Mind Over Muscle With "The Professor" Greg Maddux

The GM's welcome MLB Hall of Fame Pitcher Greg Maddux to the show. Greg talks about his life on an Army base in Spain where he learned to love sports, the reasons for his tough decision to leave Chicago, and the unwritten rules of hitting and being hit by pitches. Plus, Thad and Ryan break down the latest on Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, and dive into a candid debate on how far should teams really go to win in pro sports?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Rosterster Rains alongside Ryan McDonough, I'm fad Levine.
We've got an incredible show this week.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ran.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
We've got Hall of Famer Greg Maddox joining us in
the second segment, but before we get to him, we
got to have some follow up discussion here about the
La Clippers. Ran. Who is Dennis Wong and how has
he become such a household name in the NBA.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
This week, this La Clippers Kawhi Leonard Steve Balmer saga
has legs and there are a lot of different layers
to it. When we recorded the show last week, our
first segment was about Kawhi Ballmer and the Clippers. Pablo
Torre on his podcast reported some news with payments made
by Steve Ballmer to a company called Aspiration, a green

(00:49):
carbon neutral company that was all the rage in the
pandemic and coming out of the pandemic that I apparently
defrauded a lot of people and they had some big,
big time actors in their group, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey,
Junior Drake where pays spokespeople, and so the story it
looked like it may die down a little bit other
than last Wednesday, Adam Silver at his Board of Governor's

(01:09):
press conference in the league is going to investigate the Clippers.
And then the very next day, the next morning, it
came out that Dennis Wong, who is the LA clippers
number two owner, Steve Balmer owns ninety nine percent of
the team, which, as you note that in pro sports
it's very unusual to have that much equity in the team.
Balmer could have obviously bought the whole thing himself, but
he wanted his buddy Dennis Wong, who was his roommate

(01:31):
at Harvard, to own the other one percent. So Balmer
owns ninety nine Wong owns one percent. And on Pablo
Tore his podcast, they found out that not only had
Balmer made payments to Aspiration, this you know, nefarious green
energy company that is now bankrupt, Dennis Wong, Balmer's college

(01:51):
roommate and number one percent owner of the Clippers, that
also made payments and the timing that is very unusual
and suspicious. Here this is a second data point where
a member of the LA Clippers ownership group made a
payment to Aspiration, and then shortly thereafter Aspiration turned around
and paid Kawhi Leonard. The payments were in late twenty
twenty two Wongs LLC DEA Investments and one point nine

(02:16):
to nine million. Nine days later Aspiration paid Kawhi Leonard.
Aspiration was behind on their payments to Kawhi Leonard that
they then paid them the same day reportedly that they
laid off twenty percent of the company's employees. So here's
a question getting asked that around the league. What is
the burden approof on the NBA and the Clippers? Right right?
What are the NBA going to make the Clippers prove?

(02:37):
Because people are saying this evidence is circumstantial, and technically
it is, but now with another data point, it seems
overwhelmingly suspicious, and folks with the other twenty nine teams
are wondering is the league going to come down hard
on the LA Clippers?

Speaker 4 (02:52):
Right?

Speaker 1 (02:52):
I think you bring up a great point here, which
is even when the fact seem overwhelming, the league has
to go through their process. Right they have an investigative unit,
They're going through their process. What do you think is
happening right now? League headquarters? What are they you know,
Adam Silver and the folks at the NBA League office,
how are they reacting to all these accusations in this
overwhelming evidence.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, I wish the press conference Adam Silver had last
week was a day later because it was on Wednesday afternoon,
and then on Thursday morning, this second layer dropped. So
in the press conference last Wednesday that Silver said what
he said, and he's one of the what he had
to say, and he's one of the most brilliant guys
I've been around. Keep in mind he went to Duke.
He's a lawyer, He's very smart and very well spoken.

(03:34):
So he basically said, I think which is the right approach.
We need to see I know what it looks like,
but we need to see what the facts are and
we need to do our own investigation. And they hired
walk Tail Lipton, a prestigious law firm out of New
York who's done multiple NBA investigations so far. They did
the one ironically involving the La Clippers and Donald Sterling
back in twenty fourteen. They did the one with Robert

(03:56):
Sarvert and the Phoenix Suns in twenty twenty two into
twenty twenty three. I think that was the timeframe there.
Both of those led to removal of the owners or
the owners eventually selling their team. I guess technically the
NBA didn't remove those guys, but I think they did
to some extent encourage them to sell their teams. So
we'll see what happens with Steve Malmer. I personally, I
don't think that's how this one ends up that. But

(04:19):
what the other twenty nine teams are saying, or at least
a vast majority of them are, if this is not
enforced severely, this is going to be the Wild West
going forward. What is to deter teams if teams are
allowed to circumvent the salary cap basically pay players in
different ways to gain competitive advantages and financial advantages. Especially
when you're talking about an individual and Steve Bamber is

(04:39):
one of the ten richest people in the entire world.
We're not going to be able to compete with that
unless we cheat ourselves. So that's the overhang with the NBA.
When asked about it last week at the press conference,
Adam Silver said his powers are very broad, and that's
again where there's a little bit a gray area that
you and I talked about this yesterday offline before the show.

(05:00):
But the collective Bargaining Agreement, which rules all these sports says,
here are the certain things you can and can't do.
But obviously there's no possible way for the CBA to
cover every possible scenario. So there are some things that
are we can call them gray area, we can call
them undefined, we can call whatever you want, but it's
just not specified for a situation like this, What exactly

(05:21):
is Adam Silver allowed to do and what is he
not allowed to do? And that's what the other teams
are asking that. You know, how hard will the NBA
look and try to pin evidence that appears to be
at least maybe legally technically circumstantially even though if it
was you and I think and others think, it's probably
pretty damning for the LA Clippers. How hard will they
press that? And then how how far if they do
find that to be the case that the Clippers circumvented

(05:43):
the salary cap? You know, how far will Adam Silver
and the league office go to really punish the Clippers,
Because as you know that it's not just about one
team and one situation. The leagues always look at the
precedent and the example of the sets. They do not
want other teams to do this going forward, if the
Clippers and that in fact did what it appears to
many that they have done.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Er Ryan, quick question for you from your basketball expert opinion.
We just talked about how the league office has responded.
Is how big a story is this really in the NBA?
How big a story is this even in the Los
Angeles market? Or are they still talking about what they
need to do to build around Lebron and Doncic over
with the Lakers.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, it's great question that and some franchises seem to
be cursed is maybe the wrong term. I personally don't
believe in that, although I did grow up as a
Red Sox fan, so maybe I should. But I think
the the pecking order, the hierarchy these franchises have in LA.
If you're a basketball fan, clearly, historically it's always been
Lakers by a mile at one, and then a gap

(06:44):
and then the Clippers in the public consciousness. The tough
part if you're a Clippers fan is when Donald Sterling
went out and of all the owners to come into
your franchise, Steve Balmer was probably one of the most
attractive and most exciting on paper that right, former Microsoft CEO,
you know, worth one hundred and fifty billion dollars or
more according to Forbes, you know, in a breadth of

(07:06):
fresh air, Donald Sterling was you know, reportedly not a very.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Good human being.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
I was also very frugal and cheap in terms of
the way he ran the team, So this was kind
of the opposite of that. And Balmer has spent a
ton of money on staff, on infrastructure, on all the
things that you can spend on and have it not
count against a salary cap or there are no restrictions
as you know that in sports as far as what
you pay your GM, what you pay your head coach,
what you pay their staff, what you pay your trainers,

(07:33):
the locker rooms, the plane, the hotels, all of that,
you're able to spend as much as you want to spend,
and to some extent, Steve Balmer has done that. And
so according to staff, it's a great place to work
and they've really enjoyed that and gotten well compensated for it.
But then then this, you know, seemingly crosses the line
into that. So yeah, I think the NBA you know,

(07:54):
will continue to look into it. But yeah, in LA
that's a great question. You have to ask somebody who
lives there and has made their finger on the pulse
of the market better than I do. But I do
know this that and you know this. In sports, it
doesn't matter if it's the biggest market or a small market.
With the other teams in the league, if there is
cheating involved that gives them potentially a significant advantage. The
other teams went justice because you and I have been

(08:16):
hired and fired for some of these jobs. Others have
been fired who have tried to do things generally the
right way. Maybe not one hundred percent by the letter
of the law, but others look at this. I talked
to a president of the team the other day, said,
if they don't come down hard on this, you know
this is going to get way worse going forward. Everybody's
going to be doing something like this because if the
penalty is not severe, what is the disincentive? Because clearly

(08:38):
there are ways that this has benefited the LA Clippers
and will continue to benefit the LA Clippers if the
league doesn't drop the hammer on the franchise.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Well, right, I know you probably had to cross this
path at some point in your career as well, but
I felt like every sports executive has to answer the
personal question how far are you prepared to go to win?
And so for some of the answers, theyn't go and
do whatever it takes to win. But to do that
you have to not only dabble in the gray, but
sometimes go into the black. You referenced it earlier, but

(09:08):
each sport is governed by a CBA, and you know,
I think most franchises look at those cbas and they
view those as the rules. But there is a distinction
between the letter of the law sometimes in the spirit
of the law. And there are people inside these front
offices that are hunting those gaps. Those are the loopholes
that they know that we'll be filled at some point,
and rather than let another franchise run through that loophole

(09:29):
and gain a short term benefit from them, they want
to be the team that runs through it, knowing full
well that that's a rule that will be changed in
the future, hasn't been changed yet, and so you want
to take advantage of it. And so those are I
think really difficult discussions to be had. Secondarily, I just
want to like share the same thing in baseball. You know,
when you are the Chicago White Sox, you're kind of

(09:51):
forever living in the shadow of the Chicago Cubs. The
New York Mets are living in the shadow of the
New York Yankees. It's remarkable some of these franchises, no
matter they're dominance, those teams have done very well at
different times in their trajectory. They always seem to play
second fiddle to some of those bigger teams within the
same market. But also systemically we see in sports, we

(10:11):
see some franchises that tend to struggle with some of
these you know, image issues and different owners with the Clippers.
But now we have another transgression. You know, the Mets
over a period of time had a couple of their
executives and a manager who had some challenges and were
suspended by Major League Baseball. There's some systemic issues in

(10:32):
some of these markets that seem to keep haunting some
of those teams. It's it's really interesting to see.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, and then the question becomes is being the secondary
team in a market and having that pressure, especially in
the biggest markets, does that lead teams to bend the
rules more than the marquee franchises as you mentioned, the Lakers,
the Chicago Cubs, you know, the franchises the Yankees that
dominate the market. It's kind of a Chicken or the
Egg quest, and I don't know if we have a
great example for it, but that is as you reflect

(11:01):
back on your career, and I'm not looking for things
that you were certainly directly involved in, but what are
some of the bigger examples that you can remember that
stand out as far as teams at least bending, if
not outright breaking the rules, and how are those adjudicated
by the Major League Baseball League Office.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Well, I'm going to give you one example that did
actually impact us, and this is an area that I
truly believe was in the gray. Some fans may feel
like it was a little bit murky, but it was
technically not against the rules. So when we signed Carlos
Korea for the first time, he effectively walked into our
building and said, okay, so what's the advanced scouting you
guys are using and basically told us all the championship

(11:41):
caliber teams were using more information and where that showed
up was interesting. So keep in mind, we're coming off
of the twenty nineteen season, the twin set of record
three hundred and seven home runs. They were called the
Bomba Squad, the most home runs ever, and he basically
just asked Rockobaldellhi, like, so you guys knew what pitches
were coming, and we said no, he didn't know a
single pitch that was coming. He's like, you guys hit

(12:02):
three hundred seven home runs and you didn't know a
single pitch was coming. Roc was like, yeah, that's exactly
what happened. And so what Carlos would tell us was
that some of the more sophisticated teams also envelope pushers.
Once they got a man to second base, the man
on second base was relaying not only the pitch, but
the pitch location to the hitter. And so when at

(12:22):
this time, this was before PitchCom so the catchers were
still giving signals. It was remarkable. So then you would
watch some of those teams and you'd watch their hitters
come up to the plate when there was a man
on second They weren't looking at the third base coach
to see what the signs are. They were making constant
eye contact with the guy at second base until the
pitcher got to his motion. It was incredible. And so

(12:43):
he would tell us like, based upon where their handing
placement was, whether they were walking too or away from
the hitter at the time that the guy came to
the set position was dictating location and it was dictating
the pitch. So what Carlos started doing was you would
see him have very active conversations with the I at
second base. When the guy was at second base, he
would stand in between the guy at second base and

(13:04):
home plate to try to divert his attention. It was
remarkable to see him do this, and he really educated
our team that we needed to clean up our signals
and we had to make them a little bit more complicated.
So I think that's an area that is not illegal,
but it clearly gains a significant competitive advantage for teams
that they were utilizing to try to best teams that
did not have sophisticated signals that they were calling. Now,

(13:27):
we talked about it before, but the Houston Astros went
too far right.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
They used video to relay.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Signs to their hitters, and they used a trash can
that is clearly in the black. They were trying to
achieve the same thing. One went way too far. So
one was technically a loophole in the rules. Maybe against
the spirit of the rules a little bit, but not
against the letter of the law. The other one was
very much against the spirit and the letter of the law.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
A quick follow up question for us non baseball experts,
what is PitchCom so?

Speaker 1 (13:58):
PitchCom now is something we're the catchers no longer give signals.
The catcher and the pitcher both have an ear piece
in and they both have a remote control that is
attached to their shin guard or their glove, depending on
which position they're playing, based upon their input into that,
it will communicate to the pitcher and catcher exactly what
pitch is coming. And something that's really fascinating about this is,

(14:20):
let's say your catcher is from the Dominican Republic and
your pitchers from Japan and your shortstop is from the
United States. Each of those guys will have a PitchCom
one will be hearing English, one will be hearing Japanese,
the other guy will be hearing Spanish, and it's all
the same thing. And the pitcher can call his pitches.
We'll talk to Greg Mannix about that, you know, he
was famous for doing that. Or the catcher can call pitches,

(14:42):
but now no longer will the guys in the base
pass see the fingers being placed down by the catchers.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
What a fascinating use of technology in fact, in the NBA.
One final example that I'll bring up as far as
living in the gray or what's allowed what's not allowed,
is the startup free agency. I was GM of the
Suns twenty thirteen to twenty eighteen. The very next year,
twenty nineteen, I was working for Sirius XM and free Agency,
which used to start at midnight Eastern, was moved up

(15:10):
to six pm on June thirty. If he used to
be midnight Eastern on July one, they moved it up
six hours, which we all appreciated so we didn't have
to stay up until the middle of the night calling
free agents and expressing interest and waking the guy up
when he's trying to sleep at one am. But I
bring it up because think back to twenty nineteen Pree Agency,
ironically involving Kawhi Leonard, who was the top free agent

(15:31):
in that class. He just won a championship in his
one year with the Toronto Raptors, ended up in LA
and that was the start of this controversy that I
will continue to discuss here on rosters to rings. But
the other free agents in that class Stad were Hall
of Fame players as well. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant
both ended up with the Brooklyn Nets. Jimmy Butler, who
was a Philadelphia seventy six er, ended up in a

(15:52):
Miami Heat uniform and assign in trade. He obviously ended
up leading that franchise to the NBA Finals twice. So
those guys are great players. But I bring it up
because free agency was supposed to start at six pm
Eastern on June thirtieth, and I was doing a show
on Sirius XM right around that time, and the whole show,
Thad was just listing who is signed with who It

(16:12):
was already over. And keep in mind, this was only
one of the top five free agents signed with his
current franchise, Klay Thompson, which was supposed to be even
that was supposed to be illegal under the old rules.
You weren't even supposed to talk to your own player
about resigning till free agency started. But the other top
four guys Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Jimmy
Butler all signed elsewhere, and some of these leaked out

(16:33):
even before six o'clock Eastern that So how in the
world if teams are following the rules, would they have
a conversation, negotiate a contract, agree on the length, the payments,
the bonuses, all of that stuff, and then haven't announced
before free agency starts. Well, obviously they were way ahead
of this and we're tampering. So the NBA has gotten
more strict about that. But talk about living in the gray,

(16:56):
that was something that just about every team was doing.
And I feel bad for Mitch Kupchak, a friend of
mine who is a fellow atar heel, because you know,
said Mitch was the only honest man in the NBA.
He would wait until free agency started, and I think
what happened a lot that In fact, they know what
happened is he called agents say hey, we're interested in
this guy at one minute after free agency started, and
the agent would say, sorry, he's gone. He's already he's
already committed. So that's where it's it's tough. You know,

(17:18):
you know, if you're honest and ethical sometimes in pro sports,
but everybody else is bending, if not outright breaking the rules,
you can get penalized for that.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, And then where that manifests itself in baseball is
there's a trading deadline with a hard cap to that deadline,
but somehow after the deadline, there's always two to three
deals that leak out post deadline and you're like, well,
wait a minute, how did that come to pass? And
it's like, oh, they were just working through the final details.
It's like, well, the details are supposed to be done
by the deadline. Oh, we just forgot to report it
on time. It's like, sometimes it seems a little bit fishy,

(17:50):
but right. I wanted just to ask you one more
thing about the dabbling in the grayso to speak, is
talent acquisition. I think this is another area where executives
really have to ask themselves a soul searching question, which is,
to what extent are we willing to sacrifice character in
the name of pursuing talent? And I think some teams
will just say they don't care about makeup whatsoever. You know,

(18:11):
a guy could be a known criminal and they would
bring them into the clubhouse if they were talented enough.
One thing that we did throughout my career is we
always asked a few questions, which was is the person
accountable and contrite for the transgression they committed there? And
then there is there a redemption story, and I just
want to bring up two examples to the listener. We
acquired Josh Hamilton in two thousand and eight when I

(18:32):
was with the Texas Rangers. Josh had a unfortunately a
very checkered past. He was out of the game for
three years in the throes of drug addiction, and we
felt as if he was genuinely contrite and accountable for
his actions. We also thought he could stand up in
front of a eight or tenth grade class of students
and say, hey, listen, please don't do drugs, that I'm
an example of why you should not do that, and

(18:54):
he was willing to do it. And so that was
something where we said, okay, yes, a pretty significant transit
pression in the past, but we're willing to pursue this
type of player. And the second guy Matt Bush, who
unfortunately had some real issues with alcohol addiction and he
had a DUI orry almost cost a man his life.
He ended up going to prison for three years, served

(19:16):
a sentence. Coming out of prison, we actually signed him.
He was on a work release detail, I think working
for a Loobi's or something, and we did a workout
in the driveway there when he was actually wearing an
ankle bracelet, and I'm actually not joking about any of that. Ultimately,
we signed him as well because he was very contrite
and very accountable to his actions, and we also thought

(19:37):
there was a redemption story. But there are countless stories
in baseball of guys who maybe got really physical with
their spouse and created some real harm or did some
harm to a child. We never touched those guys because
we felt, regardless of the talent, there wasn't a redemption
story to be told there. You should never do those
types of things. There's no real excuse for that, and
that's where we drew the line. I don't know if

(19:59):
you have any exam in your opinion in your career
where you had character assessments that you had to really
take an account even when you knew it was sacrificing
your ability to acquire talent.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yeah, I think a number of times. One that stands
out is when I first started my career with the
Boston Celtics. The franchise had three MAX players, Paul Pierce,
Antwine Walker, and Vin Baker. And I can talk about
this publicly now because Vin's been public about it, but
he was battling alcoholism as well, and that was that
was a big fight for the new owners, Wick Rousbeck
and Steve Paluk after they just bought the team. You know,

(20:31):
what do we pay this guy? Do we continue to
honor the contract? Eventually they worked out some kind of settlement.
I think Vin went to rehab and to his credit,
he seems, you know, clean and sober and doing great.
He's an assistant coach with Milwaukee Bucks. He was there
when they won the championship in twenty twenty one. So
that's a redemption story more over decades, long term as
far as getting his life on track and all that.

(20:51):
But yeah, for me, it really depends on the infrastructure
in the locker room or the clubhouse. How strong are
your leaders and also importantly, I think how strong is
your manager or head coach. When we were in Boston,
Doc Rivers said, look, if these guys can play, they
have some flaws, some warts. Bring them in. I'll handle them.
I'll manage that. He did that exceptionally.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Well.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
There are other coaches managers I've been around who maybe
weren't as forceful as far as the personality and said, look,
I don't want to deal with that we're having a
hard enough time winning ballgames. I take a lesser talented guy,
especially if I can sleep well at night knowing he's
going to show up and work hard and not get
in trouble away from the facility. So that's always the
balance in the blend, And I think it comes down

(21:34):
to your leadership, especially veteran leaders. From my experience in
the NBA, teams are more willing to push the envelope
when they're a championship contender close to championship contending. I
think teams that are a long way away from that
that don't want to push the envelope, especially if it's
bringing in a veteran player with some issues who may
have a negative impact on their young core.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Well r you know, we've talked about it so many
times on rosters to rings, but this is just another example.
These guys are massively successful at one thing in their lives,
multiple things, but definitely one thing. But the rest of
them it's a cross section of humanity and they struggle
with the same challenges, insecurities and addictions that the rest
of us do. If they ask for help, if they
show their contrite, we're here to help the community. Is

(22:14):
here to help, the fan base is here to help,
and I think there's their second chances for people and
as they should be in the sports world, no different
than in real life.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Absolutely in fact, somebody who needed no help and was
literally one of the best of all time at what
he did was Greg Maddox. He'll be joining us right
after this. Stay with us on Rosters to rings.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Welcome back to Rosters to Rings. We are ecstatic to
be joined by Greg Maddox. The man needs no introduction,
but I'm going to give them one anyway. All the
following facts are true about Greg. Greg was drafted by
the Chicago Cubs in nineteen eighty four with a third
pick of the second round, thirty first overall, which means
all all thirty clubs are big dummies, including the Chicago

(23:03):
Cubs who did not take him in the first round.
Greg played twenty three seasons for the Cubs, Braves, Dodgers,
and Padres. Greg holds the record in Major League Baseball
at any position with eighteen goal gloves. Greg was the
first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win four
consecutive Cy Young Awards. Greg played in eight All Star Games.

(23:24):
Greg once hit Benito Santiago in retaliation for Andre Dawson
getting beamed, knowing that he would be sent down to
the minor leagues for doing so. Over a career one
hundred and ninety eight postseason innings, Greg posted a three
to two seven ERA, with an incredible two to nine
ERA and thirty eight to two thirds innings pitched. In

(23:44):
the World Series. Greg once done a fake beard, a
wig dressed up as a sound guy and a TV
production crew and pranked Chris Bryant. Greg led the league
two times in War, four times in the RA five
consecutive years, and innings pitched three times and wins and
three times in complete games. According to Greg's brother Mike,

(24:05):
Greg was once hit in the head by a golf ball.
Mike described the event as first scary and then quite funny.
Greg ranked eighth all time in War accumulated by pitchers.
Greg's three hundred and fifty five wins ranked second among
pictures in the live ball area. Greg has a type
of game named after him. The Mattis is a complete
game shutout with fewer than one hundred pitches thrown. Greg

(24:28):
achieved this feat thirteen times in his career. Greg's brother
Mike is four years older than Greg. When I asked
Mike to summach Greg as a baseball player, he said,
when we were kids, we would have pickup baseball games.
I was always the captain and I would take him
first with the first pick. My friends would say, why
are you taking this ten year old kid? My answer

(24:48):
was always he's the best player out here and that
never changed. Greg, Welcome to Rosters to Rinks.

Speaker 4 (24:55):
Thank you, thanks for the nice introduction. Yeah, it was nice.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
I definitely an assist assist to your brother Mike, who
will come up a few times in this conversation.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Greg.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
One of our traditions here on Rosters to Rings as
we ask all of our guests what made you fall
in love with sports? What was your origin story as
to why you're passionate about sports and specifically baseball.

Speaker 4 (25:17):
Well, I think most of it had to do with
we grew up in Spain as young kids and we
didn't have TV. You know, I think the kids today
have laptops, computers and video games, and we had TV
growing up, and we didn't have TV in Spain. Well,
we had TV, but it was in Spanish and you know,
we didn't understand it. So we spent all of our

(25:38):
time outside, and you know, all the neighborhood kids grew
up on the Air Force base, there were everybody was.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Kind of in the same.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
Boat growing up, and all the kids got together and
played sports. You know, we played a lot of baseball,
We played a lot of basketball, football, you know, just
just things you do outside and enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
You know, I was. It was our way of entertaining ourselves.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Greg. When I talked to professional athletes, they say, it's
a lot harder to watch a child, a sibling, somebody else,
other than something themselves play a sport at the highest level.
What was your experience like watching Mike You guys pitched
in the major leagues at the same time. He's gone
on to have a very successful career as a pitching coach.
What was it like watching him? And how how would
you rate the difficulty you or ease of that relative

(26:26):
to when you were pitching yourself.

Speaker 4 (26:28):
Yeah, I mean I was nervous for him, you know,
I think I was. Obviously I wasn't as nervous as
when I was out there pitching, but I had nerves
for him. And it was somebody I grew up with.
It was somebody I was always calling for. So any
anytime there's that added incentive to see someone do well,

(26:50):
you know, the nerves kind of kick in a little bit,
and uh, you know, you try to pitch with him,
You try to you know, what would my brother do
in situation? This is what I think he should do now,
And just you know, he was a big mentor in
my life and to see him have success on the

(27:10):
field was pretty special.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
That's awesome. And you know, for the listeners, I got
a chance to work with Mike for a number of
years in Texas. He's one of the most accomplished pitching
coaches in the game. Check out his record. Everywhere he's gone.
The teams have gotten better, they've won, they've played in
the playoffs. Probably one of the longest tenured pitching coaches
in the game right now, but unequivocally one of the
most successful pitching coaches in the modern era. So Greg,

(27:36):
just take us back to those those games on the
Air Force base when you and Mike show up as
then one and two starters for your team. How did
the other team respond?

Speaker 4 (27:45):
Well, the thing was, we only had five or six kids,
so we had to make do with what we had
and a lot of times we had to close off
right field, so everybody was a pole hitter. So we
usually had a pitcher, a hitter, you know, pitcher, two hitters,
and two or three guys on defense, and we would
just rotate and you know, everybody would get a chance

(28:08):
to swing the bat and pitch a little bit and
play some defense.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
So you know, it was a good it was a
good way to kill time.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
And as soon as you know, the baseball game was over,
we walked over to the basketball court and started playing basketball.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Incredible, Greg, for our younger listeners who may not have
seen you play, you moved the ball as well as
I've ever seen anybody move the ball. How did you
develop that? Was that something naturally in eight as a
youngster and with your command and control and the ability
to move the ball basically wherever you wanted to go?
How did that skill develop over the course of your career.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
I was very fortunate when I was about fifteen, you know,
my brother was you know, eighteen nineteen at the time,
and we would have Sunday workouts here in Las Vegas,
and one of the pitching coaches there, his name was
Ralph Meeter, believed that movement was more important than velocity,
and he helped us kind of change my arm angle,

(29:04):
change my delivery at a young age where I was
always trying to create movement on the baseball as opposed
to velocity. You know, I was told, hey, you're you know,
you're gonna throw hard enough to get drafted, but in
order to have success, you need to learn movement.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
And you know I bought in.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
I bought in at that age, and you know, it
was just, you know, sometimes you get great advice and
I was very fortunate to have that advice as a
young player.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
And and you know, the.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
Game wasn't necessarily about velocity like it is now. Back then,
it was about winning baseball games, getting outs, trying to
go nine innings. And you know, the movement I think
allowed me to worry about weak contact instead of the
swing and miss, which is kind of what you're seeing

(29:56):
guys Chase today. Great.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
I mean building off that I you talked about, you know,
the most important tool you have as a picture is
between your ears. I think you had a quote referencing
that as well, and you always preach movement and command
and how those and were so much more important than velocity.
Changes speeds. Today's game has changed, right, But how if

(30:18):
you were coaching pitching right now, how would you mesh
those parts of your philosophy into this newfound desire just
to hunt velocity at.

Speaker 4 (30:28):
All turned Well, I mean, obviously velocity is great, it's
a big plus. I mean, the harder you throw, the
harder it is to hit. I mean, I think everybody
can agree on that. But I think, you know, it's
very important to be the better pitcher that day. I
think you have to outpitch the guy you're pitching against.
And that's when it comes down to command, execution, movement, location,

(30:53):
the ability to change speeds. You know, if I'm facing
Randy Johnson, I'm at a huge advantage velocity wise, but
you know I have to be able to outpitch him.
You know, I have to make fewer mistakes in him.
I have to, you know, I have to go out
there and pitch a good game and keep the ball
in front of the outfield. I think, you know, we

(31:17):
can watch the games tonight. We can watch all fifteen
games that are going on tonight, and the team that
keeps the ball in front of the outfield the best
is going to win. They're going to win every time,
And I think that's what it boils down to, is,
you know, let's keep the ball in front of the
outfield better than the other guy, and I'm pretty sure
I'm going to win that day.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Greg, another area where you're exceptional, maybe the most underrated
part of your game was defensively. You won eighteen gold gloves,
a major League Baseball record. What do you see when
you watch pitchers today and when you were playing. Is
that something you consciously focused on in terms of shortening
your wind up, your follow through, whatever it is to
be in position to field when the ball was hidden.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
Yeah, I mean I would never change a guy's delivery
to get in a good field position. I think, you know,
the important thing is is how the wall crosses the plate,
and I don't think you want to do anything to
put that guy at a disadvantage in order to fill
the ball. I was just very fortunate that, you know,
I was facing the hitter pretty squarely with my delivery

(32:17):
and I was able to maybe I think I saw
the ball better off the bat than most pitchers because
of that. I think my head was always in a
pretty good position to see the ball, and that allowed
me to react a little bit better, just because you know,
I could see the ball off the bat pretty good
and kind of anticipate or maybe lean one way, dependent

(32:37):
on the pitch I was throwing. So, you know, to me,
I thought that was a huge advantage. You know, I
always I felt like, you know, if if if I
can have one hundred total chances a year, that's thirty
three scoreless innings right there, you know. And you know
you add thirty three scoreless indings to a pitcher's er

(32:58):
at the end of the year.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I think it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
It's just an insight for the listeners how you just
thought about the game so differently than most pitchers did,
and how much it led to your success. Greg, I
want to take you back to September third, nineteen eighty six.
You make your debut, but not only do you make
your debut, but when you did. I don't know if
you knew this, but you were the youngest pit player
in the major leagues at the time when you did that.
How was the transition for you at that age? And

(33:24):
then also maybe the first year or so didn't go
quite as well as you had hoped.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
How did you deal with that.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
And overcome it to become the pitcher you were today.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Well, I think.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
You evaluate your performance when the season's over, and you know,
you have help with your coaches, and you also do
it yourself as well. And I realized that I wasn't
pitching slow well enough. You know, I threw hard enough,
I felt good, I wasn't changing speeds properly. There was
nothing wrong with my fastball, there was a lot of

(33:57):
things wrong with my chain yet, and I needed to
work on pitching slower and went to winter ball with
the help with Dick pol you know, big, big, huge
advantage I had having him as my pitching coach, especially
at a young age, and I learned how to change
speeds better, and then I was able to actually apply it,

(34:18):
you know, the following year once the season started.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Greg, what advice would you give young baseball players, young
pitchers in particular, who struggle out of the gigs. I
think people remember you your success in Chicago toward the
latter part of your time there and especially in Atlanta,
But your first couple of years in Major League baseball
it did not go well. Maybe it wasn't, you know,
the level you hoped, and not everybody can be ja
Jacob Mazarowski where they come out and dominate right away.

(34:42):
What advice would you give young players, young pitchers in particular,
who have some ups and downs early on in their career.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
Well, I think it's very important to understand what you
do best on the mound, things you can and can't do.
I think you have to evaluate why you're not having
success and what do I have to do to achieve success.
You know what are my weaknesses, you know what are
my strengths, and try to just address them the best

(35:09):
you can. And a lot of times you need another
set of eyes behind you, and you need some help
from from some coaches. And you know, you can figure
a lot of stuff out on your own, but you're
going to need you know, some head starts with and
it comes down to coaching.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
I think mostly Greg.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
We're going to fast forward to nineteen ninety three, You
become a free agent, you ultimately sign with the Braves.
If memory serves, there was a lot of rumors out
there that you could have landed somewhere else and that
maybe you were going to become a New York Yankee,
or at least some people in the Bronx thought you
had a chance of being Yankee. What was it like
being a free agent? How'd you ultimately make the decision

(35:50):
to go to the Braves And what else was going
on behind the scenes of that time.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Well, there was a lot going on. Really.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
I think I never really anticipated leaving Jaica, you know,
I I you know, the Cubs drafted me, It's.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
All I knew. I was there for nine years.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
And and uh, you know, I was a little shocked
when I wasn't offered a contract by them. Uh you know,
we we had gone through some negotiations, uh after my
fifth year and then my free agent year at the
All Star break, and uh, you know, just never felt
right signing that contract for for me personally, and uh

(36:27):
uh I expected it to get done after the after
the season, and you know, the right before free agency started,
I was offered a deal and I was a day
away from free agency, so you know, I felt like I, uh,
I felt like I earned the right to go out
and see what was out there and to see what

(36:47):
my true value was at the time. And and uh
I did go to New York and there were very
few offers for me, and I think, uh I had
I had a low ball offer. I felt from a
couple organizations. I went to New York. I expected to
sign a contract when I went there, but I guess

(37:08):
there were some complications in the front office. Gene Michaels
was a general manager at the time, and he came
out to Vegas even before I went to New York
and made a couple offers, and he convinced me to
go to New York. And I assumed I was going
there to sign a contract. And you know, I heard

(37:29):
years later that one of the higher ups was having
heart problems and they weren't able to make an offer
that night when I was there, so I had flown
back to Vegas, and during that time on that flight,
the Braves came into the picture, and it was important
for me to stay in the National League. This was

(37:50):
before interleague play had started. I knew the league, I
knew the hitters. I felt it was an advantage not
facing the D eight. I felt like I had a
slight advantage, you know, probably four out of five times offensively.
I wasn't a great hitter, but I felt like I
hit better than most pitchers.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
I was able to get buns down and stuff like that, and.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
I just thought it was a better spot for me
to stay in the National League, and also I wanted
to win a World Series.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
And if we go.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
Back to the early nineties, the Braves were the team.
I mean, they had been to the two previous World Series.
I watched on my couch in Vegas. I watched them
play those those two postseasons, and you know, the Yankees
were kind of rebuilding at the time, and you know,
you it was a pretty easy decision based on that,

(38:44):
you know, National League, better chance to win the World Series.
You know, money is an issue, but it wasn't that
much of an issue. And you know, looking back, I
could not have made a better decision.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
You know, Greg, One thing that I think you should
let on there, which is real, is, you know, front
office executives we make a lot of mistakes, and one
that you just really talked about here was they waited
too long with the Cubs to come with a very
sincere offer. And I've seen this before where we think
we are the leader in the clubhouse in retaining a player.

(39:19):
We even tell the player, hey, go see what's out
there and come back to us, and at that time
we will step up and make you an offer. But
what happens for a player is that you then get
courted by another team. They show extreme interest in you,
You become a priority for the other club, and then
the executive from your previous team just assumes you're going
to come back and give them the same ability to
resign you based upon the history. But once you're out

(39:42):
the door, you are a little bit out the door, right,
And it's I've seen it in my career where we
had the best intentions of resigning a player, the best
intentions of expressing to them that we genuinely wanted them
to return, but then our actions don't really support that.
We encourage them to go see what else is on
the market. Risk you run there is then their heart
starts leaving the building, and once the heart's left the building,

(40:04):
their head follows because we're not always giving them the
most money, but we're trying to, you know, tug a
little bit on the emotional heartstrings. If you spent your
whole career in a place, but that leaves once you
leave the building. And so I just wanted to echo
what you said, like I do think that's a lesson
for executives out there. This is the real response that
a player has you when your best lad plans fall

(40:26):
a little bit short of your intentions.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
I would say, yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
The one thing you said there was go and see
what's out there and we'll come back with an offer.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
And my situation was a little bit different.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
I was told exactly that go see what out there,
go find what your true value is. And I had
every intention of coming back to the Cubs, and I
actually I was actually lied to.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
That was said to me.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
And the day before free agency started, I was made
the exact same offer that I was made after my
fifth year. So I had played my sixth year, I'd
won twenty games, i'd want to say young, and I
was offered the same money they offered me a year ago,

(41:21):
and it just didn't feel right, you know. And at
the All Star break that year of my sixth year,
my free agency year, I was offered the exact same
offer that I was back in December before that year started.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
And then.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
A week or two left in the season, I had
a conversation with my general manager and that's exactly what
he said, go out there and see what's out there.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
And we'll come back to you.

Speaker 4 (41:48):
And first day of free agency, they signed two or
three guys. I went out there, I talked to some
other clubs. I went to New York, I came back,
called the Cubs and I was told, no, we had
you had your offer, we gave you the timeline to
sign it. You didn't sign it. And you know, now
I'm definitely a free agency.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Now I'm leaving. Now I'm scrambling where am I.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
Going to go? What am I going to do? And yeh,
I would have loved to have had a GM that
was honest with me. And you know, I think if
that was the case, I probably never would have left
Chicago because I had no intentions of leaving. And and
you're right, you know that was my team, that was
my organization. Yes, I would give them a better deal
than what was out there, one hundred percent, And the

(42:33):
offer was never made. You know, I never had that
opportunity to sign on the dotted line with them back then.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
So you know, I ended up in Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Great lessons for executives and owners there that this doesn't
become emotional at times too. You know, if a player's
an unrestricted free agent, you say, go see what's out there,
you better be prepared to deal with the consequences of that.
It's not you know, restricted free agency, at least in
the NBA is a little different. You have matching rights,
but unrestricted free agency. You better be careful with that strategy.
For any owners or executive is listening, Greg, I want

(43:02):
to go back to what you just said about hitting
and you enjoying, you know, being in the National League
because you got to pitch to opposing pitchers and you
got to hit yourself. In twenty twenty two, the National
League got rid of the designated hitter. What are your
thoughts on that? And then when you were preparing as
a player, what percentage of time did you spend in
the batting cage working on hitting yourself?

Speaker 4 (43:25):
Atlanta, we hit as much as we wanted. We had
the ability to take batting practice every day if we
wanted to, and you know, depending on you know, there
were certain days where you know, hey, your elbows a
little a little barking right now, I better not be
swinging the bat. But if I was healthy enough, I
took VP every day and it was fun. I enjoyed it.

(43:47):
I think, you know, pitchers hit early every day, starters
got to hit every day, and we got to hit
on the field within a group the day before we
pitched as well as the day we pitched, so we
had two days on the field. We were in the
first group with the extra hitters, and and home games,

(44:08):
we hit every day before the first group hit, and
you know, we would hit and go out and get
our running ends, shagg and fly balls, and it was
you know, it was part of the routine. And you know,
Jimmy Williams was my hitting coach in Atlanta. He would
take us into the cage and you know, tell us

(44:29):
what we thought, and you know, we we.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
We worked on it. Definitely. All the pitchers did Greg, Greg.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Just out of curiosity, how much did did you think
it changed when pitchers were no longer hitting also known
as like they couldn't be held accountable when you hit
a guy when you were pitching, the reason was that
they were going to come and hit you. Like, how
does that change now that now that you have the
DH in both leagues? And like, did that impact you

(44:55):
at all when you were contemplating pitching inside sometimes I
would assume a ball get away from you. From time
to time, you may even hit a guy by accident.
I assume it was by accident. Well, like, how much
did that factor in when you were sizing up who
was on the mound on the other side. And sure
they may go after your three hole hitter, but they
also may come after you.

Speaker 4 (45:14):
Uh, a real picture would come after me, not not
the three hole hitter. I think that that was that
was the beauty of it was. I think, uh, most
of the pictures understood that. You know, if you hit
Andre Dawson, I'm not gonna wait and hit you. Know

(45:35):
you're you're you're your top hitter. I'm gonna wait and
get you as a pitcher. And I think, uh, the
first time it happened was, uh, Andre Dawson got hit
by Danny Cox. He was a pitcher for the Cardinals
at the time. And here comes Jack Clark. He was there,
Andre Dawson on their team, and uh, I didn't hit him,

(45:57):
and and aning or two later I Hitanny Cox.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Then I had to face Danny Cox.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
I'm thinking, oh, he's going to hit me back, but
you know, you got to do what you got to do,
and he didn't hit me, and I wound up getting
on first base and Jack Clark was the first baseman
and he kind of gave me a little pat on
the butt and said that's the way you do it.
And you know, I learned kind of as a twenty
one or twenty two year old that, okay, I just

(46:25):
gained their respect to the other team as well, and
a very valuable lesson for me. And you know, I
think I hit one guy out of anger because he
hit a home run off me. And it was Sid
Breen in Pittsburgh when he was there, and you know,
I was young and dumb and still, you know, trying

(46:47):
to mature as a picture and all that. And you know,
I've seen pictures in the past give up home run
so they hit the guy to you know, prove their
manhood and all that stuff. And you know, I came
to realize that it wasn't right. You know, I messed up,
threw a hitable pitch. The guy hit it out. He's
doing his job. That's what he's supposed to try to
do and it's not personal. And I think ever since

(47:12):
that day, I realized that, you know, I'm not going
to ever throw it a hitter unless.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
They absolutely deserve it.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
And one of my teammates asked me, if the teammate
asked you to get a guy then you got to
get it, but very rarely did you throw it guys.
I know there's a difference between pitching inside and throwing
it guys. I think I was trying to pitch inside
a lot and did hit some guys because of that.
But they were probably looking out over the plate and

(47:41):
weren't ready to get bringing and thinking about a ball inside.
So you know, you got to pitch inside. I was
never worried about being thrown at. I got thrown at twice.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
I did.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
I did hit a couple guys in the head where
I was trying to pitch inside. I was trying to protect,
you know, my side of the plate. I thought they
were leaning out out there too much, so you know,
you throw that white line fastball in and they're you know,
they're kind of diving into it and they're not really
expecting it in there, so they're not able to get
out of the way.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
And you know.

Speaker 4 (48:12):
It happened twice, And it happened both times in the
playoffs and the following year. I got hit, and I understood,
like I deserved to be hit. I mean, I did
I hit the guy in the head, and did I
want to hit him in the head? Absolutely, not especially
in a playoff game. But uh yeah, I mean I
got hit and I was actually kind of expecting it
both times, and both times it happened, and luckily it

(48:34):
didn't hurt too bad.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Greg, do you mind sharing the story of the when
when you were rookie and unfortunately Andre Dawson got hit
in the face. As you reference, those are the scariest
moments in the game. Yeah, and then the decision you had,
and then maybe the exchange you had with Rick Sutcliffe
and some of the guidance you were given.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
Uh yeah, I mean it was a horrible situation to
see Hawk get hit in the face like that. I
mean he I mean it just he was knocked out
at home plate. I mean he'd laid there kind of dazed.
I mean he needed a standing eid obviously. And when
he came to we started getting the picture and the
benches emptied, we had the brawl, we had everything, and

(49:15):
I was sitting on the bench and Don Zimmer walked
over and he said, don't you hit anybody. I will
tell you when to hit somebody. And you know, we
had to sign and it took a few hitters, and
when it was Benito Santiago came up and I got
the sign from the catcher to hit him, and you know,

(49:36):
manager says, hit somebody. You got to hit somebody, and
I was just glad I didn't miss him. I mean,
it's really sometimes everybody thinks it's pretty easy to hit somebody.
And luckily we had how to hit somebody practice one
day in the minor leagues, and one of the college
pitchers says, don't aim at him. You have to aim

(49:58):
about a foot behind him. And then you're going to
hit somebody. If you ain't at them, they're always going
to get out of the way. So you got to
throw it behind them. And it's weird because it happened
about two years two or three years ago, and I
kind of remembered that conversation that.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Day, and I said, oh, yeah, you better aim a
little bit behind him, and you know, don't throw it
at their head.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
That was the one thing Don Zimmer was, you know,
if you're going to hit somebody, don't throw it at
their head.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
I've got steel plates in my head.

Speaker 4 (50:24):
I've been being like four or five times, and we
were instructed to not throw them at their head, you know,
And it's kind of funny too because I go to
Atlanta years later now Bobby Cox is my manager, and
Bobby's like, yeah, throw it at their head. Nobody's ever
died playing this game. Send a message.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
If you send a message, send it so you know,
it's kind of you.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
Know, just the different philosophies with my two managers back then.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
That's a great idea for a Major League Baseball fundraiser.
Greg had the GM with Fad if he's back with
the team or the manager can put on a bunch
of pads and armor and then have fans were upset
to throw tried to hit him in the head. I
think we'd raise a lot of money for charity using that,
Using that approach, my question for you is now about
the steroid are good portion of your career was in

(51:11):
the steroid era? How aware of you were that? Were
How aware of that were you at the time? And
now looking back on your career, what is your reaction
to it? Now you have some time to process pitching
against so many guys who were juicing at a pretty significant.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
I mean, you know what was going on. I mean
you saw guys in the shower. I mean you saw
him one year and you saw him the next year,
and you know you saw the hat sizes change a
little bit. Uh, you saw the acne on the back,
you saw the muscles, you saw, uh, you saw the

(51:46):
ball going further. I mean, you know, it was just
it was there. You know, I inquired about it. Everybody
has their guy, you know, where they live in the
office season and and my guy said, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
He goes you.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
Don't need it. It's you know, it can do you
more harm than good. You're having tons of success without
using it. There's there's no reason to do it. And
you know I valued his opinion. I trusted him, and
it was done. It was I never worried about it
after I was told that. And you know, you knew that.

(52:26):
You know, guys were taking steroids. Guys were corking their bats.
Did it make you want to scuff the ball? Absolutely,
let's make it a fair fight. But uh, you know,
never did it. You know I felt like I did
it the right way. And and you know, the steroid guys,
it did. It did bite you from time to time.
You know, I remember facing I remember facing Mark Maguire

(52:48):
and I threw him a fastball away and and you
know I saw the ass out reach swing and it
was a fly ball to right filled and I'm kind
of walking off the mount and it went, you know,
thirty feet in the bullpen out there, and it was like, ooh,
I just got one right there, and you know, got
to make a better pitch. That's all you can tell
yourself is you know, it's either your pitch or your

(53:10):
pitch selection. It's one of the two, which one was incorrect,
and try to fix it for the next time you
face it.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
You know, Greg, before you came on in our previous segment,
we were talking about, you know how sports there's gray
areas and then there's black and white. What the listener
may not realize is at that time, really performance enhancing
drugs weren't really regulated like they are now. You know,
so as you mentioned, like some people, I mean, obviously
we're pushing the envelope way too far, and they knew
they were doing something that was going to be made

(53:38):
illegal at some point, but fundamentally it wasn't actually as
clearly against the rules of the game as it may
have seemed. And so this went on for a lot
longer than people would have expected. You mentioned it. I mean,
we were all in clubhouses, and for those of us
who didn't play the game, you just kind of dismissed
it a little bit as like, oh, that's why I
never played the game, because this guy's neck is three

(54:00):
times the size is my neck. And then you like
took a pause and you're like, wait a minute. Human
beings don't normally have necks quite that large. But in
the moment you kind of dismissed it because they were
premium athletes and you wouldn't think somebody would be pushing
the envelope as far as they were, but in practice
they were. And it lasted for, you know, over a
decade and really changed the game of baseball. You had

(54:22):
to weather that almost the entirety of that storm, Greg,
And you're like, we were talking before you came on,
Guys like you and Pedro Martinez, who you know, just
dominated during this era. It just makes your numbers that
much more remarkable as we see it. I mean, it's
just from a fans perspective, which fundamentally we all are.

(54:43):
I want to shift your attention for a second. I
want to get a scouting report or too, give us
a scouting report on John Smoltz, Tom Glavin, Kent Merker.
You know, Steve Avery that you got you got to
pitch with some excellent pitchers, some of your contemporary, some
younger guys that I'm sure you help mentor give the
listeners a quick like, what was your breakdown of a

(55:04):
few of those guys.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Well, you know Smultzy.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Obviously, the best scouting report on Smoltzy is obviously Hall
of Fame pitcher, great pitcher. Okay, I think people need
to realize what an outstanding golf coordinator he was. I
mean he set up he had golf set up for
us and every city. I mean, anytime we wanted to play.
He had the rental car, he had directions to the

(55:31):
golf course. This was going on too before cell phones,
so you know you kind of needed he had the
members name that we were playing with. But he was
he was definitely a special teammate. He he he made
baseball very enjoyable for the rest of that pitching staff,
just just through golf. And he was a great teammate.

(55:53):
He was a good friend still is as a matter
of fact. And you know, if you want to scout
and report commanded the fast small down the way as
well as anybody had an outstanding slider that you couldn't see.
One of the advantages we go back to hitting is
spring training. You know, the first ten days the hitters
aren't there. It's just the pitchers and we would throw.

(56:16):
We would throw our five to ten minutes a live
BP to the other pitchers. So I would go out
there and throw for ten minutes and then I'd grab
a bat, and now I have to go hit off Smoltzy. Okay,
And I couldn't see a slider. If you threw a slider,
I'd swung and miss it every time. I just couldn't
see it. My eyes weren't good enough to see his slider.

(56:37):
And very special pitch Murker, same way Merker had. Murker
had a pretty good change up, good fastball.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
You had to get it.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
Going early against him. He threw hard, he was a
little sneaky quick. His changeup did start a little higher
than his fastball. And you know that was one thing
as a hitter, if you saw the ball up, it
was probably a change up. But then you have to
be good enough not to swing at it still. But
you know, the good hitters can do that. The you know,
the pit the pitchers that hit you know one eighty

(57:11):
for their life can't and uh, Avery was really good. Uh.
You know how some guys can turn it up a notch.
Some athletes, Oh it's a big game, I'll just turn
it up a notch. Very few I saw, very few
people were able to do that. Avery and Smoltzy could.

(57:34):
When we got the postseason, they got better. Unfortunately, that
was something I wish I could do it.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
I mean I wish I could have done it. I
wasn't good enough to do it.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
They were, and uh, you know Glavin Glavin, he competed
as well as anybody Glavin pitched. If Glavin had a lead,
he was really good.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
And it didn't matter if he was leading one to
nothing or six to five. You know, you know I
heard a couple of comments, Oh yeah, glab got a
lot of runs, and you know you won that six
to five, and you know I got beat three to
two last night. You know, you kind of hear a
little bit of that going on, you know, throughout the years,
and and you know if you sit there long enough
and watch, you know, when Glad had a lead that

(58:19):
that sixth, seventh eighth inning where he got zeros in
those innings and regardless of the score, and I thought
that was what he was. I thought that was what
he was really good at. Was was was pitching with
the lead.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Gregor, And you're watching games today and hitters today, are
you thinking about how you'd pitched to Aaron Judge or
show Hey Otani and just zooming out across Major League Baseball?
Who are some of your favorite players to watch in
today's game?

Speaker 4 (58:49):
Well, you know, I'm kinda I kind of have the
Ranger games on every day. You know, my brother's still
over there. I watched him with the sound off. There's
always We're always watching Netflix or a show or a
documentary or whatever on TV. And and uh, you know,
the Ranger games off to the side on the iPad,
and and uh, you know, I I do enjoy watching

(59:14):
the Dodgers a lot, you know, I think, you know,
I just Otani's incredible. I mean to watch him, you know,
sit there and and get three guys out in the
first inning and then come up in the bottom of
the first.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
And hit a home run. It's pretty cool. You know,
It's just not something you see.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
And and uh, you know, I do think about rarely.
I don't do it a lot, but you know, you
see these hitters come up there, and you'd be like, man,
this guy's set up down in a way right now,
or this guy's set up in and you know, I
would throw a change up here and you see, you know,
the high fastball up there, and the guy swings and

(59:55):
miss it, and you're like, oh, I don't have a
very good scot report.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
I guess so, but I do do it at times.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
And uh, you know, I enjoy watching I enjoy watching
my brother coach. I enjoy watching the Rangers and Bruce
Bochi over there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Now do their thing. And and I'd like to see
him get hot again.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
You know, they kind of cooled down the last couple
of days, and be nice to see him go ahead
and you know, sweep, sweep another series or something like
that and try to get back in the playoff hunt.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
It'd be great to get healthy right now. Yeah, they
need to get healthy. They got the cavalry could be coming.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yeah, Creig.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
In your career, like you face some of the best
hitters in the era, obviously and did well against almost
all of them, But did you consciously how differently would
you pitch you know, the power hitters, the Barry Bonds
in one extreme and then the contact hitters, the Tony
Gwinn's and Wait Bogs the extents you faced him on
the other extreme, Like, how different was your approach?

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:00:55):
The approach was you better get Jeff kenn out. You know,
I think you know, when you have like Barry Bonds,
Tony gwyn you beat lineups and not hitters.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
I think that's what those guys teach you is. And
I think Tony Gwynn was the first guy that you know,
you always hear that, Hey, you beat lineups, not hitters.
You know, you got to pick your own fights. You
need twenty seven outs and and you know, trying to
get Tony gwen out or Barry Bonds out three or
four times a night's probably not the right way to
go about it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
So I made sure I shouldn't time.

Speaker 4 (01:01:34):
I made sure I was very aware of if you're
facing the giants when Barry was coming up, and you know,
if if he was hitting third, you knew that you
had to get the leadoff hitter out, the number two
hit her out, and then whoever was hitting behind him
it was as well, and you try to keep him

(01:01:55):
in the park.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
You know, if you keep Berry in the park. You
did pretty good, you know, peace standout on first or second.
That's that's kind of a win win for both of us.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Greg. Before the analytics era kind of took over baseball.
Accord to Thad and others who know you well, you
were doing a lot of that stuff at the time,
you know, in terms of moving your fielders around, taking
our listeners inside your process, if you would, as far
as defensive positioning with the eight behind you. And then
also you know, you keep books on opposing hitters or
even on umpires, you know, between starts or even as

(01:02:27):
you were pitching as they started.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Yeah, we had I was very fortunate because I played
in Chicago and I played in Atlanta and all of
our games are on TV, so you didn't have to
keep books. You had videotape, so uh, you know, you
had a videotape of every pitch you through, so you're
able to go in and watch a lot of film. Uh.

(01:02:51):
We didn't have analytics, but we had scattering reports, which
you know, kind of the same thing. Uh, it would
have been nice to know that in a two count
this guy hits you know, one forty one off sliders
and he hits, you know, three twenty eight off fastballs.
Those things would be nice to know. Towards the end
of my career, we started getting some of those nuggets

(01:03:13):
and they were very useful. But yeah, you did most
of your own scouting. You had to help from Jimmy.
Going back to Jimmy Williams, he kind of handled the
defense and the Braves were pretty good about the hitting charts,
where the hitters were most likely to hit the ball,
and where we should put the fielders. And then he

(01:03:35):
would actually say, you know, be careful pitching inside to
this guy because we got nobody on the left side
of the field. You know, We've got everybody over here.
So you know, he's like, I'm not telling you not
to pitch inside, but I'm telling you if he pulls
the ball, it's going to be trouble for us to
catch it. So you did have to pitch to your defense,

(01:03:57):
and sometimes you would set you defense to how you
were going to pitch a guy, so it kind of
worked both ways. So you know, that was the beauty
about the Braves is we set the defense on who
was pitching, and other organizations we would set our defense
to where the hitter hits the ball.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
So you know, it never made a lot of.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
Sense to me, Like, this guy hits the ball to
the left center, Well, I don't want him to hit
at the left center, so I have to pitch over
on this side of the plate. But then we have
our defense playing and he's going to hit at the
left center. So it was very nice when I went
to Atlanta that we kind of got rid of that
philosophy and we actually set the defense. If the pitcher
made the correct pitch, the defense had a pretty good

(01:04:44):
chance of catching Greg.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
On that same note, Eddie Press famously tell stories about
how you would call your own game before pitch come,
before anything you couldn't like obviously hold up a one
or two or three. Well, how were you calling your
own game? What signals were you did you and Eddie have?
How'd you figure that out where the hitters never seem
to understand your pattern?

Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
Yeah, I think I think it all started with a
guy on second You know, I think when you have
a guy on second base, now the catcher has to
give multiple signs, and you know, if he's given three,
four or five signs and you shake, you got to
go through the process again. You shake it again. Now
it's fifteen signs down there, and the hitter steps out
or the pitcher steps off. That just slows the game down.

(01:05:27):
The infielders don't like it, the outfielders don't like it.
And you know, just came up with a way to
call pitches to kind of speed up with a guy
on second. And you know, just how you catch the
ball back from the catcher very simple. You know, catch
it out here it's away, catch it here it's in.
You know, you know you can touch your chin, you

(01:05:50):
could pick your nose, you could you know, you can
do this with your hat.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I mean, there's one.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Hundred things you do to call a sign. And nobody
really watches the pitcher catch or no one watches the
pitcher catch the ball back from the catcher. Very rarely
will they do that. And you know, and then you
just give signs and you know it was you know,
later on my career, Uh, throwing to Charlie O'Brien was

(01:06:17):
good because he can call fastball. You can throw change
up off your fastball. He'd catch it every time. Ah,
So you can cross up your catcher and you know
that speeds things up and that gets rid of any
sign still and that's going on behind you. And yeah,
you knew a lot of things to call your own game,

(01:06:37):
and but the biggest, the biggest reason for it is
to keep the game moving to you know, keep your fielders.
You know, the quicker I can get, you know, those
eight guys off the field, you know, the better chance
we have will winning. It's it's it really comes down
to that. And uh, you know, if I spend you know,

(01:07:01):
if I spend an hour on the mound, and the
guy on face and spends an hour and a half
on the mound, we're probably gonna win.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Greg We've asked you about hitters when you played, and
today let me reverse the question, ask you about pictures
when you played. There are other guys you watched that
really impressed you with the way they work their's stuff,
their approach. And in today's game, is there anyone who
stands out that you enjoy watching more than others on
the mountain?

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
You know, Ebaldi is a legit pitcher. He you know,
he pitched election. I watched him. You know, when you
watch guys throw sides, when you see guys in the clubhouse,
it's a little bit different than just watching them on TV.
When you see the preparation that goes into it for

(01:07:44):
when it's their fifth day to pitch. You know, de
Gram's incredible. You know, it's easy to pick, you know,
the best pitchers out there, but you could see that
they're actually trying to pitch. They're not just out there
brain dead chucking. You know, they're not just you know,
throwing it somewhere in the cage and hoping the guy

(01:08:06):
swings and misses it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
They're actually trying to.

Speaker 4 (01:08:09):
Set pitches up, pitch off the last pitch, execute, rely
on execution as opposed to stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Those are the guys I like to watch pitch.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Greg. We're going to give you us our last question,
a chance to reverse the roles here retribution for the
GM of the Cubs in the nineteen ninety three for
what he did to you, and ask you this question.
You played in the playoffs a ton as a player,
what was your expectation of what the GM or the
front office should do to help support the team when

(01:08:40):
you were winning, Like, did they ever consult you on
trades they were contemplating? Well? As the players, what was
your expectation should did they need to step up and
really deliver something to the clubhouse or did you interact
with him at all at that time?

Speaker 4 (01:08:55):
Well, you know, in Atlanta, there was some interaction. There
was a little bit with the players. You know, Bobby
would ask our opinion. Rarely, I mean occasionally. It happened
a couple of times. I know, we were going to

(01:09:16):
trade for Paul Bocco, who was a catcher and he
was with Detroit at the time. And Bobby said, go
up in the clubhouse and watch the Detroit Tiger guy,
Paul Bocco.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Catch, and we might trade for him.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
And you know, I went up and watched him catch,
you know, two or three four innings, and and you know,
he asked me to go, Hey, what do you think
is that someone you could throw to? I said, yeah,
absolutely nothing wrong with him. He looks like a good catcher.
And I was consultant on that. There was there was
a time where we had to pick the eleventh pitcher

(01:09:56):
out of spring training and Bobby called all the stars
and and said, you know, hey, which of these three
guys We can take.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
All three of them. They're all equal.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
And you know, he said, hey, which one of these
three guys do you want to spend your time on
the bus with and in the clubhouse with, and we
were able to, you know, have some influence on that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
But you know, I.

Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
Think as a player, you you kind of kind of
stay in your lane. You know, it's not my lane.
We trusted what they were doing in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Chicago. I was pretty young, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
I think I don't know if Suckcliffe and Lee Smith
and those guys had any.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Say back then.

Speaker 4 (01:10:46):
If they did, I didn't hear about it. You know,
I think there's it's uh makes you feel pretty good.
You know, when your GM or your manager comes and says, hey,
what do you think about that guy? You know, I
think that it shows they value your opinion a little bit. It's, uh,
you just hope you're not wrong, you know, puts a

(01:11:08):
little added pressure on you to be right. And yes,
pretty special when he called us in in spring training
that one day and we were able to.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
Give our two cents.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
Yeah. I think from an executive standpoint, the biggest challenge
I've often asked players their opinion is then when you
don't go with their recommendation, you have to circle back
and tell them what We were also asking ten other
people what they thought about this situation. It wasn't just
you so you want you wanted. Your tensions are to
do the right thing, but sometimes the execution falls at
bit short but great. I just want to say thank

(01:11:43):
you so much for coming on exceptionally insightful conversation with you.
We truly appreciate it. Here for everyone, please join us
next week on Rosters to rings. Please join mest bad Levine,
Ryan McDonough and other general managers every week for Roster

(01:12:04):
Syringes on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.