baseball before the Savannah Bananas or anything else with all sorts of weird promotions like this one. But it is true, it is true that what Damashek is saying actually happened in a major league game, which is the Oakland A's were unserious as an organization, and they decided to put a, a little person in the batter's box and see if you can throw a pitch in his strike zone. And he was indeed walked. Now you've got a base running issue, a lot many more steps have to be taken together around the bases, but he can get to first base and then you can take him out with a pinch runner if the pitcher simply can't throw it within the strike zone. It seemed like a good idea to me. It worked. Can you look up for me whether Eddie Goodell had a lifetime on-base percentage of 1,000? Because I— did he just walk the one time? It was his one place appearance.

I think it was a one-off, and I think it was a wiffle ball bat. It literally was not a wooden bat he went to the plate with.

Pull that up again. Put that picture up again, please. Oh, I can't see the bat in this angle.

Oh, he didn't even need one. Honestly, he could have gone up there without one. That is a perfect sports photograph, incidentally. Like, there you cannot do better than that sports photograph in black and white where Eddie Goodell looks like a child. He does not look like an adult human being, and the pitch is clearly high. That is a pitch that's over his head, even though it's a strike to a normal human being.

It's chin music.

One plate appearance, one walk, 1951, 26 years old.

Uh, when it is that Amin says chin music, it allows us to play the play-by-play of Stugatz. I want to give the audience a little bit of, uh, context here. Stugatz went into a Marlins booth during an actual game with supreme swagger and confidence, thinking that he would sound like the WIP auction person and be great at play-by-play. David Sampson didn't trust him, didn't trust the bravado, went running down to the booth to do it with him because we couldn't desecrate a major league park with this play-by-play. This played in the Cardinals clubhouse. Tony La Russa got pissed off because it sounded ridiculous. Here's Stugatz doing play-by-play in color. Carpenter deals some chin music to Gabby Sanchez. Chin music normally isn't swung at, and he swung at that. I got news for you. I was getting chin music in no matter what today.

This is radio, Stu.

I was getting my chin music. So just for the record, chin music is under your chin. That was clearly a foul ball. Like, you heard the bat. You hear it's not— I don't think it's possible to even foul off chin music. Like, How— why is it called chin music, incidentally? I know it's under your chin, but why is it music? What sense does that make?

I think Jay Leno could probably hit chin music.

Oh, see, now that's not fair, man. Why would you do that?

Did we ever get to the bottom of what happened to him?

They beat the shit out of him, didn't they?

That was the theory, but we didn't ever know. You remember the story? It was in his neck of the woods.

He said he fell down a hill in Pittsburgh, and Jay Leno looked like he'd been mugged. He was wearing his His arm was in a sling and he was purple. His face was even bigger than it normally is, which seems like by surface area almost impossible. But I don't think we got— I mean, I think he got away. If it was indeed a lie, he got away with it. People wandered off and did not think that Jay Leno had done anything nefarious there. He simply was walking to a stand-up routine that he was doing and fell down a hill.

Intimidating baseball manager combined with got knocked out combines for me with my interview with Joe Torre that I once had. I almost almost knocked myself out cold in the Dodgers dugout. He was in his first season about to begin it, and I had a sit-down with him, and he wasn't seated on the bench, he was seated on the back of the bench up high in the dugout. So in my attempt to join him, I went in there and I jumped up onto the bench with my foot and I bonked my head real hard on the cement roof, and I almost knocked myself out. And I thought, wouldn't that be funny if I woke up in Joe Torre's lap and him trying to revive me? But then I said, hey Joe, of all Hollywood, when they made your biopic, they went with Paul Sorvino. Slap in the face. And he said, Paul's a dear friend. And the interview went down from there.

Chin music originally was describing razzing or heckling from the fans. It shifted right around World War II, and it was because of the way that batters described the sound of the buzzing going by their ears. And in turn, it was, you know, musical in that respect.

Okay, I'd go chin whistle, but I guess it's semantics because the ball whistles That's a different thing. Is it?

It sounds like a different thing.

Chin whistling. Put it on the poll at Levitard Show. Is chin whistling more accurate than chin music? Also, play Stugatz and some more play-by-play.

So this is a pretty big at-bat, Stu.

Does that include the shot he took in the face when he was standing at bat on base?

Stu, you gotta stop talking when there's a hit.

Logan Morrison with a big base hit up the right side, and Martinez slides into first. First and third, no out here in the bottom of the third inning.