October 10, 2025 • 30 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: MLB Nerds Blind Spot, Squiggly Zig Zag Lines, the Floor Is Lava (SoFi Mall Cops), & more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kubbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
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 to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio A Happy Friday to you.
It is the beginning of the weekend. But the Audio
Sweatshop does not stop. We produce fresh audio every single day.
Here of a new podcast on Saturday, another one on Sunday.
(00:52):
But here we are together on this podcast. Today we
have the Squiggly Zigzags and the flour is Lava. We'll
get to those, but first, it is National Handbag Day today.
I do not own a handbag. My wife owns many.
And it turns out that the handbag or the purse
(01:14):
goes all the way back, all the way back to
way way back in time. In fact, the first recorded
it goes back to prehistory. The first purse recorded in
history belonged to osi Otzi the Iceman. Atzi the Iceman,
who lived between thirty four hundred and thirty one hundred
(01:37):
BC between what's now Austria and Italy. So if you
need an ice, you went to Ozzi the Iceman in
that area right around Austria and Italy. And apparently he
was not alone. The historians I filled down this rabbit
hole and they actually said that in the beginning, back
(01:58):
in those days, mostly dudes carried purses because they needed
access to the coins. That's money was coins, and the
purse became a status symbol for men, the man purse,
which apparently is back now for some dudes like the person,
but he goes way way back. And obviously over time
(02:20):
women have hijacked the man purse and made it their
own and they became I guess it was like the
seventeen late seventeen hundreds. Many women I carried them, no
men carried them. So anyway, National Handbag Day, so go
out and buy a handbag. So I wanted to follow up.
(02:42):
I did the Overnight show, and the way this works
is I do the show and then I kind of
decompressed for a little bit, and then I leave the studio,
the remote studio, and then I walk away, and then
I try to collect my thoughts on what I want
to talk about because I have to do the podcast.
To do the podcast, I'm contractually obligated to the podcast.
(03:03):
And so I wandered away, and I walked back into
the remote studio, and I sat in the chair and
I jotted down a few bullet points and some things,
and then said, you know, I don't think I'm done
yapping about the baseball game. And there's something that I
missed on the overnight show that I meant to get
to that I didn't get to. And I thought, well,
(03:24):
this is the fifth hour, and the whole point of
the fifth hour is to follow up on things that
I could have or should have talked about during the week.
So anyway, get to the point, please. So I have
some more thoughts about the Dodger of Phillies series, which
ended yesterday, and it was very stressful. I didn't play
any of those games, but I'm trying to watch three
games at the same time because the Dodger game went
(03:46):
to extra innings and so there's a lot going on.
But I'm going to focus on the Phillies Dodgers game
because you know, not that much is going to change. However,
this particular National League Divisional series of two is empirical
data that the obsession with stats has a fatal flaw.
(04:07):
There's a soft underbelly. The three ring binder crowd got
absolutely pants in broad daylight. All the spreadsheets, all the
AI expected outcomes, all the smug process over results lectures
from the super nerds, and all all that went call
(04:28):
Bluey on a sun soaked day at Dodgers Stadium. Now
we saw actual, honest, the goodest, I'm not making this up,
unpredictable baseball. The Phillies followed the binder of numbers perfectly
checked all the boxes, right. What was the game plan
for the Philadelphia Phillies. Don't let sho Heo Tani beat
(04:50):
you check he's the Dodgers' top player. They checked that box,
get into that horrible Dodger bullpen. They blow check that box,
control game script check check check check check check. They
checked all the boxes, all the boxes in Philadelphia, and
yet they still today are cleaning out their locker and
(05:11):
packing their bags for Cancun because they forgot one it
cheap bit seat, tiny weeny. Inconvenient detail, the sport of
baseball is not played on a laptop. Oh what a bummer.
It's played by nervous humans with gloves and a heartbeat
that spikes up when they're playing in front of fifty
thousand screaming lunatics. The three true outcomes crowd, we all
(05:36):
know who they are. Home run, walk, strikeout. They got
their little fantasy land shattered. It was shattered. Boom goes
to the dynamite. Because when you live and die by
the measurable outcomes, there's these people like to tell us
you're banking on everything going exactly right. Now, before I
(05:56):
go forward, let me tell you something. I actually don't
hate analytics. I think everything in reasonable portions is fine.
The problem is the pendulum has swung so far in
this direction that it's insane. It's ridiculous right, and there's
seemingly no way to dig out of it. Hopefully this
(06:18):
will be the start of something. I'm not someone that
believes that'll be the case, because again, you're banging on
everything going right. However, October does not care about your
feelings about expected batting average or your launch angel latch,
angle bull craft or whatever that the Phillies did not
account for the old school thing, put the ball in play.
(06:41):
Put the ball in play, and this was how baseball
had been played for the first one hundred and thirty
five years. That two hopper by Andy Paez in Game
four and the eleventh inning, forty feet of nothing. He
hit the ball forty feet There should be shame he
was doing the postgame interview celebrating. His teammates ran out
to party with him. That turned the series switch off.
(07:07):
That's what happens when you force defenders to make plays
under pressure. And yeah, this is a bit of hot
take validation. I've done monologues over the last couple of
years about this very thing. When you put the ball
in play, crazy things happen, Unexpected things happen. The Phillies
built their game around avoiding that. The Dodgers, who also
(07:29):
play by the Algo rhythms, they're run by the almighty
alg rhythms. However, call it what you want is beneficiary
of dumb luck. Andy Piez did not have to hit
a ball four hundred and fifty shot over the four
hundred and fifty feet uarters over the pavilion. He hit
what many would describe the clinical term I believe in
(07:49):
baseball is a worm burner. He hit a worm burner
back to the mount. So what happens o'riyan Kirkering melts
down like butter airmails, the throw panic at the disco,
Dodgers score, the Dodgers win, and the Phillies go check
(08:11):
travel plans with their travel agent. That's the human element
the geekdom does not account for. They just don't. Do
you agree, you're shaking your head, yes, good. You can't
code a panic attack into your war protection, your wins
above replacement. This is why we rip the nerds. It's
(08:32):
the very essence of what we're talking about, the epitome
of what we're talking about. They don't trust the game
to be messy. They don't factor that in. They're obsessed
the people that run these big time teams. They's pretty
much every team in baseball. They're obsessed with controlling chaos,
with reducing liability. Everything has to be down to a
decimal And the problem is baseball pushes real baseball when
(08:59):
you play the right way, it pushes and punishes the
control freaks. Spoiler alert, spoiler alert all statistics and I
was taught this years ago all statistics have outliers. Stats
aren't linear, They're not They have squiggly zigzags. Not the
guy that used to call the Ben Maler Show twenty
years ago called zigzag. No, they have squiggly zigzags. October
(09:21):
still rewards teams that make something out of nothing, that
makes something happen. Put the ball in play, make a
shortstop plant and throw on a tough hop that reliever,
make him pick up the little dribbler with the sweaty
palms and the nerves and the brain fart happens right.
(09:43):
Make a catcher block a pitch in the dirt with
a runner coming home. That stuff's not necessarily glamorous, and
it doesn't fit into the computer. However, I am of
the dogma that it believes. I'm in the cult where
that still wins and that works. They didn't account, for example,
the Phillies when they talked about, hey, we got a sapotani,
(10:04):
we got to get to the Dodger bullpen, all this stuff.
They did not account for Bryce Harper riding the vomit
comet and batting two hundred. They didn't account for Kyle
Schwarber hitting what a buck forty three a dugout full
of dudes who I don't know where they're staring at
the table. I don't know what they were doing. And
you know they were staring at their tablets. They were
(10:25):
staring at something, but they didn't do the thing they
were supposed to do at the time they was doing. Meanwhile,
the Dodgers with a bullpen, which is a house of
horse things that go bump in the night. The Dodger bullpen.
Everyone said, we said, it's a disaster, and it was.
We were right. We won that take. It's a disaster.
They did pitch the contact. But if you look at
(10:46):
the numbers on the Dodger bullpen outside of Roku Suzaki,
the Dodger bullpen on an erea of five point five.
All so, the Phillies got to the bullpen, they got
runs off the bullpen. Kershaw melted down. The Dodgers, realizing
their bullpen such a national embarrassment that they were using,
starting pitching in relief. That was the move. And so
(11:09):
again this is just a kick to the nuts for
those of you in the back of the room. The
Phillies actually again they executed the plan. They got the
cold Oltani. He's supposedly the greatest player in baseball who
was terrible. They got the shaky bullpen. They had every
advantage possible on a tablet. We used to say paper,
(11:30):
but now they used tablets and the Phillies still lost.
And this is the end of this run. They're going
to have to reorganize that rosters. We talked about on
the radio show last night. This NLDS of twenty twenty five.
It reminded every man, woman and child that you can
still win by forcing the other team to make plays
(11:52):
under pressure. And it's the simplest thing to do, and
it's become underrated, which seems ridiculous to say that it's underrated.
Does that not seem dumb to dumb dumb dumb that
just making someone make a play is the most underrated
(12:13):
weapon in baseball Because everything is run the same way,
and so it's not original. Every team hires some nerd
from an IVY League school or an IVY League adjacent
school to run their front office. All the owners have
been convinced this is the way, and it's not just
the way, it's the only way to get it done.
(12:33):
You have to do it this way, and so you
get all the advantages, you still end up US losing
and all that stuff. So yeah, congratulations to the Phillies.
The binder was flawless. You executed your game plan, you
did everything you wanted to do. And as the great
John Sterling would say, that's baseball, Susan, that's baseball. You
(12:59):
know you didn't win. Binder Ball works in June and July.
You go through the numbers and all the different things,
and that'll work. The issue with playoff baseball, as has
been discussed and you've heard it, is small sample size
and stuff that works in April, May, June, July, and August.
(13:19):
It dies on the vine in October. And if you
don't believe me, you might want to call up the Phillies.
I'll also tell the Phillies did look good, those uniforms,
those powder blues, solid good look. Result not so much,
not so much so. Turning the page, well not too far.
(13:42):
It's still a sporty story, but it's not really about sports.
So let's take you back. I know Week six started
last night with the upset city as the Giants upset
the reeling Philadelphia Eagles that are coming apart of the scene,
but let's take you back to Week five of the
n season. Just last weekend. It was not the kind
(14:03):
of welcome you'd expect when you stroll into a multi
billion dollar infl facility. You imagine when you go into
a place like that, gleaming quarters, polished marble like the
taj Mahal, smiling staff, all wearing those matching polos, and
(14:24):
they greet you with welcome to Sofi Stadium, Sir, how
can I help you? Well, that's what you would imagine
you would get. Instead the person you're listening to, that
would be me. Ben got a masterclass in how to
weaponize a reflective vest. You see. Last weekend, the Chargers
(14:47):
were hosting the Washington Commanders. Yes, those Washington Commanders, the
team formerly known as the Redskins, but now known for
owning more rebrands than playoff wins, although I guess they
did win a few games last year, but still the
Commanders known as the Washington football team. They were the
Redskins for years that named Commanders. And I saw them,
(15:10):
and I saw the press notes that said Commanders on it,
and they know the Washington traveling media that was there.
Commanders feels like it's the great value brand from Walmart.
It's a generic store brand, it's not a real NFL brand. Well, nevertheless,
I made the track down to Inglewood in the hood
(15:30):
in Inglewood and up to no good. Apparently I was
up to no good. The modern day Colisseum the greatest
stadium in the NFL, where billionaires mingle with influencers and
occasionally the great unwashed, the hoy poloy make their way
inside that stadium, and really the rest of us just
(15:52):
kind of find the right escalator. It is a beautiful facility.
So before kickoff, sent the txed over to my old pal,
my former colleague, Eddie Garcia. Now Eddie is a Steeler fan,
but through marriage, Eddie is a Charger fan and his
(16:12):
wife is a super fan. He's become a podcaster since
he got whacked by the company, and one of the
few people in sports media who can still form a
coherent sentence without consulting a teleprompter. I'm not gonna send
any tom loony. I'm not saying any anyway. So we'd
agreed to meet for a quick catch up, nothing elaborate,
(16:35):
you know. It's a brief destent, I believe, is the
word between two men who over the years have spent
many many many nights in dark, dingy radio studios infested
by vermin giant coca roaches, talking about backup catchers and
third string quarterbacks and all this other blogoney that we
(16:59):
talk about. And so our meeting spot was a little
in between zone. Now what does that mean? I'll tell
you what that So I was media free loading in
the press box and it was one level down from
the press box, but one level up from Eddie. So
meet in the middle. The man in the middle, Eddie
(17:19):
sits in a bougie seat on the lower level. So
I had to go down out of the press box.
I had to walk down a flight of stairs and
then walked out a door that is designed for like emergencies,
the fire escape. I walked down that. I then walk
over and I have to walk down to an escalator.
I go down the escalator and then I met the
(17:40):
right turn and I walk about fifteen yards or so,
and then there's Eddie and Eddie has to go one
level up and he's right there. It's a neutral site.
It's like the Geneva you know group there. It's just
more nacho cheese, just with more nacho cheese. Now we
chatted for me maybe five minutes. This was not a
(18:05):
long thing. You know, we're both introverts. We talk when
we have microphones in front of us. We don't talk
that much without microphones. I have to talk four hours
a night. I do three hours on the weekend. So
I know I'm good. I like Eddie, and we had
standard pleasantries and all that. How's the family, how's the
wife doing, how's the podcast? How's life treating you in
(18:25):
the glamorous world of niche podcasting? And then came the
photo op. This is all basic, basic, This is paint
by numbers. A couple of old war horses smiling for
the camera, neither of us realizing that in that very
moment we had become fugitives. I didn't realize I was
a fugitive. I just wanted to meet an old friend
(18:46):
and take a photo and catch up and have some
small talk. I don't even like small talk normally. It
turns out that its Sofi stadium. When you stand in
the place I was standing, you became a fugitive. I
didn't realize it. I hope my family's not disappointed with me,
because apparently we were standing on sacred ground out of nowhere.
(19:10):
A Sofi stadium employee appeared a middle aged woman, very
negative injury energy, very negative jerurgy. You know that kind
of grumpy woman where she last smiled when Bill Clinton
was president. It's been been a minute, and I was
(19:31):
not getting a lot of loving And I'm telling you,
she was vibrating with the kind of energy that you
normally see when you go too the DMV right or HOA.
I used to have an HOA. God. I hated the
HOA like the people that run the ho I just
really just scum of the earth. She looked at us
the way that I imagine security guards look at teenagers
(19:54):
that are loitering outside an Apple store. You can't stand there,
she barked our our uh, and so that was pretty annoying.
There's ways to handle these situations, not hey guys. She
didn't say, hey guys, sorry, quick heads up. I kind
of need you to move. Can you do me a
(20:15):
good solid Please take the photo and then move on.
I need that space clear. Not even a polite would
you mind moving? I didn't get a polite would you
mind moving? No? No, no. This was the malibuz most
wanted of stadium enforcement. The tone, the stance, the whole
power trip ensemble. She had it all going on, and
as lee Elia would say, they're really really behind you
(20:37):
around here, my fucking ass. All right, that's what I
was thinking. I was thinking of Lee Ilia, the old
Cubs manager who died this year. Now, I have been
around long enough at this point in my life where
I recognize when I come across what I call a
Paul bart Malkop moment. We know, and I think most
(20:58):
people know even when you're younger. You recognize a Paul
Bart Malcott moment. When it's unfolded. You give someone who's
spent their life in the shadows being ignored by polite
society a tiny bit of authority, just a little bit
of authority, and suddenly they are patent storming Normandy, General Patton,
(21:19):
the storming Normandy. Now this woman, and I don't know
her name, she seemed to believe that that little hunk
of concrete that we were standing on was the last
unspoiled piece of American spoil, and it was her job
to keep it unspoiled. And it was only her job.
It was no one else's job, it was her job.
And so the floor was lava. I didn't realize it.
(21:42):
I'd played that game when I was a kid. The
floor is lava or the Flora's sharks, and we were trespassing.
I had to pass. Eddie had a ticket, but we
were trespassing. Now, I'm a reasonable human being, contrary to
what many of you think. And I'm talking about you
being the algorithms on social media. You know how I
feel about the matrix of X and all that stuff
which used to be Twitter. So based on that, you know,
(22:05):
then the suggestion is, I'm not that way. I promise you,
if you ask nicely, I'll move. I will I will
move if you ask nicely. But if you come at
me like a buzzsaw with this self righteous, condescending I
will hold the keys. I have the keys to the elevator.
You don't. That's my tone. Now that's a different animal,
(22:25):
that's a different story. And so for me, when you
do that to me, you've started the battle and it's
f around and find out. So, yes, I made a
few snarky remarks. I may have mentioned that this seemed
like a very curious way to treat two people who
theoretically help promote the stadium and the product on a
(22:45):
big platform, and I may have wandered aloud, you know,
just you know, in the public space there, you know,
wandered aloud whether this was the hill that this woman
wanted to die on the I am defending the honor
of the no photo zone between the pretzel stand and
(23:05):
the service elevator. And she didn't seem too amused. As
I said, she was a very angry woman. I feel
bad for her. She's apparently had a tough life. People
have been rude her, and I get it. Rules are
rules again, Someone somewhere probably wrote a memo, some corporate
weasel about this exact patch of the hallway, and likely
if you go through the bowels of Sofi Stadium, there's
(23:29):
I'm guaranteeing there's somewhere there's a laminated chart in some
break room with an overpriced vending machine that says no
standing between section one thirty two B and one thirty
two C. Photo ops require supervisor approval. That is bureaucracy
with a capital B. It is. It is the Actually,
(23:52):
it's a great American art form, and it's everywhere. I
work in a major corporation that has to deal with that,
and it's it's a tough thing and here's the point
that I wanted to make on this. We were not
at the Pentagon. You might think that we were at
the Pentagon. They have facial recognition similar to the Pentagon.
(24:13):
I would argue that going to an NFL game is
more secure than the Pentagon. I really believe that in
my heart that you have to sign away all of
your rights to go to an NFL game. Because the
NFL hired all of these old CIA people. That's what
I was told by somebody, and so they said, we
(24:34):
want these stadiums safe. We don't want anyone to get hurt.
So I have an abundance of caution. We're going to
have everyone that goes into a stadium, they're gonna be
facial recognition. You're gonna have to sign away your firstborn child.
So it wasn't the Pentagon. It was a stadium. It
was a football stadium, a place where people I assume
still paint their faces, scream until they lose their voices
because of running back fumbled at the one yard line
(24:57):
with a chance to win the game. Kyri Williams will Rams.
That's why I know this was a Charger game. But
the whole operation exists in theory to make fans feel something. Right,
you go to a game. Otherwise you wouldn't go to
a game. You just stay home and watch it on
TV or listening to on the radio. But you go
to a game because it's just you feel a vibration.
(25:18):
It's a communal thing when you go to a game, right,
you're with your other people that are kind of like you.
They're fans, and you see what happens with your own eyeballs.
Of course, these days when you see fans, they're doing
the statue of liberty. They're holding their hand up, doing
the statue of liberty taking photos. So maybe, just maybe
(25:39):
maybe you can use some common sense and let a
couple of old radio pals, you know now a podcaster
Eddie and I'm still I'm still a radio gup, but
I'm a podcaster, let them take a picture without treating
it like a national security breach. We don't have to
act like this is TSA and somebody's just gone through
the security exit at the airport. We now, we took
(26:00):
the photo anyway. The woman came over as we were
taking the foot the photo, and it wasn't exactly a
pulitzer shot. I did post one of them. It's you
really want to see a photo of two middle aged
dudes smiling like they just survived another season of radio nonsense.
And then I walked back up to the press box
muttering you ever do this when you're walking back and
(26:21):
something happened. We're like, why did that happen? You're kind
of muttering under your breath, like and in my head,
I was like, man, this is another example of how
America has perfected the art of unnecessary confrontation. Like there
are some confrontations that are necessary. This was not necessary.
This did not need to happen. And this, by the way,
is the modern fan experience. We have built these billion
(26:44):
dollars pleasure domes, but humanity's been replaced by protocol. It
is it's all about the protocol. It's no common sense.
You cannot linger here, you cannot take a picture there, No,
you can't. You can't bring in a bottle, but sure
you want to pay seventeen dollars, we'll have you buy
the same water bottle inside, but it's got our logo
(27:07):
on it. And if you have a purse. Just talked
about this being national handbag, that you can't bring a
handbag in. Why not because you got to have a clearbag.
Why do I need a clearbag because we need to
look through the bag? Why don't you don't you have
metal detectors. We do have metal detectors. Well, why would
you need a clear bag if you have a metal
detor detector? We just do it. Does that mean you
don't trust the metal detector? Don't ask us that question anyway.
(27:31):
So I got home that night after the radio show,
and I looked at some of the photos we'd taken,
some other photos there because you know why not. Lighting
wasn't great, Eddie's smiling, I look like a guy who
just got yelled at by the substitute teacher. But it's
it's perfect because it captures exactly what that day was. Now.
(27:52):
I enjoyed the game. Washington played very well in the
second half, but just a couple of friends, me and
Eddie reconnecting again in a sport the NFL that's increasingly
about control, rules and optics, and one moment of pure, absolute,
unadulterated absurdity, just absolute absurdity that reminded me why I
(28:19):
love bloviating about the circus. How absurd all of this
is right, that we are brought together to watch these
grown people play football. They're still young people, but they're
playing football. And thousands and thousands of people show up
to these games and are treated like they're douchebaged public
(28:40):
enemy number one by these other people that are They're
just a holes. So yeah, I survived so far as
no photo zone, and I'm going to add that to
my resume on Express Pros. I'm going to add that
to my LinkedIn page. I'll add it to the resume.
Once I was reprimanded for standing on the wrong square
(29:02):
a multi billion dollars football stadium, and I said, well,
I'm to talk about it. I cannot wait to see
what happens when I try to smile in the wrong direction.
Next time I go to a game. That will not
be this weekend, as both the Chargers and the Dolphin.
Chargers and the Rams rather are on the road, Rams
playing the Ravens and the Chargers are in Miami to
(29:25):
play the Dolphins. So no game to go to this
weekend in the NFL. All right, on that note, we
will put the baby to bed. Have a wonderful rest
of your Friday. Don't forget to watch Benny versus the Penny,
which is up right now streaming on the YouTube Benny
(29:46):
Versus Penny YouTube dot com slash at Benny Vspenny. The
numbers are good, keep going up. We're getting more and
more people to watch the show. It's awesome. And at
some point I was told by somebody that keeps track
of this type of stuff, there's this point of demarcation,
there's this fork in the road where you just skyrocket.
We're not there yet, and I'm not saying we're gonna
(30:07):
get there even this season, but from what I have
been told by people that work in the YouTube world,
there's this point where you get enough followers and then
it like the YouTube people's algorithm sees what you're doing there,
and then they start feeding you some people. Because it's
all fake anyway, right, it's mostly fake, like you're real,
like I want you. I'd rather have lower numbers and
(30:29):
have real people that deem the show worthy of watching.
But you actually don't make a lot of money on that. Anyway,
We'll look the other way. Here, have a wonderful, wonderful day,
and as Danny g would say, you should be with
me this weekend. Later, skater Asta Pasta got to murder
(30:52):
I Gotta go
Kubbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
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 to Clearinghouse of
hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
(00:23):
with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Mahler and Danny g Radio A Happy Friday to you.
It is the beginning of the weekend. But the Audio
Sweatshop does not stop. We produce fresh audio every single day.
Here of a new podcast on Saturday, another one on Sunday.
(00:52):
But here we are together on this podcast. Today we
have the Squiggly Zigzags and the flour is Lava. We'll
get to those, but first, it is National Handbag Day today.
I do not own a handbag. My wife owns many.
And it turns out that the handbag or the purse
(01:14):
goes all the way back, all the way back to
way way back in time. In fact, the first recorded
it goes back to prehistory. The first purse recorded in
history belonged to osi Otzi the Iceman. Atzi the Iceman,
who lived between thirty four hundred and thirty one hundred
(01:37):
BC between what's now Austria and Italy. So if you
need an ice, you went to Ozzi the Iceman in
that area right around Austria and Italy. And apparently he
was not alone. The historians I filled down this rabbit
hole and they actually said that in the beginning, back
(01:58):
in those days, mostly dudes carried purses because they needed
access to the coins. That's money was coins, and the
purse became a status symbol for men, the man purse,
which apparently is back now for some dudes like the person,
but he goes way way back. And obviously over time
(02:20):
women have hijacked the man purse and made it their
own and they became I guess it was like the
seventeen late seventeen hundreds. Many women I carried them, no
men carried them. So anyway, National Handbag Day, so go
out and buy a handbag. So I wanted to follow up.
(02:42):
I did the Overnight show, and the way this works
is I do the show and then I kind of
decompressed for a little bit, and then I leave the studio,
the remote studio, and then I walk away, and then
I try to collect my thoughts on what I want
to talk about because I have to do the podcast.
To do the podcast, I'm contractually obligated to the podcast.
(03:03):
And so I wandered away, and I walked back into
the remote studio, and I sat in the chair and
I jotted down a few bullet points and some things,
and then said, you know, I don't think I'm done
yapping about the baseball game. And there's something that I
missed on the overnight show that I meant to get
to that I didn't get to. And I thought, well,
(03:24):
this is the fifth hour, and the whole point of
the fifth hour is to follow up on things that
I could have or should have talked about during the week.
So anyway, get to the point, please. So I have
some more thoughts about the Dodger of Phillies series, which
ended yesterday, and it was very stressful. I didn't play
any of those games, but I'm trying to watch three
games at the same time because the Dodger game went
(03:46):
to extra innings and so there's a lot going on.
But I'm going to focus on the Phillies Dodgers game
because you know, not that much is going to change. However,
this particular National League Divisional series of two is empirical
data that the obsession with stats has a fatal flaw.
(04:07):
There's a soft underbelly. The three ring binder crowd got
absolutely pants in broad daylight. All the spreadsheets, all the
AI expected outcomes, all the smug process over results lectures
from the super nerds, and all all that went call
(04:28):
Bluey on a sun soaked day at Dodgers Stadium. Now
we saw actual, honest, the goodest, I'm not making this up,
unpredictable baseball. The Phillies followed the binder of numbers perfectly
checked all the boxes, right. What was the game plan
for the Philadelphia Phillies. Don't let sho Heo Tani beat
(04:50):
you check he's the Dodgers' top player. They checked that box,
get into that horrible Dodger bullpen. They blow check that box,
control game script check check check check check check. They
checked all the boxes, all the boxes in Philadelphia, and
yet they still today are cleaning out their locker and
(05:11):
packing their bags for Cancun because they forgot one it
cheap bit seat, tiny weeny. Inconvenient detail, the sport of
baseball is not played on a laptop. Oh what a bummer.
It's played by nervous humans with gloves and a heartbeat
that spikes up when they're playing in front of fifty
thousand screaming lunatics. The three true outcomes crowd, we all
(05:36):
know who they are. Home run, walk, strikeout. They got
their little fantasy land shattered. It was shattered. Boom goes
to the dynamite. Because when you live and die by
the measurable outcomes, there's these people like to tell us
you're banking on everything going exactly right. Now, before I
(05:56):
go forward, let me tell you something. I actually don't
hate analytics. I think everything in reasonable portions is fine.
The problem is the pendulum has swung so far in
this direction that it's insane. It's ridiculous right, and there's
seemingly no way to dig out of it. Hopefully this
(06:18):
will be the start of something. I'm not someone that
believes that'll be the case, because again, you're banging on
everything going right. However, October does not care about your
feelings about expected batting average or your launch angel latch,
angle bull craft or whatever that the Phillies did not
account for the old school thing, put the ball in play.
(06:41):
Put the ball in play, and this was how baseball
had been played for the first one hundred and thirty
five years. That two hopper by Andy Paez in Game
four and the eleventh inning, forty feet of nothing. He
hit the ball forty feet There should be shame he
was doing the postgame interview celebrating. His teammates ran out
to party with him. That turned the series switch off.
(07:07):
That's what happens when you force defenders to make plays
under pressure. And yeah, this is a bit of hot
take validation. I've done monologues over the last couple of
years about this very thing. When you put the ball
in play, crazy things happen, Unexpected things happen. The Phillies
built their game around avoiding that. The Dodgers, who also
(07:29):
play by the Algo rhythms, they're run by the almighty
alg rhythms. However, call it what you want is beneficiary
of dumb luck. Andy Piez did not have to hit
a ball four hundred and fifty shot over the four
hundred and fifty feet uarters over the pavilion. He hit
what many would describe the clinical term I believe in
(07:49):
baseball is a worm burner. He hit a worm burner
back to the mount. So what happens o'riyan Kirkering melts
down like butter airmails, the throw panic at the disco,
Dodgers score, the Dodgers win, and the Phillies go check
(08:11):
travel plans with their travel agent. That's the human element
the geekdom does not account for. They just don't. Do
you agree, you're shaking your head, yes, good. You can't
code a panic attack into your war protection, your wins
above replacement. This is why we rip the nerds. It's
(08:32):
the very essence of what we're talking about, the epitome
of what we're talking about. They don't trust the game
to be messy. They don't factor that in. They're obsessed
the people that run these big time teams. They's pretty
much every team in baseball. They're obsessed with controlling chaos,
with reducing liability. Everything has to be down to a
decimal And the problem is baseball pushes real baseball when
(08:59):
you play the right way, it pushes and punishes the
control freaks. Spoiler alert, spoiler alert all statistics and I
was taught this years ago all statistics have outliers. Stats
aren't linear, They're not They have squiggly zigzags. Not the
guy that used to call the Ben Maler Show twenty
years ago called zigzag. No, they have squiggly zigzags. October
(09:21):
still rewards teams that make something out of nothing, that
makes something happen. Put the ball in play, make a
shortstop plant and throw on a tough hop that reliever,
make him pick up the little dribbler with the sweaty
palms and the nerves and the brain fart happens right.
(09:43):
Make a catcher block a pitch in the dirt with
a runner coming home. That stuff's not necessarily glamorous, and
it doesn't fit into the computer. However, I am of
the dogma that it believes. I'm in the cult where
that still wins and that works. They didn't account, for example,
the Phillies when they talked about, hey, we got a sapotani,
(10:04):
we got to get to the Dodger bullpen, all this stuff.
They did not account for Bryce Harper riding the vomit
comet and batting two hundred. They didn't account for Kyle
Schwarber hitting what a buck forty three a dugout full
of dudes who I don't know where they're staring at
the table. I don't know what they were doing. And
you know they were staring at their tablets. They were
(10:25):
staring at something, but they didn't do the thing they
were supposed to do at the time they was doing. Meanwhile,
the Dodgers with a bullpen, which is a house of
horse things that go bump in the night. The Dodger bullpen.
Everyone said, we said, it's a disaster, and it was.
We were right. We won that take. It's a disaster.
They did pitch the contact. But if you look at
(10:46):
the numbers on the Dodger bullpen outside of Roku Suzaki,
the Dodger bullpen on an erea of five point five.
All so, the Phillies got to the bullpen, they got
runs off the bullpen. Kershaw melted down. The Dodgers, realizing
their bullpen such a national embarrassment that they were using,
starting pitching in relief. That was the move. And so
(11:09):
again this is just a kick to the nuts for
those of you in the back of the room. The
Phillies actually again they executed the plan. They got the
cold Oltani. He's supposedly the greatest player in baseball who
was terrible. They got the shaky bullpen. They had every
advantage possible on a tablet. We used to say paper,
(11:30):
but now they used tablets and the Phillies still lost.
And this is the end of this run. They're going
to have to reorganize that rosters. We talked about on
the radio show last night. This NLDS of twenty twenty five.
It reminded every man, woman and child that you can
still win by forcing the other team to make plays
(11:52):
under pressure. And it's the simplest thing to do, and
it's become underrated, which seems ridiculous to say that it's underrated.
Does that not seem dumb to dumb dumb dumb that
just making someone make a play is the most underrated
(12:13):
weapon in baseball Because everything is run the same way,
and so it's not original. Every team hires some nerd
from an IVY League school or an IVY League adjacent
school to run their front office. All the owners have
been convinced this is the way, and it's not just
the way, it's the only way to get it done.
(12:33):
You have to do it this way, and so you
get all the advantages, you still end up US losing
and all that stuff. So yeah, congratulations to the Phillies.
The binder was flawless. You executed your game plan, you
did everything you wanted to do. And as the great
John Sterling would say, that's baseball, Susan, that's baseball. You
(12:59):
know you didn't win. Binder Ball works in June and July.
You go through the numbers and all the different things,
and that'll work. The issue with playoff baseball, as has
been discussed and you've heard it, is small sample size
and stuff that works in April, May, June, July, and August.
(13:19):
It dies on the vine in October. And if you
don't believe me, you might want to call up the Phillies.
I'll also tell the Phillies did look good, those uniforms,
those powder blues, solid good look. Result not so much,
not so much so. Turning the page, well not too far.
(13:42):
It's still a sporty story, but it's not really about sports.
So let's take you back. I know Week six started
last night with the upset city as the Giants upset
the reeling Philadelphia Eagles that are coming apart of the scene,
but let's take you back to Week five of the
n season. Just last weekend. It was not the kind
(14:03):
of welcome you'd expect when you stroll into a multi
billion dollar infl facility. You imagine when you go into
a place like that, gleaming quarters, polished marble like the
taj Mahal, smiling staff, all wearing those matching polos, and
(14:24):
they greet you with welcome to Sofi Stadium, Sir, how
can I help you? Well, that's what you would imagine
you would get. Instead the person you're listening to, that
would be me. Ben got a masterclass in how to
weaponize a reflective vest. You see. Last weekend, the Chargers
(14:47):
were hosting the Washington Commanders. Yes, those Washington Commanders, the
team formerly known as the Redskins, but now known for
owning more rebrands than playoff wins, although I guess they
did win a few games last year, but still the
Commanders known as the Washington football team. They were the
Redskins for years that named Commanders. And I saw them,
(15:10):
and I saw the press notes that said Commanders on it,
and they know the Washington traveling media that was there.
Commanders feels like it's the great value brand from Walmart.
It's a generic store brand, it's not a real NFL brand. Well, nevertheless,
I made the track down to Inglewood in the hood
(15:30):
in Inglewood and up to no good. Apparently I was
up to no good. The modern day Colisseum the greatest
stadium in the NFL, where billionaires mingle with influencers and
occasionally the great unwashed, the hoy poloy make their way
inside that stadium, and really the rest of us just
(15:52):
kind of find the right escalator. It is a beautiful facility.
So before kickoff, sent the txed over to my old pal,
my former colleague, Eddie Garcia. Now Eddie is a Steeler fan,
but through marriage, Eddie is a Charger fan and his
(16:12):
wife is a super fan. He's become a podcaster since
he got whacked by the company, and one of the
few people in sports media who can still form a
coherent sentence without consulting a teleprompter. I'm not gonna send
any tom loony. I'm not saying any anyway. So we'd
agreed to meet for a quick catch up, nothing elaborate,
(16:35):
you know. It's a brief destent, I believe, is the
word between two men who over the years have spent
many many many nights in dark, dingy radio studios infested
by vermin giant coca roaches, talking about backup catchers and
third string quarterbacks and all this other blogoney that we
(16:59):
talk about. And so our meeting spot was a little
in between zone. Now what does that mean? I'll tell
you what that So I was media free loading in
the press box and it was one level down from
the press box, but one level up from Eddie. So
meet in the middle. The man in the middle, Eddie
(17:19):
sits in a bougie seat on the lower level. So
I had to go down out of the press box.
I had to walk down a flight of stairs and
then walked out a door that is designed for like emergencies,
the fire escape. I walked down that. I then walk
over and I have to walk down to an escalator.
I go down the escalator and then I met the
(17:40):
right turn and I walk about fifteen yards or so,
and then there's Eddie and Eddie has to go one
level up and he's right there. It's a neutral site.
It's like the Geneva you know group there. It's just
more nacho cheese, just with more nacho cheese. Now we
chatted for me maybe five minutes. This was not a
(18:05):
long thing. You know, we're both introverts. We talk when
we have microphones in front of us. We don't talk
that much without microphones. I have to talk four hours
a night. I do three hours on the weekend. So
I know I'm good. I like Eddie, and we had
standard pleasantries and all that. How's the family, how's the
wife doing, how's the podcast? How's life treating you in
(18:25):
the glamorous world of niche podcasting? And then came the
photo op. This is all basic, basic, This is paint
by numbers. A couple of old war horses smiling for
the camera, neither of us realizing that in that very
moment we had become fugitives. I didn't realize I was
a fugitive. I just wanted to meet an old friend
(18:46):
and take a photo and catch up and have some
small talk. I don't even like small talk normally. It
turns out that its Sofi stadium. When you stand in
the place I was standing, you became a fugitive. I
didn't realize it. I hope my family's not disappointed with me,
because apparently we were standing on sacred ground out of nowhere.
(19:10):
A Sofi stadium employee appeared a middle aged woman, very
negative injury energy, very negative jerurgy. You know that kind
of grumpy woman where she last smiled when Bill Clinton
was president. It's been been a minute, and I was
(19:31):
not getting a lot of loving And I'm telling you,
she was vibrating with the kind of energy that you
normally see when you go too the DMV right or HOA.
I used to have an HOA. God. I hated the
HOA like the people that run the ho I just
really just scum of the earth. She looked at us
the way that I imagine security guards look at teenagers
(19:54):
that are loitering outside an Apple store. You can't stand there,
she barked our our uh, and so that was pretty annoying.
There's ways to handle these situations, not hey guys. She
didn't say, hey guys, sorry, quick heads up. I kind
of need you to move. Can you do me a
(20:15):
good solid Please take the photo and then move on.
I need that space clear. Not even a polite would
you mind moving? I didn't get a polite would you
mind moving? No? No, no. This was the malibuz most
wanted of stadium enforcement. The tone, the stance, the whole
power trip ensemble. She had it all going on, and
as lee Elia would say, they're really really behind you
(20:37):
around here, my fucking ass. All right, that's what I
was thinking. I was thinking of Lee Ilia, the old
Cubs manager who died this year. Now, I have been
around long enough at this point in my life where
I recognize when I come across what I call a
Paul bart Malkop moment. We know, and I think most
(20:58):
people know even when you're younger. You recognize a Paul
Bart Malcott moment. When it's unfolded. You give someone who's
spent their life in the shadows being ignored by polite
society a tiny bit of authority, just a little bit
of authority, and suddenly they are patent storming Normandy, General Patton,
(21:19):
the storming Normandy. Now this woman, and I don't know
her name, she seemed to believe that that little hunk
of concrete that we were standing on was the last
unspoiled piece of American spoil, and it was her job
to keep it unspoiled. And it was only her job.
It was no one else's job, it was her job.
And so the floor was lava. I didn't realize it.
(21:42):
I'd played that game when I was a kid. The
floor is lava or the Flora's sharks, and we were trespassing.
I had to pass. Eddie had a ticket, but we
were trespassing. Now, I'm a reasonable human being, contrary to
what many of you think. And I'm talking about you
being the algorithms on social media. You know how I
feel about the matrix of X and all that stuff
which used to be Twitter. So based on that, you know,
(22:05):
then the suggestion is, I'm not that way. I promise you,
if you ask nicely, I'll move. I will I will
move if you ask nicely. But if you come at
me like a buzzsaw with this self righteous, condescending I
will hold the keys. I have the keys to the elevator.
You don't. That's my tone. Now that's a different animal,
(22:25):
that's a different story. And so for me, when you
do that to me, you've started the battle and it's
f around and find out. So, yes, I made a
few snarky remarks. I may have mentioned that this seemed
like a very curious way to treat two people who
theoretically help promote the stadium and the product on a
(22:45):
big platform, and I may have wandered aloud, you know,
just you know, in the public space there, you know,
wandered aloud whether this was the hill that this woman
wanted to die on the I am defending the honor
of the no photo zone between the pretzel stand and
(23:05):
the service elevator. And she didn't seem too amused. As
I said, she was a very angry woman. I feel
bad for her. She's apparently had a tough life. People
have been rude her, and I get it. Rules are
rules again, Someone somewhere probably wrote a memo, some corporate
weasel about this exact patch of the hallway, and likely
if you go through the bowels of Sofi Stadium, there's
(23:29):
I'm guaranteeing there's somewhere there's a laminated chart in some
break room with an overpriced vending machine that says no
standing between section one thirty two B and one thirty
two C. Photo ops require supervisor approval. That is bureaucracy
with a capital B. It is. It is the Actually,
(23:52):
it's a great American art form, and it's everywhere. I
work in a major corporation that has to deal with that,
and it's it's a tough thing and here's the point
that I wanted to make on this. We were not
at the Pentagon. You might think that we were at
the Pentagon. They have facial recognition similar to the Pentagon.
(24:13):
I would argue that going to an NFL game is
more secure than the Pentagon. I really believe that in
my heart that you have to sign away all of
your rights to go to an NFL game. Because the
NFL hired all of these old CIA people. That's what
I was told by somebody, and so they said, we
(24:34):
want these stadiums safe. We don't want anyone to get hurt.
So I have an abundance of caution. We're going to
have everyone that goes into a stadium, they're gonna be
facial recognition. You're gonna have to sign away your firstborn child.
So it wasn't the Pentagon. It was a stadium. It
was a football stadium, a place where people I assume
still paint their faces, scream until they lose their voices
because of running back fumbled at the one yard line
(24:57):
with a chance to win the game. Kyri Williams will Rams.
That's why I know this was a Charger game. But
the whole operation exists in theory to make fans feel something. Right,
you go to a game. Otherwise you wouldn't go to
a game. You just stay home and watch it on
TV or listening to on the radio. But you go
to a game because it's just you feel a vibration.
(25:18):
It's a communal thing when you go to a game, right,
you're with your other people that are kind of like you.
They're fans, and you see what happens with your own eyeballs.
Of course, these days when you see fans, they're doing
the statue of liberty. They're holding their hand up, doing
the statue of liberty taking photos. So maybe, just maybe
(25:39):
maybe you can use some common sense and let a
couple of old radio pals, you know now a podcaster
Eddie and I'm still I'm still a radio gup, but
I'm a podcaster, let them take a picture without treating
it like a national security breach. We don't have to
act like this is TSA and somebody's just gone through
the security exit at the airport. We now, we took
(26:00):
the photo anyway. The woman came over as we were
taking the foot the photo, and it wasn't exactly a
pulitzer shot. I did post one of them. It's you
really want to see a photo of two middle aged
dudes smiling like they just survived another season of radio nonsense.
And then I walked back up to the press box
muttering you ever do this when you're walking back and
(26:21):
something happened. We're like, why did that happen? You're kind
of muttering under your breath, like and in my head,
I was like, man, this is another example of how
America has perfected the art of unnecessary confrontation. Like there
are some confrontations that are necessary. This was not necessary.
This did not need to happen. And this, by the way,
is the modern fan experience. We have built these billion
(26:44):
dollars pleasure domes, but humanity's been replaced by protocol. It
is it's all about the protocol. It's no common sense.
You cannot linger here, you cannot take a picture there, No,
you can't. You can't bring in a bottle, but sure
you want to pay seventeen dollars, we'll have you buy
the same water bottle inside, but it's got our logo
(27:07):
on it. And if you have a purse. Just talked
about this being national handbag, that you can't bring a
handbag in. Why not because you got to have a clearbag.
Why do I need a clearbag because we need to
look through the bag? Why don't you don't you have
metal detectors. We do have metal detectors. Well, why would
you need a clear bag if you have a metal
detor detector? We just do it. Does that mean you
don't trust the metal detector? Don't ask us that question anyway.
(27:31):
So I got home that night after the radio show,
and I looked at some of the photos we'd taken,
some other photos there because you know why not. Lighting
wasn't great, Eddie's smiling, I look like a guy who
just got yelled at by the substitute teacher. But it's
it's perfect because it captures exactly what that day was. Now.
(27:52):
I enjoyed the game. Washington played very well in the
second half, but just a couple of friends, me and
Eddie reconnecting again in a sport the NFL that's increasingly
about control, rules and optics, and one moment of pure, absolute,
unadulterated absurdity, just absolute absurdity that reminded me why I
(28:19):
love bloviating about the circus. How absurd all of this
is right, that we are brought together to watch these
grown people play football. They're still young people, but they're
playing football. And thousands and thousands of people show up
to these games and are treated like they're douchebaged public
(28:40):
enemy number one by these other people that are They're
just a holes. So yeah, I survived so far as
no photo zone, and I'm going to add that to
my resume on Express Pros. I'm going to add that
to my LinkedIn page. I'll add it to the resume.
Once I was reprimanded for standing on the wrong square
(29:02):
a multi billion dollars football stadium, and I said, well,
I'm to talk about it. I cannot wait to see
what happens when I try to smile in the wrong direction.
Next time I go to a game. That will not
be this weekend, as both the Chargers and the Dolphin.
Chargers and the Rams rather are on the road, Rams
playing the Ravens and the Chargers are in Miami to
(29:25):
play the Dolphins. So no game to go to this
weekend in the NFL. All right, on that note, we
will put the baby to bed. Have a wonderful rest
of your Friday. Don't forget to watch Benny versus the Penny,
which is up right now streaming on the YouTube Benny
(29:46):
Versus Penny YouTube dot com slash at Benny Vspenny. The
numbers are good, keep going up. We're getting more and
more people to watch the show. It's awesome. And at
some point I was told by somebody that keeps track
of this type of stuff, there's this point of demarcation,
there's this fork in the road where you just skyrocket.
We're not there yet, and I'm not saying we're gonna
(30:07):
get there even this season, but from what I have
been told by people that work in the YouTube world,
there's this point where you get enough followers and then
it like the YouTube people's algorithm sees what you're doing there,
and then they start feeding you some people. Because it's
all fake anyway, right, it's mostly fake, like you're real,
like I want you. I'd rather have lower numbers and
(30:29):
have real people that deem the show worthy of watching.
But you actually don't make a lot of money on that. Anyway,
We'll look the other way. Here, have a wonderful, wonderful day,
and as Danny g would say, you should be with
me this weekend. Later, skater Asta Pasta got to murder
(30:52):
I Gotta go
Host
Ben Maller
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