The Book of Joe: The Style of Willie Mays, Dress Codes, and ELO

In this episode of 'The Book of Joe' Podcast, Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci honor Willie Mays and his incredible career and style of play.  Speaking of style, the Red Sox have a new dress code and Joe remembers why he wasn't a fan of the rules as a player and manager.  Plus, Tom looks back at the style of ELO and the legacy of Richard Tandy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Book of Joe podcast is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey there and welcome back to the Book of Joe podcast.
That's me Tom Berducci with of course Joe Madden and Joe.
I'm going to call today's episode our style episode. And

(00:28):
I've seen you rocking blue suede shoes, so I know
this is right up your alley. I'm going to start
since we had our podcast last week and we did
not know at the time Willie Mays's passing was the
same day. You think about style, you think about Willie Mays. Joe,
if I asked you to close your eyes and just

(00:48):
have an image of Willie Mays, what would it look like.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
A basket catch? That would be the first thing that
comes to mind with him. And there's others obviously, but
that was the thing my dad always My dad was
a big Mas fan, and we're all influenced by our dads,
especially that generation, and the basket catch really signifies indicates
Willie Mays to me.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
It's interesting because I've always said this about Willie Mays.
If you do think about him, you think of movement, right,
You think about the way, whether it's the basket catch
running on the bases first, the third, first to home
with the hat flying off, that big windmill swing of his,
you know, running down baseballs in the huge outfield, whether

(01:32):
it's Candlestick or Polo Grounds, the way he moved to
me define Willie Mays kind of like unlike anybody else.
And I know we can sit here and talk about
his incredible career and the numbers that he put up.
This is one way to look at it. If you
add up the entire careers of Hack Wilson and Ralph Kiner,

(01:55):
those are two Hall of famers. The two of them
together did not have as many hits or home runs
as Willie Mays. It's just incredible to me. But I
also say that defining Willie Mays by numbers, as fun
as it may be, that would be like defining Miles
Davis by how many albums he sold, right, It goes

(02:16):
way beyond the numbers. And I was lucky enough to
be at rick Wood Field last Thursday night. Major League
Baseball had planned that game between the Giants and the
Cardinals as a tribute to the Negro League's and to
Willie Mays, and of course Willy passed two days before
that game. But it was in some ways. I was
worried about the game, Joe, because of the timing of

(02:38):
Willy's death, But it was a true celebration of Willie
Mays and it really hit the right tone. And I
think it began with his son Michael Mays telling the
crowd at the beginning of the night, let Willy hear
you make some noise. And instead of being sort of
this sad night of remembrance, it was a celebration of life,

(03:01):
not the remembrance of his passing.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, you hit the nail on the head from me
and describing the whole thing, because there's no one way
to describe him. I picked out the basket catch, but
then you went on about all the other unique qualities
of him, and he was untethered. He was an athlete,
he was a baseball player. There was nothing scripted about him.
There's nothing like he learned stuff, obviously, but the way

(03:24):
he played was just like breathing to him. He never
had to think about it. It was just this is
who I am, this is how I played baseball. My
instincts are just I just got so many of them.
I don't know what to do with them all. And
with that, you saw. Your eyes couldnt move away from
him whenever you watch Willie Mays play baseball. And that's
the part of the historical part of our game that

(03:46):
I really miss and love is that. I mean players,
there's others, not just Willie that were like that, but
you cannot take your eyes off them. They did things
differently unique to them. You could talk about him and
you describe the several different methods that he incorporated. Stan
Mugel's peekaboo stance. You know, Tim Williams, the way he
held his hands.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
We're talking about.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Hitting right now. Even more recently, Ricky Henderson, the way
he walked off first base to grab his lead in
the time and just go different wind ups. Bob Gibson
falling off to his left dramatically as he was on
one leg and his arms are up in.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
The near like he's ready to take off.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
This is the part that I really miss is you know,
we have advanced so far with our teaching, absolutely, but
then again, at what point do you take away some
natural movement from players that really eventually makes them who
they are? And that I've always been as a coach,
I've always been wary of that and aware of that.

(04:44):
I'm not banging on anybody, right, I'm just saying this
is how we've evolved. The fact that these guys did
things unique to them. Bob Boom, the way he sat
on the ground with his butt to catch the low
ball back then when it was not in vogue, was indigenous.
I always thought there was indigenous qualities too. Great players
curveballs was a really interesting thing to me. Guys with

(05:06):
good curveballs. Guys with good curveballs, I would ask them,
how do you grip it? Because there's a spalding guide
of gripping a curveball. How you hold your fingers along
the seams, how it pops out of your hand, the
rotation of the seams. But where's the thumb? And I've
always was curious, like Bert Bleilin would have his thumb
on the side of the ball. Mike Butcher, a pitching

(05:27):
coach you pitched some in the major leagues, had a
great curveball. Butchie had his thumb on the side of
the wall. How did you throw that thing? I always
researched guys that were good, really good, how'd you do that?
How did you hold that? Grip your bat? How heavy
was your bat? How long was your bat? Things of that, catchers,
how tight did you have your strings across the top
of your mit? Things like that. I've always found you interesting.

(05:49):
So the great players I always thought were great because
they did things unique to them.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, Joe, you just reminded me of one of the
themes that pops up in our book, The Book of Joe,
about never get in the way of greatness. And you
just described Willie Mays. You know the uniqueness of Willie.
First of all, he'd loved to play the game and
he knew and this goes back to growing up as
a professional in the Negro leagues, where it was about

(06:16):
entertainment as well as competition, right. I mean, you're trying
to sell tickets, you want people to come back to
the ballpark the next day. You learn to put on
a show, and William Mays did that. Whether it's an
aggressive style of play where let's face it, nobody was
breaking down percentages and they were risk averse because you
knew the percentages too much. You know, you push the envelope.

(06:37):
Whether it was stealing bases, taking the extra base, or
swinging really hard. Willie Mays put on a show. There's
a reason as cap fell off running the basis because
he made sure he wore a cap that was a
size too small. It was all for show. The basket
catch you, reverenced. He picked it up when he was
playing ball in the Army, and he did it not

(06:57):
because it was a mechanically proper way to catch a baseball,
but he said he did it just purely for fun.
It was a fun way to catch a baseball. That's it.
Nobody taught him that. It wasn't a coach, you know,
with the Spaulding guide saying hey, get two hands up,
catch the ball above your head. No, he just wanted
to have fun playing baseball. So he actually said Joe

(07:19):
that he made the difficult catches look easy and the
easy catches look difficult. So he didn't want to camp
underneath the fly ball, right. He wanted to catch it
on the run. So maybe he might wait a beat
or two to start running that ball down just so
he can catch it on the run. That was Willy Mays,
And I think about the game today and with the game,

(07:40):
allow Willy Mays to be Willy Mays. First of all,
he played a more shallow center field because he was
so good going back on the ball. You watch outfield
defenders today, they are all playing deep, and there's a
reason why it's hard to get an extra base hit
in the major leagues today. It's outfield depth. You look
at the load management in the game today. Oh, you

(08:00):
played three four days in a row. You got to
next day's got to come off.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Willie is the.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Only player in history who played one hundred and fifty
games or more for thirteen consecutive seasons. Not Cal Ripkin,
not lou gereg Willie Mays was five to eleven one
point seventy and he played more than one hundred and
fifty games for thirteen consecutive seasons. Would that happen today?
Never positioning on defense, you imagine Willie Mays with a

(08:29):
Laminade card in his pocket telling him where to play. Somebody.
Willie Mays was had such a high baseball IQ. He
actually put the defenders on the Giants in the proper places.
He was the one who set the defense. He was
the one who ran the hitters meeting before the game.
He actually spoke to the Giants' pitchers about developing a

(08:49):
game plan going into a game, about how to defend
or pitch to the other team's hitters. That was Willie
Mays and I'm sorry, but the way the game is now,
I don't think he gets that same freedom to roam
the outfield where and when he wants to play virtually
every single day playing center field, stealing bases, and as
hard as he played the game, it just wouldn't happen.

(09:11):
And you know, I say it's a bad thing. I'm saying,
the way that the game has evolved, Joe, it's almost
like we know the percentage is too well, you know
that we have to get ahead in terms of resting
guys or whatever it may be. There was a certain
unbridled joy to Willie Mays because the game allowed him
to be Willie Mays.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Maybe write down four words or for little phrases. There boundaries,
social criticism, paying attention and instincts. There were no boundaries.
I mean, these guys came to play every day. Of course,
there was coaching, and I'm here to tell you even
when I played in the mid seventies, the coaching was
not as sophisticated. There was not as much interference. You

(09:52):
had to figure a lot of things out for yourself.
Even for me, really a real novice, not an accomplished player,
but there was coaching, but again you had to like
figure out things if you were swinging like under the
for instance, or over the ball in certain situations, how
do I make this adjustment?

Speaker 3 (10:08):
What do I need to do?

Speaker 2 (10:10):
And you had to figure it out yourself a lot
of times. If there was a player on the team
that helped, he would be the guy you would go to.
But the manager himself was not always adept at helping
you make these kind of adjustments, so you had to
figure things out for yourself. You had to pay attention
and again that there's some boundaries and incorporated into that
what are you permitted to do and not permitted to do?
I guess what I'm saying is at that time, you're

(10:31):
almost permitted to do anything, even as a young a
ball player if it worked. I mean I used to
throw like Therman months in a lot because I always
wanted to get rid of the ball as quickly as
I could. But nobody said I couldnot, and they kind
of liked it, you know, and I got good at
it for a while. But there was no boundaries. It
is who this is. I'm watching guys on TV, I'm
watching whatever, and my body works in a certain way,

(10:53):
and I'm an attempt to be good and play well
on a nightly basis by incorporating what I've seen, how
my body feels, how my body moves, figuring it out
myself internally mentally, and making the adjustments. A lot of
was at that and what that does it turns into
or maybe you're relying on your instincts or the other
sports you have played throughout your life.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Release of a football, how that felt when they're risk.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Snapped properly at the point of release, and you want
it that same kind of a feeling as a catcher
as you let the ball come out of your hand
and go to second base, or even as a pitcher.
All these things were taught, I mean by you were
suggested by maybe your father and stuff, and a couple
of coaches, like I said, but for the most part,
you taught yourself, which is still the best way to
learn something. Last point, social criticism. I think that's what

(11:38):
we're talking about here, not only social criticians, but the
control that coaching has evolved so much, and whether it's
analytics or whatever it might be, there's so much information
out there that we always think that we know it's
best for everybody else in an athlete in this situation
in particular, and then if you make mistakes, if you
had dropped a basket catcher too, I mean, he got

(12:00):
land based it, and then you'd have to have the
people to back him up and say no, will they
I want you to stay with this. It's great for
the game that people love it. It's just an anomaly moment.
But no, you're gonna get You're gonna get hammered for
the fact that you dropped one ball because you were
trying to play it up a little bit, which he
was in another way. He kind of said that. So
all these things were so cool, and that's what really

(12:24):
made the game fun, the characters of the game, the
great athletes of the game playing baseball, the way their
body worked, how their minds worked, what they felt, the
freedom that they felt to perform and do things in
different ways, which really has been.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Kind of mitigated. And I know this.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
I've watched it specifically in an early nineteen eighties when
I thought that's pretty much the mark when coaching hit
another level, or it became more specific, more broken down,
whether you're talking about hitting, pitching, whatever. I started to
be around coaches that were more into breaking things down.
Players wanted to hear it. Of course, it made people better,

(13:06):
but to the point sometimes I don't know that it
became overly oppressive. Long answer, maybe I'm going all over
the place, and i don't know if I'm explaining to
myself well enough or not. But I've seen all these
different changes, and I'm all about the athlete, and like
you just mentioned earlier, as a coach, as a manager,
I never wanted to stand in the way of greatness

(13:26):
of any individual player athlete.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, listen, we love the game today and it's played
at such a high level. It's just remarkable. The speed
of the game, the power of the game, and information
has definitely improved a lot of the methodologies of how
this game is played, especially pitching. But there's always a
cost to change or evolution. To me, the cost is
just the genius embedded in those players who had something

(13:52):
in their heads that others didn't. And this story I
always tell Joe is about the tiebreaker game between the
Yankees and the Red Sox in the nineteen seventy eight
and Lou Panela was playing right field. Ron Gidrey was
on the mound on short rest for the Yankees, and
Freddy Lynn was up and it was a middle of
the game with a couple of runners on base, and

(14:13):
Freddy Lynn hits a ball against Gidriy right down the
right field line, and Freddy wasn't a true pole hitter,
and especially against Guidry who was unbelievable that year, and
fred linn thought for sure he had a basis clearing
double and he looks up and there's Lou Panella near
the right field line where he would never have played,
and he makes the catch, enning over and fred Lin

(14:34):
after the game talked about man Loupenello was just so
lucky to be in that spot, and Panella said, you
know what, it really wasn't luck. He said, I saw
that Guidriy was on short rest, that they had hit
a couple of pole foul balls hard early in the game,
and I could see that he didn't have the usual
zip on his fastball, So on his own, lou Panella

(14:55):
played a couple of steps over and sure enough he's
there to make the catch. That's not allowed to happen
in the game today because everybody he's following a script
and we do that in our lives, Joe. I mean,
who has a map in their glove compartment anymore? I
dare you to try to give directions to somebody and
know the names of the streets that the person is

(15:17):
supposed to turn on. You can't. Why because we have
taken the CPU in our head and we're putting downloading
a lot of that information we should have in our
heads to an external hard drive, which is basically called Google. Right,
we don't need to know a lot of things, and
so we're not thinking naturally intrinsically. And I think you

(15:39):
see the same thing with the way the baseball is
played now, and again, it doesn't mean it's worse. It
just means we have so much more at our disposal
that we're not relying on that natural genius, if you will.
And that's not to say natural genius is right one
hundred percent of the time, but it makes you appreciate
the way Willie Mays played the game in the context

(16:01):
of what we have today. That's my point is that
there was a certain I guess you'd called baseball instincts, Joe,
But the way those people separate themselves from others was
not because they had all this information. It was because
of what they observed and what they knew.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Naturally, there was a freedom about it. You're describing a
freedom because they felt like they could do those things.
Players today don't have that same kind of internal or
mental freedom, and furthermore, like you said, they don't on
their hard drive basically have the knowledge or instincts to
make the kind of adjustments that lu med. I'm not
saying everybody. I've played with the management players that are

(16:39):
really good and see things, And that's one thing I've
always well, that's the phrase I don't know how many
times I've used throughout my career. I love players and
coaches that see things in advance, not post stuff. Don't
be the post mortem stuff and talk about things that,
oh I wish I had done this, No, no, tell
me in advance, which you would do. Those are the

(16:59):
guys that are really valuable. Well, I Hobby Bias really
good at making it a justment or moving on defense
based on what he was seeing at the plate ersty
Darren Erstadt could do the same kind of thing. Jimmy Edmonds.
Jimmy Edmonds is outstanding. Jimmy from centerfield because he catch
her signs, which I still don't believe. But he insisted
in upon me that he could see those things, but

(17:21):
he paid attention. And that's not that long ago. I
had players that really did pay attention. But they're almost
we're almost teaching them to not pay attention. We're teaching
them to just look at the card. Play the dots.
I've heard that from front office personnel recently. Play the dots,
meaning that this is the stuff that we've given you,
this is the stuff that we analyze, and we've given you,

(17:42):
we put all this work into it. Now play the
dots because and again that's where analytics provides a safety
net for decision making because of a trong. It's okay
because eventually it's going to be right. Wow, that's that
is like okay, of course, that's that's true. Almost anything
you're going to try to do, it's gonna eventually be right.
But in the moment, if you can make the adjustment

(18:02):
in the moment based on what you're seeing, and it
is a game changer. In the moment, there's so much
momentum to be derived when things go well as opposed
to things don't go so well just because you played
the dots. Even though you thought something, you're seeing something differently,
and now you don't make the play that you could
have made like Penelic game changer, world changer, life changer.

(18:24):
Don zeenbwould have been managing for several more years. All
these things matter. And if you don't feel the freedom
to utilize all that you've learned and experienced, if you
don't have that freedom to do that and just become
kind of a robot to or slave to the numbers
and the dots, you're missing something. We're missing some athleticism,

(18:45):
and yes.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
We are missing some greatness.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
We're talking about style here on the Book of Joe
podcast and the epitome of style, the great Willie Mays.
When we come back, we're going to stay on our
theme and I know this is one of Joe's favorite topics,
dress codes. We'll talk to you about that right after this.

(19:17):
Welcome back to the Book of Joe podcast. We're talking
about style in baseball and this was really interesting. The
other day Alex Cora, the manager of the Boston Red Sox,
of course, happened to notice that his players were getting
a little too sloppy when it comes to their dress code.
You know, a lot of sweatpants on the road. And

(19:38):
Alex was a guy who came up in the Dodger
system and they had a very strict, professional looking dress code.
So Alex went to some of his veteran players, he
doesn't have many, but he's got a few, and basically said,
can we clean it up a little bit, And he
came up with not a Dodger style dress code, but

(19:58):
a new dress code. When the Red Sox now travel
on day games, getaway game to and from the ballpark,
he requires a sport coat. Doesn't mean you have to
have a collared shirt. You can wear a T shirt
underneath it, but listen, you're not wearing sweatpants with a
sport coat. So I like the idea Joe he went
to his veterans. Your equivalent, of course, is the lead Bulls.

(20:20):
You can read all about that in the Book of Joe.
But I like the fact that, hey, let's clean it
up a little bit. He wants his players to feel
and look like major leaguers. You say those two words
major league and there is a certain aspirational quality to
that something. I think there's a responsibility to live up to,

(20:41):
not just in how well you have to play the game,
but how well you represent yourself, your family, and your team.
And I'm all in favor of cleaning it up a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Well, I haven't been around to see all that.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I mean, my biggest thing when I was in the
minor leagues and even when I began in the big leagues.
In the minor league's, for instance, we had dress codes
for bus rides, and I mean dirty buses. And I'd
come out with, like, you know, decent pair of jeans,
which they didn't have a whole lot of money to
buy new ones, and they'd be all messed up and
dirty whatever, and it goes all the way back to them.
And I had to wear a collared shirt, and I

(21:15):
wanted to know, why did my shirt have to have
a collar on it? And I've always thought that the
people making dress codes were some of the worst dress
people I've ever seen in my life. So why am
I listening? Why do I have to listen to these
people that lived and died on polyester? But however, I
do like polyester now way more than I did back then.
But the point was that I'm being told how to
dress by people that were really I thought poor dressers.

(21:37):
I got to the big leagues in what it was
in nineteen ninety four, right, and then all of a sudden,
you had a dress up to get on a plane ride.
And I didn't have money to buy nice stuff to
get on that. I mean, I'm just just transitioning up there.
And I got not one more penny to go from
my minor league job to my big league job. I
had the same salary, same thing, and I got two
homes to take care of, the one in Arizona and

(21:58):
the one where I was living in California. So you
get on the plane and you know, a lot of
the guys that had some doak jumped down there with
their boss suits and all this kind of stuff. And
then guys that didn't have the dough get on there
and they'd be made fun of sometimes. And I used
to really kind of piss me off, quite frankly, and
I didn't like it because I really thought it could
impact performance I did. That was my biggest concern, that

(22:20):
you're constantly cutting at somebody's confidence, even by attacking the
way they dress. Okay, you might say, well that then
they got to be tougher than that. They don't belong
in the big leagues. You hear all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
I get it, you do have to be tougher than that.
But I did not want that to be something that
interfered with the performance of young players based on the
fact that they were kind of verbally clothingly bullied by
a bunch of guys with a lot of money. So
I didn't like that either. Eventually, when I got a
job as a manager, I wanted to eradicate most of that.

(22:55):
For me, it was if you think you look hot,
you wear it. And what I found is that when
a player dresses according to his sensibility is what he
thinks he looks good and what he likes. You got
a confident guy walking on the airplane.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
Now listen.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
I also had something where you had if you wanted
to wear sandals, that's fine, but you had to have
your toenails polish to wear sandals as an example to
try to discourage that. But Jake Arietta challenge me on it.
He looked great. So all this stuff and furthermore, nobody
sees you. Nobody sees you. I'm sorry, but nobody does.
Out of the lobby, into the bus bust at the ballpark,

(23:30):
quickly into the ballpark game over back to the bus tarmac.
If you were like sitting in a commercial airport in
a terminal situation, different, a little bit different, But for
the most part, listen, I don't want I don't want
you to look like a creep either. And I always
expected among the lead bulls that if somebody really got
like creepingly out of haimd like they were just dressing

(23:52):
trash in a trashy kind of but yeah, somebody's going
to say something to them. But honestly, I think it's
a method of a self expression. I have no issue
with it. My biggest concern is that I runs hard
to first base more than what he looks like on
an airplane. There was a time that I thought you
could elicit discipline through methods of dress. That was part

(24:13):
of why it addressed a certain way on a bus.
That generation of leadership and men felt as though they
could impart discipline by making you dress a certain way
and looking at So I'm well for it. With youngsters, listen,
prochio school and schools in general, I think there should
be a dress code to discourage competition and the fact
that there's a situation there that you could be bullied

(24:33):
by the way you're dressing. There's a time and place
for that, absolutely, but overall I'm just not into it.
I think it's superficial. I think that when you start
getting to that point, you're looking for the wrong reasons
why the team's not doing well, et cetera, et cetera.
So I would empower my lead bulls if if there's
something they really didn't like, like kind of like Alex did,
just say something to the player if you have to.

(24:55):
But overall, again I wouldn't do that quite frankly, I
wouldn't do that. I prefer that the guys would express
themsel in a way. And that's why I like my
theme road trips. People you know, some love them, some
made fun of them, most of them love them. And
I say, I think another thing about Theme road Trips
that I found out guys would come up to me
like kind of like more of the shy, introverted kind

(25:17):
of whether it's a staff member or a player, would say, hey,
thanks for that. Man. I did something I wouldn't normally do.
I would dress in a manner that I wouldn't normally do,
and I felt uncomfortable until I did it, and everybody
else was doing it, and all of a sudden I
felt kind of good about myself because I did take
a chance, I did step outside the box. I did
do something differently that I normally wouldn't have done. So

(25:38):
there's all different ways to look at this. It's real
easy to revert back to the dress code based on
where we come from and what we think is right.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
And I get it. I get it.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
But to just all of a sudden think you're going
to get more wins out of it, I'm not into it.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, I respect your opinion on that, Joe, there's no question,
and I think most managers today probably think the same way.
But in Alex's case, here where he really said, I
think we're getting too sloppy. I mean, he didn't set
out to do this. This is something that's done in
reaction to the direction the team was going in, right,
And I don't think you're trying to equate wearing a

(26:18):
suit with winning more games. I don't think it's about that.
I think it's simply about disappointed pride and again, a
major league you should aim higher. And he's not asking
guys to wear three piece suits. One sport coat is
not asking a lot, and I get it. You know,
the dress code is basically it comes from the days
when all teams did fly commercial, right and you were

(26:41):
out about in the public, And I get it. They're
not doing that now. So yes, these guys go straight
to the tarmac, straight to the chartered plane, straight to
the hotel. The public generally is not going to see
them other than when they're getting off the bus into
the hotel pretty much. But I think it's a pride thing, Joe.
I think it's not asking guys too much to put

(27:01):
on a sport coat. And I think again, if he
saw something where it was getting too sloppy and you're
still representing the Boston Red Sox whether people see you
or not. You know, I think we've gotten so lax
in general, not just with dress codes, with discipline in general.
I think this is not a very difficult guardrail to

(27:23):
put up to dress. As Alex said like a big leaguer,
I mean, listen, we all know since COVID, right, you know,
every the world has gotten so much more casual, and
it continues to do so. I mean we see people
on TV all the time now, Joe wearing a T shirt.
I mean, come on, make a little bit of an effort.
It's all we're asking here. Nobody's asking you to dress

(27:44):
to the nines your Sunday best. But and sports writers
going to the ballpark wearing a T shirt, No, come on, I.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Mean they are guilty.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
I mean it's you got to have more pride. You've
got to represent your employer yourself with a little bit
of effort and pride. That's what I'm talking about. And
discipline is something that you know, I'm all for people
expressing themselves, but at any costs. You know, there's a
time and a place. And to me, I think he's
well within his rights. He does have theme road trips.

(28:17):
He's got a red, white and Blue Fourth at July
trip coming up, he's got something to Miami. This is
not some draconian system he's coming up with here. He's
basically saying, guys, let's just clean it up a little bit.
And I have no problem with that.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
And here's my response to that. Listen, I'm not just
disagreeing with you. I dig on all that. But if
you want to create discipline, let's run hard for a space,
Let's make better turns, let's not miss the cutoff.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Can't you do it both? This is not an either
or proposition.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
I'm just saying if they did that, if they had
been doing that and they'd been more successful, I'm saying
this would not even be an issue.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
That's my point.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
See, sometimes things like this become an issue because other
things aren't working, and all of a sudden you look
in different areas to find your results.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, I think Joe, I think what he's got here
is he doesn't have the lead bulls and a lot
of times that you had. He's got a younger team
and he's waiting for leaders to emerge.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Now.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
He's got Kenley Jansen, who's a closer. He's got Rob Refsnyder,
who's not really an everyday player, doesn't have those lead
balls that you'd love to just kind of run the
team without the manager to have having to step in.
So I think in this case he needs to step
in again.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
I'm okay with all that.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
I'm not I'm not saying i'm not, But my point is,
I want to create my internal discipline among my team
by how they run the like they have that one
kid there that plays really hard to lead off here
or what's.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
His name, Jaron Duran, perfect.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Perfect example.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Now that's the guy I want to point and say,
I want you all the play and I would embarrass
the crap out of him. But that's what we're looking for,
that's what that's what this team needs to be built
off of. And if all this other stuff becomes ancillary because.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Of that, wonderful.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
But I don't like to look in areas to find
what I need that are just kind of like reactionary
based on lack of results in no sense now and listen,
I love it. I think Alex does a wonderful job.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
My point is, I'm just philosophically. This is where I
come from, because this is what I've seen. I've seen
the front offices and managers react to not winning by
looking for different reasons for them not reading other than
the fact that they're not playing good baseball. And so
they attempt to elicit discipline and structure in other ways. Fine,
I mean that goes back to Vince Lombardi, that goes

(30:31):
back to my parochial school days, and I did, and
I became disciplined and structured through those moments, whether it
was nuns, my coaches, how hard the practices were, the
punishments if we didn't win, how much I had to run.
All those things were part of the day back in
the day, and I still get it. But I want
to stay. I guess what I'm saying is I want

(30:51):
to stay in advance of that. I want to stay
in advance of shifting course if I possibly can. Because
when you lay these things down in the spring training,
the biggest thing is to not let them wagh during
the course of the year. This is where not only
the manager, but a really firm coaching staff comes into play.

(31:11):
The coaching staff really needs to be an extension of
the manager. When you call bs on guys when they're
not running hard, if they don't make a good turn,
if they do miss a cutoff, man, it needs to
be addressed and it doesn't need to be addressed by
the manager all the time. That is not what that
voice is there for. That's why you have coaches in
different positions. Coaches I need to be empowered to do

(31:32):
their job. They need to do their job and stay
on top of all this stuff. So that's all I'm
saying is that I get it. I'm getting not arguing.
I get it, But from my perspective, the reason why
I did what I did the way I did it
was because I wanted to stay in advance of all
of this other interpretations of why things aren't going well,
and I needed a strong coaching staff with a bunch

(31:54):
of fearless guys that stayed on top of their craft.
We're not afraid of a tough conversation, and I think
when you do that, you could avoid some of these moments.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Well, it's interesting, he said. One of the benefits of
this is he's seen that old tradition, if you will,
were some of the older players used to buy suits
for the younger guys because Joe, you mentioned the disparity
right and how you dress based on what your salary was,
and some of the younger, older guys on the Red
Sox now picking up a sport jacket for a younger guy.

(32:23):
I love that sort of camaraderie.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Bo Jackson was great. If that Bo would pick up
I was with Bo for that first year. He would
always pick up your right. There was a lot of
veteran guys.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
That would do that. Chili.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
All these dudes, if they saw somebody in need, they
take him out, take them under their wing literally and
again professionalize them. This is how we dressed her. These
were the rules. They are the rules. There was always
that sport code, and a lot of guys are sport
code tie they look hot. But I always wondered who
you're dressing up for centerfielder? Was dressing up for the

(32:54):
short stop? Shortstop? Dressing up for the relief pitchers, because
nobody ever saw you, And that was that's just my sensibilities.
If it made you feel better, please go ahead and
do it. And you can still do it. And the
way I try to do things is if you think
you look hot, weard, go ahead and wear a suit,
go ahead and wear a.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Type that makes you feel good. Go ahead and do it.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Or wear a nice pair of jeans and a cool
shirt and sit on the airplane if you really comfortable,
because you prefer that meta because it's you feel confident
being dressed that way. You don't have to stuff your
suitcase with stuff. What do we have to bring on
the road trip? All these things to me, because that
back then we used to have really long road trips.
Sometimes you've got two suitcases. Sometimes going on the road

(33:35):
not necessary. Frank Coward had it best. Frank whatever he
took and we're on that airplane the first round of
that trip. He wore every day and every day to
the ballpark and had the club He's clean and stuff
constantly Cecil Fielder used to have. He'd bring some great
stuff and he'd always start shipping them home while we
were on the road. He'd like a beautiful lime green

(33:57):
electric lime green suit he'd wear at one time, next day,
put in a box, ship it back to home. There's
different ways getting it, but there's all these things that
could tend with that. I was just trying to simplify
and make it easier for everybody too.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
You just reminded me of Danny Tartible. He used to
be proud of the fact that he would play through
a whole season, one hundred and sixty two games and
never wear the same outfit a second time. Now, that's
a deep closet.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
That's awesome. I love all that. I'm not saying I
don't love it.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
I love it all. It's all fun.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
But I philosophically, I just I was just it was
burned into me early on, and I didn't like it,
and so I had to do it.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
I thought was right.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
When I had the opportunity to hold my own baby.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
That's what it comes down to.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, no, I get it. And for the guy who
is dressing up and looks sharp when nobody sees him,
that's even more impressive because he's not doing it for effect.
But yeah, no, Joe, to my point originally here, I
think we have gone too far with casualness morphing into sloppiness.
That's my point here. Listen, I know you look around

(35:01):
the world today. I get it. When the G seven
summit was held, was it two years ago? Every one
of the leaders of the G seven was wearing a
jacket without a tie in the Senate. Now you need
a tie in the chamber. You don't need it anywhere else.
There's an organization called the Men's Dress Furnishings Association that

(35:24):
represents the tie makers of America. It went out of
business in two thousand and six. So the neck tie
is kind of like commercial real estate and working in
an office five times a week. COVID basically killed it, right,
I get it, But you know we're not under COVID restrictions. People,

(35:45):
you know, wearing your sweats to the ball park as
a journalist is you know, it's not going to cut it.
It's fine for Zoom, but people have taken the the
you know, the Zoom protocols and now applying it to
being out and about in the world. I'm just saying,
make a little bit of an effort. I get your point.
Joe wear whatever makes you hot. It doesn't influence the
outcome of things. To me, it's it's more about pride

(36:08):
and representation. And you know you always try to do
your best. Why not try to look your best?

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Get the team Blazer. I had the brazier with the
rais the brazier U B R A S E R brazier.
Before the game, Rafael Soriano was the lead bull and
the bullpen. All the bullpen guys walked out of the
dugout down to the right field bullpen at Tropicana, all
wearing their brazier. One of the coolest looks I've ever

(36:35):
seen in my life.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
That is so cool. By the way, one bit of
baseball I'll talk about here in terms of the game.
The Red Sox, by the way, had an unbelievable comeback
against Toronto to begin this week. They were downting four
runs with five outs to go, mind up winning the
game real quick. Jawe. I want your take on the
Toronto Blue Jays because now we are this week, we

(36:58):
will hit the halfway point of the season and it's
make or break time in terms of whether you're in
or out in terms of the trade deadline coming up.
The Toronto Blue Jays are twenty seventh in the major
leagues and runs scored. They're twenty fifth and slugging twenty
sixth in home runs. Baseball Reference gives them a one
point three percent chance of making the postseason. I never

(37:22):
liked this team. I thought they were overrated offensively, and
it certainly is turning out to be that way. I
don't see it happening for them, Joe, to be honest
with you, the American League East is really really good.
We know that they've got a steep climb to make
with an offense that frankly is just not good, and
you can say they're underachieving. It'll turn around. I don't
see it happening. I think this is their level. What

(37:44):
do you see with Toronto going forward?

Speaker 2 (37:47):
I used to like the way they played. I'm in
agreement with you. I've been watching for the last couple
of years. They have some nice names, A lot of
young guys, a lot of pedigree involvement, and I think
some of it was the kind of hype was built
into the names. Nice players I'm listening. I'm not grudging
any of those guys, but I never really liked their
method of play. There wasn't for me a blue Jay

(38:09):
style other than trying to pound the ball, which they're
not doing. And then furthermore, if you're not hitting home
runs in that ballpark. I know they did some rentals there,
but wow, that was that was an absolute launching pad.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
Up there for a long time.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Just touch the ball down the left field line or
the right file on that thing's out of there. So
I don't know what's going on with that, and know
if the roof's been open more often or not. But overall,
look at Springers numbers this year really not Springer like,
and I know he's been through some things in the
past couple of years, but they're lacking that thing. They
don't have that thing going on where they show up
and they expect to win. It's just it's just not

(38:42):
obvious or present. I know Bo's been hurt a little
bit and I like Boba shit, but I would move
it around a little bit. I'd put him in the
outfield that get a real standout shortstop on that team.
I would do that, somebody that really can catch the
ball and shot up the middle. I would really focus
on their defense. I know you got to hit there
a little bit, but I would really look at their defense.
You know, they lost Chapman from last year. I don't

(39:03):
I don't want to the words sloppiness, but there's there's
a there's not a tightness about the way they play,
and that's that's what bothers me when I watch them.
They got some nice names, nice young guys. But I
would move it around a little bit. I would just
take advantage of the Shutt's bat, Lad's bat. Fill that
thing in with some athletes, uh turned you know, don't
just worry about banging all the time, even though you're gonna,

(39:25):
but really get more athletic. I know Kevin's in center field,
I get all that stuff. But I would focus on
athleticism defense and believe that the ball is gonna start
flying out of the ballpark as these guys get more
confident and feel better about themselves pitching wise. I mean,
I bas said I saw him last night. He still
He's one of my favorites. I've liked him for years.
The guy that Manoa Minoa is the guy that really

(39:47):
has disappeared. I thought this guy was gonna be good
for years. I swear I saw him, you know when
he first came up. I damn this did they got
their locked here? This guy is nasty, great attitude, mound demeanor,
all that stuff. And then he goes away. So they
got some stuff going on there. But and they're just
missing a blue Jay's way of playing that needs to

(40:10):
be altered. Take the advantage of athleticism, show up your defense,
and just create an identity. I'd love to see that.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
I agree everything you said there. And it's a difficult
time of year for general managers. It's the time of
year where you have to be painfully honest with what
you have and not kid yourself into thinking, well, if
this happens, and that happens, and we get this guy back,
maybe we can make a run. Eighty One games into
a season is enough to know what you have and
whether it's worth going forward or not. And I'm with

(40:38):
you on Toronto. It's an opportunity to maybe pivot to
something better. It's not happening this year. We're to taking
another quick break here we get back. We'll continue our
style theme on this episode of the Book of Joe
Podcasts and we go to one of our favorite areas
for that, and that is the world of rock and roll.
Be right back, Welcome back to the Book of Joe Podcasts.

(41:13):
Were a little bit late on this. A few weeks
ago Richard Tandy of the Electric Light Orchestra passed away.
You talk about I'm not going to say they were
the Willie Mays of rock bands, Joe, but ELO created
a sort of unique sound, right, the uniqueness of bands
back then, no copycats, and the way that they first

(41:35):
of all their name Electric Light Orchestra. You could look
at it, and they did this purposefully. The modifier could
be electric, electric light. There was something electric about what
they were doing, but also the modifier could be light
light orchestra. They wanted also an orchestral sound to what
they were doing, and Richard Tandy was the keyboardist who
really gave him a lot of that sound that you

(41:57):
associate with ELO. He played the mini mood synthesizer, the Warlitzer,
electric piano, the melotron, the clavinet, which I was not
familiar with, Joe. It's sort of like a keyboard where
you can get the electric guitar sound. If you think
about Stevie Wonders, Superstition, Bill Withers, use me Steely dan

(42:18):
On Kid Charlemagne, that's the clavinet that sound, that very
unique sound, and Richard Tandy had that for Elo. I'm
not sure if you weren't Elo fan, Joe, but it
sounds to me like that that might have been right
up your alley.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Well yeah, evil woman, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
All that the uniqueness, this different sounds, the individuality of
the groups of the seventies and sixties cannot agree with
you more. And that's that's it's in the book. We
talked about individuality of cars. We talked about that and
that you could be a block or two away from
a car. You see a car going down the street,
you know exactly what it was, Chevy Ford whatever. You

(42:55):
could see all that it was, you could see it.
The colors were distinctive, they were individualized. With all the
music and the sixties and the seventies, the first almost
like the first sound you hear, you realize, oh, that's
that's Grand Funk Railroad or that's the Almond Brothers, or
that's Elo. That's what I missed, That's what I think
is missing. That's the color that is missing in our

(43:17):
world today. That's become so gray and shaded because everybody
is scribing to be the same with the same sound
and the same everything, and you don't get these garage
bands locked up. And I've always believed and I always
it's probably not true. But and even when it came
to authors, I love to read the first book that
they wrote, the first album that they that they made,

(43:38):
or the first song that they wrote, because there's so
much of them in those first that the high school,
the college ers, whatever, the garage band era or the
smoky nightclubs, all the different things, the time that you
put into that.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
First moment that hit it big for you.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
I always found that fascinating, and I always I would
want that first book, the first book, when I was
really an avid reader, was really interesting to me. So, yes,
viduality was promoted. They didn't want to sound like anybody else.
Ela didn't want to sound like anybody else. The Almorn
Brothers didn't want to sell like anybody else. Nobody did.
They wanted their own unique sound.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
They were not copycats.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
And that's my problem with everything, and maybe that goes
to my dress codes too, the fact that I love individuality,
I love teamwork. I love teams. I love teams winning.
I want groups playing for Hazelton, Hazelton High whatever whatever
that says on the front of the uniform. I want
you playing for that. Well, then I want you to
play with the name or the back of the uniform.

(44:37):
But it's gotten to the point now it's everybody is
so homogenized and everything has to look and even though
the city connect uniforms, to me, I don't even know
why they're praised. I watched a seventh game last night
of the Stanley Cup and they're all both in there
pretty much historical. The Panther's not that all, but the Oilers.

(44:57):
I love hockey. I mean, hockey is really adhere to
their to their roots. There's not a whole lot of
necessary could perceive change that needs to be made there
in the game and how it's played whatever. Probably a
little less fighting, but the Rangers brought that back this
year a little bit.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I love that about hockey.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
I love the fact that they've held on and they're
still the same, and they have uniqueness about the way
they play and the game itself.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
And the players. I love hockey players.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
I think these guys are tough and they're polite and
they do dress well. Individuality rules, it rocks while you're
working within a team concept.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
That is my.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Dream situation as a manager, When I'm working with a
bunch of individuals that show up, that inspire one another,
that are different. There's a diverseness about it. But first
pitch is thrown, here's the tip off. The puck is dropped,
we're all.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Playing as one.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, I mean well said. I mean back in the
day with rock bands, just because this is how it
was done. Recordings were literally recordings, right, You had to
go into the studio as a and laid down tracks.
You know, it was about musicianship, it was about vocal range.
Now there's so much that can be done with technology.

(46:14):
You can basically make an album on a laptop, right,
And it's kind of scary where things are going when
it comes to AI. I had a friend who got
a spam call, except the spam call had literally copied
to a t the voice that you would normally if
you were this bank's customer. That voice, that recorded voice.

(46:34):
They literally copied it, so it was not just sending
you now an email where maybe there's some spelling errors,
the logo's not quite of the bank they're trying to
rip off, but you can actually copy the voice and
now images as well. And it's kind of scary. So
who knows where it's going next. But just in our
world today, Joe, there's less of that uniqueness that you're
talking about and the willingness to be wrong and to miss.

(46:57):
How many bands tried to go in certain areas and
you know, put out some albums that frankly would just
weren't very good. But that was the cost or price,
if you will, of being unique and not trying to
copy somebody else.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Awesome, wonderful, that's right.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Fearlessness about it, be willing to accept the criticism. That
is an awesome way to live. And that's part of
what you're missing. You cannot be afraid to lose to
be great. You cannot be afraid to fail to be great.
You have to know that you're going to fail to
be great. Everybody's looking for soft landings all the time anymore. No,
there's got to be some rough landings. There's got to

(47:33):
be in order to be great, there's got to be
a few rough landings in your existence. So I'm all
about that. I think it's God Do I appreciate that
when I when I when I witness or talk to
groups or people or kids or whatever that have gone
through some tough times that come out the other side. Man,
they got they got my full attention, They got my
full attention, my full support.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Don't be afraid. Fortune favors the bold. I had that
in my in my locker room at the Rays, And
it's true. It's absolutely true. And you're only going to
be bold if you really believe in something. You can't
be bold about something if you don't really believe in
it and know it and understand it. You have to
feel as though you're right, regardless of what anybody says.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
You have to believe that.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
I want it fearlessness in my players, and I want
fearlessness in my coaching staffs. And to me, that's the
one quality I want all the people that I work
with to have, because I'm going to get all of them.
They're not going to be afraid of a conversation. You're
going to tell them exactly what they're thinking. They're not
going to back down in a tough moment. They're going
to support one another where everybody's gonna have each other's back.

(48:38):
And that's not even spoken about it enough. I don't
think when you talk about qualities that are necessary to
be successful, to me, that's number one. I want dudes
and do that as ladies that are not afraid to
make a mistake. There's a fearlessness about them. That's what
attracts me.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, I use this line a lot, Joe, and I
got it from Vince Scully, and you just reminded me
of this. Vin Scully, of course, was probably the best
broadcaster ever in baseball, and he was that way right
up until his last year calling games for the Dodgers.
So I asked him, you know, how could you possibly
be this good for this long? And he actually paraphrased
something he had heard from the great actor Lawrence Olivier.

(49:18):
He said, you need the humbleness to prepare. In other words,
you need to know that you don't know everything. You
just can't skate through life. You have to prepare. And
Vince Gully was he prepared for his last game as
if he was his first game, and he said, then
you need the confidence to pull it off. And I
think that's what you're talking about, Joe. You can have mentors,

(49:39):
you can have support people, you can have people encourage you,
and my goodness, we need those people, there's no question
about it. But you also need that inner confidence that
I can do this. This is important to me, this
is what I love to do. If you don't have that,
as many people are supporting you, you're just not going
to make it. That just kind of inner compass, that

(50:01):
inner drive that you have that I can do this.
You have to find a way to have that, at
least if you really want to succeed at whatever passion
you have.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
You know, I'm thinking of myself as a kid coming up.
You know, you lay in bed, you have all these trepidations,
these fears, I mean these we're always afraid of something.
We don't even know why we're afraid of something, but
we're afraid of it. And the only way to overcome
that is to just stir it down and attack that.
Whatever that fear may be. That kind of a fear

(50:33):
holds you back. It does not permit you to be
in the flow in the moment to be able to breathe,
to do the thing that you want to do so desperately. Well,
you can't do it well if you permit fear to
take over. A great line I read one time, feel
the fear and do it anyway. Anybody that's looking to
advance in their career and their personal life, relationship, whatever,

(50:56):
you have to feel the fear and do it anyway.
And if you do that, then you can't. You can't
overcome whatever that thing is that we're all God, we're
all born with it. We don't even know what it is,
but it's just in a trepidation about doing something differently
sometimes and God bless those that don't have that, although
I do like the fact that I have that, because

(51:17):
I think you do remain.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Humble with that.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
You do eventually proceed with caution, but you do proceed
and then eventually come out the other side. So, yeah, Scully,
how about you talking about preparedness? Went up there, me
and David Ross went up there to give him a
number off the scoreboard at Wrigley Field, sixty something for
the years in the business. We go up through the
Vin Scully broadcast booth at Dodger Stadium, walk in the door.

(51:44):
The first thing he asks me, how's Beanie? My mom?
That's the first thing that Ben Scully asked me, how's
Beanie doing?

Speaker 3 (51:51):
And that said it all.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, that's humility and confidence, not in conflict, but in tandem.
One last note here on Elo they have a kind
of s a t record, if you will. They have
the most billboard top forty hits, twenty of them without
ever having a number one. So they're kind of like

(52:14):
the Ernie Banks of rock and roll bands. Right, that's awesome.
I don't know if anybody you know if bands need
that number one hit for validation, and personally I think
it's cooler to have twenty top forty hits and have
one and be a one hit wonder. But that's the
Earnie Banks of rock and roll bands for me. Is
ee loojeene mock. Yeah, here you go.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Right, So many wonderful, great people in different fields that
never reach the pinnacle for whatever reason, Dan Reno, right, right,
So that that happens, that happens, but it doesn't in
any way deters from the greatness of that individual or group.
But that's really a great point. And I never knew
that about a yellow I'd listened to them, like I said,

(52:57):
that is all. I think, it's all very interesting stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
All right, mister Blue Sky, what do you got for
us to take us home? Today? To wrap up this
style edition of the Book of Joe Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
God, I'm all over the place, man, I'm all over
the place. I'm like, you know, as we're talking, I
had that showed you the card that I had before, and.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
I'm going to conclude with that.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
I think I'm going to go three things that I
please forgive me for this. But Yogi bear a lot
of this you know, Yogi stuff. But he said love
was the most important thing in the world. But baseball
is pretty good too. I was thinking about, you know,
the situations Willy and rick Wood Stadium this week and
how that all came about. I think that really encapsulates

(53:41):
all of that. And I didn't see the beginning of
the game. It didn't realize his son had said that.
And I think that's so right on. And it was
a celebration, no question.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
By the way, before you get to number two, you
mentioned Yogi. I gotta throw this in and connect Yogi
and Willie Mays. Okay, Willie Mays's first number with the
Giants was actually number fourteen. It was not twenty four.
There was a guy named Jasjack McGuire, an outfielder for
the Giants, who had twenty four. The day Willie comes up,
they put him on waivers. Three days later the Pirates

(54:11):
claimed Jack McGuire off waivers. Willie switches from fourteen to
twenty four. Jack McGuire grew up in Saint Louis with
Yogi Bearra was a buddy of his, and Jack McGuire
was the one who came up with the nickname for
Lawrence Peter Bearra, calling him Yogi. So Jack McGuire, a
player you've never heard of, gave Willie Mays his number

(54:34):
and Yogi Bera his nickname.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
That is beautiful man.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
That's awesome. I never heard that. I love that.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
All Right on to number two. I love the fact
that you're giving us three here and not just one.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Yeah, well, this is your thoughts. Today's been outstanding. Number
two comes from a teacher that's passed away here at
Julie Franzosa. He was part of the history department Social
studies here at Hazleton High School back in the day,
and he used to go to third lunching at my
uncle's restaurant and sit at the counter and have his

(55:07):
coffee like they all did. And Julie one day blurted
out and it this applies to what you're talking about,
the how the world's moved on since COVID, and you
can even go farther back than that, when things were
less complicated. But he once said things are better when
they were worse. And I use that a lot, and I,
you know, we always and that speaks to the word progress.

(55:27):
I mean, like I actually heard Bill Maher say it
the other day. He's talked about progress being progressive is
doesn't always necessarily mean something is progressing its progress, but
things are better when they were worse, mister Julie Franzosa.
And finally, a card that we found on the shelf
the other day that I thought was funny and I
think it applies. Someone stole my antidepressants. I hope they're happy.

(55:54):
So that's it.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
I love it. That's awesome. That's a great way to
end it. Joe. It's been a lot of fun and
we'll do it next time.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Thanks Tommy, great job, buddy.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
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