September 12, 2025 • 29 mins
Ben Maller (produced by Danny G.) has a great Friday for you! He talks: Doc Mike returns, the Big Con Continues, NBA is hoodwinked, & more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kubbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old Republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me Ben Maler,
Hello and Danny g Radio. A Happy Friday to year,
the twelfth day of September. As we are one game
in two week number two, week number two of the
(00:49):
NFL season of the Packers and the Commanders last night,
and now you have a full weekend of the Fifth Hour,
and we kick it off right now on this edition
the Friday Special, after a very long overnight show, The
Friday Special. We've got bugs, Bunny Truman, and possibly some
(01:12):
other things. But we're gonna begin with this. So, as
you know, the Fifth Hour a tribute to the Overnight Show.
Let me talk about whatever pops up in the head
that I have on top of my body here. So
the text arrived the other day. It was during the
radio show and the text said are you on the radio?
(01:33):
Which I thought was odd because I was literally doing
the show. It was like midway through the show and
the text came in, are you on the radio? And
so I wrote back, yes, I'm on the radio, and
then silence, and minutes later, the call screening board in
my computer lit up. Now, they keep the studio usually
(01:55):
pretty dark, except when we're recording the YouTube videos, so
the callboard lights up. Now. I had a bunch of
other calls and then I see the name and it
starts flashing on my left hand side. I see the name,
and there's the city the callers from. It's from Chicago.
Callers from Chicago, and not just any caller. This is
(02:18):
not just your run of the mill radio caller. If
you missed it. This week we had the glorious return
of Doc Mike. Doc Mike popped up out of nowhere.
He is back, well, he was back for one day.
He called the show the other night. Now his first
call and much. I actually got some email from people
(02:40):
who have listened to the show for a very brief
amount of time and they're like, tell me more about
this guy, Doc Mike, and so rather than right back
to people, because I'm very bad about that. If you've
emailed me, I probably haven't written back. Bad job by me.
I'm a schmuck. So I said, rather than right back
to these people, I will use my platform, the pie
pulpit here on the fifth hour, and I will reminisce
(03:03):
about the caller known as Doc Mike. So Doc did
return to the show. He called for the first time
in probably five six months, maybe longer than that. It
seemed like it had been years. Seemed like it had
been years. I'm going to decapitate a goat, let's do it.
It felt like, Hey, I was running into an old friend.
(03:24):
You everyone into somebody at the grocery store or something
like that. He sah, look at that. I didn't know
you were still around. Yeah, I didn't know you were
around either. And it's like the old friend, the one
who always has a story, that really good storyteller, And
in this case, this is our friend that's got stories
that are half brilliant, half insane, and completely unforgettable, completely unforgettable.
(03:49):
That is Doc Mike in a nutshell. He's not just
a radio caller, he's a headline. He's also a Hasmad
alert as you're gonna learn if you've don't know that story.
And he's the reason, one of the reasons that sports
radio is never just about the sports. Now, we learned
during the pandemic years ago, that's not really about the sports.
(04:12):
It's not We had the most listeners we've ever had
to Fox Sports Radio when there were no baseball games,
there was no NBA playoff games, there was no sports.
We had more people listening in the middle of the
pandemic than we've ever had since or before. I mean,
it was insane. So many of you have been with
me on this audio journey out into the twilight Zone,
(04:37):
and so some of you know these stories. But for
those that are new, and we love that there are
new people that find the show because they end up
working the dreaded overnight shift. All I say it's the
dreaded day shift. For them, they say it's the dreaded
overnight shift. So you know the Goadhead story. I think
everyone does. I mentioned it briefly the other day. He
left one at Wrigley Field. He's actually done this a
(04:58):
couple of times. Doc Mike, the Mayor of Chicago. One
of the great stories as long as I'm around, I'll
remember this, and when I died, that'll be it. But
the Mayor of Chicago, Rama Manuel, at the time, the
cub head, our goathead knocked was dropped off. They knocked
on the cub's offices, dropped off this goathead, right, So
(05:21):
the story was and the cub game got rained out
that day, so there was no story, and so the
media latched on to the goatthead. The mayor of Chicago
at the time, Ram Emmanuel, comes out and says that
all police resources would be used to find out whoever
did it. They wanted to get to the bottom of it.
They didn't treat it like some prank. They were very upset.
(05:43):
So think about that a goat heead in a box
created the same level of urgency for the city of
Chicago as a citywide manhunt. How ridiculous is that? And
my favorite part of that story is that Doc Mike
was kind enough to call me up as he was
arriving at Iconic Wrigley Field, Chicago, and he had his
(06:07):
phone and he was doing play by play. He saw Ben,
I got the goathhead. I'm going to go here. He's
describing where he's dropping the goat head off. He's doing
play by play as this is going on. So juxtapose
that I'm playing back this message because I was sleeping
when he sent it. It was early in the morning
in Chicago. Cubs were playing a day game. I think
(06:29):
they're playing at Giants. So I'm hearing this, and then
I'm seeing on the internet. I'm seeing the Mayor of
Chicago say, hey, we got to find who did this.
And it was the funniest thing. I still chuckle about it.
And then there's the time that Doc Mike decided that
I needed a goat head and he mailed me a
goat actually mail a couple, and there was a problem
(06:52):
with one of them send it to the Fox Sports
radio studios. Now one famously leaked blood through the packaging,
and this created a very tent situation in the mail room.
They didn't know what's in the box. They had no
idea what was in the box, so this became a
(07:12):
hazmat situation. I get yelled at. People are screaming at
me and management. Management's changed. They were screaming, what are
you doing. You can't be having this, Senor. I didn't
tell them to send it. You can't be having this
stuff center. I'm not in control of the United States
Postal Service. I cannot stop someone from sending something to me.
You shouldn't have people send this stuff here. I understand,
(07:34):
but I didn't tell the person to send it. They
chose to send it. You can't send it here. I
know that, but I told you I someone can mail
me something all they want. It's not illegal to mail
something unless it's a hazard. Anyway, we went back and forth,
and as a result, I was banned embargoed to everyone
(07:55):
say I could not receive mail. I believe it was
like six months. They would not not receive any mail.
He just returned all mail that was sent to me
as an active protest. Now Doc mailed, as we say,
several goattheads in that whole thing. Miranda Marino was my producer.
She got a GoAhead, which she didn't want at the time.
(08:18):
Another fun factoried about Doc Mike. Every presidential election since
twenty zero four, so we are over twenty years. Doc
Mike has run for president one of these fringe parties
that gets no votes. So Doc Mike has run for
president and he's always been kind enough to include me
as his vice presidential candidate. You see, there's no caucus.
(08:40):
When Doc Mike decides to run for president, he just
does it. Unfortunately, we never picked up any votes. That's
not true. We did get some votes people would send me.
It was like twenty oh eight. I vaguely remember people
sending me photos they were in the ballot box and
they wrote they wrote in Mike and Ben Maller in
(09:01):
the Battle of Box. I thought, well, that's both wonderful
and horrific at the same time. So then there was
the Cansa City story. Doc big fan of the show,
drove down from Chicago to Kansas City. Not that bad
a drive, but still a decent trip. And he shows
(09:22):
up to the Malar Meet and greet and he sets
up his own table. Now this is a Malar branded
meet and greet, this is not a Doc Mike meet
and greet. So he shows up there, He's got a
table in the back. He puts a stack of T
shirts out with his face on it, and then he
starts signing autographs and giving medical advice to people that
(09:44):
were there to eat chicken fingers. And it's like, bugs, Bunny,
what's up?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Doc?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
It's like Doc Mike made himself the headliner at someone
else's party. Who does that, Doc Mike, That's who does that.
Doc Mike's the one that does that. Now, later outside
the the event had ended. I was preparing to leave.
The event had come to a close, and I'm not
familiar with Kansas City. I don't know where the good
part in the bad part are. I can kind of
(10:09):
tell when you drive around. This looks better. This is
probably the good part. That doesn't look so good. That
must be the hard scrabble streets, but you don't really know.
And the restaurant, which was not the landing, It was
the restaurant before the landing, which is we're not going
to give them a plug because they don't have the
food anymore, the ben Maler chicken fingers. So go out.
It was nighttime and it was another nice, warm Kansas
City night, one hundred degrees with seven hundred degree humidity,
(10:33):
seven hundred percent whatever humidity. So I go out the
dark street at night, getting ready to leave, and Doc says, hey,
I want to show you something. Okay, So I am
with my wife, my then girlfriend, she is with me,
and Dox says, give me a sack. He then goes
into his glove box, and in the glove box he
(10:58):
grabs something I didn't know what. I'm not sure what
it was. He then walks back out again the street
starked as a little bit of a street lamp kind
of gleaning on the face of Doc Mike. And then
he opened his right eye a little bit and it
had this like sparkle, and he puts his other hand
in the air and he's got a screwdriver. He's holding
(11:19):
up a screwdriver. And in that moment, I thought, this
is it. I'm going to be murdered by my most
dedicated listener. But no, it turns out that Doc Mike
just wanted to give me the license plate literally off
of his car, literally off of his car, a souvenir
(11:43):
Doc Mike license plate, and he did. He just took
it off the car and said, here you go. And
he had some trouble futzing around trying to get the
license plate off the car, and then he autographed he
signed it. I still have it, believe it or not.
I still have that item. There's a couple of license
plates I have. I have the one from Doc Mike,
and there was a gentleman from Florida who I've been
asked not to name because he's a lifetime member of
(12:06):
the country club in Florida. And this guy, big fan
of the Ben Maler Show, used to listen all the time.
I haven't heard from much anymore anymore because it's hard
to contact people when you're in prison. Costs a lot
of money to send those letters. Anyway, back then, it
did anyone. I don't know it's like now. So he
was deputized. That's probably not the right word. But his
(12:28):
job in prison was to make license plates, and so
he made a Florida license plate with my name on it. Now,
that part is one thing. The next part is you're
not allowed to do that. How do you get it
out of the prison. I still don't know how he
got it out of the prison, but I did receive
it in the mail. So I have a Doc Mike
license plate and a my name license plate. It's pretty funny.
(12:50):
It's a Florida plate and it's as amateur radio on it,
which is really a tribute to my dad as well
as Big Ham radio operator. So you don't forget stuff
like this. You just don't back to the Doc Mike
angle to it. So let's flash way back, way way
back during the pandemic. So Doc Mike somehow became the
(13:11):
producer of the Ben mathershw No, we really don't have
a producer on the overnight show. He's going to produced
the show and do the show and all that. So
Doc Mike somehow became the producer. Now, this is another
one of those stories. I'm not sure how it all
went down. It was a bit of a foggy situation.
One minute, I'm on the radio talking about Tom Brady
(13:33):
and the whole situation with Brady, and at that time,
he was leaving the Patriots, He's going to go to
Tampa Bay, and there was all these stories about Tom Brady.
And the next thing, I've got Doc Mike lining up guests. Now,
not athletes, not coaches. Doc Mike ended up lining up doctors,
(13:56):
like real or at least those that believe they're real.
Uh So he put these people on and during the pandemic,
we didn't really have many rules. We just had to
fill the airtime. And the bosses were like, listen, there's
no sports going on. We hired you to do sports.
Just talk about whatever you want to talk about. So
I was like, all right, Doc's going to book a guest.
(14:18):
No one else's booking guests for me. I don't have
a producer, so let's let's do it. And so he
puts these doctors on to do urine therapy on national radio.
Urine therapy. One even got so worked up and do
a tizzy that they cursed on the air. Now I
should have been furious. I should have been very upset.
(14:40):
That's a very bad thing to do. You're not supposed
to curse on the air. Instead, I laughed, because when
you let Doc Mike drive the bus, when you put
him in the driver's seat and you let him drive
the bus, you do not complain. Do not complain when
it crashes. Don't do that. You just and you hope
(15:02):
the fire isn't too big when the bus crashes, because
you know it's going to crash. And then there was
the wedding. Now some of you attended this, if you
went to the Mallard meet and greet in the Great
State of Minnesota, a fake wedding at the Iconic Mermaid
where Hollering James was there and a bunch of other
(15:23):
big stars there from the Great State of Minnesota. They
were all hanging out and also other states around there.
So Doc Mike and Regina, also known as spin Cycle Regina,
they had a wedding. It wasn't real, of course, but
it was, if you'll excuse me, the most real fake
(15:43):
thing I've ever been a part of, Doc Mike saying
I do in front of radio listeners. I was dragged
into that. It was funny, it was bizarre, and it
really was perfect in many ways for that of it.
It was perfect for that event. You could tell part
(16:03):
of Doc Mike believed that he was actually getting married,
even if it was all theater. He played along, good acting.
And here's the thing about Doc Mike, and I'll sum
it up like this, he shouldn't matter. Doc Mike should
not matter in the context of a talk radio show.
He's just one guy calling in to the overnight a
(16:25):
sports talk radio show. And yet some of the funniest,
most memorable, most bizarre things in the history of the
show have happened because of Doc Mike. He's chaos, he's theater.
He's the best and worst of what makes sports radio
so addictive and the passion of sports radio. So yes,
(16:48):
Doc Mike, he has called the show again, and yes,
it was wonderful to hear from him, because Doc Mike
is a reminder, at least for me and maybe for you.
But he's a reminder to me. Doc Mike is that
it's kind of why we do what we do in
the first place. And it's not just about the sports.
(17:12):
It's about the people around the sports, the goat heads,
the screw drivers, the fake weddings that never happen. So
Doc Mike is back, and I say, at least for
the Ben Mallor Show, and I would say for a larger,
larger group of sports radio that means the world's just
a little more interesting again, at least when he chooses
(17:33):
to call in, he say he's going to call in
more often. We'll see if that actually happens. I have
my doubts, but he said he's gonna call in more often,
so we'll see. Now, I did want to rant about
something else, and there's a need to filibuster for me.
For me now, I mentioned this in the previous episode
(17:54):
of the radio show. I would like to now mention
it again. I want to expand on what has become
a pet peeve of mine. And there are people in
this world that collect baseball cards. There are some people
that collect snaps stamps, there's some people that collect Disney stuff.
Whatever your jam is, I don't know what you collect.
(18:16):
It's not my business unless you want to make it
my business. So what we're all collecting though, and we're
not realizing it, Well, I'm realizing it. I've had the
point of epiphanation where having an epiphany. But we're all,
all of us are collecting illusions. The greatest hustle of
(18:41):
the modern age is not Bernie made Off, It's not Enron,
it's not the Larry David endorsed crypto that went under. No,
it's the curated, digitalized, algorithm driven social media mirage that
(19:02):
we are living in a fund zone at the count
of all, a fun zone of mirrors, and it rubs
me the wrong way it does. And so the inside
skinning on this, a lot of us know it's a
really slick trick, and yet we still clap like seals
(19:25):
at a show when the magician pulls the rabbit out
of that. Social media is the wile wild West. There
is no sheriff, just tumbleweeds, tumbleweeds of bots, rolling, rolling,
rolling across the digital wasteland that is your feet whatever
your algorithm happens to be. However, here's the con. The
(19:49):
con is there are major companies, billion dollar, multi billion
dollar companies who I believe are run by really smart people,
really really smart people who are very sharp in business
and know exactly what they're doing. And yet these really
really smart people, the top one percent of one percent,
(20:12):
those people are falling for it. They get dragged in.
Look at these numbers. Millions of followers, billions of views,
except spoiler alert, spoiler alert, the followers are fake. The
views are inflated, the downloads bought in bulk like you
(20:33):
would buy tubs of mayonnaise at Costco or discount toothpaste.
Now we're told that that artist is blowing up, this
influencer is a star, and this show is a smash
hit except when, and it always happens, when the curtain lifts.
(20:58):
The tickets aren't selling, the arenas are mostly empty, the
ratings look like they're a minor league team on a
Tuesday in Toledo. It is a Potempkin village, is what
it is. It's a facade built out of bots, fake likes,
and the illusion of relevance. And it turns out that
(21:22):
a lot of these people that have been going around
trying to sell music or sell their takes on certain
shows that the fans with just an algorithm in Uzbekistan
some clicking refresh and there's some new followers and all
that stuff. And you see, the matrix is a rigged game.
(21:43):
It is a rigged game. Red pill, blue pill, guess
what same destination destination fraud, capital f fraud. And now
entering the chat, half man lizard person Adam Silver, who's
(22:04):
supposed to be supposed to be the grown up in
the room, supposed to be the grown up in the room.
He gets on his soapbox this week. Now, I mentioned
this on the radio show, but I would like to
expand on this because it really ties into what I'm
thinking about. And this is my train of thought, and
I'm the conductor true on my own train of thought.
So I've just explained to you how I think this
(22:25):
great hustle is going on. And it's a Potempkin village.
It's all just an illusion, and it's like a movie set.
It's like being over at the Universal Lot and they've
got the downtown New York scene and that whole deal.
It's like that. So Adam Silver, who's supposed to be
one of those grown ups in the room. Adam Silver,
(22:45):
he gets on his soapbox or his spaceship is flying
saucer the other day and he says the NBA is
a highlight sport. He said it. He was asked about
people not wanting to money for the various streaming services,
and Adam Silber, without missing the beat, says, well, listen,
(23:07):
just watch the highlights. Don't bother watching the games. Just
snack on twelve second dunks and three point shots that
are about eight seconds on TikTok, and you're good, which
is the equivalent if if you were the CEO of
Ruth Chris Steakhouse said, I know you can't afford our steak.
You can't afford our delicious mashed potatoes or the mac
(23:30):
and cheese. You can't afford anything because you're poor. So
what I'm gonna do for you is you don't need
the steak, you don't need the mashed potatoes, you do
not need the mac and cheese. Just lick the plate.
That's all you need, right, you don't need the steak.
Just lick the plate. That's what it's all about. So
the NBA business model. The NBA makes the lion's share
(23:54):
of their money off television when no one's watching television anymore.
That may, it may not be true, but television is
what pays the bills, the real money. Social media, for
all of the glitter and all the metrics and all that,
is a cotton candy economy. It's sweet, fluffy and evaporates
(24:18):
the second it touches your tongue e. And the other
thing about is, once you've seen how the trick is done,
and this is with all magic, but this is a
bit of a magic trick. Once you've seen how the
trick is done, you no longer say abercadabor, hocus pocus.
You learn how the magician slides the box, how the
saw never actually touches the lady who's getting cut in half.
(24:40):
You see all that. You notice the bots, You notice
the inflated viral accounts that you've never heard of. You
notice the emperor has no clothes, just a lot of retreats,
and it's like, what's up with that? Now? Back in
the old days, you're an old head. Back in the
old days, we called this what it is. We called
(25:01):
it fraud. We called it fraud. Now, a synonym for
fraud is engagement. So we've dressed up the con with
a fancier language, slapped a blue check mark on it,
and said there you go, sold it as is its progress.
Now everyone is making money on this outside of one
(25:23):
group of people. And it's one of the reasons that
this has gone unchecked. That the creators buy followers and views,
they inflate their value. It's not real. The people selling
advertising on the creators' platforms, the social networks all they're
(25:45):
all gung ho on that, right. So you got the
influencer who's buying followers, So the people that sell followers
are making money, they're growing their audience. Then you have
the other social media companies who are benefiting because the
perception is that you have a lot of followers, more
people who are real will actually follow you in so
(26:08):
they're making money on that. The only people who are
getting panted and this exercise are the hair brained advertisers
who don't realize they're being hustled, scam bamboozled, hoodwinked and
led astray all of those things. Then all realize it
and so yes, this is a I don't think it's
(26:28):
I'm not gonna use work conspiracy anymore. I just think it's
a straight con. The house always wins. The magician doesn't
saw the lady in half, the bots don't care about
your product, and the NBA doesn't want you to watch
the game. It just wants you to double tap a
dunk and make sure you give it a like. That's
(26:50):
all they want. It's an old movie, which is a
great movie, and they should remake it called The Truman Show.
Now maybe that's before your time, But The Truman Show.
The crowd is fake, The applause a canned. The illusion
is about as airtight as you can get until until
someone sails their boat into the edge of the set
(27:13):
and finds an exit door. Then it becomes a problem.
So it's smoke, it's mirrors, and it's a magic trick
that we all agree, not me anymore, but we all
agree to pretend is real. And every once in a
while there'll be a team that will have an influencer
throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, and
(27:35):
it's pretty funny. Most of the time, nobody knows who
these people are. It's kind of like YouTube. During that
Chiefs Chargers game, they mixed in some YouTube influencers who
have a big following on YouTube, and the millions of
people who are watching the NFL game had no idea
who these people are because they're really not that famous.
(27:57):
It's like being famous in a silo. Well, you're really
well known in the silo. Outside the silo, nobody really
knows your that's the problem. And that's the problem. The
silo is not nearly as big as you think the
silo is. That's the other problem. So it's the modern
world's greatest hustle and the mark is us. It's you
(28:17):
and me. We'll get out on that. We will have
a new podcast on Saturday, that would be tomorrow and
then again on Sunday, NFL Sunday. Don't forget to watch
Benny Versus the Penny Benny versus the Penny on YouTube,
Benny Vspenny, that's Benny Vspenny on YouTube. Check that out.
(28:39):
As we have a brand new slate of games up today,
just went up last night. You can watch all the
picks on the key primetime games, including the game in
Kansas City, Philadelphia and KC and all the way through
the double header action on Monday night. Got you covered
on all of it, and we'll catch you next time.
(29:02):
Have a great Friday. Danny g should join me tomorrow.
We'll catch you then. Got a murder.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I gotta go.
Kubbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old Republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere, The Fifth Hour with me Ben Maler,
Hello and Danny g Radio. A Happy Friday to year,
the twelfth day of September. As we are one game
in two week number two, week number two of the
(00:49):
NFL season of the Packers and the Commanders last night,
and now you have a full weekend of the Fifth Hour,
and we kick it off right now on this edition
the Friday Special, after a very long overnight show, The
Friday Special. We've got bugs, Bunny Truman, and possibly some
(01:12):
other things. But we're gonna begin with this. So, as
you know, the Fifth Hour a tribute to the Overnight Show.
Let me talk about whatever pops up in the head
that I have on top of my body here. So
the text arrived the other day. It was during the
radio show and the text said are you on the radio?
(01:33):
Which I thought was odd because I was literally doing
the show. It was like midway through the show and
the text came in, are you on the radio? And
so I wrote back, yes, I'm on the radio, and
then silence, and minutes later, the call screening board in
my computer lit up. Now, they keep the studio usually
(01:55):
pretty dark, except when we're recording the YouTube videos, so
the callboard lights up. Now. I had a bunch of
other calls and then I see the name and it
starts flashing on my left hand side. I see the name,
and there's the city the callers from. It's from Chicago.
Callers from Chicago, and not just any caller. This is
(02:18):
not just your run of the mill radio caller. If
you missed it. This week we had the glorious return
of Doc Mike. Doc Mike popped up out of nowhere.
He is back, well, he was back for one day.
He called the show the other night. Now his first
call and much. I actually got some email from people
(02:40):
who have listened to the show for a very brief
amount of time and they're like, tell me more about
this guy, Doc Mike, and so rather than right back
to people, because I'm very bad about that. If you've
emailed me, I probably haven't written back. Bad job by me.
I'm a schmuck. So I said, rather than right back
to these people, I will use my platform, the pie
pulpit here on the fifth hour, and I will reminisce
(03:03):
about the caller known as Doc Mike. So Doc did
return to the show. He called for the first time
in probably five six months, maybe longer than that. It
seemed like it had been years. Seemed like it had
been years. I'm going to decapitate a goat, let's do it.
It felt like, Hey, I was running into an old friend.
(03:24):
You everyone into somebody at the grocery store or something
like that. He sah, look at that. I didn't know
you were still around. Yeah, I didn't know you were
around either. And it's like the old friend, the one
who always has a story, that really good storyteller, And
in this case, this is our friend that's got stories
that are half brilliant, half insane, and completely unforgettable, completely unforgettable.
(03:49):
That is Doc Mike in a nutshell. He's not just
a radio caller, he's a headline. He's also a Hasmad
alert as you're gonna learn if you've don't know that story.
And he's the reason, one of the reasons that sports
radio is never just about the sports. Now, we learned
during the pandemic years ago, that's not really about the sports.
(04:12):
It's not We had the most listeners we've ever had
to Fox Sports Radio when there were no baseball games,
there was no NBA playoff games, there was no sports.
We had more people listening in the middle of the
pandemic than we've ever had since or before. I mean,
it was insane. So many of you have been with
me on this audio journey out into the twilight Zone,
(04:37):
and so some of you know these stories. But for
those that are new, and we love that there are
new people that find the show because they end up
working the dreaded overnight shift. All I say it's the
dreaded day shift. For them, they say it's the dreaded
overnight shift. So you know the Goadhead story. I think
everyone does. I mentioned it briefly the other day. He
left one at Wrigley Field. He's actually done this a
(04:58):
couple of times. Doc Mike, the Mayor of Chicago. One
of the great stories as long as I'm around, I'll
remember this, and when I died, that'll be it. But
the Mayor of Chicago, Rama Manuel, at the time, the
cub head, our goathead knocked was dropped off. They knocked
on the cub's offices, dropped off this goathead, right, So
(05:21):
the story was and the cub game got rained out
that day, so there was no story, and so the
media latched on to the goatthead. The mayor of Chicago
at the time, Ram Emmanuel, comes out and says that
all police resources would be used to find out whoever
did it. They wanted to get to the bottom of it.
They didn't treat it like some prank. They were very upset.
(05:43):
So think about that a goat heead in a box
created the same level of urgency for the city of
Chicago as a citywide manhunt. How ridiculous is that? And
my favorite part of that story is that Doc Mike
was kind enough to call me up as he was
arriving at Iconic Wrigley Field, Chicago, and he had his
(06:07):
phone and he was doing play by play. He saw Ben,
I got the goathhead. I'm going to go here. He's
describing where he's dropping the goat head off. He's doing
play by play as this is going on. So juxtapose
that I'm playing back this message because I was sleeping
when he sent it. It was early in the morning
in Chicago. Cubs were playing a day game. I think
(06:29):
they're playing at Giants. So I'm hearing this, and then
I'm seeing on the internet. I'm seeing the Mayor of
Chicago say, hey, we got to find who did this.
And it was the funniest thing. I still chuckle about it.
And then there's the time that Doc Mike decided that
I needed a goat head and he mailed me a
goat actually mail a couple, and there was a problem
(06:52):
with one of them send it to the Fox Sports
radio studios. Now one famously leaked blood through the packaging,
and this created a very tent situation in the mail room.
They didn't know what's in the box. They had no
idea what was in the box, so this became a
(07:12):
hazmat situation. I get yelled at. People are screaming at
me and management. Management's changed. They were screaming, what are
you doing. You can't be having this, Senor. I didn't
tell them to send it. You can't be having this
stuff center. I'm not in control of the United States
Postal Service. I cannot stop someone from sending something to me.
You shouldn't have people send this stuff here. I understand,
(07:34):
but I didn't tell the person to send it. They
chose to send it. You can't send it here. I
know that, but I told you I someone can mail
me something all they want. It's not illegal to mail
something unless it's a hazard. Anyway, we went back and forth,
and as a result, I was banned embargoed to everyone
(07:55):
say I could not receive mail. I believe it was
like six months. They would not not receive any mail.
He just returned all mail that was sent to me
as an active protest. Now Doc mailed, as we say,
several goattheads in that whole thing. Miranda Marino was my producer.
She got a GoAhead, which she didn't want at the time.
(08:18):
Another fun factoried about Doc Mike. Every presidential election since
twenty zero four, so we are over twenty years. Doc
Mike has run for president one of these fringe parties
that gets no votes. So Doc Mike has run for
president and he's always been kind enough to include me
as his vice presidential candidate. You see, there's no caucus.
(08:40):
When Doc Mike decides to run for president, he just
does it. Unfortunately, we never picked up any votes. That's
not true. We did get some votes people would send me.
It was like twenty oh eight. I vaguely remember people
sending me photos they were in the ballot box and
they wrote they wrote in Mike and Ben Maller in
(09:01):
the Battle of Box. I thought, well, that's both wonderful
and horrific at the same time. So then there was
the Cansa City story. Doc big fan of the show,
drove down from Chicago to Kansas City. Not that bad
a drive, but still a decent trip. And he shows
(09:22):
up to the Malar Meet and greet and he sets
up his own table. Now this is a Malar branded
meet and greet, this is not a Doc Mike meet
and greet. So he shows up there, He's got a
table in the back. He puts a stack of T
shirts out with his face on it, and then he
starts signing autographs and giving medical advice to people that
(09:44):
were there to eat chicken fingers. And it's like, bugs, Bunny,
what's up?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Doc?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
It's like Doc Mike made himself the headliner at someone
else's party. Who does that, Doc Mike, That's who does that.
Doc Mike's the one that does that. Now, later outside
the the event had ended. I was preparing to leave.
The event had come to a close, and I'm not
familiar with Kansas City. I don't know where the good
part in the bad part are. I can kind of
(10:09):
tell when you drive around. This looks better. This is
probably the good part. That doesn't look so good. That
must be the hard scrabble streets, but you don't really know.
And the restaurant, which was not the landing, It was
the restaurant before the landing, which is we're not going
to give them a plug because they don't have the
food anymore, the ben Maler chicken fingers. So go out.
It was nighttime and it was another nice, warm Kansas
City night, one hundred degrees with seven hundred degree humidity,
(10:33):
seven hundred percent whatever humidity. So I go out the
dark street at night, getting ready to leave, and Doc says, hey,
I want to show you something. Okay, So I am
with my wife, my then girlfriend, she is with me,
and Dox says, give me a sack. He then goes
into his glove box, and in the glove box he
(10:58):
grabs something I didn't know what. I'm not sure what
it was. He then walks back out again the street
starked as a little bit of a street lamp kind
of gleaning on the face of Doc Mike. And then
he opened his right eye a little bit and it
had this like sparkle, and he puts his other hand
in the air and he's got a screwdriver. He's holding
(11:19):
up a screwdriver. And in that moment, I thought, this
is it. I'm going to be murdered by my most
dedicated listener. But no, it turns out that Doc Mike
just wanted to give me the license plate literally off
of his car, literally off of his car, a souvenir
(11:43):
Doc Mike license plate, and he did. He just took
it off the car and said, here you go. And
he had some trouble futzing around trying to get the
license plate off the car, and then he autographed he
signed it. I still have it, believe it or not.
I still have that item. There's a couple of license
plates I have. I have the one from Doc Mike,
and there was a gentleman from Florida who I've been
asked not to name because he's a lifetime member of
(12:06):
the country club in Florida. And this guy, big fan
of the Ben Maler Show, used to listen all the time.
I haven't heard from much anymore anymore because it's hard
to contact people when you're in prison. Costs a lot
of money to send those letters. Anyway, back then, it
did anyone. I don't know it's like now. So he
was deputized. That's probably not the right word. But his
(12:28):
job in prison was to make license plates, and so
he made a Florida license plate with my name on it. Now,
that part is one thing. The next part is you're
not allowed to do that. How do you get it
out of the prison. I still don't know how he
got it out of the prison, but I did receive
it in the mail. So I have a Doc Mike
license plate and a my name license plate. It's pretty funny.
(12:50):
It's a Florida plate and it's as amateur radio on it,
which is really a tribute to my dad as well
as Big Ham radio operator. So you don't forget stuff
like this. You just don't back to the Doc Mike
angle to it. So let's flash way back, way way
back during the pandemic. So Doc Mike somehow became the
(13:11):
producer of the Ben mathershw No, we really don't have
a producer on the overnight show. He's going to produced
the show and do the show and all that. So
Doc Mike somehow became the producer. Now, this is another
one of those stories. I'm not sure how it all
went down. It was a bit of a foggy situation.
One minute, I'm on the radio talking about Tom Brady
(13:33):
and the whole situation with Brady, and at that time,
he was leaving the Patriots, He's going to go to
Tampa Bay, and there was all these stories about Tom Brady.
And the next thing, I've got Doc Mike lining up guests. Now,
not athletes, not coaches. Doc Mike ended up lining up doctors,
(13:56):
like real or at least those that believe they're real.
Uh So he put these people on and during the pandemic,
we didn't really have many rules. We just had to
fill the airtime. And the bosses were like, listen, there's
no sports going on. We hired you to do sports.
Just talk about whatever you want to talk about. So
I was like, all right, Doc's going to book a guest.
(14:18):
No one else's booking guests for me. I don't have
a producer, so let's let's do it. And so he
puts these doctors on to do urine therapy on national radio.
Urine therapy. One even got so worked up and do
a tizzy that they cursed on the air. Now I
should have been furious. I should have been very upset.
(14:40):
That's a very bad thing to do. You're not supposed
to curse on the air. Instead, I laughed, because when
you let Doc Mike drive the bus, when you put
him in the driver's seat and you let him drive
the bus, you do not complain. Do not complain when
it crashes. Don't do that. You just and you hope
(15:02):
the fire isn't too big when the bus crashes, because
you know it's going to crash. And then there was
the wedding. Now some of you attended this, if you
went to the Mallard meet and greet in the Great
State of Minnesota, a fake wedding at the Iconic Mermaid
where Hollering James was there and a bunch of other
(15:23):
big stars there from the Great State of Minnesota. They
were all hanging out and also other states around there.
So Doc Mike and Regina, also known as spin Cycle Regina,
they had a wedding. It wasn't real, of course, but
it was, if you'll excuse me, the most real fake
(15:43):
thing I've ever been a part of, Doc Mike saying
I do in front of radio listeners. I was dragged
into that. It was funny, it was bizarre, and it
really was perfect in many ways for that of it.
It was perfect for that event. You could tell part
(16:03):
of Doc Mike believed that he was actually getting married,
even if it was all theater. He played along, good acting.
And here's the thing about Doc Mike, and I'll sum
it up like this, he shouldn't matter. Doc Mike should
not matter in the context of a talk radio show.
He's just one guy calling in to the overnight a
(16:25):
sports talk radio show. And yet some of the funniest,
most memorable, most bizarre things in the history of the
show have happened because of Doc Mike. He's chaos, he's theater.
He's the best and worst of what makes sports radio
so addictive and the passion of sports radio. So yes,
(16:48):
Doc Mike, he has called the show again, and yes,
it was wonderful to hear from him, because Doc Mike
is a reminder, at least for me and maybe for you.
But he's a reminder to me. Doc Mike is that
it's kind of why we do what we do in
the first place. And it's not just about the sports.
(17:12):
It's about the people around the sports, the goat heads,
the screw drivers, the fake weddings that never happen. So
Doc Mike is back, and I say, at least for
the Ben Mallor Show, and I would say for a larger,
larger group of sports radio that means the world's just
a little more interesting again, at least when he chooses
(17:33):
to call in, he say he's going to call in
more often. We'll see if that actually happens. I have
my doubts, but he said he's gonna call in more often,
so we'll see. Now, I did want to rant about
something else, and there's a need to filibuster for me.
For me now, I mentioned this in the previous episode
(17:54):
of the radio show. I would like to now mention
it again. I want to expand on what has become
a pet peeve of mine. And there are people in
this world that collect baseball cards. There are some people
that collect snaps stamps, there's some people that collect Disney stuff.
Whatever your jam is, I don't know what you collect.
(18:16):
It's not my business unless you want to make it
my business. So what we're all collecting though, and we're
not realizing it, Well, I'm realizing it. I've had the
point of epiphanation where having an epiphany. But we're all,
all of us are collecting illusions. The greatest hustle of
(18:41):
the modern age is not Bernie made Off, It's not Enron,
it's not the Larry David endorsed crypto that went under. No,
it's the curated, digitalized, algorithm driven social media mirage that
(19:02):
we are living in a fund zone at the count
of all, a fun zone of mirrors, and it rubs
me the wrong way it does. And so the inside
skinning on this, a lot of us know it's a
really slick trick, and yet we still clap like seals
(19:25):
at a show when the magician pulls the rabbit out
of that. Social media is the wile wild West. There
is no sheriff, just tumbleweeds, tumbleweeds of bots, rolling, rolling,
rolling across the digital wasteland that is your feet whatever
your algorithm happens to be. However, here's the con. The
(19:49):
con is there are major companies, billion dollar, multi billion
dollar companies who I believe are run by really smart people,
really really smart people who are very sharp in business
and know exactly what they're doing. And yet these really
really smart people, the top one percent of one percent,
(20:12):
those people are falling for it. They get dragged in.
Look at these numbers. Millions of followers, billions of views,
except spoiler alert, spoiler alert, the followers are fake. The
views are inflated, the downloads bought in bulk like you
(20:33):
would buy tubs of mayonnaise at Costco or discount toothpaste.
Now we're told that that artist is blowing up, this
influencer is a star, and this show is a smash
hit except when, and it always happens, when the curtain lifts.
(20:58):
The tickets aren't selling, the arenas are mostly empty, the
ratings look like they're a minor league team on a
Tuesday in Toledo. It is a Potempkin village, is what
it is. It's a facade built out of bots, fake likes,
and the illusion of relevance. And it turns out that
(21:22):
a lot of these people that have been going around
trying to sell music or sell their takes on certain
shows that the fans with just an algorithm in Uzbekistan
some clicking refresh and there's some new followers and all
that stuff. And you see, the matrix is a rigged game.
(21:43):
It is a rigged game. Red pill, blue pill, guess
what same destination destination fraud, capital f fraud. And now
entering the chat, half man lizard person Adam Silver, who's
(22:04):
supposed to be supposed to be the grown up in
the room, supposed to be the grown up in the room.
He gets on his soapbox this week. Now, I mentioned
this on the radio show, but I would like to
expand on this because it really ties into what I'm
thinking about. And this is my train of thought, and
I'm the conductor true on my own train of thought.
So I've just explained to you how I think this
(22:25):
great hustle is going on. And it's a Potempkin village.
It's all just an illusion, and it's like a movie set.
It's like being over at the Universal Lot and they've
got the downtown New York scene and that whole deal.
It's like that. So Adam Silver, who's supposed to be
one of those grown ups in the room. Adam Silver,
(22:45):
he gets on his soapbox or his spaceship is flying
saucer the other day and he says the NBA is
a highlight sport. He said it. He was asked about
people not wanting to money for the various streaming services,
and Adam Silber, without missing the beat, says, well, listen,
(23:07):
just watch the highlights. Don't bother watching the games. Just
snack on twelve second dunks and three point shots that
are about eight seconds on TikTok, and you're good, which
is the equivalent if if you were the CEO of
Ruth Chris Steakhouse said, I know you can't afford our steak.
You can't afford our delicious mashed potatoes or the mac
(23:30):
and cheese. You can't afford anything because you're poor. So
what I'm gonna do for you is you don't need
the steak, you don't need the mashed potatoes, you do
not need the mac and cheese. Just lick the plate.
That's all you need, right, you don't need the steak.
Just lick the plate. That's what it's all about. So
the NBA business model. The NBA makes the lion's share
(23:54):
of their money off television when no one's watching television anymore.
That may, it may not be true, but television is
what pays the bills, the real money. Social media, for
all of the glitter and all the metrics and all that,
is a cotton candy economy. It's sweet, fluffy and evaporates
(24:18):
the second it touches your tongue e. And the other
thing about is, once you've seen how the trick is done,
and this is with all magic, but this is a
bit of a magic trick. Once you've seen how the
trick is done, you no longer say abercadabor, hocus pocus.
You learn how the magician slides the box, how the
saw never actually touches the lady who's getting cut in half.
(24:40):
You see all that. You notice the bots, You notice
the inflated viral accounts that you've never heard of. You
notice the emperor has no clothes, just a lot of retreats,
and it's like, what's up with that? Now? Back in
the old days, you're an old head. Back in the
old days, we called this what it is. We called
(25:01):
it fraud. We called it fraud. Now, a synonym for
fraud is engagement. So we've dressed up the con with
a fancier language, slapped a blue check mark on it,
and said there you go, sold it as is its progress.
Now everyone is making money on this outside of one
(25:23):
group of people. And it's one of the reasons that
this has gone unchecked. That the creators buy followers and views,
they inflate their value. It's not real. The people selling
advertising on the creators' platforms, the social networks all they're
(25:45):
all gung ho on that, right. So you got the
influencer who's buying followers, So the people that sell followers
are making money, they're growing their audience. Then you have
the other social media companies who are benefiting because the
perception is that you have a lot of followers, more
people who are real will actually follow you in so
(26:08):
they're making money on that. The only people who are
getting panted and this exercise are the hair brained advertisers
who don't realize they're being hustled, scam bamboozled, hoodwinked and
led astray all of those things. Then all realize it
and so yes, this is a I don't think it's
(26:28):
I'm not gonna use work conspiracy anymore. I just think it's
a straight con. The house always wins. The magician doesn't
saw the lady in half, the bots don't care about
your product, and the NBA doesn't want you to watch
the game. It just wants you to double tap a
dunk and make sure you give it a like. That's
(26:50):
all they want. It's an old movie, which is a
great movie, and they should remake it called The Truman Show.
Now maybe that's before your time, But The Truman Show.
The crowd is fake, The applause a canned. The illusion
is about as airtight as you can get until until
someone sails their boat into the edge of the set
(27:13):
and finds an exit door. Then it becomes a problem.
So it's smoke, it's mirrors, and it's a magic trick
that we all agree, not me anymore, but we all
agree to pretend is real. And every once in a
while there'll be a team that will have an influencer
throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, and
(27:35):
it's pretty funny. Most of the time, nobody knows who
these people are. It's kind of like YouTube. During that
Chiefs Chargers game, they mixed in some YouTube influencers who
have a big following on YouTube, and the millions of
people who are watching the NFL game had no idea
who these people are because they're really not that famous.
(27:57):
It's like being famous in a silo. Well, you're really
well known in the silo. Outside the silo, nobody really
knows your that's the problem. And that's the problem. The
silo is not nearly as big as you think the
silo is. That's the other problem. So it's the modern
world's greatest hustle and the mark is us. It's you
(28:17):
and me. We'll get out on that. We will have
a new podcast on Saturday, that would be tomorrow and
then again on Sunday, NFL Sunday. Don't forget to watch
Benny Versus the Penny Benny versus the Penny on YouTube,
Benny Vspenny, that's Benny Vspenny on YouTube. Check that out.
(28:39):
As we have a brand new slate of games up today,
just went up last night. You can watch all the
picks on the key primetime games, including the game in
Kansas City, Philadelphia and KC and all the way through
the double header action on Monday night. Got you covered
on all of it, and we'll catch you next time.
(29:02):
Have a great Friday. Danny g should join me tomorrow.
We'll catch you then. Got a murder.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I gotta go.
Host
Ben Maller
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