041624 200 What's on Mike's Mind

Jeff nailed the Wings pick in the WNBA Draft last night! Former Rangers manager Whitey Herzog has passed away!  

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Let's begin the show by starting it. Look at us, Hey, look
at us, Look at us.Who would have thought not me? Two

(00:43):
oh four is our time, fourminutes past two pm Central daylight time.
According to the Tower of the Mercantile. Your tuner is set to ninety seven

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to one the freak. This isthe speakeasy, warmest greetings to one and
all, no matter where you maybe, no matter how you may be
receiving this radio transmission. It isTuesday, the sixteenth of April, and

(01:32):
we are here prepared to edify youin that way that we do for the
next four hours. I would beMike Reiner joining us this afternoon. Jeff
Cavanaugh, I am here. JulianneDobbs, I am also here. I'm
over there at the helm Shoopy present, Hi Joopy. All right, there

(02:00):
you go. We are locked in, loaded, We are aerodynamic and ready
to roll and ready to do thisthing that we do. And we are
glad you were with us this afternoonbecause we're gonna talk a little sports and
have a little fun while we're atit. You know. Yeah, you

(02:20):
guys take in that WNBA draft lastnight or what? Oh man, see
I nailed the uh boy, Inailed the wings. Boy, you did
nailed it? What did it?I sure did nailed it. We got
us at JC. I've been realdialed in, real dialed in. Who
was it? Her name was?Is J. C. Sheldon Young Sheldon,

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Ohio State of course? Mike,wonderful player. I'm sure we got
it with the fifth pick w NBADraft last night the much time. I
didn't watch it at all. Didhe really nail it? I did get
the right name, though. Whyare you so into the NFL draft but
the w NBA draft? You can't, man, because the there so what
people are afraid? You're of thoseguys, aren't you? Is that the

(03:06):
w one of those guys a woman'ssport? Yeah, you got a problem
with that? Nope. I thinkthat they should play their best. I
just like football. Buh all right, I did notice, now you know
what this is not what I noticedit was. This is just to tell
people who would be into this sortof thing, which is not me.

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Lot a good looking lady. Isn'tthat WNBA draft? I know a lot
of hot I agree they're cute,Just to those of you that that's what
you care about in your women's sports. Yeah, there was a lot of
hot at the WNBA draft. Soone of the numbers, the number two,
go was real hot was her name? She was the tall chick wearing
black and white. Yeah, yeah, she looked good. Yeah, Mike,

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we might need to go to somegames. Okay, I'm down with
it. Carpick was a pretty ladytoo. I went to the Firstallas Diamonds
game ever. Nice. What's thatmean? What's a Dallas diamond that was
the previous women's basketball team here?Okay, that's not the Cowboys when Emmett

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said that he was the diamond andthey were the poopoo or something. No,
it has nothing to do with diamondsand poop. Okay, totally different,
totally different thing. We had somediamonds along with the diamonds got mixed
in with poop poop, but thepoop poore long. It just all looked
like poop poo. That's a problem. It's definitely a problem. That's a
wonderful quote. Do you want toget some Wings season tickets with me?

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Or what? Um we go ahid wenna get some Wings season tickets with
Jeff or what? I don't knowif I can make the economics of it
work right now. Oh, butyou can go sit like on the floor
at MAVs and Stars, but youcan't buy some Wings season tickets. Mike,
I don't think he's buying those tickets. You just take a peek.

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I know, groopy, but it'sjust part of my own human I'm a.
I'm saying he's getting the tickets fromdon't have Wings tickets? Why not,
groovy because they're sexist? Why wouldthey not have Wings tickets? Everybody
needs to check themselves here, asWings are the hot ticket in town.
Can I ask you guys a question? Shoot? Where they play? They

(05:19):
play at Chip Moody Colosseum. Don'tknow they don't they play? They play
U T Arlington. I'm just asking. I don't appreciate that. Mike is
the only one who knew. Ithought it was chip Moody Coliseum first.
I got it right. He gotit wrong. They played at the College
Park Center, of course at UT A. Yeah, but I get

(05:40):
credit for it because that's my almamater's. Yeah, he was that counts
for something. Yeah, he wascheering for that the whole way, trying
to get that thing going, that'sright, trying to get them out there
I was on the phone with guysevery day, all the way up to
the school president. Yeah, playing, Look man, what's his name?
Ian? Paying any attention to this? Get the wings out here? What

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was the name of the guy youcalled? Oh? Hell on them?
Let me talk to the president,like, okay, yes, service to
riner. I don't know his name, but that's who I need. Yeah,
let's see. Yeah, oh wow, tickets from one hundred and two
dollars. May fifteenth, Chicago Skyat Dallas Wings. Oh, now you're

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complaining that they cost to one hundredand forty five, but then there's a
big old drop off. June fifth, you could see the Las Vegas aces
at the Wings from forty two dollars. What you mean the season's about to
start here? Yeah? And May? Okay, why didn't you know that?
Dude? O? Mike, Ohno, everybody knows you're watching the
Rangers lose. Everybody knows it's toomany fourteen. Yeah, you think the

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Rangers are going to lose today?They could. I mean, it's a
it's bullpen versus bullpen in a twotwo game, So I'll take the another
team without knowing who any of theirguys are. You have, but rings
in the game. Now, yeah, that might go okay for a while
to off of that. Jeez,hey, we're in first place. Negative,
we're first. Did you guys knowthat? Yeah? I did know

(07:09):
that. We're a playoff team rightnow. Yeah, it's all cool.
What's the problem. I got noproblem, There is no problem. Everything's
great. I got a mountain.Well, here comes a Mike Maddocks trip
to the mound. Touch a shoulder, Touch a shoulder. But he'll get
out there. He'll walk out there. He'll stand across from him, hand
will go into a chin like thatbecause he don't want anybody to readlive.

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Now there's the shoulder tap, allright. He'll talk to him a little
bit more and when it's finished,he'll tap him twice on the chest and
walk off. When you met MikeMaddicks and he gave you the mound talk,
what did he say to you?He was critiquing my imitation of him.
Okay, because we were at acharity event one time and Mike Maddox

(07:53):
did talk to Mike Rinder, Yeshe did. He gave me the old
mound visit. He said, listenhere, dumb ass magmatics. Though,
what do you call the UTA presidentagain. Get that thing moving for crying
out loud. I like Boach,Oh man, I like this birthday today.

(08:13):
What it's Boache's birthday. He's sixtynine. He shares a birthday with
my buddy Mitch. Do you thinkhe knows? Probably not. Do you
think Mitch knows? He does nowor he will when he listens to the
podcast tonight. Sometimes he listens afterthe show. We don't hate him.
Yeah, that's fine, don't worryabout it. Big day for Boach and

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Mitch. Yeah, it is bigday. Big day. What's a day
put on her him? I haveto say, Oh my gosh, they

(08:58):
go, I can sing. My'smind is fueled by Celsia's Essential Energy drinks.
Try the whole song by b Enme Very. It's pretty good,
real much. Okay, I justwant to go give that little goat some

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water. It sounds like it's strugglingflank flink? Do you do an insane

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song that has just gotten more?Look, I didn't have anything to talk
about, so I'm gonna be dumb, all right? Oh no, okay,
all right, repe Yeah, ifyou don't have anything to talk about,
just be dumb. I like it. I like it a lot.
What you're not, Mike, Well, we're going to go back into the

(10:11):
deep annals of Rangers baseball for this, what the deep anals of Rangey baseball?
All right? For this? Okay? Because there's a notable death in
long ago Ranger Land. He's alsoif you're doing the one I think you're
doing, he's also in the longago Cardinal Land. I was born there,

(10:35):
Yes he was, and we are. Whitey Herzog has passed on to
the next plane we find out today. Whitey Herzog was the second manager in
Rangers history. After they moved thething here from Washington, d C.

(11:00):
Ted Williams came down here to managethat he didn't want to, but as
a as a favorite to Bob Short, the Rangers' owner, who was just
just awful, just an awful guy, as a favorite to him. He
did it because the Rangers didn't haveany good players anybody anybody would want to

(11:26):
come see, except for maybe FrankHoward, who used to hit home runs
like crazy but had kind of hadit by the time they got down here,
and he told him. He toldTed Williams, look, man,
you got to come with me justfor a year. After the year's over.
Then if you want to quit,you can quit, You can do
whatever then, but I just needyou for a year. I need your
name. So Ted Williams came downhere, and every night a crowd of

(11:52):
about five or six thousand would showup to watch Ted Williams manage. Hell
yeah, not to watch the Rangersplay. They not to watch Ted No,
because the Rangers didn't have any goodplayers and they were terrible. And
so it was that on the lastday of the season, once the game

(12:13):
was over, the way I alwaysheard it came down was like this,
Ted Williams took off his jersey,left it on the bench, walked over
to where there was the portal toget from Dugout to clubhouse the tunnel.
There you would find Ted Williams's pants. A few steps later. There was

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his cap, a few steps later, his undershirt, a few steps later
his shoes. He must have beennaked by the time he got in there,
but nobody knows, because by thetime anybody else got in there,
he was gone. A man gotin his car butt naked, and he
got out of here, and henever looked back, not once he was

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driving around naked. Anything might havebeen Have you ever done that in your
car? Ever? No, Ican't say I have never, never,
Jules, absolutely not. He's aall right, we know you have what
do you do with the balls?I didn't say that a drop, all

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right, I want to hear thecircumstances of you driving in your car naked.
But later, yeah, later,I gotta I gotta get to Whitey
hers No Rangers manager. Yes,so they they went on the managerial search.
And at that time Whitey Herzog hadbeen a coach, maybe a minor

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league manager, but he was viewedas a guy that anybody looking for a
manager would want to talk to,because he was viewed as a really solid
baseball mind and a good guy.And so the Rangers talked to him,
and sure enough he got hired here. But apparently, and tell me where

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this starts to sound familiar, Beinghired as Ranger manager was contingent upon what
kind of results you got, andthe results of nineteen seventy three were not
real good. Oh man. Theywere starting to work in a few young
players and they didn't have much tobegin with, so it was exactly the

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kind of year that you would haveexpected them to have. Regardless of who
was managing. But late in theseason we learned that that that they were

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going to fire his ass because theywere winning enough f in games they were
going to do that. They're goingto hire Billy Martin's ass. That's who
it was. Billy Martin had becomeavailable, and Bob Schwartz said to somebody,
I'd fire my grandmother to hire BillyMartin. Wow. And he went

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out and did it, and justlike that, White he hears Og,
this promising manager with a bright futurein front of him, was out of
a gig once again. But itworked out really really well for him because
apparently a lot of other teams hadtheir eyes on him. And he went

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to Kansas City about the time thatthe Royals were starting to get good,
and his big pitch to them was, look, I can put together a
team that can play in this stadium, because at that time the Royals stadium,
the Royal Stadium was all AstroTurf,and what you needed was guys who
could hit gaps and run. Andthat's kind of team he put together and

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the Royals won the American League Westfor several years after that. Now,
once the playoffs started, they wererunning up against the Yankee teams of Thurman
Munson and Ron Guidry and Greg Nettlesand Goose Gossage and Reggie Jackson when he
got there and all those guys,and they could never beat them, nobody

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could. But that made Whitey Herzog'sname as a manager. And then later
on he went to the Cardinals andhe led them to three pennants over there
in the eighties and a World Seriestitle, all the time playing the game
the way he wanted to do ithere and did do it in Kansas City.

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What was the name of the wayhe played the game like whitey ball.
They called it whitey ball. WhiteHe played whitey ball pretty amazing.
I mean it worked out. Theywon a World here. He's without a
single good hitter on the team,basically, Yeah, they did it with
pitching and being able to run basesand hit the gaps and good defense.

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Who could ever stop Lonnie Smith,Ozzie Smith and Willie McGhee. Nobody,
Not many, not many. Allthose guys could hit doubles and triples and
run. They would get on base, and they were really really good playing
whitey ball. I want to talkto Willie McGee or Ozzie Smith about this.

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He was also on the business endof the Don Denkinger that what all
the blown call one of the mostfamous blown calls in baseball history against Royal
George Jordan let off and grounded anO two pitch. The car Cardinals were

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up three games to two. Thisis in the eighty two World Series against
the Royals, and in Game sixthey led one to nothing going into the
bottom of the ninth, they broughtin Todd White. He brought in Todd
Warrel to finish the job. Righthe did, because Todd Warrel was a
stud. George Ordo let off andgrounded an O two pitch between the mound

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and first base. It was fielded. They made the toss to first base
and somehow, some way, DonDenkinger called him safe. Idiot replays from
every angle you could possibly imagine showedthat he was clearly out, but there

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was no replay back then, soump says you're safe. You were safe
no matter what. This is oneof the most famous blown calls, not
only in baseball history, but inthe history of all sports. Did you
know, Mike that because I wasborn in Saint Louis and my mom's family
were Cardinal fans. I had botha videotape and an audio tape of that

(19:08):
call, and one of them Irecorded over with the song regulators and the
video when I recorded over with theanimated show, that's amazing. You don't
know back then and you remember thatmakes it even better. Well, everybody

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loved Whitey Herzog. And I gottatell you, I mean, even when
he was here, I could seethat I could see some direction. You
know, it wasn't good yet byany means, but I could see some
kind of direction in place. Hewas your original Cody Bradford. Yeah,
he was. You saw something inthat man. He was. And in

(19:56):
nineteen seventy four with Billy Martin,arranger were good. They missed out on
the playoffs by five games. Thatyear. They were they were good for
the first time, but alas thatwas not sustainable because Billy Martin was such
a manic hothead. Anyway, WhiteyHerzog was ninety two years old. It's

(20:18):
a good run. The hell ofthe runs, Heaven or hell? You
think, wow, I would imaginemost people in baseball are going to pretty
much wind up in hell. Ohwow, you're gonna go the other way
with that, Why, Mike,A lot of them don't live very shall
we say Christine lives off the fieldpeople in baseball? Huh yeah, well

(20:47):
not most, just a lot ofthem. What do you think he was
doing with his white balls up to? No good of them? I don't
know. I don't know. Idon't want to speculate that of the day
that the I died for cried outa while, Why would you? That
would be crazy. You send himdownstairs? Yeah, you send him to
Hell, banished him in heaven.I didn't send him. That's just where

(21:11):
I would imagine that, you know, guys like him wind up. Not
that he was a bad guy now, I don't know. He's just going
to hell. Yeah, he willpatiently await Ozzie Smith at the Pearly Gates
and they'll be reunited because, ashe's described the Dallas Morning News today,
he was a crew cut, potbellied, tobacco cheer the patients. Mike's

(21:33):
going off to take your ointment.Yeah, yeah, what do you need
to do? Nothing? But doyou have it right now? Is that
your go to break alone? You'redone with what's on Mike's mind? Yes,
that's when it's time to get outof what's on Mike's mind and get
on with other stuff. Crying,All right, let's do it. Uh,

(21:56):
the sports desk is coming up next, Jewels, where are we headed?
All the Rangers just went down forwardto in Detroit? Is it time
to lighter this whole thing on fire?