Kubbooms.
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 Mahler starts right now.
In the air everywhere. Welcome in the Fifth Hour with Ben Mahler and Danny g Radio. Danny still on assignment fatherly duty for Danny. He should be back next weekend. Congratulations again to Danny and his wife on the birth of their son last weekend. We'll have all the details when Danny returns. But we go back to the well one more time. The Fox Sports Radio Alumni Association a chance to catch up with one of my friends in the radio business who's no longer in the radio business.
But if you've been a fan of talk radio sports talk radio over the years, you know who this guy is. He not only did a long stint at Fox Sports Radio, he also worked at Sporting News Radio, which no longer exists, and the fledgling NBC Sports Radio network, which also no longer exists. There must be a pattern there, but it is very exciting for me to welcome back to the microphones, the man, the myth, the legend. He also was the voice of the Make and Whoopee hockey team. We'll have
to get into that as well. The great Turk Stevens joins us now on the fifth hour. Turk, welcome in. And why don't we start with your timeline? How many years? I forget? How many years were you at Fox Sports Radio?
Ye? Yes, I went to a competing network. Well, actually I was asked to go by a couple of people, and then I landed at a different network. And then they moved out of state, they left California, and so by the good graces of one Dan Byer, I was able to return to Fox Sports Radio for a couple of years.
Now, was that the sporting news radio that you went too?
It was? It was sporting news radio and I did that. Then they moved to Houston. After like three years, three or four years they moved to Houston. I was actually the last voice heard out of the Los Angeles studios for Sporting news radio.
Did they want you to go to Houston or did they tell you that we're good, we don't need no.
No, they actually did.
They wanted me to go, but I was teaching full time. I was teaching pe at a private school down in Santa Monica, and so I didn't want to go, and so they understood that, but they did want me to go.
I didn't go.
And then and then I ended up going to back to Fox for a couple of years. And then NBC Sports Radio moved in the now departed NBC Sports Radio they're no longer in business, and they came in and offered me a full time gig. So I left Fox to go to NBC Sports Radio.
Look at that the career path of the Turk. And I remember you did the show with me on the weekends back when you first started. We were together. We did quite a bit of nonsense and you were one of the You were one of the original guys that Benny Versus the Penny. Although I think back then we had a different name for it. In the early days. We didn't call it Benny Versus the Penny. You called it something else, Ben versus the Coin or whatever.
Yes, I remember, I actually remember you.
Coming to me one night.
It was one of the overnights, and you saying, I have this idea. And it was me and you, you know, doing the show overnight, and you told me the idea. I still remember that night and we talked about it and we and then we put it together and I had a quarter and we we did the flips live. I actually did them live back then, and it was Ben versus the Coin. Yeah, not a great name and a good bit.
Not a great name, but it was either that or bringing a monkey or something like that.
Yes, but those were our options.
And yes, I'll blame you for the name because it was your, your show.
But eventually we got a good name though. Benny versus the Penny was the name that it morphed into. And my one of my favorite Turk memories is when you were on vacation, you were out, you were out one weekend and you were in Palm Springs or something, and you still called in to do the do the bit with the coin. Yes, it was hilarious because you were like in a hot tub or something else.
It was nuts. It was live, it was and it really was live. That was no joke.
I was I was live from a hot tub and put the phone next to me and had a coin I brought it. I brought a quarter just for it and did flip it on the side of the hot tub. And yes, we did it live from that was the right around Christmas. We did it live from the hot tub.
So you're ruining the illusion though it's penny versus the penny, although at that time it was the coin, so you could get away with the quarter.
It was, yeah, because it wasn't It was a coin back then, and we said it was a quarter. Yeah, you you altered it to a penny. So it's a little different now.
Well, it's all for marketing reasons. It was all for marketing reasons and somebody you.
Just can't afford a quarter anymore.
Well, yeah, working in the radio business, I can barely afford a penny at this point. But that's a whole different, different conversation. So you you would come, I remember you came to Fox. You were from Vermont?
Right?
Is that where you would you were from there? You had grown up there? Is that where you were working before you came to Fox Sports Radio?
No, I actually was working in Macon, Georgia. I was the last radio voice for the East Coast Hockey League minor league team called the Macon Whoopee.
Oh yes, I remember that. We used to do jokes about that to make it's correct.
I still have clothing from that, because that's how they paid us when they folded. They went out of business and they, of course in sports, is called folding, and I was out of work and they paid us basically our last paychecks were here are some leftover clothes?
Take them?
Yeah? Is that stuff worth anything? That's kind of a no.
I'm sure it isn't. I'm sure it is. Yes.
My son is here pointing out I still have a making whoopee notepad.
Well, Trevor's your marketing guy. He's your marketing guy for sure.
Yes, yes, so I actually this was in This was summer of two thousand and two. I'm out of work in Macon, Georgia, and I just saw an ad looking for an update anchor for five Sports radio, which would have been what just two years old? You guys would have been about two years.
Old then, right, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Because you're an original and they and I Smoky Gifford is the one who hired me.
Very Smoky Gifford.
That's right of my Actually, I sent it in waited a month, heard nothing, cold called him and he said, oh yeh yeah, you know, gave me the usual, you know, yeah whatever, And then the next day he called me. I swear he had never listened to my seat. It was CDs back then, he would you know, mail them, and I'm swear he never listened to it.
But then he must have pulled it out of the pile. He told me there were one.
Hundred and fifty CDs he got for this overnight opening, and I ended up getting the gig. So I moved from Georgia to LA Before that, I was in Vermont. I had grown up in New York in Vermont, and I had I was in Roswell and Albuquerque, New Mexico in the mid nineties doing radio, making chances, you know, very short money. I got called back to Vermont for a job doing play by play, which is what I
love to do, doing college hockey and basketball. And I did that for four years, and then went down to Georgia to do the minor league hockey, which I love. I enjoyed it thoroughly and then was disappointed when the team went under, but then got lucky and got to meet you, and you were one of my trainers in LA when I first got there at Fox.
It's a small world, and we might have ended up working together earlier because I've told you the story before. But when I was in San Diego at the mighty six ninety, one of the first offers I got was to do an afternoon drive show in Albuquerque at I think a station you worked at. I think that was one of the stations you worked at. It was this Guy's Sports Animal. Yeah, the Sports Animal is the name
of the station. They approached me about doing a show in the afternoon, but I saw how much money they paid, and I decided, you know what, if I'm going to leave Southern California, I got to get something that actually pays some decent money. Otherwise it's just not gonna not going to work out. The financial is not going to work out. But I know you had, you know, you had to take less money, and you're supposed to, you know, it's cheaper to live in Albuquerque and all that stuff.
But I was like, I don't know. And I have a friend of mine it's still does radio in Albuquerque, and he likes it. He enjoys it.
There.
I've never been to Albuquerque, so I don't know you missed out. I know it's one of the great vacation destinations. If they actually have billboards around LA they have photos of balloons, you know, those big giant him the hot Air balloons, and they're like, this is what we consider traffic, you know, try to get people done.
Yes, they do a fall festival every October, the hot Air balloons. It is actually pretty cool. If you get Jess's Go Go, it's pretty fun to watch. It's early in the morning. Now you'd have to do it after your shift, and you know.
I'd have to stay up. Yeah I can't. Yeah, getting up early in the morning not my thing. So we were traveling with the making whoopee turk. What was the what were the common nations like when you're traveling with a minor league hockey team, was it first class? Were you staying at the Rich Carlton when you were on the road traveling by chartered planes?
Exactly?
That's what double a hockey is. Yes, No, it was.
Some of the hotels were not bad. It all depended on when you booked them, and that was not my department. Unfortunately. I remember one of our trips was to New Orleans. It was the only time I've been in New Orleans. That was one of the benefits. I got to see the South, which I hadn't really seen much of. I don't count Florida as the South, so I hadn't really been through the South, and so it was fun to go.
There was a team in New Orleans.
Unfortunately, our crack administrative staff waited before booking the New Orleans trip and we ended up in Metai, like twenty miles out in this ramshackle, old brick motel. I think it might have been a super at one time. It might have been in a conoldge actually, and it was. It was brutal. It was right across from where the Saints used to train. I don't know if they still train in Metaie, but it was across from that.
It was not good, not.
Good at The cockroaches were large, let me tell you that.
Yeah, everything's larger in the South though, all these animals.
But New Orleans was awesome.
I mean to get there and I got and to get on the you know, to get out on Bourbon Street and I interviewed, you know. We had a game Friday night in minor league hockey. They usually do games on the weekends. They'll go back to back games, and so we had a game Friday night and I interviewed.
I always tried to interview the local beat writer for the team during the first intermission of the first night and then afterwards he talks to me, were you know during the commercial break and he says, you know, are you going to go down to Bourbon Street? I said yeah, and he said, here's my card. Don't stray like ten feet off of Bourbon Street. If you get in trouble, call me. I'm thinking, oh boy, what am I getting myself into? But but no, it was it was fine. I mean it was I had to take a cab
all the way back to Metaie. That wasn't too pleasant, but but it was. It was a lot of fun and that was one of the nice things about it. The travel was tough. We had a bus. It was a sleeper bus that was on an eighteen wheeler rig and it was like a flatbed rig and then it was like a submarine with just bunks, three bunks on each side, with a small road to walk down and it slept about twenty two or twenty three people and that's what we use. And the guy drove like a like a maniac.
It was.
You'd be kind of kind of moving back and forth down down the high We must have been doing eighty five in the middle of the night, you know, down the down the freeways and it and you'd be rocking back and forth on this in this thing as you tried to sleep.
It was interesting, for sure.
It sounds like the movie portrayals of minor league sport like that.
Yeah, like that's real life. And that's why I decided to do it. I mean, I had done four years in Vermonto in the University of Vermont sports. I was the voice of the Catamounts. They didn't have a football team. It's hockey and basketball with the big sports. And after four years of that, I was getting toward my mid thirties and I'm mean, well, you know, if I'm going to do minor league sports, I got to try it now because the travel is hell.
And so I did it. And it took a while.
I was taking the drama mean the first few road trips, but then after that you got used to it and it was and then you could sleep. It's kind of amazing because after a while, you got used to it and you could sleep overnight.
So I've told you this in the past, but you listening have no idea. But early on, I wanted to be a play by plague. I didn't want to be a talk show host. My goal was not to do talk radio. I like talk radio, but I was like, ah, I want to be play by play. I want to be like Vin Scully. And then I started doing some research about how difficult it is. And this is a long time ago, but the career arc of a minor league play by plague I A get terrible money, and
then b the lifestyles aread. You're traveling, as you said you just described, you're you're not traveling well in weird weird buses and whatnot. But then the other problem is to move up the ranks the ladder to a higher level is almost impossible. At that time. It was because the guys in the in the big league jobs would keep those jobs until they were eighty five ninety years old in some cases, and so it was impossible. And I remember I had an epiphany when I was starting
doing radio. I did talk radio. We were in Indianapolis, and I went to an Indianapolis Indians game, the Triple A team in Indianapolis, and the play by play guy there had been there for twenty five years or something doing Triple A baseball in Indianapolis, and I think the guys, I think he's still there, by the way, I think he's fifty.
What's the name of the guy, Russ Langer.
Yes, he was, he was. Where was he in vade or Vegas? Albuquerque? He was in Albuquerque when I was there, and you were almost there. Yeah, in the mid nineties he was doing the Albuquerque Dukes, was the Dodgers Triple A. Then they moved to Vegas. And in fact, when I lived in Vegas, Uh what six five six years ago? I lived in Vegas before I moved here to Phoenix. Uh, he was there and he's done. He's been doing probably thirty years. He's been doing Triple A baseball and he
just can never get that break. And super nice guy and could never get that break to get into the big leagues. And you're right, they would hold on him forever. Uh. You made the right choice, by the way, going to going to a talk show post, I think was the right move for you. I don't see you as a play by play guy.
No, but you know me now, but you know you know me. But early on I think I could do I could have done the play by place though you never got because you did.
You did Dodger pre and posts.
Right.
I did do that for for a couple of years yet.
Right, but you never got the break someone you know, Vin didn't have a vaga or something. You couldn't go on for him. Well.
The funny thing is in those days it was that was hallowed you know, Vin and Ross Porter and Rick Monday, and they would not let any slums like me or you do that. But in more recent years, like David Vessy who does the Dodger stuff. Now he's been given opportunities to do some stuff and some other people, But in those days it was like, no, this is hallowed ground. You have to be of a certain ilk to have that microphone.
And have the experience.
You have to be of Yes, you had to have paid your dues exactly exactly, and that's what.
You talked about about going up the ladder.
It was and I, you know, I could have gotten another minor league hockey job. I hated doing the media portion of you had to do media relations, you know, the pr part, and I really hated it, and I just wanted to do play by play. It's all That's what I wanted to do. From being five or six years old. All I ever wanted was play by play. And I went to college, got a degree in broadcast journalism, started in my hometown of ten thousand people, Saint Albans, Vermont.
Shout out to Saint Albans and and I started. And but then this job came. You know, you when you're unemployed in your mid thirties, sitting, you know, in a in a small apartment in Macon, Georgia, you know you got to take what you can get.
And I said, okay, I'll apply to Fox, never thinking.
I would ever get it, because you know, it's Los Angeles, it's National network radio. I had done sports updates for Burlington Vermont. You know I would never get none. I got it, So I made the choice. And actually I haven't done play by play since the make and Whoopie was the last one. It's over twenty years now. It's hard to believe it's been over twenty years now.
Did any of those players make it, any of the coaches make it to the higher level the NHL from.
The Whoopee, I not from our team. Gord Dineen was the co of the Make and Whoopee. I think I got the job partly because he phoned me for an interview and he said, hi, am Gordon Deneen, and I said, I hated you as a player. I'm a Rangers fan. And he laughed because he was an Islander and he played for the Islanders for years, and so he laughed, and I think that's probably one reason I got the job. But so he was a pro player, you know, a big league player that came down, but none of the
players made it to the NHL from our team. Jack Capuano, who I actually went to college with at the University of Maine, was in my dorm, was coaching the pd Pride in South Carolina my year of doing ECHL, and so he ended up making it to the New York Islanders in fact, as a head coach for years. Most people, most players in the East Coast Hockey League, they're lifers. They're not getting out of the miners.
Yeah, they are locked in. They're in a lifetime employment kind of like me at Fox Sports Radio, lifetime employment plan. But you're you're yeah, I'm.
Trying to figure out how you got that.
Ben.
I don't I don't know. Don't don't jinxit turk, don't jinx it. It might it might end at any moment. So you did the show, you didn't stuff with me, You went to your at Sporting News, you did NBC. What do do you have a couple of favorite memories of those days doing the radio stuff, doing the updates and whatnot that stand out? I I love we talked about the hot tub. That was great.
That was one of the highlights.
What are some of the other things that stand out from those days?
You know, my first time on on Sporting News radio, I was supposed to I was supposed to go and train for a little bit there, just you know, because every network has different music, different ways that they throw it to you. That's called the end, different ways. I would get out and know the music. Everyone has different music. And I was supposed to train on that. But then I remember, actually I was at Santa Anito one day.
It was in February of seven. I was at Santa Anita and they they called me and said, hey, we need someone to fill in with Jeff Biggs. Of all people someone who a lot of LA Sports radio fans would know because he's worked for every single station. He needed someone to work with him. Somebody dropped out. It was on the Grammys night and we were doing some kind of and it was some Sunday night show. So that was my first time on Sporting News Radio and I got to co host with the great Jeff Biggs
doing a show. I hosted college a college football show for a couple of years on Saturday mornings for an hour right before kickoff of all the of all the games on Sporting News. I like doing that.
A boy.
What was my Oh, I know, my first my first time on Fox Sports Radio.
You were training me.
Which is which is right there? A nightmare that I'm training you should training anyone that I should have.
It was intimidating, and I've told you this story. It was intimidating because I get there and the studio. I'm from a small town in Vermont and and the and then I had done stuff uh in Albuquerque, but those are small, you know, small.
Little studios with old equipment.
And I walk into the studios in Fox Sports Radio and it's to me, it looked like the Starship Enterprise I mean it was huge rooms. There were lights blinking from everywhere, all kinds of tape decks and and mini cassette things and god knows what, and computers everywhere, and this huge board, which, by the way, you don't need to use like ninety percent of it. It just looks huge. It is huge, but you don't use any of the
dials except maybe two. And it was. And then you get on the air and you do these brilliant updates with almost no notes, and I'm thinking, oh boy, what am I doing here? But you trained me? And who
else was someone else? That Tie works in Fort Myers now and he crag Craig Sheman, and Craig Sheman also super nice guy, very nice, and he I think Craig just didn't want he didn't like doing updates, and you know, he was more of a host like you, and both of you graduated finally as you should have to become hosts and not do updates. And Craig just didn't want to do the updates. So I was supposed to train for like a week, and I trained for two days and it was like the nine o'clock update for JT
The Brick Show. And he says, Okay, you're gonna do the nine o'clock you're ready. I'm like, oh no, I don't think, Yeah you are. And so so that's how I started on network, right I did Okay, I had like two days of prep instead of a week, and bam and I was on the air. And then I did it ever since, and it was it was a lot of fun.
It really was the sink or swim technique.
It definitely was. It was the I don't want to do the updates, so I'm gonna let this guy do it, and if he dies, he dies.
It's funny you brought up when you walked into the studio, because that's the most famous story from the early days of Fox Sports Radio. There was a guy who shall remain nameless. It was not you, but somebody that the company had hired who had worked at some big stations. He had a nice resume, and they brought him in. And I think you actually might know this person because I think the person was there while you were there, although it might have been before you.
No, it was before me, because you guys told me all the story.
Okay, all right, so we told you anyway, So the guy came in and this guy walked around like he was God's gift the radio. I mean, but he had he walked into that studio you're referring to the update studio, the news studio, and then they told him what he had to do, and he said, what is this the space shuttle? I'm supposed to run the space shuttle here?
And uh, it is one of the greatest stories because Annie who you know, who is you know, one of our bosses and a very interesting woman, nice woman, but she she sold but they would hire people and she she would be, oh, this guy's amazing, look at the resume and all this stuff, and so we always kind of took it with a grain of salt. But this guy in particular, not only her, but several other people at the company were selling this guy's resume and he just was totally in over his head. And it wasn't.
He the one who he wasn't ready to do the update And the music came on. And when the music comes on, folks, you're on. I mean, after the voice guy says Fox Sports Update, you have to if you're the update anchor, you have to go. And didn't he like put his hand up playing he wasn't ready. Yeah.
No, he told the board op to play more commercials. That was what he told me. And I was like, Hey, we're on a network. We can't not a local station. We can't local station. You just keep playing extra spots. But on the network you got to go and it's like.
And tight on a clock.
Yeah, it was such a debacle. Touch a total tobacco.
It is a very beautiful studio for folks. If you ever get there, go and visit Ben and.
You'll be happy to know Trek next time you're in Los Angeles. We a few months ago moved from the studio we had been in for over twenty years.
Twenty two years.
We just moved across the hall. And you talk about high rent real estate and radio, we moved across the hall. Rush Limbaugh had his own LA studio When he would come to LA for like two weeks a year. Rush did a show from Florida, but he would do the show from Los Angeles in the studio, so they kept it only for Rush. It was the old rock Line studio. And then the next studio over was Steve Harvey. He had moved back to LA and he was doing his show for a while, and then the pandemic when twenty
twenty came around that all stuff. He just did the show from home, or I think he moved back to Atlanta. But anyway, so they had these two massive, beautiful studios that were first class. Everything was brand new for Limbaugh who passed away, and Steve Harvey, and so they they moved us across the hall and the h So we're we're just across the hall from where.
How was that?
It's it's it's cool. I like it a lot, mostly because the air conditioning works better than the old studio. And I like I like to make it like an ice box. Yes, I like I like it to be like a freezer. When I'm in there and it's it's really perfect, and everything's new. People haven't spilled coffee over everything. And food you know you'll take care of that. Oh no, no, I don't you know you know what mean these days? Turk, I intermitted fasting. Man, I don't. I don't eat these guys.
Some of these guys go in there and they eat like five meals during the show. It fascinates.
That's great.
What are you doing either, No, of course not. No, it's it's disgusting.
It's Alky Loco from right next.
Yeah, the Crazy Chicken or whatever's there's a buffalo wild Wings across the street at the mall doing that. But so I want to know we are kind of close to the same age. I was talking to t J. Simmers. We had TJ Simer's on the show yesterday, very good, the great to columnsts from the other time, and we were talking about the way sports media operates and like me and you, Turk, I think are on the same page because we're around the same age, Like we grew up and you grew up on the East Coast. I
grew up on the West Coast. But I always loved the critical eye in the media, the columnists that would attack the radio guy when warranted performance that was not up to standard. And I told TJS, like, listen, you're one of the last guys that did that in LA. He's one of the only guys that ever did it. Because LA is a pretty soft talent when it comes to the media. They worshiped the athletes and TJ didn't do that. And we were discussing, like will it ever
get back to the way it was? And he didn't think it'll ever get back to the way it was. I am skeptical as well, Turk, but the way sports media operates now were if you are critical. I've noticed people get upset a lot of be like, well, we're using so critical, you shouldn't be so critical. What's your take on that?
I agree. I agree with you guys. Nobody's critical anymore, and I hate it. I'll tell you when when I was a teenager and into my college days and in my twenties, I remember we'd watch hockey games and then a goal would be scored, and what we did was we wanted to see who the defenseman who was a defenseman now skating into the picture after the goal scored because it was his fault, so he was the one
with his head down. You know, we were critical. It's like we're looking for who gave up the goal why? And they don't do that anymore, and they I think
it's access. I think it used to be that way back when it started twenties, thirties, forties, I mean, starting with Babe Ruth and those guys, and going up through when new sports came up, where the nobody said anything, nobody dug for information, you know, like what Mickey Mantle, Whitey for Billy Martin would show up drunk at games and no one's you know, the reporters never say anything. They were drunk from the night before and right, and
no one would no one would write about it. And it was the same thing with presidents and no one would say anything. And then Watergate happened, and I think that changed it. From the seventies of the eighties and nineties when we grew up where it became it was now it was on and.
Now you're now.
Reporters were supposed to dig and supposed to get info and be critical and not trust, you know, what the teams were telling you, and not trust what the government was telling you. And then for some reason in the last twenty years, it's all swung back. And I don't know what started it, but it's I think teams started to started to like withhold access and hold that over
the reporters' heads. Do you think that's the case where they say, look, you start being too critical of us, you're not we won't let you in here.
I have a theory on this, and my theory is, and I had somebody when Major League Baseball started their MLB dot com and they started hiring beat writers to cover the teams, and that was that was to me, that was the origin of it. I had somebody that worked at baseball tell me that this is the future. We're just gonna because they were upset with the negative media, so we'll just hire the writers and then we'll kind of be able to be in control of what's said
about the team. And he said, you know, given given enough time, you know, this will become the way people expect to get their news about their favorite team. And it's been about a generation since MLB started that, and we're now at that point where people, a lot of younger people younger than us, just expect everything to be sugarcoated about their favorite team. And I blame the team website stuff, but you are right. A lot of it also is hey, if you say something we don't like,
we're not going to give access. And we talked to TJ yesterday and TJ pointed something out also. It says like the beat writers in his day, when he was a beat writer, if the team did not make somebody available, he would just still try to track the guy down. He's like, well, no, my job is to talk to that person today, not tomorrow and so. But now a lot of the media guys are just like, whatever the PR people tell.
Him, that's it.
They just take it.
Yes, that's what they do. I complain about it on Twitter all the time. They know my team. I'm a Mets fan and my condolences. Yeah yeah, oh boy that ship. The last week has been brutal and uh I I complain about it on Twitter. The Beat writers don't dig for any information. I mean they now they don't have and I think one of the reasons is because they don't have to sell papers anymore because they know no more newspapers, so they don't part of the job of
the beat writer. When TJ. Simers is doing it well, he needed to sell papers, so he needed to beat the other guy to the story because that's what sold papers. The paper that broke stories was the one that people bought. And that's not the case anymore. They're no more newspapers, and the Beat writers aren't. I'm sure they're not being pushed. Clearly, they're not to go get stories and go find information that isn't out there yet because the fans want to know it, so they don't have to do that.
Anymore.
So they don't I mean they literally don't don't don't look for any information. It's what you just said. They just let the pr people give them stuff and that's it. And that's not what it was supposed to be. That's not what journalism was when I got my journalism degree. And it's unfortunate that that's what it is, because it's just you don't know anything anymore.
It's no fun.
Yeah, TJ told me, he said, the thing that you have to do now as a writer, they call it engagements, where like they expect when people read your story. He said, like, you're sorry about the La Times because he's still obviously connected there with people at the Times, and they expect certain number of engagements, like people to subscribe based on
reading Bill Plashki or somebody like that. So I don't know how they keep track of who's actually subscribing based on reading a column or not, but supposely that's the case. But you mentioned you're a Mets fan. So at the trade deadline this year, Verlander and Sure's are gone. There's a big controversy whether or not the Mets are actually
going to try to win in twenty twenty. For what say you, Turk as a long suffering Mets fan Stephen Cohen, when this guy got hired as the owner, when he bought the team, he get hired, people said, oh, this is great, the greatest owner of all time. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. He's a Mets fan. Not going so well right now? What's your take on Cohen and the Mets.
Well, what I feel happened is it's a kind of a three year process. In twenty twenty one, they had the analytics department run the team and it was a complete failure. And that was Cohen's he bought it team. It didn't really change anything. Sandy Alderson was still in charge, and it was Alderson's dream to have analytics do everything. He's one of the fathers of analytics, going back to the late nineties.
And so it failed.
So then last year they hired Buck show Walter for twenty twenty two, and they hired some good coaches, and they backed off the analytics and let the manager and the coaches do their thing, you know, like it used to be for one hundred and fifty years. And they had a great year, won one hundred and one games, they stumbled down the stretch, lost in the in the
wild card to the Padres. So then this year they yet Cohen spends the big money, right, three hundred what fifty three hundred and seventy million whatever it was, I mean huge amounts of money, you know, like the Dodgers did in the two thousands, you know when when they got bought and they never won either. And then it fell apart again. And it turns out that because Cohen put the analytics department in charge again this year, and it's been a disaster. Everyone has played worse than their
the back of their baseball card. And so, oh they did the right thing. I think by selling off they got a lot of good prospects. I know how you let me let me say, do you still call prospects suspects?
Yes? Yes, yes, because turk listen, you're all excited because everyone does the same thing that, oh, this guy's gonna be great. You know, those guy's gonna live up to the scouting report.
I've heard this for twenty plus years, folks.
And I've been right, and I've been right more times than i've been wrong. Because you look at the trades and you can go back, and with very few exceptions when you trade an established start player. In fact, I praised the Angels Turk for not trading Otani because I don't need I'd rather see Otani for two more months with a team. If I'm an Angels fan, then trade
him for some minor league pitchers. Gonna have Tommy John surgery in two years and some guy that's hyped up the fifty home runs and then ends up batting you know, one to ninety four with limited power. I don't need that. A great example, the Angels have a guy, Mickey Moniac or Mania, whatever his name is, who was the number one overall pick from the Phillies. Yes, he's an average major league player. Yeah, three hundred this year, but he's an average major league player.
He gave it below average until this year.
Actually, so you think the Mets. One of the guys they got was Ronald is his brother, right, and he's a shortstop. Don't you have Francisco Indoor for the next ten years or eight years at shortstop?
Yeah, we have him for the rest of his life.
And then even when he died, even when he dies, he'll still be the shortstop.
He'll still it's the Bobby Benia contract. No, yeah, he's a kunya. He'll move to second base. But actually he might play next year. He might make the team next year. The Mets are in a different situation because Erlander and schurz Or were not free agents, So I don't know if I was the Angels, though, the Angels must think they can resign Otani, because if you if you don't think you can resign him, you had to trade him.
You just had to. I mean, you're gonna get nothing for him if he's sign And of course you're a Dodgers fan, you're hoping he goes, you know, up up the frequently.
No, no, not necessarily, because I will never be able to go to another Dodger game in the press box because it'll all be uh. Otani has twenty roughly twenty writers and TV people that follow him around. I'm not kidding, just a sign from Japanese media to cover him. When he pitches it's it's It reminds me of a Dale nomo. When I was covering the Dodgers back in the nineties, they had a Dale Nomo and it was insane and they had to have extra seats because there was so
much media from Japan. It's it's even bigger now because Otani is the greatest player in the history of baseball and all this, so it's insane. What's going on?
Yeah, don't you have a name plate though?
I mean you've been going to games there in the yeah, you.
Know, and then I got married. I don't go. I go. I don't go as much. I do go more now than I did in the past. But yeah, I was out there pretty much every night for twenty five years. I was at every Dodger game and a lot of Laker Clipper games things like that. Back in the but I had no life and I had no no one to spend time all that stuff.
Yeah, see, now you have a life, so now you can't go.
As much exactly. You know, he's being grown up. I guess that's what they call it, right, And then you're so, you're you're okay, what you like the minor league players, you buy into the.
High Well here's the thing I'm not. I mean, look, Sure's are I mean, look, Otani's still in his prime. Sure's are and Verlander are not so. And in fact, Sure's are gave up what three runs is? First inning with the with Texas pitched well the rest of the way, but uh, neither one of those guys is going to get better next year, so I you know, that's why I'm okay with it.
That what the Mets gave up was just people who are free agents or forty year olds.
So well, and then it's also paid. Uh CO paid a good amount of money, which is which is fine with me because you know, you know, I don't I live in Phoenix, so I'm not going to the game.
So if he wants to raise you know, he wants to raise ticket prices and rices for concessions, I'm okay with that. If he wants to recoup some of that money, it's not my money. So you know, he did the right thing. He can afford it, and more power to him. He actually took his money and bought minor league prospects. It was an interesting theory, right, instead of the Mets played the Oriols this weekend and got swept, and instead
of they talked about on the broadcast. Instead of tanking for four years like the Oriols, the Oriels are winning fifty two games a year for like four years. Right, they were terrible. They were losing one hundred and ten games a year to get high draft picks to rebuild. So what Cohen did instead was instead of tanking like that, he's going to use his money and bought prospects. So he bought first round pick prospects and instead of tanking, and so we'll see if it works.
Yeah, well, you could never get away with what the Orioles did or the Astros for years before they right first right, and then they still had to cheat to end up winning the World Chest.
So that we're on the same page on that one.
Yeah, yeah, all right.
So we have a little time left. I know you're in the NFL. You're a Giants fan, your family had season tickets forever. But the Giants are an afterthought this so far, in terms of publicity, it's all about the Jets.
That's okay.
That doesn't annoy you. You're not bothered by that. Aaron Rogers, Aaron Rodgers takes a bottel movement and it's a front page news on the Internet. You know, you're not worried about that. You're fine with being in the background.
Huh.
The Giants have always been like that, So we're fine with that. I mean, the Giants have won four Super Bowls. The Jets haven't haven't even been in the Super Bowl since sixty nine, so and meanwhile the Giants have won four. So we're we're very happy with Let the Jets get all that publicity. The Giants are back. They have a great coaching staff. Daniel Jones. You're gonna love this one, bet, I know you love this. Daniel Jones is looking great in training camp.
So oh yeah, I'm sure, yeah, yeah against against two exactly against who is he always loving guys, no dominate practice, you know, but let's see him in a game. It's like it's like in Spimmer and spring training, guys would hit a bunch of home runs in the Cactus League and you're like, let's see, let's see what he does at night at you know, not in that, you know, not in the hot weather, just the normal weather, you know, in the with a marine layer in LA or something like that.
But yeah, they're looking good. I mean, they have a really good coaching staff with with Dable and and Mike Kafka is the the coordinator, and then they've got Wink Martindale as a defensive coordinator. They had that surprise team last year that went to the playoffs and beat the Vikings in the first round. I know, so they're gonna.
Know what happens. Though, When you have that's turk. You've been around enough. When you have a surprise season the following year, it's the regression to the meet. So you gotta be worried about that aggression.
I'm looking at it as the eighties Giants where they eighty four they came out of nowhere. It had a nine to seven year, and then in eighty five they got they went better, and then eighty six they won it all. So that's that's the progression we're looking at here. We think that that this team is going to make the playoffs and they're going to be real solid. And they got Darren Waller as a nice tight end receiver. Uh, you know, one of the that's what they were missing.
Theydn't have anybody good to throw to, and now they've got They've got that. They signed a couple.
Of Is it that? Is it the people catching the passes or is it the person throwing the pass?
Oh? Are you an anti Daniel Jones? Guy?
I'm I'm a truther. I'm a Dan is what I am? The guy's abum but.
It was last year was the first year he had confident coaching and and he played well.
The Giants where I believe twenty fifth in passing offense last year, Well.
They well, they did they well, but you know, they rained it in and and Barkley did most of the work.
Say kwon Barkley.
But but is that because Brian able to not trust Daniel Jones.
At the beginning?
Yes, and the first yes, the first half of the year correct, And but he got better and better as year went on.
And now they're opening it up.
I mean, if you if you count what they're telling us in training camp, you know what the Beat writers do, give you stuff in training camp for football, so they you know, and and that it seems like they're opening it up. They they actually went out and got some receivers and got Waller, who's more of a receiving receiving tight end. He's not a blocker, so uh and he's been dominating in practice too. So well, you know, we we have high hopes for the Giants this year, for sure.
I got you all right, and you you've been out of the radio business for a while, right sir, living a normal life. What's it like living a normal life in education.
Uh yeah, I've been teaching. Well, I've been teaching pe. This is my seventeenth year. What yeah, Well I started. I started in six while I was still working at Fox Okay, and that's when I shifted to weekend work, so I would One of my high lights of working at Sporting News Radio is I was working seven days a week because I was teaching Monday through Friday, then doing eight hour shifts Saturday and Sunday for the Sporting News Network, and.
So it was.
It was a lot, but I loved it and I miss it. I do miss being on the air. I miss working with you for sure. It was a lot of fun, keeping us keeping ourselves awake at three am, and it was. It was a lot of fun. No, we had a great time. And I remember I went when you were coaching early on at.
Very bougie school in Brentwood.
I believe, Yes, are we allowed to name it? Can I name it?
Oh?
You don't work there anymore? Not sure? Why not? Go ahead?
Yes?
I worked for a school called carl Thorpe, very fancy school, private school some some celebt they don't actually go for the celebs. The other private schools in the area kind of catered to the celebs. We didn't, but we've had we had a few there when I was there. Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner. When are they still together? I've lost the connection.
I don't know if I'm pretty pretty sure they're not.
They're not. They're not together.
They were then and their kids were young, and so they went there, and they're both very nice, by the way, for the fans, and they were both very nice people. Ben Affleck is tall man. He's six four.
He's a tall dude.
Yeah, Usually those guys in movies are very small, little little people.
Yeah, you don't realize how, you know, they're like basketball players. Sometimes you don't realize how tall they are because they put them with actors and actresses who were tall, you know, and so you don't realize how it's like basketball. They all look on TV, they don't look that tall because they're all the same size. But then you meet them in person and they're, you know, six ' nine. I mean, they're huge. But yeah, I work for I work for
a bougie school. Yes, it's expensive. It's a private school in Santa Monica, So yeah, it was.
It was pr Now and now you're in Arizona where it's one hundred and ten degrees every day of the year, which must be make your job very easy, Turk when you're out and you're gonna get kids to exercise when it's a thousand degrees outside.
But it's hot, and when there's no gym.
I don't have a gymnasium. In fact, I was also I taught in Vegas for six years as well before I moved down here to Phoenix, and uh, and I had no gym there either, So and it's hot in Vegas too, so it's yeah, they it's hot. It's you get I could say, you get used to it. You just know it's there. So you're just like, Okay, this is what it is, and you try to find shade when you can. But I love it. I do miss radio. I do miss working with folks like you who are
so good at it. It was always fun to work with people who were good, and you're one of the best.
Well, I love you and we want you back in radio. So if you ever want to get back, it pays no money in the hours suck, but we'd love to have you back at so much.
How can I refuse right with an offer like that.
It's a great offer, but but I'll let you go. Thank you so much, Turk, you're the man. We'll have you on again at some point. I appreciate it. Thanks man, Hey, I loved it. Thank you so much.