Kabooms.
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the Old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Wow.
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special. The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
In the air every where. The weekend kicks off right now on a spooky edition of The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallor and Danny g Radio Things that go bump during the day. As Danny, this is the Friday, the thirteenth edition of The Fifth Hour. Are you prepared?
You know who is excited about being in the month of October. Who's that my next door neighbor who has not taken down their Christmas lights from last year.
Oh, they're prepared. I don't have to worry about the nightmare of putting the lights up, right, the bad dream that that.
Is, Uh yeah, yeah, we're early.
Yeah, Well there you go. Just never take them off. That's that's the definition of laziness. Just put them up and or pay somebody to put them up and then just leave them up and and that is all.
That is all.
So on this edition of the Fifth Hours, we kick off the weekend here in the middle of the month of October, well just about the middle. We've got the Tony Bennett Special. It's spaghetti time, the word of the week, the word of the week. And we'll see if we have time to get cy and tyfficult.
Yeah we probably won't.
Probably not, No, no, we win. If we don't, we'll just we'll just bump that to another day. We've got all weekend, so we'll just push that to tomorrow on Saturday or who knows. But let's start with this so Tony Bennett Special, the Tony Bennett Special. So this past week did somebody die? Well, no, not quite so, Danny. This past week now interesting for the radio show. So, as you know, we have a lot of opinions. We're in the opinion business. It's not necessarily about being right,
it's about having an opinion. So on my end, Danny's on with Kovino Rich. So on my end, I do five live radio shows a week. That is twenty hours of traditional radio broadcasting. We do another three hours here on the podcast, which is not hot take driven thirty a minute TV shows syndicated where with NBC which will be on by the way today all over the place.
So check your local cable listenings. So anyway, the point of this, get to the point please point on this is you become a hot take assembly line, which might sound like a bad dream to some like you know, that's an ordeal, but it's not. It's not that bad, right, it's not that bad. Opinion react to stories, have opinion. And so each monologue, the way we do the show, and I've been doing this pretty consistently the last year or so, each monologue, it's not just one opinion, it's
like three, four, five, six. Usually it's like three kind of broken up parts of the monologue. And so that's like twelve a minimum, twelve takes a night, sixty hot takes in a monologue per week, the monologues per week, so you get to a certain threshold where it is just a cacophony of noise weekends. One of the reasons we don't do sports takes here, I think Danny on this podcast, is because we just need a break. I need a break, I need a break from my hot takes.
So I kind of have to refresh and get away from the hot take, the grind of the hot take. These are first world problems, Danny, the grind of the hot take. And as a result of this cacoffony of noise, I just want to for the record, I want to point out that it's not that we don't work as artisans.
To actor David Cacoffney, yeah, but.
No, no, no, I mean we worked as artists, right. We try to craft every take into a masterpiece, but not every take is going to be your masterpiece. Try to make it that so anyway to continue the never ending story. You don't know what you don't know, and you also don't necessarily know what's going to resonate in the ears of you the list. Right, It's like the old Joe Madden line, try not to suck. So you try not to suck, but you don't know. Certain things are better
than other things. And so this week we went Tony Bennett fly into the Moon on one of the random takes that didn't even really move the needle at the time. In fact, I was getting blowback from people for the take, and it skyrocketed up the charts, just like Tony Bennett
fly Me to the Moon, Right, so it went platinum. Now, of all the things that you want to take a shot of, all the sports news of the week, what do you think the thing was that took off your Danny and was very popular, very popular in that cyber warfare zone, in the bunker of cyber warfare.
I'm going to say the story about Jimmy Butler not giving up coffee for a year, even if that meant he would win an NBA title.
That's a good story. That Jimmy the bucket story is a good story. And I didn't even get into it that much though, so it's not It is pro bouncy ball related, but it is not the Jimmy bucket story. So I'll fill you in on this because a little birdie plugged me into the NBA said we were texting back and forth and sent me something about the Blazers and it goes back to Dame time and that Damian Lillard trade to the Milwaukee Bucks. And so this was
passed on me. Now, keep in mind, Danny, I am so low on the totem pole doing the Overnight Show that when people tell me things, I just assume everyone already knows it, and they just happened to tell me at the end. You know, I don't think I'm getting any kind of real scoopage per se. People tell me interesting things, which I appreciate. These days they usually text me interesting things. But I appreciate that, and so I didn't really think anything of it. I was like, all right,
this is a good story. So the story was that the Blazers were prepared to give Damian Lillard what he wanted. They were going to trade him to Miami. They had tried to work out with the Heat what exactly they wanted. They were working out the logistics of it, and then Damian Lillard's agent did a round of media and said some disparaging, disparaging things about the Trailblazers, and they were like, hey, we're here to help, and you're screwing us over here.
You're making us look like a bunch of dopes, and you know the hubris of people that work in sports. So at that point a couple of the muckety MUCKs there in Portland decided to pivot. According to the source I have, and they're like, all right, well we'll do what we want with Lellard. He's under contract. We don't have to set them to Miami, and they opened up the trade market to a bunch of other teams, and the obviously ended up in Milwaukee. So I just merely
passed on that part of the story. We actually started out playing somedings Lillard sound from Media Day and we went into it. Next thing I know, And I didn't know this right away. It actually took a couple of days. But I wake up and and things are just blowing up. Right. It's like this thing had rocket fuel, and the blogger sphere started picking it up. Then some prominent social media accounts for the NBA picked it up, and the flag
is up. We were off to the races. We were off to the races, and this thing traveled the basketball Kingdom. And as of this morning, this just happened yesterday. But as of this morning, Danny, this thing had been viewed on only one of the one of the more prominent basketball social media accounts. Three point one million times, three point one million times. It's insane. So anyway it was.
It was really surprising. I thought if anything would have gone viral this week, it would have been me losing my lunch over the debacle that is Dodger Baseball, the wash out that is the Dodgers. But you know, so this I earned my stripes this week with with our friend Sager uh and and the social media guys and all that.
So uh so I thought you were going to drink coffee live on the air for the first time in your life.
Ah, well that would know, No, I can't do that. Well, Iowa Sam was like, why don't you just drink coffee? And then I had to explain the whole story to Iowa Sam because he's the other night we were complaining because a little tired because of the TV thing. I was like, I'm kind of kind of drained here and he's and he's like, well, just drink coffee. I'm like, no, I have caffeine. I just drink I take the pill. And he's like, no, you just have a chocolate mocha
or something. I was like, I don't want to.
How is it was Sam working out by the way.
Oh, Sam's great. But every once in a while, Sam, we have a little bit of I don't want to call it like disarray or anything like that, but they're
every once in a while, Sam goes back. We call it Iowa time where he panics, well not I don't know that panics the right word, but it's kind of like he's stuck in a labyrinth and he's he's like an amaze, right, And and every once in a while, I was Sam, We'll go down a blind, blind alley because I'll set up a sound bite, you know, because you worked with me, Dan and Danny on the on
the radio show. So I'll sometimes kind of set up a drop to kind of tell the story, right, whether it's tortorella, you know, we just sucked at a time we cannot suck, or any of those ten And so Iowa Sam. Every once in a while i'll see get nothing or or and I love Iowa Sam, and we're gonna get him on the podcast here at some point. And I'm not saying this an inter neegative way at all, but but sometimes he'll be kind of I don't know
the disorder is the right way. It's just things get jumble, things getting muddled, cluttered, whatever you want to say there, discombobulated. So anyway, he'll he'll be messing around, he'll be futching around with the sound and I will have moved on to something else and then what do you think happens? Danny drop exactly out of context, too late, total sabotage, vandalizing the next take. I've already moved on, and my man, Iowa Sam's like, well, I found it, so I'm gonna play it, and uh, yeah.
It's not a delay system exactly exactly.
But I must say that all things considered, you know, i Sam has been great. We had a rotation of people. We had three three different engineers a week and it was a little bleary eyed, well that was going on. Uh, and so now we've settled on Iowa Sam. So it's been been pretty good. It's been pretty good.
Uh.
There's a bunch of new like people. I feel like, I don't don't you sense there's like new people, A few new people. There's always new people coming to Fox Sports Radio. I know there's a there's another new board op they hired that has been training with the vegan Alex.
The vegan Yeah, Lorena who she's also trained in the afternoon where Ramos kind of just shadowed her. Brianna is back in the editing bay. She was an intern at the network a few years back. Yeah, the new blood and two females, which is kind of cool because except for Monci, we didn't really have any females in the building.
It's it's like Chippendale's there with all dudes. It's all all that. But yeah, I know it's cool. It's nice to have new people.
Yeah, previously was a sausage factory.
There you go. It was like we were doing a sausage race, like the Brewers Sausage Race every single night.
There.
I like the extended winner. Yeah, continuing on here, I did want to tell this tales, so we'll get more into it. There's some great stories. I'll probably save some of these for the Saturday podcast. But today's Friday, so
let's just worry about this. So, before the Dodgers were excommunicated from the playoffs, before they got bushwhacked by the Diamondbacks there and tuckered out of the playoffs with a pathetic offensive performance, totally feeble, just stupefying how bad they were offensively, considering they were the ones that didn't have they cast offs. The secondhand players, the players that were
supposedly discarded, that's mostly Arizona, right, Arizona. They got a couple of good young players, but a lot of that roster is flotsam and jetsam, and they went out there and that hodge podge of nothingness went out and was able to just burn the Dodgers. It was anyway. But before all that happened, I was able to attend a pair of postseason baseball games kind of. It was really one and some pregame festivities. But La absolutely, as we said,
just spit roasted by the Diamondbacks. But the playoff omians. It was cool being out there. Now. Saturday I attended briefly. We'll have more on that on the Saturday podcast. But on Monday, which was Game two of the National League Divisional Series, that's a work night. I have the radio show to do on Monday night, which is the Tuesday show, and so that means that I am doing a NBA
halftime show. I'm spinning a lot of plates and I'm running around trying to spend all the places to get ready for the show.
The Miller choked night, right.
Yeah, that was when Miller came out and gave up I believe three runs, three or four. So anyway, so but I was there at the game whatever. I wanted to watch the game. So I'm gonna be out there, and I didn't think that would be the last game that I would see until twenty twenty four in person. So I'm out spinning plates just like an NBA halftime show.
And there were multiple games going on, and we react to all the games, so I had to watch the I think the Phillies Braves game was that night also, that was on earlier, and the Dodger game was the late game. But there was also a Monday night football game that wasn't much of a game Vegas in Green Bay in terms of offensive fireworks. So I'm gonna put the show together. So four hours whatever you get to put together. And there's a method to the madness, and it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot
of time. And normally I have my own space, my own sanctuary where I am away from all all the outside world, right all the outside world, and I don't have to worry about anything. There's no Hindenburg that's gonna blow up, no hydrogen bomb, none of that stuff anyway, So obviously I didn't have that at the Dodger game. And these playoff games are packed with media. I did media up, so it's very busy there's a lot of media freeloaders that fill up the press box. That were
a ton of ara. I didn't realize Phoenix had that much media. There were a bunch of TV stations, radio stations, newspapers. I thought there was only one newspaper in Phoenix, but maybe these were blogs. I don't know. There were tons of people that were just all over the Dodger Stadium press box for the playoff game. I don't at these playoff games usually unless there's an auxiliary press box. I
don't have a seat for the first round. I think if the Dodgers has gone to the NLCS or the World Series, which is totally impossible the way they hit and pitch, But if it had been possible, I would have had a seat. I didn't have a seat, so I had to sit in the around media freeloaders. I went unorthodox. The media dining room at Dodger Stadium. They turned into like a hybrid workspace mess hall. So I got there early. I didn't get a lot of sleep,
had to pick up place. I didn't get there early so i'd get a spot to sit in the press room. So I sit down, set up my computer, and I've got views of the baseball game because they had the Phillies game on. And then I put the Raider Packers game on my TV, well my computer, and then but they put the Raider game on one of the TV's because there was some Raider fans I want to watch.
So I'm sitting down, I'm mining my own business, okay, And the hybrid workspace slash mess Hall starts start filling up. People are coming in, you know, slowly turning into a madhouse. More and more people are coming coming and going, and it's like a Grand Central Stations. There's a lot of a lot of activity. And then at one point, as people are dining, they're starting to eat their their supper.
At one point, a major league baseball legend just happens to sit down right across from me at the table I'm at, and all right, this seems I mean, this seems like kind of an interesting thing. And for him, in his head, he was saying, it's a spaghetti time, because this hardball hero had he had a couple of people with him, but he was enjoying some nice pasta and he was interrupted multiple times by other Rando randos that were well wishers, well wishers and all.
That he was eating spaghetti.
He was eating spaghetti. This guy was eating spaghetti. So we're gonna play a game.
Here, Danny, So I know who this was?
Can you name? Can you guess the baseball player who I dubbed an MLB legend who was sitting down eating spaghetti? And how many guesses do you think you need? That?
Three guesses?
Okay? So if you get it wrong, I think you might get this right right away. But if you get it wrong, I will give you a clue. Okay, all right, every wrong guess, I will give you a clue. Okay, So do you want to go blind here without any clues to start?
Yeah, I'll start blind with no clues.
All right. This is where we're trying to figure out what I call a Major League Baseball legend who sat down at my table as I was getting the ready for the radio show to eat a nice dish of spaghetti.
Let's see, stat wise, he's one of the best catchers of all time. I'm thinking Mike Piazza sat down across from you.
Michael Piazza the most popular Dodgers since Sandy Cofax when he played at Dodger Stadium. Certainly you think Italian, you think Mike Piazza, right, racist the whole coach. Didn't he manage the Italian World Baseball team? Yes, well that is that is not Mike. Mike Piazza actually had a falling out with the Dodgers. He hates the Dodgers.
Oh, I didn't know that.
See still holds a grudge because they traded him to the Marlins in was it nineteen ninety eight. It's been twenty five years and he still has very little, if any communication with the Dodgers. He hates him. He considered himself a met which MLB legend sat down at my table across from me and ate spaghetti. It's a spaghetti time, all right. So this person played for six teams. He played for the Padres, the Phillies, the Cardinals, the Orioles,
the Angels, and the Dodgers and the Dodgers. Think about think about who is responsible for generations of Dodger fans like literally has made them probably I don't know, fifty billion dollars, some ridiculous number like that. If you think about the impact.
Oh, I didn't know Fernando pitched for all those teams.
Yeah, yeah, he did. At the end. He left the Dodgers at age like twenty nine. He bounced around, he pitched, He went to the Angels for a little bit, then he was on the Orioles.
I do, okay, I do remember him as an oriole right, yeah, but no other team, Like in my mind he only wore a Dodger's uniform and then maybe an Orioles uniform for a hot second.
Yeah, he actually was mostly a Dodger. He actually pitched three years with the Padres, which I barely remember him.
Yeah.
So, yeah, Fernando sat down and he ate some spaghetti and people kept interrupting him, like these people from Arizona that were there for the for the game, from the Phoenix media. They're like, oh, I just want to thank you Fernando, you know, back in the day. And he'd pause eating the spaghetti. It was very polite. He'd nod his head. He'd then the person would leave and he'd
go back to eating his pasta. I mean, you go to these Dodger games and in the Mexican American community in La Man there is no athlete more important in La sports than Fernando Alenzuela.
Yeah, you totally threw me off with that list of teams because I, like I said, I don't picture him in any of those other uniforms except the Orioles. And I think he wore glasses when he was pitching for the Orioles.
Yeah, because remember he left the Dodgers. He had some arm issues and he wasn't pitching very well. So they were throwing all kinds of spaghetti against the wall to try to figure out what what they could do to to help him to pitch pitch a little bit better.
Now, did he have any sort of interaction with you?
There was a nod when he sat down, because when you sit down, you know, I was only only other one at the table, so there was a nod. There was an acknowledgement there. But but he was I didn't want to bother him, and I'm pretty sure he didn't want to bother me because I had my I had my computer going, and I was like I was running around spinning all those plates, and but it was just
it was just cool. He just randomly sat down there and Fernando, and of course I eaves dropped, as you know, Danny, I'm I'm prone to do that, and so I learned Fernando likes playing back. He liked playing basketball back and the day who knew, and I was planning on golfing. The next day he was lining up some golf and so he had that going for him. And he was also somebody asked if he was going to be at a certain playoff game and he said he had a date. He had to go back to Mexico for something. So
there you go. That's all my intel. And none of that was like, it's not like private or I mean, she just likes golfing, he likes basketball, and he goes to Mexico. I think that's all kind of public information anyway, isn't.
It huge mansion in Mexico right on the water.
Oh, he's got to be like the King of Mexico. Like nobody nobody's gonna mess with Fernando. Like the cartels won't mess with him, nobody, the government won't, and no one's gonna mess the Fernando Valenzuela.
My very first Dodger game as a little kindergartener, my grandmother took us way up top with her son umbrella and her transistor radio with Vin Scully and it was Fernando pitching.
Here's the interesting thing though, when Fernando. You remember the rumors when Fernando started pitching, he made his debut, he was nineteen years old when he supposedly almost.
Yeah, fixed to birth certificate.
Right, So here's the question. How for Ando's listed age is I think he's listed ages sixty two? Yeah, almost sixty three. But if he really was much older than nineteen, like there were stories I heard from old time Dodger people that he was like closer to twenty eight or something like that.
What yeah, I would say he's closer to sixty eight years old.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Anyway, Yeah, So anyway, that was my interaction with.
I could have asked him to hey, Holmes, how old are you? For reals?
Yeah, no, I could have. I could have gone, I don't think it would slap me or thrown some tomato sauce on me or something from the pasta I don't know. Uh. Oh, the word we want to get out on the word of a week. How about that? You ready for the word of the week? Word of the week? All right? So the word of the week here, which is actually it's more of a phrase hot potato.
Wait is this of the week?
Then?
Why you can call. There were words, But you know, why don't we say? How about the phrase of the week, Danny, are you ready for the phrase of the week?
Phrase of the week?
Much sought after, much desired, much coveted, requested, and very marketable, wrong and popular with a certain demographic. The phrase of the week is hot potato. Now, I think we all know what this means. Anything that is taboo, anything that is a third rail type topic of conversation right, can be awkward, controversial, delicate, can create some pushback. That would be a hot potato. The term hot potato originated not that long ago. In the context of the world and verbiage.
The term hot potato originated in the mid eighteen hundreds, and it is taken from an older term to drop like a hot potato. So hot potato is a shortened version of the drop like a hot potato. It goes back to I just said to the mid eighteen hundreds,
to abandon something or someone quickly. And what it means, what it alludes to is the fact that if you've ever cooked a potato, it retains a considerable amount of its temperature, its heat, and if you try to pick up said potato, you are likely to drop the potato because it will burn your fingers and your hands and all that. And so right, that is the and I have done that. My mom used to make my dad like baked potatoes, so we would us kids would make the potatoes and we take them out of the the
like the stove or whatever. And it was it was very hot. I remember it being like extremely extremely hot. So I do recall, I do recall that. All right, we'll get out on that. I got the TV show today. I'd love you to watch that week six, Week six of Benny Versus the Penny. It's on tonight on NBC Sports Boston at seven thirty. We're gonna play Philly, and we should get great ratings because NBC Sports Philadelphia is the Philly station. They're in the NLCS. We'll be on
there at six thirty in Philadelphia. We play in Chicago late night. Don't watch late night television. Watch watch Benny Versus the Penny eleven thirty tonight in Chicago. The TV show Beyond. We'll be on multiple times in San Francisco, six thirty, seven thirty on NBC Sports Bay Area. We'll also be on all day Saturday on Spectrum Sportsnet SoCal beginning at six am here in LA on the Lakers cable station six am, three pm, seven pm, and eleven pm.
Five four showings of Benny Versus the Penny on Saturday tomorrow, and we will play and as Danny says, New York City on Sunday morning at eleven thirty am in New York, we'll have just before the pregame shows and all that Rigamo roar for the NFL, we'll have Benny Versus the Penny. That's on Sportsnet New York, the cable home of the New York Metropolitans. It also airs a bunch of other times. But check your local cable listenings. Can you tell me to do that? Your local TV listings?
That you tell me local listings is what you need to tell everybody. Now, as I watch Laker programming on Spectrum Sports LA, the Penny is gonna haunt me. One second, I'll be watching a Lakers preseason game. The next second, your big mug is going to be on the screen.
Yeah.
I can't wait. No, My goal and this will be the ultimate here is if Bill McDonald, who I've known for years, I haven't seen him in a while because of the COVID stuff. And I've been back to Laker games while, but back when I used to go out there all the time. Bill McDonald, the play by play guy on TV, maybe he'll be forced to do a promo for Benny versus the Penning. Now, that would be that would be that would be just great. But who knows?
What are you hear going on? You got Covino on Rich today, Danny g Yes.
Yes, sir, got a fun Friday afternoon show planned weekend hob Nobbin and our power parlay and everything else, all the shenanigans that we normally have to end the week. And that is two to four pm on the West Coast, five to seven pm in New York City.
Have a wonderful day today, obviously, on this Friday, the thirteenth, Stay safe and joy, have a wonderful time, and we will catch you on Saturday later.
Skater got a murder. I gotta go,