A Dallas Star

in the a everywhere you name it. We are here for you eight days a week, because four hours obviously not enough the overnight, and we do thank you for finding the Fifth Hour podcast. There is no advertising budget. There is zero advertising budget. This is a spinoff of the radio show which has heard on Fox Sports Radio. It's part of the I Heart network. But this is not a Fox Sports radio production. It just sounds like

a Fox Sports radio production unless it does not. And the thing you can do to help this podcast is to tell a friend, Tell a friend, tell a friend, and hey, anywhere you get your podcast, not just on the I Heart network, but anywhere you get your podcast, You can here this show, and we are joined yet again by the man, the myth, and the legend in his own mind. David Gascon is here west of the four oh five. He's coming in to hang out with

us here a little bit west four five. Look at that's I'm going from hanging out west the four five to indoors with you, because man, it's getting little nippiots side these days. Come on, you know, that's the people rip California. It's a little it's in the sixties, so people freak out, what's wrong with you? Well know, it gets windy, and then obviously if you're down near the water, it gets a little bit colder. So I don't like working out in the cold. You I actually I've been

walking and it's been cold. I don't really mind it. It's not like I got this guy Mark the Walker in Rochester. Well that's cold. Yeah, that's I mean, this is I mean, this is not We're not exactly in Alaska here. No, you know, it's not the Arctic. M Yeah, if it gets below freezing, we've got a problem. But you know, I'll let you know when's so cal moves to Siberia. But yeah, it's it's different than it has been because before it was like a hundred degrees where

I live every day. Now you go outside, you got goose bumps. Right now. There's two places, Chicago and Philadelphia. Two years ago, I went outside during the wintertime and it was so cold. My my ears were were in pain, like the wind was piercing and it felt like I had immediate frostbite on my ears. In Chicago and Philadelphia, it was that cold. Yeah. Well, my experience was in Stanford, Connecticut. Uh, when I was doing television and we went out one of the guys on the show. We all got together

and had had dinner at Bobby V's. Bobby Valentine has got a restaurant, don't know if he still does, but it was in Stanford, Connecticut. So we want to air and it was like maybe four blocks from the hotel I was staying at. It was wintertime, you know, it was it was one of time. So I went there, Uh, I gotta ride. The guy was going in a different direction than the hotel, so I said, don't worry, I got this, you know, And I thought, you know. I walked back to the hotel. It was ten thirty eleven

o'clock at night, you know, something like that. And as I remember it, and uh, so I got out of the restaurant and I started walking and I knew where the hotel was. It was the biggest building there in Stanford, and so I started walking and I made it about half a block and oh my god, this intense, this intense feeling just overwhelmed me of coldness. And I kept going though, because I'm stubborn, all right, So I kept going and it kept getting worse and worse and worse.

My nose starts running from the cold, and there was just it was unbelievable. And I made it to the hotel, but oh my, I was not prepared. I didn't have the proper cold gear. And it was one of the dumber things that I've done. Now, were you wearing pants, slacks or or something else? No, No, I had like just like pants on. I had a lightweight jacket. I didn't have gloves. I didn't have a hat, you know things you're supposed to have a scarf, you know things

that normal people who live in cold weather. Half what kind of socks did you have on? I said, normal socks? Yeah, that's the other thing. My my brother told me that that's a cheap code, right, you go, you live in cold, whether you gotta get those wool socks, right, those thick wool socks are amazing. And I didn't know that, but now you know. Now that was a long time ago. So now when I go back, I uh, you know,

I don't mind going in the cold. And uh, I love when you fly into like JFK and you take the drive in to New York City and you see all the dead trees when you go in the wintertime and everything's dead, everything's gray and dead. But yeah, so good times. That's that's where we're at though right now. Like that's the distinct thing about California. I don't know if you feel the same way, but when I look at it, it's we go from summer and there's no fall.

It's just go right into winter. At least it feels like, yeah, it's like a California winner. And it never rains, Like it rains for like one month. Maybe maybe it'll rain for a month. If we have Anno, then it all rain a lot and then everything. The good thing about is everything grows and turns green and then everything's you know, primed to burn again. So It's perfect. It's the circle of life on the West Coast, is what it is. So anyway, this is and this is a interview podcast.

It is and also a bonus. Not only this is a two for one special, by the way, because not only do you get to hear one of the legends of the NFL who's slumming with us, but also we'll have an exclusive story that no one else has after we get on with our our man here that's gonna be hanging out with us. Uh. And I'll then to lose him properly here in a second. But well, have you gotta be joking after we get done with this conversation.

This is a I Heart Podcast fifth hour exclusive. But right now, though, let's begin our conversation with the voice of America's team. This man has been calling Dallas Cowboy football games since I was in diapers. Okay, his name is Brad Sham. He's also called Texas Ranger games. Briefly. He's been with the Dallas Cowboys for forty years. When he started ed to Tall Jones, Rogers, Stabach all the legends of the Dallas Cowboys. In the nineteen seventies, Tom

Landry was the coach. When Brad Sham started calling Cowboy games, he actually started as the color commentator with Verne Lundquist, the legendary broadcaster Verne Lundquist, who was the play by play guy for the Cowboys at that time. But he's seen it all. He knows where all the bodies are

buried with the Dallas Cowboys. Uh. And you know the star Box Pearson too tall, Jones all the way through the glory days of the nineties with Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmett Smith, the Tony Romo years now that Dak Prescott here. He was there before Jerry Jones, way before Jerry Jones became the Cowboy owner. So he has been part of all of that. He has seen the changing of the NFL. And I give it up now for Brad Sham, the voice of America's team, the Dallas Cowboys.

And Brad welcome man, Thanks for thanks for doing this Number one. Number two man, How how has this been this year with COVID and all the changes. It's been a wonky year. How's it been for you? It's ridiculous, Ben, I mean there's but but it's the same problem that that everyone's having in every sport. I mean we're we are not traveling, which is true for I think twenty four of the thirty two radio crews, and we don't have any personal access or contact any players or coaches,

which is true of all of the teams. But the most important thing is getting the games played and not getting people sick. So um, we we sold her on. We do the best we can and try not to bother the listening audience with our problems because they don't care and they shouldn't. It's our job to give them some respite from their own difficulties. So when you're calling a game off a monitor, did you do that back in the day when you were starting out, like just

messing around? I mean, well, I'm not that old, Ben, Come on, I actually have done that. I've done some soccer games that way, and and it's really hard because you can only say what the picture shows you, so you can't see what's going on outside of camera range. And those are things that would normally be brought into play to help paint the picture. And then this year we throw in the addit COVID benefit of empty stadiums in most places that they've been they've been to l

A nobody there. They've been to Seattle, nobody there. I think they were a smattering of people in Philadelphia. I don't believe there was anybody in Washington. So that's really eerie. Even though they're mixing in crowd noise and the same thing people at home who are watching games are experiencing. You kind of low yourself to sleep. You go along with the crowd noise. They do their best to modulate it, and then all of a sudden there's a wide shot

and there's nobody there. You go, oh, yeah, this is a little different. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty crazy this year. And and how does you star in the nineteen seventies doing the Cowboys? You've seen every you know all the secrets of the Cowboys? Are you like the secret keeper for the Cowboys brand? With all the time you spent in What was it like in the early days that when you started back in the in the seventies when Roger Stabach was the quarterback, right when you when you

started doing yeah, I got the end of Roger's career. Um, there were so many things that were different in every aspect of the sport that it would it's way too numerable to mention, and that goes from media access to the offensive and defensive rules and formations. So it was the same sport e loving guys out of side hundred yards length to the field. But there are many ways in which the industry and the sport are are vastly different.

It was a lot more personal, um the relationship between a media, let alone a team broadcaster and the and the players and coaches and front office. It was a lot more personal before. So many things in the world changed. And I'm not talking about the pandemic. I'm just you know, I'm talking about money and social media. All of those things have not necessarily the money has been great for the players. And free agency, I think is something that they the rest of us have free agency. Why shouldn't

athletes have it. But it definitely changed all of that stuff. It's a whole different culture than it was. This is my forty second year, so than it was all those years ago. And back in the seven I watched you know, NFL films, highlight videos and stuff, and you talk about the violence of the NFL and how it's a lot

obviously a lot different now. But when you were calling Cowboy games, did you have you noticed a tangible difference in the way people tackle, and so sure, yeah, you know when I when I started, that it was I think it was the head slap, for instance, was still legal. That was something that Deacon Jones made famous with the rams and uh, and it became taught. Ernie Stoutner, the Hall of Fame defensive lineman for the Steelers, was the

Cowboys defensive coordinator when I started. And that was a technique and he he had guys like uh, he got Randy White in seventy and Randy quickly became a martial arts expert and learned all kinds of techniques about slapping the guy in the head. And a lot a lot of that stuff's changed. And I just saw. I'm a Chicago kid and I was in high school when the Bears drafted Buckas and Sayers. And I just saw on Twitter the other day a little montage of maybe about

a minute of Nick Buckas tackles. The shoulder pads are different. But the way they attacked people, uh, And whether it was Butckas or No This or niche Key or all those great Steelers players, um, the uh, you know, all of those guys just they just tackled differently, even the even the rams with with the Firresome Foursome. Now I didn't know him well, but I got to know Merlin Olson a little bit, and he was such an incredible gentleman that you had difficulty thinking of him as vicious.

But the young Bloods you could think of that way, and and Merlin was a very physical player. Was all just it was. It was just different than it is now that and there were some of these rules are better for the safety of the players, it will prolong the game, but it was it was a different thing to watch. Brad, what what do you look at the state of of the Cowboys right now? Prior Totack getting hurt.

Had you ever seen such a discrepancy wide range from offense to defense or maybe vice versa defense to offense and all the time you've been Dallas, Well yeah, they, I mean they They've had some years where there were big discrepancy, some of Tony Romo's best years as quarterback. To the defense was not very good. I don't think I have ever seen the overall defensive performance be as

abject as it has been most of this year. The I think that the worst Cowboys team I've ever seen was Tom Landry's last one in they were three and thirteen. They they had gotten old. There was a strike in eighty seven which kind of masked some of the aging of some of the players, and some of them Tom uh and Texts let hang around a little too long, and so that manifested in and that was eight was

a much worse team than eighty nine. That was Jimmy Johnson's first team, and he was just churning people through that They could have won more than one game if they wanted to, but that wasn't the point that year, and the point became very clear to three years later. But that eight team was really horrible. And this one, defensively, um is as bad as anything I've ever seen. They really had some terrible times. And I want to say twenty thirteen, Monty Kiffin was the defensive coordinator and and

it was really really bad. But this there's a lot of reasons for why they would have been so bad this year, everything from the absence of the off season to uh over evaluating some personnel, to coaching mistakes, but this has been abject and the discrepancy was really it

would have even been more um in relief. It would have been even even more harshly uh seen if they had not turned the ball over so many times the first few games before dark Prescott got hurt, Elliott fall but a few times, and Dak fumbled two or three times, and so they got themselves in a terrible hole. They put their defense in horrible positions. And then they compounded that by playing just as poorly as it was almost humanly possible to play. And um, and still the the

offense was scoring points. And I mean, they've got some good personnel, but now a lot of it's on the

injured list right now. But that's true of a lot of teams, but there have been some years where there were discrepancies to this year just seems like everything said of it once well, with social media being where it is right now, can you take us through what it's like to work for the Cowboys then, because get l a where it's like a Lakers and Dodgers town, New York with the Yankees and the Knicks being in Chicago.

Obviously got the Cubbies, the Bears, the whole nine yards, but Dallas is different, especially because you have the ownership group and has so hands on with the team and the personnel. Well, this is a Cowboys town. It's a football town. I came here, uh in in seventy came to Tendon and start working on Cowboys broadcast then, but I started I came town college football was the biggest thing. Um,

the Cowboys were just starting to win. Football is always going to be the biggest thing here when the Rangers are doing well, which is a distant memory right now, even though it's only been like ten years. Um, baseball is very popular and the Mavericks are very popular. But in St. Louis, for example, I don't care how many Stanley Cups the Blues were. And that's a Cardinalstown period and um, you know you can you can have a

debate in places like Chicago and New York. I mean my feeling is that that in l A, not living there, the Lakers and the Dodgers are going to split it up and everybody else is gonna is gonna have what's left. And I don't care how good the Rams are for how long. That's what That's just how it is, and that's how it is here. This is Cowboys town. Now. The fandom will not show up in person when they're not doing well. And once upon a time it was phone calls to call in shows. I did one for

a long time. But now the social media, as you say, everybody's everybody's a critic, and everybody's got a form and um, whether you're a team employee or an affiliate like I am, you just can't look at that stuff. You can't pay attention to it because all of us have been fans at one point or another. If we haven't been fans, we shouldn't be doing this. And as a fan, you react viscerally and emotionally, and that's not conducive to running

a business, and that's what pro football is. But we do know what the reactions are and people will react, so you just have to ignore that stuff because everyone has a shingle to hang out now thanks to Twitter and Facebook. Brad. I'll go back in your your game prep. I know I've talked to guys that did talk radio back in the day, and it's it's all different how you prepare for for show and all that. You've been

a radio guy your whole life, which I like. I love that your radio guy buddy, when you when you prepare for a game back in the in the seventies and the eighties, there wasn't that much information. You've got everything out of newspapers, it's seen. There was no internet obviously, So how is it too much now? How much? How much different is it? And how much time do you spend?

Is it a paralysis of analysis situation? With all the information that's available now, that's the biggest danger that you run. I'll never forget Um. I want to say it was in the late nineties when the Cowboys were playing Um Seattle and Seattle was still in the a f C. And one day they were getting ready to play Seattle. It was like Wednesday, and I got an envelope in the mail and there was a VHS tape of Seattle's last game, so I could watch that game to help

prepare and and I almost died of sheer delirium. And then and then Denver did the same thing the next week. And so watching tape or film that wasn't something we did. And you're right, it was all out of newspapers. It was clippings. People would make clippings and facts you copies, or you would go to a bookstore and get copies of out of town newspapers, and it was culturally just as different as it could possibly possibly be. And so you do run that risk of um paralysis by over analysis.

Since that day when those UH tapes showed up, I've always said the good news about the Internet is that there is an unlimited amount of information available twenty four seven. The bad news is there's an unlimited amount of information available twenty four or seven. You have to learn where to draw the line, what you can really use, and what what rabbit holes. That takes some learning in and of itself. But I'm much more prepared to do a game now than I was then. I just didn't know

it then. Yeah, and uh, and what do those guys are gonna be listening to this? And women as well. I think I want to be a play by play person someday. I want to be the next voice of the Cowboys down the line. Any words of wisdom, Brad, that you have, you know you've learned over the years, you can pass on to the to the guys and the gals that are coming after you that want to

do the play by play down the line. Well, if if they are looking to do play by play for the Cowboys, my advice is to wait about ten years, um, if because I'm gonna try to keep the job that long. UM. Generally speaking, yeah, I think that you have to learn how to prepare and you have to be you have to be ready for that preparation to be pretty much all consuming. You're never done when the season starts. Really, when the preseason starts, game passes another. It's a beauty,

it's a fantastic thing. I can watch any game all year, any time, um. But there's literally work to be done, different and specific work every single day of the week. So there are no you know the old I guess it was originally a Belichick saying no days off, but it's true. In the NFL during the season, there are literally no days off, and and that's okay. You just

have to be prepared for it. Well, Brad say, I know you gotta go, but I appreciate it coming on spending a few minutes with us and continued the success. You're great man. We love listening to you on the play by play calls. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Everybody stayed safe and healthy. Alright, awesome, Thank you Brad Sham again the voice of the Dallas Cowbany. You already knew that you've been listening to this podcast, and he had to go. He's a very busy man. The man

is the voice of the Dallas Cowboys. He can't be slumming too long on a random podcast. We gotta we gotta get him back because I I only guess gon I just barely put my toe in the water. Like I have so many questions, uh, from different eras of the NFL that I would like to get into if we can have Brad on again, because he is a walking,

talking encyclopedia of the NFL. And I touched on a little bit there about the nineteen seventies and watching NFL films and stuff, But like, what was it like with the Cowboys when he was traveling with the team back when you remember how how big the Cowboys were with Emmett and Aikman and Irvin that era. I mean, they

were rock stars at that time. Yeah, I was gonna ask you before we got on, and and we can ask Brad when we come back, because you always get broadcasters that have been with an organization to twenty thirty years that have those those catchphrases, and so I guess I could ask you now, but in the NFL, do you have another call that's as good as his when he says walking the dog? Uh, well, the one the NFL call that pops into my head when you say

something like that would be the Bill King Holy Roller call. Right, Remember that it was a Raider Charger game. I think it was um and that was that was ridunculous um. But you know, off the top of my head, no, there's some guys like I love the guy in Kansas City touchdown cans, you know, but that's just the touchdown. What about your boys in uh, your boys in Minnesota when Dalvin Cookie is like he is loose? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

the Vikings, absolutely, that's a that's a good one. In fact, we we have a lot of drops in the system from outtakes of Viking games when Christian Ponder was the Viking quarterback and uh yeah, let's just say that was not um the smoothest era of Viking football. Yes, and he threw that's like shades of Ryan Linley at Arizona with the Cardinals when he had to play a playoff game and had a like a completion percentage of Yeah. But Paul Allen, who we should. I gotta get, we

gotta get. We were talking about having him on the podcast from Minnesota. We would love to get Paul Allen on and break it down. But Paul Allen his call was, why why would you even ponder passing? It was? It was hilarious, it was it was so. And then the other one, um, I think it was I'm pretty sure this was Paul Allen. The Vikings were playing the forty Niners. This is actually a few years back, not that long ago,

and the Niners the big story. They signed a guy from the Aussie League, an Australian league football guy, remember, and he was the punt returner. Yeah, and so it was like a Monday night or a Thursday night game. I forget which, but it was his first game and he they Vikings punt the ball of the guy and he drops it and Paul Allen screams the odds he must It was perfect. It was so and for years

we play that. Unfortunately robertos new and so like every time I change engineers, like all the old drops vanish because that's a previous engineer, and so then we have to you know, you have it's like their own fingerprint on the show where they play their own drops, and like, we lost a lot of the genie and met for stuff, but in Robertos put some new things and we've got some new toys that we play with, which I'm fine

with because that keeps the thing fresh. Right. We can't you can't keep playing the same drops that I played with Art Martinez in Tree. You can't do it now because stuff changes. And I mean back then we were playing the drops were like Jeff Garcia Crisp was a drop, Alan Iver was in practice it was what was the his mom's name, I forget his mom, but did you want to tell you that screaming into the microphone? That

was a funny drop that we played a lot. It was an incident with Ivers and his girlfriend at the time. And yeah, soh so all that, but yeah, I mean, listen, Sham's an all time great He's done a bunch of other stuff too. We didn't get into it, like he actually left the Cowboys for a couple of years to do the Texas Rangers. Yeah, he was a tech. So he's done both the NFL and Major League Baseball, done a bunch of college games, uh and so, and it

was great to talk to him. Yeah, And I like the fact because he's he's seen the top of the mountain and also the basement in the years that that Trey Aikman was there in Dallas. I mean, obviously they won a couple of Super Bowl three Super Bowls, but that team was also dreadful prior to that. I think they were one in fifteen, the year prior than going on that run. So he's seen some some god awful football and then he's seen the best of the best. Yeah, and you know, you do it and we're gonna get

into this too. Like it's it is different. It's obviously different when you're calling you're supposed to say, wow, it's the same, you know, and all that stuff when you when you're calling it. But but it's a lot more fun when the team is good. You know, when you're polishing turds, it's it does not it's not as he's like the old line. I love the Ralph Lawler back in the day in his computer like mind, the great

Ralph Lawler. But you know, when you're calling the Clippers and they're terrible, and then when they're good, it's it's obviously a lot more fun. But you're it's like you're the voice of doom. You know, it's like when you're calling, it's like the exact opposite for sports talk radio because you want chaos, and ma'am hell, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely know. I've always said the greatest sports talk radio is teams losing. The better stories in the losing locker room.

That's where the stories. It is, absolutely where the story is, because uh and I know this and I have lived it, because I was able to do Dodger Talk very lucky in my career and also, believe it or not, remotely, I did the Red Sock Review Show, which is their version of Dodger Talk, and I noticed the same tendencies in l A and Boston, thousands of miles apart that when the hometown team won, not a lot of excitement, not a lot of buzz right when things were going well,

But when they lost, all right, oh my god, you gotta fire the manager, the pitching coaches a bum. You gotta trade this guy, Joe blow, get him out here, bring in Johnny six pack. You know, the whole thing. And uh and I love the the chaos and the reason for that is actually a great John F. Kennedy quote right that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat isn't orphan, And that's right, it is because you know anybody, and when you win, everyone wants to kiss your ass

and tell you how great you are. So that's why the better stories and losing locker room because then you gotta answer questions, and then you gotta get surly, right, you get upset and all that. So and I I

love it. I thought Brad made an interesting point, and you know this obviously from doing a four hour talk radio show, is that it's a wonderful thing that we have information at our fingertips, but it's also a horrible thing that we have information at our fingertips because it messes with the nuance of telling a story and painting a picture as opposed to just reading line line line, copy, line line line. You get some guys are so robotic,

especially in baseball. Like I know, the game of baseball is is made up now of saber metrics, and guys weren't about launch angles and exit velocity. But if you don't tell the story, and if you don't have history behind players and games, then you then you lose the context of it. And you're better off just watching the

game on on game cast or something of that nature. Yeah, I agree, And I worked h Dodging talk with Ross Porter, who we gotta get him on this podcast to at some point the great Ross Porter talking to Dodger Baseball Baseball Trivial. I love ross Man, He's great and I haven't seen him in a while, so we should give him a buzz, get him on. But Ross was like early in on that analysis stuff. He and but he it was back in the stone age where it's hard to get those numbers, but he found them. I'm not

sure how he found them, but he knew. You know, he'd go like, you know, Dale Murfrey, he's bat in three seventy on a Tuesday afternoon in July. You know, historically he'd have all that, he'd be able to explore that. But yeah, Sham was absolutely correct. The epidemic of information, right, the infodemic where you just you over don't you overindulge. It's kind of like a fat guy and all you can eat restaurant. You know, you go a little, you

go a little too much, you over overeat. I've done it right, and you go Joey Chestnut and then you're like, I gotta go to the fat farm because I've had too much information here. But yeah, it is. It is something man and and thinking about his seventies, and I remember when I got even I and I don't think I'm that apparently I am. I'm becoming old. But I remember when I got into radio talk radio and I watched through. I learned by as most is how Hacks

did his thing, and he gave me some pointers. But Hack saw in those days the internet was I was. It was his stone age. He didn't have what it was. It was the early days of the internet. We still had at at the mighty six nine in San Diego, we had the sports ticker in the AP news Wire, and that was really the way we got the information.

There'd be a breaking news bulletin on the AP Sports Wire and you'd wait for that news bulletin, and then sports ticker for the scores, and and then Hacks I would be he would be reading the newspapers like the Milwaukee Journal, Sentinel or whatever, trying to get information out of it for his fifteen minute open. Now you go anywhere and it's it's non stop. You can wolf down seven seventeen thousand newspapers and some of them charge, which

you know, who pays for that on the internet. But but yeah, it's it's it's crazy that that was bad. That was bad in the day when breaking news was actually breaking news. Yes, yes, now stuff happens and then you know, you don't even know when it first starts. You know, it's like everyone's eating magic mushrooms these days, and it's like did that, does that new? Or is that two days old? Or I'm not sure what's going on? And you know, and then the other thing is like

what is what is really? Everyone's got an agenda, Everyone's always had an agenda, but just maybe I'm because you know, back in the good old days, it just seems like even people at agendas then, and they had biases, but it just seems like it's so and people live in their own boxes. Right. If you're a Democrat, you only listen to people that tell you what to do. If you're Republican, the same thing. But it's it's it's just

an all not just political stuff. I think it's everything's kind of slanted depending you know, it's the same thing in sports, because if you love the Cowboys, you only want to get positive Cowboys stuff apparently, so you'll go read cowboys dot com. You know, we're not gonna hear a lot of negative stuff on Cowboys dot Com or any of those teams that have their own websites, and you get information, but it's just completely filtered information. Yeah.

And the other thing too is now that agents have an extension of the media, they're able to leak content to reporters or news agencies if there's a client that they have that's on the fence about an extension or a new contractor wants to be traded. So there's ways to manipulate and funk with the market that way. Well, we had that, you know, who knows if it's true or not, but we believe our guy Holiday, who is related to Michael Thomas of the Saints, and we asked Holiday,

what's going on. You know, it's because Thomas was in the doghouse and he wasn't playing and he was hurt. But people think he was being benched and they claimed he was hurt and that old thing. And Holidays said that it was Michael Thomas who got upset with the Saints and went to his agent, and then the agent is the one that contacted the NFL insider crowd to toss Michael Thomas's name out in the you know, the rumor mill, right, you know, to give the the rumor

out there. And so he had an agenda. He wanted to let the Saints know, Hey, I can go play somewhere else. And so some NFL insider said there was a mounting belief, you know, or some of the one and whatever we as a word you know that you want to throw out there. Um, so, yeah, a lot

of stuff does come from agency. But back I'd also like to point out when I was around the Dodgers and I was around baseball in general, a lot of the stuff would come from the people that worked behind the scenes, the support staff, the locker room attendance, people like that, because and I know this to be true when when free agency was coming around in baseball, and I don't know that they still do this, but the general manager of the front office would call down to

the equipment guy and say, hey, um, you've got to get you know, X Y n Z jersey ready because we might this guy and we're gonna have a news conference and we need the jersey for the photo op and I remember that might might not have been in the way that some of the free agents the Dodgers were interested in got out. Uh. One of the most famous stories. I guess you can tell because I think this is on the public record. I don't want to only some of these people I still know and he

still worked there, so I don't give in trouble. But Randy Johnson was he signed with Arizona. But he the thought was he was gonna go to the Dodgers, so they had a jersey made. They anticipated they're gonna get Randy Johnson before he went to Arizona. How would that have changed things? Maybe not at all, who knows. But but Randy so cow guy. But he signed with Arizona. The reasons. The legend is he walked into the old Raggedy Dodger clubhouse, the same clubhouse that Sandy Kofax had

been in back in the day or whatever. And he's too small. I'm out now. The clubhouse at Dodger Stadium is like the taj Mahal. They redid that. The Googenheim partners that on the Dodge just man, they went all in on that. They lay loaded up, loaded up. That

is a country club. Yeah, that's what that is speaking of, which that was pretty interesting that what Brad had mentioned with with the way that they're actually calling games and he's looking at that giant screen in Jerry's world to call action um as opposed to maybe necessarily being live at a venue nowadays. Yeah, you know, I, I know, I was playing around with Brad. Brad got a little defensive on that. I was, Okay, did you call games before?

But I did when I was a kid, and I was like, hey, I would like to do this someday. I originally wanted to be a play by play guy. So I think most kids my age, maybe not now, we would would do it, you know. And that's how they you know, they would they would call games and stuff. It's like you go full, you go full. Ronald Reagan,

right full. Ronald Reagan was a w h O in Des Moines, Iowa who would call cub games and uh, you know the famous story about Reagan and I read this and it's it's a great story because having worked in broadcasting, you love when crap goes wrong and you have to you have to improvise. But one time, so he was calling the game off he wasn't even calling it off TV because this is back before before TV

was regularly consumed. So Reagan was doing radio calling CUB games, recreating them, but he was doing it off the teletype the ticker, so the wire breaks, right, So this is the only way that then just civilian Ronald Reagan was able to call CUB games, and so he has no information. So so, uh you know, he's like, what are we gonna do here? And uh so he then he would he would talk about the batter keeping he said, the batter would keep fouling off the pitch until the ticker

came back. He would just you know, like they be a million foul balls and there's still two strikes. Uh yeah, So it was it was pretty funny back back in the day. Back in the day, it's great to hear like like guys like Brad, guys like Scully, guys that

have gone through those different stages. And I mean, I I know, obviously he's make believe, but Bob Yuker when he played Harry Doyle, That's that's why I thought of sports casters when I grew up, Like, Okay, there's a guy getting himself loose by drinking some jack getting a guest gun. Let me tell you when I first started, some of those guys did get loose. Jack Harry Carry Callis had a few pops some time at the time. Harry Callis, Harry Harry Harry Carry. I'm Srry Carry a

legendary of course. Yeah, Harry didn't even hide it. He bragged about it. Who was? Who was? I forget his name? M de Trait Tigers, Ernie Harwell, Yeah, Ernie Harwell, there you go. I don't know that he did. Ernie was a pretty straight laced guy. Met him obviously near the end of his career there. But Ernie was great, very nice guy. I always say he wore the same hat I wear. Now you know that he wore the paper boy hat. Yeah, yeah, which I guess there's an old

guy's hat. But I like it. It's a good, good thing. Ernie was. Yeah. I feel like I got to meet Ernie Harwell, Harry Carry, Harry Callis, Scully, uh, the the Mets legend, Ralph Kiner who did it did the Mets on television, met him for a good stretch. Just keep carry the braves guy. I grew up watching him on TBS, the superstation Atlanta Braves baseball. They were terrible. And you met you met Sterling too, right, yeah, John Still. I met him at the the Yankees came in to play

the Dodgers in the press box. There was very nice. And the other one it just passed away a couple of years ago in Sandy Goes It last year. Oh dick Enberg, you have the great dick Enburg. Yeah, he was fantastic. It was great, very smooth, Yeah, smooth delivery and he was He was good across everything, football, baseball, tennis, golf. I feel like I'm doing my Pat O'Brien where I'm

just dropping names. Now, I feel like I'm doing my o b It's a little bit different because you're not like in Brentwood right now, eating a burrito and just casual talk. I still haven't called Pat to follow up because I Pat offered to take me out to lunch, but I haven't. Everything in California is all left up now, so I'm gonna wait. See here's my move on this. All right? Let me tell you this is a veterman move.

So I'm I'm hoping that by April of stuff will be open back up, you know, because I'll even have a magic pill or something like that, or uh, this thing will take its course the corona. So then I'm gonna wait, and then I'm gonna hit Pat up. And knowing Pat, he'll take me to some steakhouse in Beverly Hills or something like that, and and I'll get to enjoy a nice meal if I go. Now, I'm gonna eat a box lunch outside my burrito with Pat on the street in Beverly Hills. Who wants to do that?

Why don't you invite him over? And you can cook a steak here we go? All right? Just you, you brought it up. You brought it up. All right? Are we done? I'm done, by the way. You gotta tonight, you gotta, you gotta listen to a special special edition of Benny Versus Pain. This is the week I'm actually gonna try to get the picks right. Uh, this is the week I'm gonna actually try to do well. I was sand bagging, but now it's now it's winning time.

I can salvage the season. I can salvage you. Uh. You know, last week was to take your trash out week. But I will be back. I will be back tonight at nine thirty nine, thirty in the West, and that's twelve thirty in the Witching Hour in the East. So we'll have Benny Versus the Penny and that's on Friday night in the A little depressing because that that also

means that we're officially halfway home with the NFL regular season. Well, that's a blessing and a curse because that means no more Benny Versus the Penny unless we have a spin off, which we we've talked about, but who knows. Yeah, we'll see you keep going. Now. We asked a couple of weeks ago for for tickets for anyone that um took a five team parlay, anything of that nature as we were doing some of the Benny Versus the Penny games and then also presidential stuff. Did you get any pictures

twittered to you, d m to you anything. No, I got none. No one took us up on that guest God, and there was Monday to be made. We got the guaranteed we got right now. I think your boy Steve in Seattle, I think he did do some pro games though yeah, I don't know if he did political, but I know he did some pro game well the pro see the political stuff you're not technically allowed to bet

as an American on the election. But as we know, the off shore books kind of the they have more loose they're fast and loose with the rules, so there are ways you could have done it. It's it's more it's not like you can go into your local sports book if you're in Jersey or something like that and say, hey, I want to put a couple of bucks down on you know, I Trump winning Mississippi or something like. You can't.

You're not allowed to do that. So I feel I feel like in in the next in the next four years, when we have our next presidential election, the elections should be started off with a musicians singing the national anthem. That way, we can bet on the time of it and then get the election underway. I feel like that's the way that we do with the Super Bowl and

then everything else follows after that. Yeah. Well, eventually they're doing mail and voting now, but I'm guessing like ten fifteen years from now, they'll just have like a text voting, you know, just text your vote, you know, name the name the candidate texted in. You know, what could go wrong, what could possibly grow? Well, that's the evolution, right you think you know? He just keep moving it forward and

forward and forward and for warden Ford. And then I would guess, depending on what happens with the elections in January, not to get too political, we'll have we could have Puerto Rico become a state, right are they talking about adding another couple of states? Puerto Rico, d C. There you go. So then would be fifty two states, which, uh, how about Guam? Can we make Guama states? About Guam territory? What? Yeah, I'm making a state. Come on out there in the

middle of the Pacific. It's like a way point between Hawaii and the and the Asian countries. It took you a while to climb to that third rail, but but you're there. Thank you. I appreciate that because I gotta get I gotta get out of you. I got things to do. How dare you? We want podcasts on Saturday and Sunday and an exclusive, So I saved this story we're gonna talk about on Saturday for this podcast. I was gonna do a bit on the radio show, but

I wanted to give this some time. It's about another sports icon and I happened to cross pass with this icon, but thanks to Brad Sham who was on earlier here and have a great day. Remember Benny Versus the Penny tonight nine thirty in the West and just midway through the Witching hour of twelve thirty in the morning on early Saturday Friday into Saturday in the East. We'll catch you. Then, be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Meller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific