August 15, 2026 • 36 mins
Benny cracks open the Fifth Hour vault for a never-before-told tale from a sultry afternoon at Shea Stadium, when an Egg McMuffin somehow owned Mr. Met and brought the usual pregame schmoozing to a screeching halt. It’s one of those wonderfully ridiculous “you had to be there” baseball stories, preserved in Benny’s memory for nearly three decades. From there, Ben reacts to the latest gold rush for the Hamburglar, who apparently has upgraded his criminal enterprise and graduated from swiping ordinary burgers. Then it’s off to the hodgepodge, where no useful knowledge is required: honey bees come equipped with their own built-in air conditioning, the Japanese practice the woodland magic of Shinrin-Yoku, and the French once called tomatoes “love apples” because they supposedly put a little extra ooh-la-la in the boudoir. Baseball, burgers, bees, trees, and aphrodisiac tomatoes — another perfectly wackadoodle edition of the Fifth Hour.
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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 sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallor starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me Ben Mahlor,
and a happy Saturday to you. It is the fifteenth
day of August as we are recording this in real
time in the early morning hours here on a Saturday.
You listen, when you listen, it is the two hundred
(00:50):
and twenty seventh day of the year. There are one
hundred and thirty eight days to go. That's it, thirty
third week of the year. Here we are, and on
in this edition of the Fifth Hour podcast, we have
the day the Egg McMuffin owned Mister met and the
Hamburglar's graduation with a gaggle of fun facts by request,
(01:14):
by request, a gaggle of fun facts. But we begin
with this. We flash back in the hot tub time
Machine we set the year to nineteen ninety eight, back
when Furby's and the iMac were popular. Back in the day,
people still used America Online. Social media wasn't really much
(01:35):
of a thing in nineteen ninety eight, and in baseball,
the New York Metropolitans had guys like Mike Piazza, John Olerude,
and Guardo Alfonso and a guy named Butch Husky. Now
they also had, on one very memorable Sunday morning, at
(01:57):
least to me, something that no other team in baseball had.
They had the ability to be absolutely twisted into a
pretzel dominated by an egg McMuffin, now not metaphorically an
actual egg McMuffin. And I can explain this never before
(02:19):
told story that flashed back into my mind this week
because I was there, I lived it, and I've seen
a lot of cool things. I've been very lucky in
my time in the radio business. It remains, though, one
of my very favorite memories from the handful of years
that I was given VIP access hanging around the Los
(02:44):
Angeles Dodgers when I did their pregame and postgame shows
way back in the late nineteen nineties into the year
two thousand. Now, keep in mind, this was a period
when the Dodgers did not win the World Series every year.
They had mostly middling teams. They were a team of
underachievers for the most part, considered to be elite, had
(03:06):
a lot of talent, they just never actually lived up
to those expectations, and they were many times a disappointment. Now,
regardless of that, this moment in time that I want
to share with you came rushing back to me this week.
In fact, it was yesterday on Friday. This pop back
into my head because of the sad news that Butch
(03:28):
Husky is dead. He died suddenly in his hometown, we
are told in Lawton, Oklahoma, reportedly from a blood clot
in his lungs. He was only fifty four, and he
has left our mortal coil. It's hard to believe that
the story that I'm about to tell you happened almost
(03:49):
thirty years ago. It feels like maybe twelve, maybe twelve
years ago, which, as we pointed out time and again
on the Fifth Ar podcast, it's one of those things
that lies to your brain. Your brain starts telling lies.
It's like as you get older. Eventually everything before last
(04:11):
Tuesday happened about ten years ago. I don't know how
old anyone is. I think everyone's kind of somewhat close
to my age, and most people aren't. The date we're
going to talk about is August second, nineteen ninety eight.
I remember the exact date. I remember where I was,
I remember what I was doing. The Doyers Traveling Circus
(04:34):
headed to the Big Apple and we were at Chase
Stadium to play the Mets. It was a one thirty
Sunday afternoon game. It was hot. It was not just hot,
it was humid. It was New York in August. If
you've ever spent any time in New York in August,
just standing outside qualifies as a cardiovascular workout. It's just
(05:00):
insanity in that part of the world in the month
of August. Now, this was particularly juicy. The Dodgers were
playing the Mets in this series, and this was the
third game of four. It was a wrap around weekend series,
a wrap around weekend series. There. The reason it had
(05:21):
a little bit of extra juice is because the Dodgers
and the Mets were playing for the first time since
Mike Piazza had joined New York and only a few
months earlier, Piazza had been the face of the franchise
for the Dodgers, their biggest star and arguably the most
popular player in Southern California. In nineteen ninety eight. Got
(05:44):
to remember, the Lakers weren't very good and there was
no NFL in La. It was pretty barren at that time.
And then came the stunner from down under. The Dodgers
said bye bye to Piazza. They dumped him on the
Florida Marlins. The Marlins apparently looked at Piazza and said, Ah,
(06:08):
this is nice. What else can we get? And a
week later or so they flipped Piazza to the Mets
and he didn't play against the Dodgers that year. And
so in nineteen ninety eight I traveled that was with
the Dodgers. We were in New York, as I said,
there at Piazza's first game against his former team, and
it was a spectacle, the kind of baseball drama orrama,
(06:34):
the theater that you wanted to be around. And on
that Sunday morning, this is way before the game and
again game three of four that that weekend wrap around series,
I was on the field at Shay during batting practice,
schmoozing with my media, free loading buddies. Now, schmoozing is
an important skill. I don't do it often. It involves
(06:58):
standing around in baseball, involves standing around the batting cage
saying things like how about that boy, that's a good swing,
while giving the impression that you're gathering very valuable information,
and then we notice something the Mets couldn't hit again.
(07:18):
We're talking about batting practice, not a game.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Not a game.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Not a game, Alan Irison, We're talking about batting practice.
The entire purpose of batting practice, if you've ever been,
is right there in the name. No buddy is trying
to strike you out, nobody. The pitcher is essentially your accomplice.
His job is to put the baseball in the happy
zone so you can launch it into the seats and
(07:44):
feel good about yourselves and impress a couple of beautiful
women in the crowd who are like whoa.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The marketing campaign around that time was chicks dig the
long ball, and yet the nineteen ninety eight Mets were
flailing so wing and a miss, saw a miss, and
suddenly their batting practice pitcher, I have no idea who
it was, looked like a love child of Nolan Ryan
(08:11):
and Dwight Gooden, possibly Tom Seaver tossed in there, and
it was wild, like some kind of weird baseball science
experiment in a laboratory somewhere with a bunch of beakers
and Dwight Gooden, Nolan, Ryan, Tom sever all into one
as a batting practice pitcher. You've got to be blooding me,
blady killing me. No way. Nobody was having a worse
(08:36):
time than Butch Husky. Husky stepped into the cage and
began putting on a performance that even after all of
these years, I have never forgotten. The man couldn't hit anything.
He looked like he was swinging blindfolded at a pinata
(08:57):
at a child's birthday party after somebody had wietly moved
the pinata to another tree. With with with with with
with with with with with with with At first it
was strange, then it became funny. Then it became mesmerizing.
(09:18):
And my media buddies and I we stopped schmoozing. We
were witnessing history. Well kind of you see enough, you
go to enough baseball game, you watched batting practice. I
remember I was fortunate enough back when Maguire and Sosa
and those guys were doing all kinds of pharmaceuticals, hitting
the ball to the moon, And you go to batting practice.
(09:39):
It was insane. So you're watching a video game, watching
he Man or four, it was next level. You see
enough baseball, Eventually you develop a certain arrogance about what
you've seen. Ah, I've seen a no hitter, I've done that.
I've seen a walk up. I saw a guy hit
two Grand Slams in one inning. Check check, check, check,
great catches. I've seen some terrible errors. I've seen baseball's
(10:01):
bounce off guys junk. It happens. But this, this was
right up there with Fernando to Teasse Senior hitting two
Grand slams in the same inning off the same picture
Chanho Park at Dodger Stadium, a game I also attended.
This was different, the single worst batting practiced in Major
League history. At least that's what it looked like now. Eventually,
(10:25):
butch Husky climbed out of the cage, and I caught
his reaction in my periphial vision. Now it turns out
shockingly enough, butch Husky was not amused. He was hopping mad.
He was ready to chew, not on popcorn, on nails.
Nails the man to chew on some nails. Okay, he
(10:48):
was all in on the nails, and so he was
hopping around and some Mets staffer asked whether everything was okay.
Clearly it was not one of those questions you immediately
regret asking when the person you're asking is visibly on fire.
(11:09):
So no, everything was not okay. And as I remember it,
bush Husky turned towards the longtime Mets pr man Jay
Horowitz and unloaded. Now keep in mind I am paraphrasing
after nearly three decades, but the message was essentially, hey, Jay,
(11:31):
we can't see the ged baseball because of your effing
advertising sign in center field. Can you get somebody in
stadium ops to change the background back? Please? Please? We
all looked forward to the directly out in center heir.
(11:52):
We looked towards the centerfield wall, and there it was.
There was an egg McMuffin. The mystery had been solved.
The Shayse Stadium batter's eye, where if you go to
any big league stadium, it's always usually black behind center
field so the batter can see the baseball. The Shae
(12:12):
Stadium batter's eye was supposed to provide hitters with a
dark background so they could pick up the baseball coming
off the pitcher's hands. However, the Mets, on this day,
during batting practice, had rigged part of the backdrop from
road with a rotating advertising sign that I guess they
(12:32):
had done this between innings. They'd flip it so fans
got a view of an advertisement agains almost thirty years. Well,
somebody apparently forgot a very important detail. If the Mets
are hitting, or any other team is hitting for that matter,
this is not a good idea. So instead of the
normal dark background, there was a bright McDonald's advertisement. It
(12:57):
was in white and yellow, mostly white and yellow, sitting
right behind where the ball came out of the pitcher's hands.
The baseball was disappearing into breakfast. Butch Husky hadn't suddenly
forgotten how to hit The Mets batting practice pitcher had
not become the second coming of Doc Gooden or Nolan
(13:18):
Ryan or Tom sever The egg McMuffin was dealing. The
egg McMuffin was dealing. It had late life on its fastball.
Nasty movement, nasty movement, great command, wonderful command. Couldn't pick
up the release point could not pick up the release point. Now,
if stat cast had existed, and thank god it didn't.
(13:41):
If stat cast had existed, I'm pretty sure the egg
McMuffin would have posted a thirty eight percent wfweight, probably
even better than that. The whiff rate was insane, and
the nineteen ninety eight Mets had finally met their match,
and it came with America and cheese and Canadian bacon
(14:01):
and whatever else. I don't even know. It's on an
egg big muffin. But eventually someone changed the sign back.
The dark background returned, and all of a sudden, major
league hitters miraculously regained the ability to hit batting practice
fastballs over that apple out and outfield in the outfield
at Chase Stadium. But I've never forgotten Butch Husky's reaction,
(14:26):
And that's mostly how I remember Butch Husky. He was
a fascinating baseball character. Husky had real power and was
a more of a batting practice hitter than anything, which
makes the story even more ironic. He did enjoy a
few stretches where he looked like he might become something special.
(14:47):
And we've talked about a prospect being a suspect and
to proven otherwise, and unfortunately, but Husky never became elite. Occasionally,
he'd have a game here or a game there where
he breathed that rarefied air, and he had a few
Mets records obscure Mets records. However, sustainability is the secret
(15:08):
sauce to longevity and continued domination. He didn't have that.
He also occupied a small but significant place Butch Husky
in baseball history because of the digits. He wore number
forty two. Yes, when Major League Baseball said bye bye
to the number forty two, retired that number for Jackie Robinson.
(15:31):
That was in nineteen ninety seven on Jackie Robinson Day,
players had already been wearing number forty two. Those guys
were grandfathered in they were allowed to keep it, and
Butch Husky was one of a handful of players that
got to keep the number forty two. Now it turns
out that Butch became the ultimate Met permitted to wear
(15:52):
Jackie Robinson's number, with Mo Vaughn eventually becoming the last
Mets player to wear number forty two. Now Husky he
spent most of his career with the Mets, and later
on he went to Seattle, Boston, Minnesota, Colorado. He was
on the Dusty Winnemucker Road. And it seemed for a
(16:13):
while like Butcher Husky was always somewhere in the major
leagues until he wasn't. His final big leget bat came
in the year two thousand. He was still only twenty
eight when he was playing, and that was it. You
was about to turn twenty nine, and baseball comes at
you fast. One minute you're standing around Shase Stadium watching
(16:36):
Mike Piazza take batting practice. The next minute, Schase Stadium
doesn't exist, Piazza is in Cooperstown. You're much older than
you care to discuss, and you're learning that Butch Husky
has died at the age of fifty four. That's the
part of the story that's obviously not funny at all. However,
(16:58):
the memory still is to remember Butch Husky with a smile.
He made me smile that day, not really knowing who
the hell I am. I just happened to be an observer.
I was background noise, and I just loved his reaction
and the whole thing. And sometimes an entire major league
batting order can't hit because somebody forgot to turn off
(17:21):
the egg McMuffin. And that's baseball, Susan. That's also why
the weird little moments stay with you longer than so
many supposedly much more important moments. Now, I don't remember
much about the game that afternoon. I think the Mets won.
I remember the humidity. I remember a guy that had
(17:44):
snapped at me with the Angels years earlier was playing
for the Mets. He was at the very end of
his career. At guy named Tony Phillips, who was not
a big fan of mine, and he was at the
end of his career, still hanging on with the Mets,
not playing very well. And I just remember the Mets
swinging and missing near that batting cage I was standing,
and I remember Butch Husky storming out of the cage,
(18:05):
ready to declare war on Chase Stadium's operation department, all
because McDonald's had turned Chase Stadium's battered the batter's eye
out there. And there's some kind of breakfast menu, And
almost thirty years later, it still makes me laugh. It's
sadly now it makes me smile and shake my head
for another reason. And again, rest in peace to Butcher
(18:29):
Husky dying suddenly, for one glorious Sunday afternoon though in
Queen's you and your then teammates for the New York
Mets got dominated by an egg McMuffin. And I was
lucky enough to have a front row seat to witness that.
And all these years later, I still smile from ear
(18:50):
to ear your reaction, butch Husky was unreal. Rest in peace,
but man, that was quite the day. Now. In a
related but unrelated story about the Golden Arches, I was
reading this week some writer for the magazine slash website
(19:10):
called Wired. I think it's just a website now, it's
called Wired, all right. So there's a guy named, a
writer named Rhys Rogers who requested his personal data from
McDonald's under California privacy law, which is a thing in
the People's Republic of California. And this guy received a
(19:32):
mind blowing, staggering five hundred and fifteen page dossier documenting
year and year and year and year and year years
of his activity using waite Ford Kids. That's right, the
McDonald's app loyalty program. So the file went far beyond
(19:56):
just the purchase history. No, no, no, McDonald's uses the
data to adjust the algorithm to predict future behavior, estimating
that the writer named Rogers would visit two point one
times over the next six weeks and spend thirteen dollars
(20:18):
and forty nine cents per order, and when you include
the tax, it was like twenty nine dollars and fifteen
cents or something along those lines. So the question quickly
is what is the moral of the story. What is
the moral of the story about McDonald's commercial surveillance? Which
(20:40):
is what this is? Commercial surveillance. So there is an
old saying that is one of my favorite sayings. If
you're not paying for the product, whatever the product is,
if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
And apparently Ronald McDonald, the legend Ronald McDonald, had been
(21:02):
caught red handed, yellow gloved, and knee deep in the
surveillance business. Who knew? So think about it. If McDonald's
has a five hundred and fifteen page dossier on some
random tech nerd imagine the filing cabinet they've got on
(21:22):
the rest of us. Now. Fortunately I don't have the
McDonald's app. I just never got around to getting it.
And every Man, Woman and happy meal eating child, though,
is apparently being tracked, categorized, and profiled. I don't want
to be profiled all in the noble pursuit of getting
(21:44):
deeper in to your wallet. Now times have certainly changed, Obviously,
times changed. When I was a kid back in MINDR,
we were singing bars from McDonald's Menus song, trying to
remember Big Mac McDLT a quarter pounder with some cheese,
and we do that whole thing. And now now it's
(22:07):
a gold rush for the hamburglar. Yeah, like McDonald's has
really leaned into the character arc of the hamburglar with
an adjustment. Who's He's not stealing hamburgers anymore, the Hamburglar,
he's moved into senior surveillance. He's graduated to stealing metadata. Yeah,
the hamburglar says, I'm on a diet. I don't want
(22:29):
to eat the burgers. I'm going to steal your metadata instead.
And that is the hidden price. If you want those
free fries, if you want that free drink on your birthday,
then you gotta play the game. So you thought you
were getting two hundred bonus points. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the Golden
(22:49):
Arches are building your psychological scouting report, predicting where you'll go,
what you'll order, and whether you'll ever escape. Big brother
is watching you, and apparently so is Big Mac. Stay
away from Big Mac, do it? Stay away? All right? Meanwhile,
(23:11):
it time now for fun facts. That's right, we kind
of fun facts. You'll be the judge whether these are
fun or not. So today is August fifteenth. It is
National Honeybee Awareness Day. Now, I do find it hard
to believe that there are many people in this world
over the age of eight that don't know about honey bees. However,
(23:36):
rather than just focus on the bees knees, why don't
we focus on one of the some of the quirkier
sides of the honey bee? Did you know the honeybee
has not one, not two, not three, not four? How
about five eyes? Two large compound eyes and three smaller
simple eyes on the top of its head. They have
(23:59):
four wings, two pairs that hook together in flight, making
them function as a much larger pair of wings. Even
though they don't have that large pair of wings. They
work together, work smarter, not harder. The honey bee pretty fast,
pretty fast if it drives like a golf cart, although
(24:19):
not as fast as kids on e bikes. And it
drives around flies around fifteen to twenty miles per hour.
That's that's pretty good. And a worker bee may visit
thousands of flowers a day. Those are draconian, draconian working conditions.
We need someone to advocate for the worker be rights.
(24:42):
Somebody needs to advocate for the worker be rights. And
that's it. Now. Honey essentially doesn't spoil. It's one of
the great foods. I've talked about this in the past.
If I were to ever open a store, I would
open a honey shop. I would. I would. It does
not spoil when properly sealed. It's low moisture, and you
look at the way it's made. It's extremely hostile to
(25:07):
the microbes that attack the food. So it's very well
persuved preserved. In fact, archaeolologists back, you know, go back
and find all this old stuff, and they've found ancient
honey from back in the early days of humanity, and
the honey is well preserved, preserved all these years later. Yeah,
(25:29):
And the of course, the worker bees are female. Nearly
every bee you see gathering pollen or nectar is a
female worker. You gotta put the ladies to work. The
male honey bees are called drones. They're primarily biological job.
Their job is mating with a queen for another colony.
(25:50):
So they're essentially just uh, you know, I don't if
I can say that it's a family podcast. I think
you there are kids listening. Let's just say there's a
term for that. You'll learn it later, kids, You'll learn
it later. The queen is not actually the boss of
the colony. The hive operates through a decentralized collective behavior model.
(26:12):
She's primarily the colonies reproductive specialist. So if you want
to reproduce, you go to the queen and that's it.
And honey bees do not talk. They don't have a mouth.
They communicate by dancing the famous waggle dance, telling other
workers the approximate direction the distance of a food source
(26:35):
through the waggle. You gotta do the waggle. Do the
waggle dance. Yes, absolutely. Bees can translate the sun's position
into directions their sisters can follow. It's the sisterhood of bees.
It is. Yeah. Their brains are about half or about
the size of a sesame seed. About the size of
(26:55):
a sesame seed containing roughly one million neurons seems pretty
good for the size of a bee. They have built
in air conditioning. I'd like to get that. We need
to get built in air conditioning. The fan in their wings. Obviously,
the workers fan their wings, and that manipulates the water
(27:16):
evaporation to regulate the hive temperature. So you got to
make sure the queen's happy. You got to make sure
the queen's happy. You just have to. Yeah, Now, honeybees
can sting some creatures repeatedly, right. They typically with humans,
(27:36):
they can only sting once, right, that's it, and they
lodge into the skin and then ultimately kill themselves. It's
a coma case emission. However, they do sting other creatures repeatedly.
One sting in your dead rule mainly results from the
stinger becoming trapped in thick elastic mammal's skin, and so
(27:59):
that that's that. Native Americans were probably referred to honeybees
as white man's flies. Okay, very very nice. Most bees
species do not make honey. They don't. Large communal honey
reserves are a specialty of honeybees and a relatively small
(28:21):
number of the other bee species that are just out there,
just out there futting around doing their thing and that's it.
That's just it's just playing around. That's all we're doing here.
Honey bees do sleep. Researchers have observed sleep postures and
periods of reduced responsiveness, and sleep deprivation can interfere with
(28:43):
their communication. There you go. The oldest known bee fossils
are around one hundred million years old, meaning that the
bee ancestors were buzzing around during the age of the dinosaurs.
Think about that. T Rex is out there and triceratops
and there's bees just like that. It is relaxation day today,
(29:09):
so make sure to relax. It's a Saturday. Your body
has a built in brake pedal. The nervous system is
often called the rest and digest system. It helps slow
the heart rate and shifts the body away from fight
or flight mode. So there is that. Now. I'm not
(29:31):
very good at relaxation. I've read all of the pamphlets
about relaxation, all right, and I'm in the majority They've said.
Over the years, there have been studies done that humans
are not particularly good at doing nothing. That they generally
you and I dislike simply sitting alone with our thoughts,
(29:52):
and many choose to give themselves an unpleasant electric shock
rather than continue doing in this study that they did
back back in the day. Most people prefer to go
out to nature when they want to relax. Music also
helps calming. Music has been associated with reduction and heart
(30:16):
rate and blood pressure and all that, and many studies
over the years. A warm bath chewing gum has actually
been studied for stress. Some experts have found chewing gum
is associated with lowering your stress level. There's a term
in Japan, the Japanese practice of chinrin yoku. I'm probably
(30:42):
butchering that chinrin yoku, meaning forget bathing. It doesn't involve
a bath tub. It essentially deliberately spending quiet, attentive time
immersed in a forest environment. You're going out to the woods.
Say hey, honey, I'm going on. I'm gonna enjoy some
(31:03):
shin rin yoku. Okay, that sounds good. Don't get attacked
by a grizzly bear. And doing nothing has also attracted
some pretty crazy names elsewhere. In Dutch, there's a concept
nixon nik s e n so. I think it's probably
(31:23):
not pronounced Nixon, whatever that is. It roughly refers to
intentionally doing nothing without needing the activity to be productive.
So even humanity finally found a way to put loafing
on a resume. Just come up with these shiny words
and you are good to go. All right. We also
(31:46):
have tomato glory Tomatoes, Glory Day, Tomatoes Glory Day, which
is a apparently a thing. Yeah, I like the ketchup,
not that to tomato. Although my favorite tomato reference is
Manager's Quarter with Earl Weaver and the Great Bill Whitehouse,
(32:10):
and that line from Earl Weaver was outstanding, outstanding. From
Ella Sweet from Norfolk, she wants to know, Earl the
best time to put in a tomato plant, And then
Earl Weaver went on that famous rant and saying she
(32:32):
had to worry about where her next blank is coming
from rather than where her next gd tomato plants coming from.
It was so good, It was so good. Now tomatoes
are fruits, we are told botanically they're berries because they
developed from a flower's ovary and contain seeds. But in
(32:55):
the United States, the country I live in, they are
legally vegetable. That's right. In eighteen ninety three, there was
Believe or not, There was a Supreme Court case in
eighteen ninety three in the relative early days of America
still compared to where we are now. And they determined
(33:17):
that tomatoes classified as a vegetable for purposes of tariff.
You know, they had tariffs back then and people didn't
mind because it wasn't our current president. But that aside,
they were commonly served with dinner rather than dessert, so
that's what they determined. And tomatoes are all American babysa USA.
(33:39):
They originated in America. Wild ancestors grew in western South America.
While you think about the evolution of the Americas and
all that they were there before before tomatoes reached Europe
in the fifteen hundreds. Yeah, and the Europeans, those hearty
(34:02):
souls from Europe once feared tomatoes were poisonous. Yeah, stay
away from the tomato. Stay West stair wes Stair, wes
stair way. Yeah about that. The French once came up
with the term for potatoes or forto for tomatoes. You
say potato, I say tomato for the tomato. The French
(34:26):
came up with a word that means love apples. Yes,
because they acquired a representation of getting you horny, so yeah,
you had to have They were an aphrodisiac a nice afrodisiac,
and you could enjoy that Italians where I think when
I think of the tomato, I think of the Italian right,
(34:47):
the tomato sauce with the red sauce. The It's just
that's what it is. So they had a term which
translated meant the golden apple. Early varieties included introduced to
Italy may have actually been yellow rather than the bright
red they are today. There you go, but wait, there's
(35:09):
more tomatoes. Seeds have gone all the way to space.
I know you're impressed by that, alf you are. You're
nodding your head. And Ferk Dog is trying to come
up with a proper email to the mailbag for tomorrow.
I'm guessing it will be about Edwin Diaz almost blowing
the save last night against the Brewers. However, somehow Milwaukee
(35:29):
could not finish the comeback against the Dodgers, So there
you go. They say to never refrigerate a good ripe
tomato unless you need to preserve it a little bit longer.
Cold temperatures end up being bad for the flavor of
(35:50):
the tomato. There you go. And Rotten Tomatoes, which is
a very popular show business website where they review movies.
That is an old cliche action in the early days
of entertainment, vaudeville and Hollywood. The name references the image
of an unhappy audience member throwing that's right, a rotten
(36:12):
tomato at an absolute terrible performer. Just there you go.
All right on that note, we will get out of here.
Should have the mail bag up and running tomorrow. We'll
let you know who's on the mail bag. We have
not figured that out. I know, I know it's a
disheveled mess. But either way, have a wonderful, wonderful, glorious
(36:35):
Saturday here and we will chat with you tomorrow. Tomorrow
is another day, as Dick and Dayton would say, bye bye,
bye bye
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 sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Mallor starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me Ben Mahlor,
and a happy Saturday to you. It is the fifteenth
day of August as we are recording this in real
time in the early morning hours here on a Saturday.
You listen, when you listen, it is the two hundred
(00:50):
and twenty seventh day of the year. There are one
hundred and thirty eight days to go. That's it, thirty
third week of the year. Here we are, and on
in this edition of the Fifth Hour podcast, we have
the day the Egg McMuffin owned Mister met and the
Hamburglar's graduation with a gaggle of fun facts by request,
(01:14):
by request, a gaggle of fun facts. But we begin
with this. We flash back in the hot tub time
Machine we set the year to nineteen ninety eight, back
when Furby's and the iMac were popular. Back in the day,
people still used America Online. Social media wasn't really much
(01:35):
of a thing in nineteen ninety eight, and in baseball,
the New York Metropolitans had guys like Mike Piazza, John Olerude,
and Guardo Alfonso and a guy named Butch Husky. Now
they also had, on one very memorable Sunday morning, at
(01:57):
least to me, something that no other team in baseball had.
They had the ability to be absolutely twisted into a
pretzel dominated by an egg McMuffin, now not metaphorically an
actual egg McMuffin. And I can explain this never before
(02:19):
told story that flashed back into my mind this week
because I was there, I lived it, and I've seen
a lot of cool things. I've been very lucky in
my time in the radio business. It remains, though, one
of my very favorite memories from the handful of years
that I was given VIP access hanging around the Los
(02:44):
Angeles Dodgers when I did their pregame and postgame shows
way back in the late nineteen nineties into the year
two thousand. Now, keep in mind, this was a period
when the Dodgers did not win the World Series every year.
They had mostly middling teams. They were a team of
underachievers for the most part, considered to be elite, had
(03:06):
a lot of talent, they just never actually lived up
to those expectations, and they were many times a disappointment. Now,
regardless of that, this moment in time that I want
to share with you came rushing back to me this week.
In fact, it was yesterday on Friday. This pop back
into my head because of the sad news that Butch
(03:28):
Husky is dead. He died suddenly in his hometown, we
are told in Lawton, Oklahoma, reportedly from a blood clot
in his lungs. He was only fifty four, and he
has left our mortal coil. It's hard to believe that
the story that I'm about to tell you happened almost
(03:49):
thirty years ago. It feels like maybe twelve, maybe twelve
years ago, which, as we pointed out time and again
on the Fifth Ar podcast, it's one of those things
that lies to your brain. Your brain starts telling lies.
It's like as you get older. Eventually everything before last
(04:11):
Tuesday happened about ten years ago. I don't know how
old anyone is. I think everyone's kind of somewhat close
to my age, and most people aren't. The date we're
going to talk about is August second, nineteen ninety eight.
I remember the exact date. I remember where I was,
I remember what I was doing. The Doyers Traveling Circus
(04:34):
headed to the Big Apple and we were at Chase
Stadium to play the Mets. It was a one thirty
Sunday afternoon game. It was hot. It was not just hot,
it was humid. It was New York in August. If
you've ever spent any time in New York in August,
just standing outside qualifies as a cardiovascular workout. It's just
(05:00):
insanity in that part of the world in the month
of August. Now, this was particularly juicy. The Dodgers were
playing the Mets in this series, and this was the
third game of four. It was a wrap around weekend series,
a wrap around weekend series. There. The reason it had
(05:21):
a little bit of extra juice is because the Dodgers
and the Mets were playing for the first time since
Mike Piazza had joined New York and only a few
months earlier, Piazza had been the face of the franchise
for the Dodgers, their biggest star and arguably the most
popular player in Southern California. In nineteen ninety eight. Got
(05:44):
to remember, the Lakers weren't very good and there was
no NFL in La. It was pretty barren at that time.
And then came the stunner from down under. The Dodgers
said bye bye to Piazza. They dumped him on the
Florida Marlins. The Marlins apparently looked at Piazza and said, Ah,
(06:08):
this is nice. What else can we get? And a
week later or so they flipped Piazza to the Mets
and he didn't play against the Dodgers that year. And
so in nineteen ninety eight I traveled that was with
the Dodgers. We were in New York, as I said,
there at Piazza's first game against his former team, and
it was a spectacle, the kind of baseball drama orrama,
(06:34):
the theater that you wanted to be around. And on
that Sunday morning, this is way before the game and
again game three of four that that weekend wrap around series,
I was on the field at Shay during batting practice,
schmoozing with my media, free loading buddies. Now, schmoozing is
an important skill. I don't do it often. It involves
(06:58):
standing around in baseball, involves standing around the batting cage
saying things like how about that boy, that's a good swing,
while giving the impression that you're gathering very valuable information,
and then we notice something the Mets couldn't hit again.
(07:18):
We're talking about batting practice, not a game.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Not a game.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Not a game, Alan Irison, We're talking about batting practice.
The entire purpose of batting practice, if you've ever been,
is right there in the name. No buddy is trying
to strike you out, nobody. The pitcher is essentially your accomplice.
His job is to put the baseball in the happy
zone so you can launch it into the seats and
(07:44):
feel good about yourselves and impress a couple of beautiful
women in the crowd who are like whoa.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The marketing campaign around that time was chicks dig the
long ball, and yet the nineteen ninety eight Mets were
flailing so wing and a miss, saw a miss, and
suddenly their batting practice pitcher, I have no idea who
it was, looked like a love child of Nolan Ryan
(08:11):
and Dwight Gooden, possibly Tom Seaver tossed in there, and
it was wild, like some kind of weird baseball science
experiment in a laboratory somewhere with a bunch of beakers
and Dwight Gooden, Nolan, Ryan, Tom sever all into one
as a batting practice pitcher. You've got to be blooding me,
blady killing me. No way. Nobody was having a worse
(08:36):
time than Butch Husky. Husky stepped into the cage and
began putting on a performance that even after all of
these years, I have never forgotten. The man couldn't hit anything.
He looked like he was swinging blindfolded at a pinata
(08:57):
at a child's birthday party after somebody had wietly moved
the pinata to another tree. With with with with with
with with with with with with with At first it
was strange, then it became funny. Then it became mesmerizing.
(09:18):
And my media buddies and I we stopped schmoozing. We
were witnessing history. Well kind of you see enough, you
go to enough baseball game, you watched batting practice. I
remember I was fortunate enough back when Maguire and Sosa
and those guys were doing all kinds of pharmaceuticals, hitting
the ball to the moon, And you go to batting practice.
(09:39):
It was insane. So you're watching a video game, watching
he Man or four, it was next level. You see
enough baseball, Eventually you develop a certain arrogance about what
you've seen. Ah, I've seen a no hitter, I've done that.
I've seen a walk up. I saw a guy hit
two Grand Slams in one inning. Check check, check, check,
great catches. I've seen some terrible errors. I've seen baseball's
(10:01):
bounce off guys junk. It happens. But this, this was
right up there with Fernando to Teasse Senior hitting two
Grand slams in the same inning off the same picture
Chanho Park at Dodger Stadium, a game I also attended.
This was different, the single worst batting practiced in Major
League history. At least that's what it looked like now. Eventually,
(10:25):
butch Husky climbed out of the cage, and I caught
his reaction in my periphial vision. Now it turns out
shockingly enough, butch Husky was not amused. He was hopping mad.
He was ready to chew, not on popcorn, on nails.
Nails the man to chew on some nails. Okay, he
(10:48):
was all in on the nails, and so he was
hopping around and some Mets staffer asked whether everything was okay.
Clearly it was not one of those questions you immediately
regret asking when the person you're asking is visibly on fire.
(11:09):
So no, everything was not okay. And as I remember it,
bush Husky turned towards the longtime Mets pr man Jay
Horowitz and unloaded. Now keep in mind I am paraphrasing
after nearly three decades, but the message was essentially, hey, Jay,
(11:31):
we can't see the ged baseball because of your effing
advertising sign in center field. Can you get somebody in
stadium ops to change the background back? Please? Please? We
all looked forward to the directly out in center heir.
(11:52):
We looked towards the centerfield wall, and there it was.
There was an egg McMuffin. The mystery had been solved.
The Shayse Stadium batter's eye, where if you go to
any big league stadium, it's always usually black behind center
field so the batter can see the baseball. The Shae
(12:12):
Stadium batter's eye was supposed to provide hitters with a
dark background so they could pick up the baseball coming
off the pitcher's hands. However, the Mets, on this day,
during batting practice, had rigged part of the backdrop from
road with a rotating advertising sign that I guess they
(12:32):
had done this between innings. They'd flip it so fans
got a view of an advertisement agains almost thirty years. Well,
somebody apparently forgot a very important detail. If the Mets
are hitting, or any other team is hitting for that matter,
this is not a good idea. So instead of the
normal dark background, there was a bright McDonald's advertisement. It
(12:57):
was in white and yellow, mostly white and yellow, sitting
right behind where the ball came out of the pitcher's hands.
The baseball was disappearing into breakfast. Butch Husky hadn't suddenly
forgotten how to hit The Mets batting practice pitcher had
not become the second coming of Doc Gooden or Nolan
(13:18):
Ryan or Tom sever The egg McMuffin was dealing. The
egg McMuffin was dealing. It had late life on its fastball.
Nasty movement, nasty movement, great command, wonderful command. Couldn't pick
up the release point could not pick up the release point. Now,
if stat cast had existed, and thank god it didn't.
(13:41):
If stat cast had existed, I'm pretty sure the egg
McMuffin would have posted a thirty eight percent wfweight, probably
even better than that. The whiff rate was insane, and
the nineteen ninety eight Mets had finally met their match,
and it came with America and cheese and Canadian bacon
(14:01):
and whatever else. I don't even know. It's on an
egg big muffin. But eventually someone changed the sign back.
The dark background returned, and all of a sudden, major
league hitters miraculously regained the ability to hit batting practice
fastballs over that apple out and outfield in the outfield
at Chase Stadium. But I've never forgotten Butch Husky's reaction,
(14:26):
And that's mostly how I remember Butch Husky. He was
a fascinating baseball character. Husky had real power and was
a more of a batting practice hitter than anything, which
makes the story even more ironic. He did enjoy a
few stretches where he looked like he might become something special.
(14:47):
And we've talked about a prospect being a suspect and
to proven otherwise, and unfortunately, but Husky never became elite. Occasionally,
he'd have a game here or a game there where
he breathed that rarefied air, and he had a few
Mets records obscure Mets records. However, sustainability is the secret
(15:08):
sauce to longevity and continued domination. He didn't have that.
He also occupied a small but significant place Butch Husky
in baseball history because of the digits. He wore number
forty two. Yes, when Major League Baseball said bye bye
to the number forty two, retired that number for Jackie Robinson.
(15:31):
That was in nineteen ninety seven on Jackie Robinson Day,
players had already been wearing number forty two. Those guys
were grandfathered in they were allowed to keep it, and
Butch Husky was one of a handful of players that
got to keep the number forty two. Now it turns
out that Butch became the ultimate Met permitted to wear
(15:52):
Jackie Robinson's number, with Mo Vaughn eventually becoming the last
Mets player to wear number forty two. Now Husky he
spent most of his career with the Mets, and later
on he went to Seattle, Boston, Minnesota, Colorado. He was
on the Dusty Winnemucker Road. And it seemed for a
(16:13):
while like Butcher Husky was always somewhere in the major
leagues until he wasn't. His final big leget bat came
in the year two thousand. He was still only twenty
eight when he was playing, and that was it. You
was about to turn twenty nine, and baseball comes at
you fast. One minute you're standing around Shase Stadium watching
(16:36):
Mike Piazza take batting practice. The next minute, Schase Stadium
doesn't exist, Piazza is in Cooperstown. You're much older than
you care to discuss, and you're learning that Butch Husky
has died at the age of fifty four. That's the
part of the story that's obviously not funny at all. However,
(16:58):
the memory still is to remember Butch Husky with a smile.
He made me smile that day, not really knowing who
the hell I am. I just happened to be an observer.
I was background noise, and I just loved his reaction
and the whole thing. And sometimes an entire major league
batting order can't hit because somebody forgot to turn off
(17:21):
the egg McMuffin. And that's baseball, Susan. That's also why
the weird little moments stay with you longer than so
many supposedly much more important moments. Now, I don't remember
much about the game that afternoon. I think the Mets won.
I remember the humidity. I remember a guy that had
(17:44):
snapped at me with the Angels years earlier was playing
for the Mets. He was at the very end of
his career. At guy named Tony Phillips, who was not
a big fan of mine, and he was at the
end of his career, still hanging on with the Mets,
not playing very well. And I just remember the Mets
swinging and missing near that batting cage I was standing,
and I remember Butch Husky storming out of the cage,
(18:05):
ready to declare war on Chase Stadium's operation department, all
because McDonald's had turned Chase Stadium's battered the batter's eye
out there. And there's some kind of breakfast menu, And
almost thirty years later, it still makes me laugh. It's
sadly now it makes me smile and shake my head
for another reason. And again, rest in peace to Butcher
(18:29):
Husky dying suddenly, for one glorious Sunday afternoon though in
Queen's you and your then teammates for the New York
Mets got dominated by an egg McMuffin. And I was
lucky enough to have a front row seat to witness that.
And all these years later, I still smile from ear
(18:50):
to ear your reaction, butch Husky was unreal. Rest in peace,
but man, that was quite the day. Now. In a
related but unrelated story about the Golden Arches, I was
reading this week some writer for the magazine slash website
(19:10):
called Wired. I think it's just a website now, it's
called Wired, all right. So there's a guy named, a
writer named Rhys Rogers who requested his personal data from
McDonald's under California privacy law, which is a thing in
the People's Republic of California. And this guy received a
(19:32):
mind blowing, staggering five hundred and fifteen page dossier documenting
year and year and year and year and year years
of his activity using waite Ford Kids. That's right, the
McDonald's app loyalty program. So the file went far beyond
(19:56):
just the purchase history. No, no, no, McDonald's uses the
data to adjust the algorithm to predict future behavior, estimating
that the writer named Rogers would visit two point one
times over the next six weeks and spend thirteen dollars
(20:18):
and forty nine cents per order, and when you include
the tax, it was like twenty nine dollars and fifteen
cents or something along those lines. So the question quickly
is what is the moral of the story. What is
the moral of the story about McDonald's commercial surveillance? Which
(20:40):
is what this is? Commercial surveillance. So there is an
old saying that is one of my favorite sayings. If
you're not paying for the product, whatever the product is,
if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
And apparently Ronald McDonald, the legend Ronald McDonald, had been
(21:02):
caught red handed, yellow gloved, and knee deep in the
surveillance business. Who knew? So think about it. If McDonald's
has a five hundred and fifteen page dossier on some
random tech nerd imagine the filing cabinet they've got on
(21:22):
the rest of us. Now. Fortunately I don't have the
McDonald's app. I just never got around to getting it.
And every Man, Woman and happy meal eating child, though,
is apparently being tracked, categorized, and profiled. I don't want
to be profiled all in the noble pursuit of getting
(21:44):
deeper in to your wallet. Now times have certainly changed, Obviously,
times changed. When I was a kid back in MINDR,
we were singing bars from McDonald's Menus song, trying to
remember Big Mac McDLT a quarter pounder with some cheese,
and we do that whole thing. And now now it's
(22:07):
a gold rush for the hamburglar. Yeah, like McDonald's has
really leaned into the character arc of the hamburglar with
an adjustment. Who's He's not stealing hamburgers anymore, the Hamburglar,
he's moved into senior surveillance. He's graduated to stealing metadata. Yeah,
the hamburglar says, I'm on a diet. I don't want
(22:29):
to eat the burgers. I'm going to steal your metadata instead.
And that is the hidden price. If you want those
free fries, if you want that free drink on your birthday,
then you gotta play the game. So you thought you
were getting two hundred bonus points. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the Golden
(22:49):
Arches are building your psychological scouting report, predicting where you'll go,
what you'll order, and whether you'll ever escape. Big brother
is watching you, and apparently so is Big Mac. Stay
away from Big Mac, do it? Stay away? All right? Meanwhile,
(23:11):
it time now for fun facts. That's right, we kind
of fun facts. You'll be the judge whether these are
fun or not. So today is August fifteenth. It is
National Honeybee Awareness Day. Now, I do find it hard
to believe that there are many people in this world
over the age of eight that don't know about honey bees. However,
(23:36):
rather than just focus on the bees knees, why don't
we focus on one of the some of the quirkier
sides of the honey bee? Did you know the honeybee
has not one, not two, not three, not four? How
about five eyes? Two large compound eyes and three smaller
simple eyes on the top of its head. They have
(23:59):
four wings, two pairs that hook together in flight, making
them function as a much larger pair of wings. Even
though they don't have that large pair of wings. They
work together, work smarter, not harder. The honey bee pretty fast,
pretty fast if it drives like a golf cart, although
(24:19):
not as fast as kids on e bikes. And it
drives around flies around fifteen to twenty miles per hour.
That's that's pretty good. And a worker bee may visit
thousands of flowers a day. Those are draconian, draconian working conditions.
We need someone to advocate for the worker be rights.
(24:42):
Somebody needs to advocate for the worker be rights. And
that's it. Now. Honey essentially doesn't spoil. It's one of
the great foods. I've talked about this in the past.
If I were to ever open a store, I would
open a honey shop. I would. I would. It does
not spoil when properly sealed. It's low moisture, and you
look at the way it's made. It's extremely hostile to
(25:07):
the microbes that attack the food. So it's very well
persuved preserved. In fact, archaeolologists back, you know, go back
and find all this old stuff, and they've found ancient
honey from back in the early days of humanity, and
the honey is well preserved, preserved all these years later. Yeah,
(25:29):
And the of course, the worker bees are female. Nearly
every bee you see gathering pollen or nectar is a
female worker. You gotta put the ladies to work. The
male honey bees are called drones. They're primarily biological job.
Their job is mating with a queen for another colony.
(25:50):
So they're essentially just uh, you know, I don't if
I can say that it's a family podcast. I think
you there are kids listening. Let's just say there's a
term for that. You'll learn it later, kids, You'll learn
it later. The queen is not actually the boss of
the colony. The hive operates through a decentralized collective behavior model.
(26:12):
She's primarily the colonies reproductive specialist. So if you want
to reproduce, you go to the queen and that's it.
And honey bees do not talk. They don't have a mouth.
They communicate by dancing the famous waggle dance, telling other
workers the approximate direction the distance of a food source
(26:35):
through the waggle. You gotta do the waggle. Do the
waggle dance. Yes, absolutely. Bees can translate the sun's position
into directions their sisters can follow. It's the sisterhood of bees.
It is. Yeah. Their brains are about half or about
the size of a sesame seed. About the size of
(26:55):
a sesame seed containing roughly one million neurons seems pretty
good for the size of a bee. They have built
in air conditioning. I'd like to get that. We need
to get built in air conditioning. The fan in their wings. Obviously,
the workers fan their wings, and that manipulates the water
(27:16):
evaporation to regulate the hive temperature. So you got to
make sure the queen's happy. You got to make sure
the queen's happy. You just have to. Yeah, Now, honeybees
can sting some creatures repeatedly, right. They typically with humans,
(27:36):
they can only sting once, right, that's it, and they
lodge into the skin and then ultimately kill themselves. It's
a coma case emission. However, they do sting other creatures repeatedly.
One sting in your dead rule mainly results from the
stinger becoming trapped in thick elastic mammal's skin, and so
(27:59):
that that's that. Native Americans were probably referred to honeybees
as white man's flies. Okay, very very nice. Most bees
species do not make honey. They don't. Large communal honey
reserves are a specialty of honeybees and a relatively small
(28:21):
number of the other bee species that are just out there,
just out there futting around doing their thing and that's it.
That's just it's just playing around. That's all we're doing here.
Honey bees do sleep. Researchers have observed sleep postures and
periods of reduced responsiveness, and sleep deprivation can interfere with
(28:43):
their communication. There you go. The oldest known bee fossils
are around one hundred million years old, meaning that the
bee ancestors were buzzing around during the age of the dinosaurs.
Think about that. T Rex is out there and triceratops
and there's bees just like that. It is relaxation day today,
(29:09):
so make sure to relax. It's a Saturday. Your body
has a built in brake pedal. The nervous system is
often called the rest and digest system. It helps slow
the heart rate and shifts the body away from fight
or flight mode. So there is that. Now. I'm not
(29:31):
very good at relaxation. I've read all of the pamphlets
about relaxation, all right, and I'm in the majority They've said.
Over the years, there have been studies done that humans
are not particularly good at doing nothing. That they generally
you and I dislike simply sitting alone with our thoughts,
(29:52):
and many choose to give themselves an unpleasant electric shock
rather than continue doing in this study that they did
back back in the day. Most people prefer to go
out to nature when they want to relax. Music also
helps calming. Music has been associated with reduction and heart
(30:16):
rate and blood pressure and all that, and many studies
over the years. A warm bath chewing gum has actually
been studied for stress. Some experts have found chewing gum
is associated with lowering your stress level. There's a term
in Japan, the Japanese practice of chinrin yoku. I'm probably
(30:42):
butchering that chinrin yoku, meaning forget bathing. It doesn't involve
a bath tub. It essentially deliberately spending quiet, attentive time
immersed in a forest environment. You're going out to the woods.
Say hey, honey, I'm going on. I'm gonna enjoy some
(31:03):
shin rin yoku. Okay, that sounds good. Don't get attacked
by a grizzly bear. And doing nothing has also attracted
some pretty crazy names elsewhere. In Dutch, there's a concept
nixon nik s e n so. I think it's probably
(31:23):
not pronounced Nixon, whatever that is. It roughly refers to
intentionally doing nothing without needing the activity to be productive.
So even humanity finally found a way to put loafing
on a resume. Just come up with these shiny words
and you are good to go. All right. We also
(31:46):
have tomato glory Tomatoes, Glory Day, Tomatoes Glory Day, which
is a apparently a thing. Yeah, I like the ketchup,
not that to tomato. Although my favorite tomato reference is
Manager's Quarter with Earl Weaver and the Great Bill Whitehouse,
(32:10):
and that line from Earl Weaver was outstanding, outstanding. From
Ella Sweet from Norfolk, she wants to know, Earl the
best time to put in a tomato plant, And then
Earl Weaver went on that famous rant and saying she
(32:32):
had to worry about where her next blank is coming
from rather than where her next gd tomato plants coming from.
It was so good, It was so good. Now tomatoes
are fruits, we are told botanically they're berries because they
developed from a flower's ovary and contain seeds. But in
(32:55):
the United States, the country I live in, they are
legally vegetable. That's right. In eighteen ninety three, there was
Believe or not, There was a Supreme Court case in
eighteen ninety three in the relative early days of America
still compared to where we are now. And they determined
(33:17):
that tomatoes classified as a vegetable for purposes of tariff.
You know, they had tariffs back then and people didn't
mind because it wasn't our current president. But that aside,
they were commonly served with dinner rather than dessert, so
that's what they determined. And tomatoes are all American babysa USA.
(33:39):
They originated in America. Wild ancestors grew in western South America.
While you think about the evolution of the Americas and
all that they were there before before tomatoes reached Europe
in the fifteen hundreds. Yeah, and the Europeans, those hearty
(34:02):
souls from Europe once feared tomatoes were poisonous. Yeah, stay
away from the tomato. Stay West stair wes Stair, wes
stair way. Yeah about that. The French once came up
with the term for potatoes or forto for tomatoes. You
say potato, I say tomato for the tomato. The French
(34:26):
came up with a word that means love apples. Yes,
because they acquired a representation of getting you horny, so yeah,
you had to have They were an aphrodisiac a nice afrodisiac,
and you could enjoy that Italians where I think when
I think of the tomato, I think of the Italian right,
(34:47):
the tomato sauce with the red sauce. The It's just
that's what it is. So they had a term which
translated meant the golden apple. Early varieties included introduced to
Italy may have actually been yellow rather than the bright
red they are today. There you go, but wait, there's
(35:09):
more tomatoes. Seeds have gone all the way to space.
I know you're impressed by that, alf you are. You're
nodding your head. And Ferk Dog is trying to come
up with a proper email to the mailbag for tomorrow.
I'm guessing it will be about Edwin Diaz almost blowing
the save last night against the Brewers. However, somehow Milwaukee
(35:29):
could not finish the comeback against the Dodgers, So there
you go. They say to never refrigerate a good ripe
tomato unless you need to preserve it a little bit longer.
Cold temperatures end up being bad for the flavor of
(35:50):
the tomato. There you go. And Rotten Tomatoes, which is
a very popular show business website where they review movies.
That is an old cliche action in the early days
of entertainment, vaudeville and Hollywood. The name references the image
of an unhappy audience member throwing that's right, a rotten
(36:12):
tomato at an absolute terrible performer. Just there you go.
All right on that note, we will get out of here.
Should have the mail bag up and running tomorrow. We'll
let you know who's on the mail bag. We have
not figured that out. I know, I know it's a
disheveled mess. But either way, have a wonderful, wonderful, glorious
(36:35):
Saturday here and we will chat with you tomorrow. Tomorrow
is another day, as Dick and Dayton would say, bye bye,
bye bye
Host
Ben Maller
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