No Limits with Kevin Cooney - Former FAU Baseball Coach - No Limits

Episode Transcript
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(00:19):
Couldn't evening. Get everybody and welcometo another edition of New Limits. My
name is Scott Morgan Routh in motorCity, Madmouth, and we have a
great show tonight. And I meangreat, I mean Tony the Tiger great.
We haven't even done it yet.How do we know it's great?
Well, I because I have allthe confidence in you and hopefully you'll have
as much in me. And myfeelings of you have been nothing short of

(00:41):
great. So you know what,the one thing in the coaching business,
Coach Kevin Cooney is you can neverlack confidence. If you hope to stick
around right now, you gotta havethat, all right, Well, let
me get everybody an overview of thebroadcast speaking with former Florida Atlantic University coach
Kevin Cooney. Has a great twentyone year career over at FAU, and

(01:02):
I got to know him several yearsago. And we're going to talk about
coach Kevin Cooney's story. So let'stalk about your twenty one year career at
FAU. Give me tell me whatit was like. Well, it almost
wasn't twenty one years, but itworked out pretty well, Scott. I
was blessed that they took a chanceon me back in nineteen the fall of

(01:23):
nineteen eighty seven, they had anopening because Steve Trailer, who started their
program, was hired at Duke,and I applied for the Duke job,
didn't get it. Steve was actuallygot it, and I called to congratulate
him because we had played each otherthat year Monclair State, where I was
coaching, was Division three. Wecame down and played fau that that particular

(01:48):
spring, and so I said,it's there anybody who's got an inside track
to the job. He said,no, it's an open search. And
he said, I liked the wayyou handled your team and the way they
presented themselves on playing golf with thead tomorrow, and he says, I'll
putting a word for you. Andso I got an interview and I got
hired. The athletic director to hireme. Always like to say afterwards,

(02:12):
they did a nationwide search. Sixpeople applied, five turned it down,
so we hired Kevin. I don'tknow if that's true, but he loves
saying that. And there were somegood people. Pulmonary, who was at
St. Thomas at the time,went to Notre Dame and then had great
success at LSU and is now retired. He was a finalist Mike Easam,

(02:37):
who was retired at Indian River CommunityCollege and has the field named after him.
George Pettick, who was at CardinalGibbons High School, had just won
a state championship. And then itwas another fellow I've forgotten his name,
Scott was his last name, wasan assistant at Miami that year, and
so somehow he chose a guy fromNew Jersey to command down. So I

(03:00):
was fortunate on Beluisva. All right, I just want everybody know that No
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(03:23):
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(03:44):
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that's our way to contact. Well, we'll mention it later on the
show. Incasemints the first time.All right, So, coach one player
that stands out as story who wentto Deerfield Beach High School, was the
current manager of the Houston, Nashville'sTriple A team, the sugar Lands Base

(04:08):
Cowboys. Talk about Kevin's story.Well, Mickey, Mickey, but okay,
yeah, it's a great story,to be honest, No pun intended.
Mickey's grandfather coached against me up inNew Jersey. His name was Eddie
Lyons, very famous coach up in. Eddie are coached basketball and baseball at

(04:30):
Uppsala College in East East Orange,New Jersey. Anyhow, we were friends
even though we were rivals. Andone day I'm in the dugout at FAU
And this was early because we werestill in the third base dugout, so
it had to be probably ninety orninety one and a guy opens the door

(04:53):
and steps in. It's Eddie Lyonsand he goes, Kevin, I want
you to meet somebody. And he'sgot this little kid with him. I
don't know how old, um.And he goes to my grandson, Mickey
story, He's going to pitch foryou someday. And I'm like, okay,
edyway, I'm in the middle ofthe game here. Can you go
to concession stand get a beer andI'll talk to you later And he goes,
no, no, he's his momand dad lived down here, but

(05:14):
he's going to play for you someday. Like okay, great. So you
fast forward to uh in the twothousands, I guess, oh three,
maybe um. John McCormack is nowthe head coach, was a recruiting quarter
and ken then he said, hey, you know that kid's story, Eddie
Lyons, you know the ground.I go, yeah, he goes,
that kid's pretty good and uh Sowe went down to see him at Deerfield

(05:38):
Beach and the game I saw himwas State tournament game and he gave a
blead off triple in the last inningand struck out the side on nine pitches.
After the double, every pitch wasa curved ball. He had a
great curve ball. So anyway,we were fortunate to get him. And
the big reason we did get him, what's his grandfather? He was?

(05:58):
He really you know, he wassmaller in stature, so he really didn't
have a lot of division one offers. It was a decent student, so
he could have gotten just about anywhere. And I think that connection and actually
I kind of used it with him. I sat him down, I said,
you can go to junior college andthey're going to get you into pro
baseball within a year two years maximum. I said, But if you come

(06:19):
to us, I'm responsible for you, because your grandfather and I go back
aways. I'm going to be,you know, a grandfather surrogate to you,
and I'm going to make sure thatyou get as close to graduating as
you can before you leave here.So he came, and fortunate for us,
he was freshman All American that year. He was freshman pitcher of the
Year in the nation that season.He was unbelievable, tremendous competitor, a

(06:44):
great curveball, really good fastball.So he gets sophomore year, he gets
banged around. I think the earlysuccess that a lot of freshman get Oftentimes
it struggles that second year, youknow, because you think you're invincible and
you try to overpass our people.And that was a lot of what Mickey
was trying to do. That wasjust overpower people instead of becoming a pitcher.

(07:05):
And and and so he had arough sophomore year, and then it's
his junior year. He hurt hisarm, and so he didn't pitch as
much as he should have his junioryear, and then his senior year he
was coming. He got drafted.Anyway, I'm sorry Minnesota drafted him.
He chose not to sign, andhe came back for his senior year.

(07:25):
And in his senior year, hekind of struggled again because the arm wasn't
one hundred percent yet, and andwe kind I didn't. I don't want
to say I babied him, butthere were a couple of times where I
really wanted to use him in reliefand I didn't because I knew we didn't
have enough rest and I wasn't goingto jeopardize the kid's arm. I made
a promise to his grandfather. Andso he wound up getting drafted by Houston

(07:48):
and UH and signed with them.Either Houston or Toronto. I can't remember
which one signed him first. Ithink maybe Toronto, but one of those.
Um he wound up pitching for bothin the big leagues, and he
made it to the big leagues.I saw one game where he got hit
in the head with a line driveand it didn't phaze him. He was
a tough kid. You know.He left the game, but you know,

(08:09):
a game back strong. And thenwhen he finished, he played,
kicked around a while Triple A fora long time, went to independent baseball,
had great career up in Somerset,which is now the Double A team
for the Yankees, and I guessyou know, he got to the point
where he had to make a decisionand he called me. I remember I
was at the church where I wasworking at the time, and I took

(08:31):
his call and he said, Coach, I don't really know which direction to
go. He goes, I needto be in baseball. I don't I
don't really want to go back foranother year if I'm just going to be
an extra guy. I think Ican still pitch, but maybe it's time
for me to make a move.And I said, what do you think
you want to do? And hegoes, well, I'd like to be
a pitching coach, but I'd alsolike to be a manager. He said,

(08:54):
I want to call all the shots. And Mickey really knew the game.
When he played for US, heall, he's had an opinion.
He wasn't scared to voice his opinion. He did it most of the time
in the proper manner. And hewould question, you know, why did
you do this, Why didn't youdo that? That sort of thing.
That was kind of because he alwayshad his idea what he wanted to do,

(09:16):
and he was a natural leader.Kids gravitated towards him, and so
I think that that's important. Hehad a really good personality. I think
that's another important thing if you're goingto be a good leader, and and
you know, so people follow him. And he got into got a chance
to go with Houston as a minorleague. They called a quality control coach

(09:39):
or something. It might be someon the field stuff, some off the
field. So its first year hewas in North Carolina doing that. They
liked him. The following year theygave him a job in the Midwest League
at Quad Cities. He won theleague championship that year. They brought him
back to next year, he wonthe league championship again and he got promoted
to trip right from I mean lowA ball to Triple A. It's really

(10:03):
impressive. And he's been with themfor three years now. They won I
think they've won the league one yearand I think the overall championship another and
then last year they made the playoffsbut didn't win. So he's had a
lot of success and a lot ofthose young players that you saw brought up
by the Astros that were very successfulin the playoffs last year beating my team,

(10:26):
the Yankees. You know, hemanaged those guys. So he's got
a bright future. Really does well. I'll tell you one thing. When
I wrote a story about him forthe Deerfield Beach Observer, I remember I
was asking you players, I shouldtalk to you when you mentioned Nickey,
and after my conversation with him,I was on the same page with you.
Boy. We really got a goodone here. And obviously years later

(10:48):
he's made us look pretty smart.And he's a great family man. They
live in West Palm Uh. Hemarried a soccer player, Maureen from from
Fau. They have two beautical daughters. I think one is probably just turning
thirteen, so he's gonna have hishands full and uh, the middle ones
probably ten, ten or eleven.And he's got a son that's a great

(11:11):
baseball player. You know, he'swith he's he's on the field all summer
with his dad, and then Mickeycoaches him in the off season and travel
ball. So you know, it'sa good, good family. It's it's
nice to see. You know,he had a rough family situation. Um,
they didn't have a lot and andyou know, to see what he

(11:35):
gives back to his own children andto his wife is really really heartwarming.
All right, let's go onto alighter note here. This is one that
we always talk talk about every timewe talk a little bit, So we'll
talk about a joking conversation we hadwhen you mentioned that Fau was facing Fau
and you're asking me, this mustbe a tough day for him, And

(11:56):
obviously Tony Fosss was the Owls pitchingcoach. And what we mean by that
is, I'm a graduate of USFbut meanwhile I'm writing about the Owls.
I mean, yeah, that waspretty interesting how you came up to me.
So what are you thinking, It'sa tough day and you're do you
remember my answer? I don't remembernow, so you know a coach,

(12:20):
I can't I told you I can'tlose either way. Oh that's right,
you can't lose either way. Yeah, that's a great answer. Well I
know that's how I followed, Ican't lose anyway. Yeah. I kind
of felt that way when when FloridaAtlantics basketball team played Tennessee in the regional
at Masster Square Garden. Man,I really did want Fau to win,
but you know, part of mewins if Tennessee wins too, because I'm

(12:43):
sleeping with a girl from Knoxville,you know, A yeah, you don't
want to get her upset with you. But no, it was so fun
and I ended up doing a storyin Tony Fosters later on down the line
when he was with the Daytona Beach. Yeah, he's a character. He
taught me a lot, very interesting, very interesting man. Tony was raised

(13:07):
His family came from Cuba after Castro. Well, Castro was still there,
but somehow they got out and hewas up in Massachusetts and he arrived at
Gosh, I think he was maybeseventh grade or eighth grade. Didn't speak
a word of English. And wasthrown into a Catholic school that he went
to, and he went to theCatholic high school. And he was a

(13:30):
Sphatic Jew. So he's you know, everybody thinks, well, you're Cuban,
you must be Catholic. Well,now there's the Sphotic tribe of Israel.
It was from Spain. So anyhow, he really knows both faiths very
well. And we had a lotof he would room with me on the
road. We'd have a lot ofgreat discussions, and he really knew his
pitching. It's a good guy,I call you imagine, all right.

(13:52):
So, up to this point ata US stadium, situation has been awful.
Nothing has been done in nineteen ninetyye're telling me a stadium and never
hosted a conference tournament, thus alwayshad to travel. What was that like?
Well, it was really frustrating andunfair to our players in my opinion.

(14:13):
We we put a great product onthe field, but we just didn't
have the you know, the standardthat was necessary to effectively host a conference
tournament. The press box was andis kind of deplorable. It doesn't it
doesn't satisfy the needs of media.I mean not in the nineties it didn't,

(14:37):
and certainly the needs have changed drasticallysince then, and the seating capacity
was questionable, although you know thatcould be you could bring in temporary bleachers.
You know, if you really wantto do something, you could do
something. The biggest hang up,I think was logistically handling it, the
lack of support staff at the universitythat A was capable or B was willing

(15:03):
to do the job as it shouldbe done. But it just you know,
we had to slep up to abeautiful new stadium up in the land
as Stetson would host it, wehad to slep over to UCF to their
new stadium as they would host it. We'd have to go to Jacksonville they
hosted it, So we were alwayson the road, and it's kind of

(15:28):
nice to sleep in your own bednow and then as a coach, it's
good being on the road because Idon't have to do any work. If
we hosted it, it would havebeen physically challenge for me because I would
have been doing a lot of thegrounds work and helping out and feeling all
that extra pressure aside from the games. But for all those great athletes that
we had, you know, wewere Division one from ninety five on,

(15:52):
I think, and ninety six wasthe first year we were eligible for postseason
play. When they brought us intothe conferences in Division one, it was
called the Transamerica Athletic Conference. Inthey made they made baseball and women's basketball
have a year of probation before theywere eligible for postseason play. The reason

(16:15):
for that was our women's basketball teamhad just made the Final four the year
before in Division two and they hadJolan de Griffith coming back, who was
one of the greatest basketball players incollege history. Our team had just lost
in the regional championship game in Divisiontwo to Tampa, who was the eventual
national champion. So I really think, well, why did you pick those

(16:37):
two schools have a probationary year,so we were not allowed to play in
postseason play, even though we hada really good record and beat a lot
of Division one teams. So ninetysix on we were eligible to host if
we if we wanted to, andwe were in the playoffs every year.
Never hosted, and so that's that'sone of my big regrets. Not so
much for me, because, likeI said, hosting is more challenging when

(17:02):
when you're the head coach. Butfor all those young men and for their
families always having to travel, itwas wrong. It was it was just
a wrong situation. Okay, youmentioned me this week that the situation FAU
Sadium is about to change. Socan you elaborate on that. Well,
I'm getting this from a news sourcethat is uh, you know, it's

(17:26):
not some national news source. Ithasn't been announced by to my knowledge,
by the administration, but there wasinterviewed by alaccess dot com. I believe
it's the name of it UM anda fellow named Aaron Alberts, who I
follow on Twitter is big FAU guy. UM. He sent me the link
to the story and he writes aboutFAU now and then um and so there

(17:49):
was an interview with the al Accesspeople with it's Brian White, correct,
don't I don't know? Right,Well, White's a new athletics the athletic
and you know what, I followAaron Elberts. He's a good Facebook friend
and I support anything that they cango ahead and do. But yeah,
no, he's always been an advocatefor a new state of everybody. Oh
yeah, anytime it's talked about healways tags me on his Twitter. So

(18:14):
anyway, supposedly there's there was thisconversation and Brian had indicated that there are
plans. You know, they've comeinto you know, a fair amount of
money because of the success of lastyear's basketball team. Yeah, I mean
that that's why everybody investball that moneyin basketball and football because the return is
so good and that return gets spreadthroughout your athletic program, and so it's

(18:36):
a matter of you know, ifyou're successful in those two sports, it
can really trickle down to the othersports. So there are plans. They
First they've got to take care ofthe basketball facility, which is atrocious.
Um. And it's a miracle,you know, it's a miracle what what
they were capable of doing. AndDusty did. He did things that we
did. I mentioned you once beforeand we'll talk about it later, maybe

(18:57):
about hiding the gym from the don'tshow them everything, um, you know,
and you have to be careful andand smart with your recruiting. So
supposedly there is money allocate that it'sgoing to go toward baseball. Some of
the things under discussion are a hittingand pitching center, possibly on the basketball

(19:21):
courts that are adjacent or behind firstbase, and right field they run parallel
to that, and the unused tenniscourts which are next to the bullpen.
So it's really there is really agood set up there. They'd have to
build something. And you know thosecages, uh Scott, It's it's hard
to imagine that in South Florida.UM, the batting cages at FAU haven't

(19:45):
been covered all these years. There'sno roof on them. So if you're
practicing in the fall, when youdo all this training, it rains all
the time in the fall and thensun comes out, but everything is wet
and steamy. UM, So it'sit's really hard to really work effectively outdoors
all the time. And it sounds, you know, incongruent with being in

(20:08):
South Florida. But UM, we'rethe only school that I know of that
doesn't have covered batting cages. Andevery high school I see in the state
of tennessee beautiful cages, you know, AstroTurf, grape roofs. So that
that issue I think will be addressbased on this interview. The pitching an
indoor pitching facility, that sounds likethat's part of the plan. UM coach

(20:33):
McCormack was responsible for UM obtaining amillion dollars gift a year ago, and
I don't know how all that moneyis being allocated, but a lot of
that money was used towards refurbishing theformer football locker room that's in the Oxley
Center right, very big space,and so they redid that whole thing.

(20:56):
It's beautiful. Um they did itwith a lot of FAU alumni help,
both physically and financially. So that'sthat's something that it's hard to get people
to give money when you're not showinganything that their money is going to go
to. Yeah, there's a greatneed, but at some point kids that

(21:18):
are now men who have worked,and you know, they have families.
If they want to donate money,they want to know that the school is
invested as well. And if you'vebeen around Florida Atlantic as long as I
was, you look at it say, well, where's the investment from the
university in the baseball program. Imean, we had to fight tooth and
nail just to get eleven point sevenscholarships. These the coaches out the stories

(21:44):
I could tell you about how coacheswere paid at Florida Atlantic when I was
there, I didn't take a raisefor years because any time they were going
to give me a raise, Isaid give it to John McCormack instead,
because I had to. I wantedto hold on to him. He was
very good at what he did andpeople were talking to him, and the
kid was making nothing, and Iwould get him different jobs on the campus.

(22:06):
He had like it's one point likefour different jobs so that he could
coach baseball. And I had todo all those things. I took camp
money. I took at least tenthousand dollars of money with my money to
supplement my income and gave it toour volunteer coach. Because he was a
really good coach. I had noway to pay him, and so that
came out of camp money. Sothat sacrifice have gone on for a long

(22:27):
time. And you know, Ithink when you're asking people to give up
themselves, they want to see,well, what are you doing? You
know, and they all know youknow that it's a bear. It's been
a bare bones operationals year, soit's kind of hard to get those people
to buy in. I think what'shappened with basketball Scott it gives it gives

(22:48):
Florida Atlantic a great opportunity. ButI do have a worry with that.
The great opportunity is I went outto Houston and I never saw so many
people with Florida Atlanta gear on peoplewalking on the street. Hey, look
at you, you know, hey, blah blah blah. It was unbelievable.
And we had twenty about twenty sixplayers out there, baseball players.

(23:08):
You walked in at the NCAA storein this convention center and there's all T
shirts from every school, T shirts, hats, everything can name. Is
like one whole section Florida Latic.The other section was whatever the other schools
were. So I was telling thestory to some guys looking at it,
and I said, you know,the first time I ever saw FAU T

(23:29):
shirts in the mall in Boka atoneI walked into one of those stores,
not Lids, but one of those, and there were four shelves. Miami
was on top, all Miami shirtsthat it was Florida shirts, Florida State
shirts on the bottom. FU shirts. So two boys are with me.
I said, come on, wegot them changing shirts around. So we
took all the FAU shirts and putthem on top of each shelf. So

(23:51):
we buried all the other schools andhere we are, you know, we
went from that to now you're atthe final four. So the opportunity is
that everybody knows. Everybody's got achance to jump on something big, and
they can see what's possible. Theworry is that there's only so much to
go around, and you know,baseball has been it was on the precipice

(24:14):
of really taking a big step,and we didn't take the step at the
time. Back in two thousand andthree when Craig Angelus was hired and I
had a conversation with him because wehad won the regional, lost in the
Superregional, so we're almost in theCollege World Series and it was first time
I met him and I said,listen, we're at a certain place,
but there are things that have tobe done if we're going to go forward.

(24:37):
And I said, we can't affordto go backward, and we can't
do it on your watch. Andunfortunately we did. Nothing was done.
Every they the whole idea of footballtook hold like tentacles just squeezing everybody over
there, and the idea of adome stadium was being floated, and guys

(24:59):
are flying out all over the countrylooking at domed stadiums. You know,
it was a pipe dream to dothat sort of thing, and so consequently
monies were not allocated towards other sports, towards female sports. Yes, and
that was because of the title nineissue of when you bring in football players,
you have to increase what you're spendingon the female side. So soccer,

(25:23):
men's soccer suffered, women's soccer gotball full rides. So that was
So we're at a point now whereokay, how are we going to do
this. We're gonna have X amountof money. You can only go so
far, but there are certain thingsthat need to be done over there and
add baseball facility. It's atrocious.It's pretty, you know, don't get
me wrong, but it's atrocious.Well, I haven't been back there in

(25:45):
years until he strange you've been.You had your silent a little boycott for
years. Oh I am I'm notgoing to sit in a facility which is
not worth my time at all.Let's go to the chat room really quickly.
We'll go to the first one.As an fall um, Wayne Wainstein
comments, I'd like to thank youfor everything you did with als baseball.

(26:06):
There you go, another FAU guythat our appreciation will continue on with Wayne.
I know you hadn't many players playingthe majors, but who was the
most complete player you had while there? Boy, I'll tell you Wayne,
he took my thunder, but we'llgo ahead, and Coach answered, well,
the most complete player that made thebig leagues is that? So if
we look at the question that way, I would say it was probably Jeff

(26:29):
Fiorentino. Came out of Nova HighSchool in Davy and Jeff played three years
for US and signed with Baltimore andgot to the big leagues with them.
He could run, he could throw, could hit, and he could hit
for power. And Hecky caught forUS at one point we had no bar
catchers were injured and we put himin practice a few days and he opened

(26:55):
the season behind the plate. Soprobably Jeff, But you know he had
some other great players that never madethe big leies that were complete baseball players.
Gabe sam Ariba as a doctor now, and he was on the O
two team as a senior on thatteam, just tremendous outfielder, was about
five foot eight five foot seven.I think he still has the NCAA records

(27:18):
for being hit by pitches. Hewould stand so close to home plate.
His toes were on the batter's boxline, which is legal. So when
you're standing with your arms, hisarms were over the plate. And in
the shower he looked like a batteredwife. He had been hit so often.
He was all black and blue.So we had a lot of great
players. Well, all right,let's go back to Craig Angels for a

(27:41):
minute. So you're telling me withall your conversation, but the Angels ane
of the stuff came to fruition.Was it all talk or hearsay for the
most part with what you ended updoing, Craig, Because obviously you know
there was our opportunities, but apparentlyhis priorities were in different places. The
priority was football. I mean,that's really comes down to every Everything was

(28:02):
geared towards football. And you knowthat's fine. I understand that you made
a decision, but I think ifyou're going to make a decision like that,
you sit down. If I wasrunning things, I would see everybody
down and say you know what you'regetting this that that net and no more.
Don't bother me. It's football.If you don't like it, go
someplace else. But don't say,well we want to be this we want
to be and don't don't exude anexpect expectation of success, um when you're

(28:33):
not going to do anything to help. We had success despite our administrations.
And I say that plural. Youknow, we had very few athletic directors
that did much to help baseball atFlorida Atlantic. You know, it was
kind of like a circle of wagons. You know, it's us against them
and let's get it done. Thatwas, you know, And and those
players played for each other and playedfor Florida Atlantic. They played for each

(28:57):
other, They loved each other.Did you ever have any conversations with Howard
Schnellenberger over any of this stuff?Because I know, obviously he started the
football program. We know he's astatue and all that, but let's face
the reality. I think Howard Snellenbergeris probably the king of Florida Atlantic based
on what he did to put thefour football team together. Yeah, when

(29:22):
they decided to go to start football, which I understand why and I don't
disagree with it, just like whenAnthony Kattney is a president decided to start
Division one basketball. That's a gooddecision. Were we ready for it?
No, But you know that wasthe fault of the people he had in
place running the operation. They justweren't up to it. So when they

(29:45):
decided to go with football the firstyear, Howard came in and he was
given everything that they could give him, his own secretary, his own office
separate from the athletic department, andeverything was geared towards that. He had
his own radio show, which whenbaseball rolled around, I was you know,
I took over the show every everyMonday. I was the guy on

(30:07):
his on his radio show. Andthen our success that was a year that
was ninety nine, that's a yearbefore they started playing. UH. The
ninety nine season, UM was ayear we won thirty four straight games.
UH tied to national record UM forconsecutive wins. And so we were we
were trying I was tried it outat a whole bunch of different things,
as look this is look at FloridaAtlantic, look what they can do and

(30:30):
imagine when it's football. So,you know, baseball had you know,
we played a role in helping footballget a foothold in the community, in
their minds, that sort of thing. But you know, football football people
are are a different breed. Youknow, there's Roament's that's it. There's
nothing. There's no other world outsideof there. And I'm glad that they

(30:52):
have a football program. I thinkit's come at a very very very steep
cost for some coaches and and alot of play or is at that university.
But you know, that's where weare, and we have it,
and we've gotten a lot of nationalpublicity. So I'm great and I'm happy,
and i'd like to see them win. All right, we'll go to
Wayne waine Stein's comments. Again,it's football at all major universities because it

(31:15):
brings in the money. As youstated, baseball has to share limited scholarships
like eleven or so it's a veryvalid point. And you know, I
and then I graduated in ninety threein baseball was a winning a squat on
campus time. So there you go. This guy knows what he's talking about,
you know. So let's talk aboutFAU sports in general. Football finally,

(31:40):
money for the basketball program. Likeyou said, Dustin May did a
miraculous job over there. And Igot to tell you something that when I
was over at a Tom Herman pressconference from the spring game, I joked
around and I swear it was justa joke and then they all knew it
that, you know, Tom amazing, he came here to a basketball so

(32:00):
I didn't know about basketball. Itwas a basketball program. I mean he
was Herman as one and we hidit around about it was anything that Tim
Herman, to me, of allthe coaches I've dealt with through the years,
is one of the best sense ofhumors I've ever seen. Yeah,
he really does so. But hewas a little caught off bart guarded by
my comments saying that fu was abasketball school. But he knows so well.

(32:23):
When you're out there in the middleof a final vour, you know,
the well obviously gets a lot ofincredible content on such a stage.
It's Scott, I mean, Iknow. Unfortunately the press finally lashed onto
the story, you know, justprior to the Final four or leading up
to it, about what Dusty hadto go through and what the basketball program

(32:45):
had to go through. Um thatthat gym is a glorified high school gym.
Um you can dress it up,put lipstick on a pig if you
want, but it's still a pickand and they're going to dress that.
Now stand that the facilities are it'sit's just it's incredible that he was able

(33:06):
to do what he was able todo. And they were smart in the
way they did it. They theymaximize the brotherhood, the attitude towards their
kids, and the you know,the the affection they're going to show kids.
But it's tough love. You know, kids don't love you because you're
soft on them. Kids want,kids have expectations. They want to be

(33:30):
pushed. Now that doesn't mean youhave to be Bobby Knight and throw chairs
of people and stuff like that,but you know, they want to be
held accountable. You know, mystyle of coaching was I was a benevolent
dictator. You know, I wasin charge. I had the final saying.
But you know what, you know, you could talk to me.
You could sit down on a benchand and ask me how I'm doing,

(33:51):
or how my kids or you know, what do I think? Or what
kind of music do you want toplay? I mean, So, I
think they found that and and theyhad to get the right kids. So
they were recruiting. They got thekid that could fit into that system.
And I think that's what's happened inbaseball all these years, is that kids
don't come to Florida Atlantic with starsin their eyes. I'll tell you a

(34:15):
real quick recruiting story. Don't rememberwhat year this was, but okay,
we really knew we were looking fora junior college shortstop and there was a
kid out in San Jacinto Community College, a really good player came in for
a visit. Now, unfortunately hecame in for a visit in the fall.
We had tropical storm warnings, youknow, so all the windscreen that

(34:38):
we had to hide our the backof our bleachers because back then they didn't
have fancy banners on it. Itwas all blown and all over the place.
It just was terrible. So hefinishes his visit and you know,
we're sitting down and getting ready,you know, you know, let's fisher
cut bait, and I go,what do you think? And he looks

(34:58):
at me and he goes, oh, don't take this the wrong way.
He goes, but I thought youwere serious about baseball. Year now,
we had just come off So thisis after two, so we'd just come
off being close to the World Series, and so here's a national level kid
that you know it was capable helpingus get to the World Series. And
his answer was, I thought youwere serious about baseball. I go,

(35:21):
oh, we are, well,sure doesn't look at and all he talked
about was, you know, hegoes, I'm not looking for bells and
whistles, but it just doesn't looklike what you're telling me is And he
signed with Baylor, who had justopened a six million dollars stadium that year,
and Baylor went to the World Seriesthat year with that kid playing shortstop.
So you know, you have totry, you have to find the

(35:43):
right kid. Yet, you know, we had kids that looked past that.
You know, we had one kidfrom Jacksonville. He saw the wind
blown out the right field. He'sa left handed power hitter, and he
goes, is it always blowed theright feel like this? I go,
yep, I go, You'll hitfifteen home runs a year. Here he
goes, where do I sign?So the other things he was able to
look past because you know, oneof the main things that he thought could

(36:06):
make him more successful was there forhim. Okay, all right, let's
talk about the parallels between baseball andbasketball. I'll list them as they are,
okay, and then we can nailthem down one by one. Obviously,
the one thing you were talking aboutwith recruits is you had no locker
room and you had the longest timewith laundry baskets. You had to change

(36:27):
into sweat pants. The kids hadto change into slatpants, and the recruit
didn't want to witness that part ofthe day. We didn't want to recruit
to witness it. That was yeah, I mean that to me. He's
on a rail. We were timethings. It's kind of like with Dusty.
Dusty signed a couple of kids nevereven saw the gym. Right,
Dusty signed his contract and hadn't seenthe gym. If you read the stories

(36:50):
about how it happened, So youknow, we kind of had to finesse
some things, you know, don'tlet them see. You know, the
game ended, we just won thegame. Mac would take him, let's
let's go over here. We're goingto head for a restaurant. So Michael
was gettinghim to Hooters as fast asI could after a game. Oh that's
funny. Can get him out ofthe dugout. It's a good choice.
Well, you'll also told me thatdust he didn't see the gym, and

(37:14):
then he cried at the hotel wonderingif he committed professional suicide. So that
he was quoted in I've read twodifferent articles where he said, Dad,
he you know, he had madea commitment based on you know, good
friendship with um with Brian. Theyhad worked together at another school, and

(37:35):
and I you know, I thinkit was kind of like buyer's remorse.
You know, you walk over therelike, oh my goodness. And he
was quoted the same way back tohis room and said to his wife,
I think I committed professional suicide.Yeah, but he was. He had
given his word. You know,if it wasn't Brian, he would have
gone back to gain So and calledhim the next day and said I'm sorry,

(37:57):
I'm I'm not gonna do this.But he giving him his word before
he saw the gym. It's goodmove by Brian. You got to say,
you've got the A d of theyear. Yeah, well, you
know what my dealings with Dusk hemade. There'll be a lot more of
them next year as I'm busy runningmy operation and working on other projects.
But when I got to know ofus, he's a really nice guy and
I'm looking forward to doing more withhim and Brian White as time goes on.

(38:21):
So we'll see what's what. Soall right, let's talk about the
biggest feat when thy despite all ofthat, you talk about solid kids that,
like you say, wanted to bethere. I'll go ahead and elaborate
on that. Kevin Well. Therecruiting spiel that we used, especially early
on, was you know, Okay, I know you want to go to

(38:42):
Miami. I know you want togo to Florida. You want to go
to Florida State, or you wantto go to Alabama or where blah blah
blah. Are those guys on thephone with you tonight or those guys offering
you the same money I'm offering you? Are they? You know? And
we're going to give you a chanceto play all those people. He played
everybody back then. I mean,it didn't matter, and we tried to

(39:02):
play the best Division one schedule,non conference schedule we could. We played
Division one schools when we were aDivision two. Anybody that would play us,
I would play him. And becauseI felt one we got better two.
It showed our kids, you knowwhat they had to do to get
better, and that's they wanted tobeat those guys. I had a player.
It was just kind of advant hiskid was not. This kid was

(39:24):
at monclar State for me my firstyear Monclar State. We came down to
Florida and his kid, Danny Olsen, his retired police officer. Now Danielson
was a great pitcher. He wasa junior. So he shuts out Southern
Illinois University. It was a Divisionone school. We're playing at mark Light
Stadium, so we shuts him out. I take him out after eight innings.

(39:46):
He's winning five nothing and the traineris icing his shoulder and he's standing
in the dugout and he's pointing andcursing across the diamond at Southern Illinois.
Where the were you guys? Whythat didn't you guys sign me? I
just shoved it. You know.It's like he was so angry. So
it was that attitude. He hadto go to a Division three school,

(40:08):
pay his own way and become agreat pitcher, and you know, signed
a professional contract. Our kids kindof felt the same way. You know,
those other schools didn't want them,Okay, I'll show you, or
they didn't want them badly enough,you know, to give them a scholarship
commensurate with their their ability. Andso it was kind of that always,

(40:30):
hey, we'll show these guys attitudethat we tried to instill in kids.
And if that's your attitude, you'renot looking for a whole lot of stuff.
You know, changing in the parkinglot's not the worst thing in the
world. Changing in dug Out.I mean, I remember we finally got
a locker room. They in thatlittle building next to the pool they built.
It was built new in ninety eight, I believe, and we got

(40:53):
this little, tiny locker room.But it was a locker room. And
I told McCormick, I said,you know the thing I want, I
just want to hear after a bigwin. I want to hear those guys
in the locker room, you know, joking around, playing music, laughing.
And I remember the first opening seriesthat weekend we won whatever, and
and we're in the coaches locker room. Mac opens the door and all of

(41:15):
a sudden you can hear all thenoise, and the other goes, well,
there's your sound, coach, there'syour sound. And it was really
it's that's that builds camaraderie. Now, it was cramps. It was cramped
because it was pretty small. Right. We took Scott one year. I
took the I took over the lockerroom that the general public was using to
swim The swimming facility is right there, right behind the ballpark. It's Scott.

(41:40):
These lockers in it. And soI took all those lockers, I
painted them blue, and I leftthe little lockers in the back section.
The general public could use them,because all you need is for your swimsuit.
I painted all these lockers blue,put their numbers, and we would
change. So we're getting changed fora game, and here comes people in
to use the bathroom. Was itwas ridiculous. We stayed there a year

(42:02):
just to get the fuel of alocker room. But wow, retrospect probably
wasn't a good idea. All right, let's go to the chat room a
little bit. I'm gonna go backto Wayne Weinstein. Wayne Weinstein said,
I know, back in ninety three, I had friends that lived in dorms
and they were small and dinging.All right, Well, well we've talked
about an alumnus saying that. SoGeorge Iikorn actually from Detroit. I've worked

(42:27):
with him a long time, andI started with Ron Cameron, as you
remember, and George and I haveworked together for a better part of forty
three years. Another thing we're gonnaput up there with George here is how
competitive other recruiting wars in college baseball, football, and basketball. We always
see hearing about that in college baseball. Wait for I'm going to get to
that, George. But but coach, keep that question in mind because we're

(42:50):
definitely referred back to it. Sothanks Wayne, Wayne to dorms now or
plush. You wouldn't you wouldn't recognizethe place. If you have not been
on campus. You need to cometo campus. It's incredible the way those
young people live. Now, that'sthe biggest change in college life nationwide.
All the money, all the demographicsdictated that you've got to make dorm life

(43:15):
not the way it was in nineteenninety three. There you go, all
right, way and there you go. So all right, let's talk about
the stadium of the Palm Beaches,Okay. And this one here has always
intrigued me a little bit because youknow, I've often wondered and I was
able to leave or not get onthe media distribution list for the University of
Florida when FAU held a game overin West Palm gave my card and now

(43:37):
I'm on their mail and it wasprobably one of the best things I ever
did because we know the Gators obviouslya big heavy hitting the institution or whether
I don't know if the Stadium ofthe Palm Beaches was there, but you
know, if you're in that positionnow in order to go ahead and offset
the lack of a stadium like that, would you ever have considered to play

(43:58):
multiple games at the stadium of thePalm Beaches because that's a beautiful facility with
the Nationals and the and the HoustonNatril's there. Yes, we'll take you
back to before that facility and whenI was there, we had to go
up to Jupiter and play a gamethere every now and then, and I
didn't want any part of that becauseI felt every time we use that facility,

(44:22):
which is beautiful, you know,and you could make an argument it's
a campus of FAU, I feltit detracted from our chances to get an
on campus facility. Now, I'vetalked to coach McCormack this past spring,
and I know that there are talkswhere, you know, they'd like to
get a tournament held at the thePalm Beaches and I think that's a good

(44:49):
I would I would go for that, you know, play a tournament one
weekend there, But I read anarticle a couple of days ago about TCU
baseball, Texas Christian University. Theyjust got eliminated at it by Florida yesterday
from the College World Series. Backin two thousand and I can't remember which
year, but early two thousands,they had a deplorable States, very similar

(45:12):
situation. They were throwing all theirmoney into football, and finally a guy
stood up, one of the bigmoney guys and said, hey, if
you want to win a national championship, you're not gonna win it. Your
chances of winning it in football,it's gonna cause you a whole lot more
money, and it's gonna take alot longer. We need to concentrate on
baseball and we need to. Sowhat they did, and now they brought
in a new athletic director. Theybrought in they built a seven million dollars

(45:37):
stadium back in the early two thousands. Now we played there in oh three
or four, so m may havebeen run around two thousand. It was.
It was beautiful, very It wastwo decks and the upper deck hung
over. It's like a facade thathung over, so they were like almost
looking down at home plate, andit was very intimidating as an opponent because

(46:00):
the fans were right on top ofyou anyhow. And then he hired a
good coach and recruit it well,and it makes it easier to recruit if
you've got But they were getting backto the point of playing off campus.
They were offered an opportunity. Therewas a minor league team that was coming
in and they were building a stadiumfor them in Fort Worth, and so

(46:21):
they said, well, you canjust play in here, we'll sign an
agreement. Well, the league thatthey were going to be in went belly
up after three years. They refused. They said, now we're going to
do this on our own campus.And that was, you know, in
retrospect, a great decision on theirpart. That's kind of the way I
feel. I think you have tohave your own place to build your own
fan base, to do, youknow, a one off and go up

(46:44):
there and be capable of bringing in, you know, three great schools from
different parts of the country. That'sa good thing. And we did that
one year. The Marlins ran somethingwhen they first had their spring training up
in Melbourne and so it was Ican't remember who we had, Washington,

(47:05):
Oregon State, and I forget whothe other team was, but you know
from you know, Northern schools orWestern schools, it was. It was
really good for us. I wouldn'tdo it. I wouldn't make that a
regular thing on my schedule. SoI think you might see that happen coming
up shortly. Okay, I gota question about North Carolina. But Wayne
Wayne Stein is a great question.How did you get North Carolina to come
down and play that incredible three gamesseries? I was there, covered all

(47:29):
three games and fau Stadium was electric. It really really was. We gave
him money. Wow, well itwas a thing out that you guys get.
We probably gave him five thousand dollarsback then, Um, that was
about what we started putting down forguarantees. It got to the point where
you used to be able to geta lot of great teams come down from

(47:52):
the North and play play their theirspring schedule in March. But then things
changed in college baseball and they wentmore to we want three game series every
weekend, and we're just going totravel on the weekends, and so a
lot of schools stopped doing that,you know, spring break trip. And
now I know North Carolina is technicallynot the North Um but so they were

(48:15):
a school that I don't know howit happened, but we were able to
get him. He's a former Divisionthree coach. The guy that was there
whose name is escaping me, buthe was at North Carolina Wesleyan years ago,
got job. Yeah, ironically,that's series elected. Now. Unfortunately,
the final game on that Sunday night, my grandmother, Dorothy died at

(48:37):
the age of nine. So Ileft the game and went over there.
But that's I should have gone withyou because I think we lost late in
the game. Down Well, youcould have gone with me. I could
have used your them, but Iwas no, not your fault. It's
all right. Now. Now wehave a few interesting questions in the chat
room, okay, and I willNow we really need to address the easil
was nil. Do you feel it'saffecting baseball greatly or football and basketball?

(49:01):
Oh, you have no idea.I mean people, you have no idea.
That is that's gonna be the killer. It's gonna separate the wheat from
the chaff. You're not gonna seeschools like Florida Atlantic in baseball be the

(49:23):
success that we want them to be, unless unless they can get that kind
of financial backing and it's just notlikely the money that's being thrown around.
UM. I talked with Kevin O'Sullivanthe other day's coaching Florida at the World
Series. We gave him a startat FAU and he said, coach,

(49:44):
it's unbelievable. And he goes,I got I'm on the phone today.
I got two commitments, you know, for the recruiting class, and I
got two transfer portal guys. Andyou know, if there's transfer portal,
there's nil involved because as he said, there's one school and Partici Kuller,
we were talking about the participants.He goes, well, I'm not that
guy because he's buying every player hecan buy. But if you're in the

(50:07):
right school with the right kind ofbackers, and we know that, we
know that money that players have beenbought since college football started. You know,
back in the day's of newt Rockneyand all that stuff, there were
guys getting paid back then. Itwas all under the table, one hundred
dollars handshake, the job, turningon the sprinklers at the stadium at night

(50:28):
and getting paid five thousand dollars.You know that all went on. Well,
now the cheating's up and above board. So you know, you're at
every player on Tennessee who just goteliminated from the World Series. Every player
on their team that signs next yearis guaranteed a six figure payment through the
NIL if they will do something forit. They have what they call collectives,

(50:52):
So there's an NIL collective for baseball. They have some name for it.
So if the kids autographed balls forthem and they're given to the collection
to people and then they're selling themor whatever, they're guaranteed six figures just
for being on a team. Andyou know, so you can imagine what's
going on in football and basketball withthe money. But see the opportunity for
the baseball fan that has money isgreat because now they can be the big

(51:16):
shot. You know, they canbe in a night stadium with you know,
luxury boxes and suites and yeah,you know, my collective paid for
the starting rotation. You know,my collective paid for the entire bullpen.
That's what we're facing and where youcan find that and we can't get We're
still in port to John's at thestadium. Where are we going to get

(51:39):
financial backing for baseball to that extentwhen there are so many other things that
are needed as well. Basketball isa little different. You don't need as
much. You get two great playersin basketball, you can be really really
successful, right you know, Baseballyou need you need through four great pictures

(52:01):
to be in the World Series.It's not like it used to be.
So that's the channel. Nil.Then the transfer portal goes right along with
it. You didn't ask that,but I kind of segued into it.
The transfer portal is terrible. It'sit's one of those things where they threw
the baby out with the bathwater.They wanted to do a good thing and
give give young men a chance tomake a move. Well, okay,

(52:25):
and they always said, well coachescan leave and take another job for more
money, but the player, ifhe wants to leave, has to sit
out one year. Yeah. Iagree that maybe that's not right. But
the way it's done right now wherethere's there's four hundred and seventy five baseball
players in the transfer portal. WhatI mean, so, why are you

(52:46):
coming to Florida Atlantic? Now?All right? If you buy in everything
that I'm selling, and a bigpart of what I'm selling is you're playing
for the guy next to you.And then when you grow up someday maybe
you're gonna be a cop and you'regonna take a bullet for the guy next
year, and you're gonna learn thatwhile you're playing with us, Or you
might be a firefighter and you're gonnago and you know, put your life

(53:06):
in jeopardy for your partner. You'regoing to be in a business world and
you're gonna have somebody's back and helpsupport them through a difficult time. Where
are you getting that now? Andnow it's like, oh, I'm not
happy, I'm not playing. I'mgoing someplace else. Or somebody through a
back door said hey, I canget you three hundred thousand dollars a year
to play here. What are yougetting where you're playing now? Nothing?

(53:29):
Okay, transfer portal boom By,It's it's a cesspool. It's an absolute
cesspool. It's worse thing to happento college athletics, baseball, basketball,
fill it doesn't matter. It wasan idea that was completely well intentioned,
but they did it with absolutely noThey said, okay, you can all
go, and now it's a monster, absolute monster. It's changed everybody's life.

(53:53):
Those two things Nil and transfer portalI wouldn't coach today if you paid
me a million dollars. Wow,because of that taken away everything that coaching
is supposed to be. Okay,great question, Wayne, appreciate it all
right. I want to go backto a question to George Iikorn post coach.

(54:13):
Yes's about how competitive are the recruitingwars in college baseball, football,
and basketball. We always hear abouthow big? How about college baseball?
So you know there's something. It'sit's nightmarriage. It's it's really pain in
the neck. You know, thoseguys are at the College World Series right
now and they can't enjoy themselves becausethey're still recruiting. They're they're trying to

(54:37):
keep the kids they have who arethinking about going into the portal. They
got to try to get back toguys that are in the portal from their
school. They're trying to see whois the best fit for us that's available
in the portal. And they stillhave their high school class and their junior
college class. They've got guys thatthey've signed who are going to be first

(55:00):
second round draft picks. So youmight not have them, you know,
in by midsummer when the draft comesthrough. And now you've got to have
Plan B ready, so you're recruitingPlan A and Plan B and probably Plan
C. If you're and it's gone, it's gone crazy. It's all the
way down. They finally change therule where you can't talk to a kid

(55:21):
now until he's a junior. Younever let you talk to kids at sophomore.
It was the recruiting is nuts nomatter which sport, there's really do
you live and die by it?And it's constant okay now, George Eichhorn
is another interesting question. I allapart, he's not a role man.
This guy. I've known him fora long time. He's seen a lot
of games. Are the Big Tenteams that have disadvantaged when they oftentimes opened

(55:45):
in Florida and they started some chillyweather too well, not to George,
to be honest, not to theextent that it used to be. The
Big Ten schools have facilities at incredibleSo yeah, they're not outside in Boca
Ratone taking batting practice and playing aninter squad game, but they're probably in

(56:07):
a facility that simulates that really reallywell. They also have field I would
venture to say that every Big Tenschool is all FieldTurf now Tennessee is field
turf. Now Tennessee's supposedly in theSouth, but it's FieldTurf, so you
can play and you can practice.That's a big thing. You know.

(56:29):
When we used to recruit kids andfrom the north and they said, why
do you think Southern kids are betterbaseball players, I said, well,
they're not necessarily better players. They'rebetter right now because they're on a good
field every day in high school andall summer. You know, you're only
on a good field in the summerwhen you're playing up north, because when

(56:50):
you're you're playing and practicing in Marchin April, you know, one day
it's twenty two degrees and then itrains and then it freezes and then it
flaws out a little bit and youcan't get a true bounce. So that
was the biggest disadvantage. But evento high schools, in most anything north
of the Mason Dixon line, you'reseeing all field turf going down, So

(57:12):
that aspect has gotten a little bitbetter. All these big ten schools will
go they'll play on the road,so yes, that's a disadvantage, but
they'll you know, so they'll startsomeplace. They might come down three game
series play Miami or play Florida,but they're also going to places that are
not as challenging as Florida or FloridaState or some of those, and so

(57:34):
that gives them an opportunity. It'shard to play most of your schedule the
beginning your schedule on the road.I understand that, and I would never
argue against that. But it's notas bad as it was. Well,
let's go back to Wayne, allright, you shouldn't have done so well
with O'Sullivan. Lol. He's laughingat this one. Okay, As I'm

(57:55):
also a James fan, which bringseither the plant of what do you attribute
Miami struggling to get out of aregional Well, things have changed in Miami's
not the Miami that it was fora lot of reasons, and it's it
started when they went near ACC.When they were an independent, they could

(58:19):
do whatever they wanted to do theacademic standard of the University of Miami.
And I hate, and I'm nottrying to say this and say it's bad,
but the academic standard as it appliedto their baseball program before the ACC.
Right now, all these conferences haveacronyms. I can't get them all
right, has toughened, it's gottenreal, it's gotten much much tougher.

(58:43):
And you know, being able tosit at home and play at home all
the time, which is was themodus operendi of Ron Frazier and then Jim
Morris. That went away because nowyou're in a conference and you're traveling,
and you're playing in northern climates,and you know you're not in that cocoon,
and you know, the University ofMiami's home field it's one of the
biggest advantage home field advantages that thereever was, especially in the old days.

(59:08):
You know, you had j roKeach out there firing up the crowd.
You know, he had Ron Frazierand there were no Marlins back in
the day. So that was baseballand those people loved baseball. So you
know, I think that's contributed toit. I you know a lot of
people say, well, you know, it's a coaching mark, but if
you look at Mars's teams, youknow he had great success and then once

(59:30):
in the acc wasn't quite as successful, and you know there are a lot
more challenges in a conference like that, So I would attribute it to that.
Okay, let's go back to Waitone more thing. It's not just
that everybody else is up their game. You know, Miami in the eighties

(59:52):
and nineties, compared to the restof the country, it was night and
day. There are only a fewschools that were big time based. So
there's a big time baseball everywhere now. Wake Forest. Wake Forest was horrible
for for generations except for nineteen fiftyfive whenever they won the World Series.
You know, there's a ton ofschools at today are really really good baseball

(01:00:14):
schools that were never any good.And so that's changed everything as well.
Well, you're talking about wake Forestnow. A couple of years ago I
went up there for Sports Broadcaster's conventionand I had a chance to twar their
baseball facility, and no, isit good, But they have some unbelievable
science. Science that they're known forthat they changed at all. That's now

(01:00:36):
the new standard, and that's whatI they use. You know, the
reference was a pitching lab. Iswhat they're going to build? What they
that's in the talks anyway, Yeah, everything's that. It's got a pitching
lab. You know, we're allscientists. Put electrodes on the kid's body
all over the place. Yeah.And the curious thing, Scott, is
that everything we were teaching there nowcounter team or contradicting you. We were

(01:01:01):
taught that you develop an arm swing, so your arm swings back in a
natural way and comes up and around, and we would teach captures, get
your arm up here and throw itas fast as you can. Now they're
teaching pictures, get your arm upto here and throw it from there.
And that's where all those hundred milean hour guys are coming from. It's

(01:01:21):
well, you know, bio technicologically, you're stronger if your arms like this,
then you are if your arms likethat, right, if you had
to held a book out. Iused to make kids in history classes.
They'd miss beeave stand against the walland hold hold their books out like this.
Can't do that anymore. But ifyou're hold a big history book like
this for you know, five minutes, but if you held it like this,

(01:01:43):
you could hold it all day.So you are stronger by being But
we want it to be long andthen get to Hear and then Jenner and
they're saying, no, it's betterto get up faster and go. And
it's hard to argue with science andthe proofs up there with the pictures are
throwing so hard and wait, Foresthas been you know they were the first.
They got a big endowment. Theyput the money towards that. I

(01:02:07):
don't know the exact deal, butthere's some doctor that's dedicated to that.
The only thing I'll make a comparisonand will continue in the chat room because
we've got some good stuff going inhere. Is there? What I'm seeing
with these pitching lads reminds me ofRocky for but Drago hitting that bag.
It's so hard that you can thinkthat things just go off. I mean,

(01:02:29):
that's unreal. All right, we'llgo back to Wayne Weinstein, Okay,
and we'll just I'll mention some ofthese commentside coaching ice cool and broward,
and you need at least two orthree quality pitch state wide. Very
true. All right, We'll continuethrough a coach. George Eicorn makes another
interesting point. I actually have totry to reach out to Chris made the
jump from the urcity of Michigan,pitching coach of the MLB and Detroit Tigers.

(01:02:51):
Does this happened very often? It'shappened more recently than uh than back
in the in the day. Usedto be that they thought, if you're
in college, you couldn't be inpro baseball. It's a big prejudice against
it. Now there are tons ofcollege guys have gotten into pro baseball.
Really, and actually the reverse hashappened. There have been young I can't

(01:03:13):
remember who. Gosh, I can'tremember who exactly, but some one of
the top coaches came from Major LeagueBaseball. It may be just a pitching
coach, but the pitching coaches arewhere the money is um and came to
one of the major universities. Good, hello, Chad attend he's one of
our regulars who just saying I docoach Chad. There you go. We

(01:03:37):
got another one in there. We'vetaken up a collection here or what were
we doing? We got Wayne's gettingcharged extra if he asked one more question.
Hey, listen, you know he'san alum. He I'll tell you.
If you're an alum, you reallywant to go all out. All
right, let's go back to GeorgeEichorn. He's anything. Let him alum,
but but you know he's he said, I felt so sad at the
University of Detroit drop baseball years ago. I know it broke coach Bob Miller,

(01:04:00):
the Philly Whisker. Yes, greatguy. Yeah, all right,
let's continue played. Did you evercome see Detroit Mercy play us? They
played us in at least two orthree years in a row, or did
they really? Yeah, I'm sorry, that's okay. I had a tournament
every year, Um, and i'dhave I'd bring in three northern schools.

(01:04:24):
Yeah. And can you see mymessages when they come on my phone?
No, I don't because I'm blonde. Just asked me for a day,
I said, but I'm busy.No, I'm just kidding. But no,
but Bob was coaching, and hecame down and play a good guy,
gentleman, great guy. No,I mean all right, so let

(01:04:45):
me ask you. Were you everoffered other jobs in fau were afterwards?
No? Um? Trying to remember, I applied for a few because early
on I was very dissatisfied. Ireally wasn't getting paid to beyond be very
frank, and I didn't see muchof a future. Um, but I
know nobody wanted me, so Istayed there. I'll tell you what.

(01:05:10):
You made a name for yourself there. My opinion, you put baseball on
the map there, all right,I go back to Chad. I'm gonna
read what he has to say,and then you can respond. How important
is leg strength as compared to armstrength when it comes to pitching. Huh,
that's a good question, you know, I don't think it's You probably
shouldn't separate the two. You know, you have to that whole body,

(01:05:30):
especially the way today's pitching is.Um, it's got, it's everything's connected,
and now they know how it's connected. So you know, it's very
different than it was. And youall did's where you think, well,
you gotta have big, big legs, but you don't have to have big
legs. You know, the prototypeis more of a lanky kind of body,
but they have to be strong legs. So um and and definitely your

(01:05:54):
your arms only gonna hold out aslong as your legs do. From a
stam and a standpoint, although that'schanging in today's game, you pitchers,
I would never want to pitch today. It's like, I hate to say
that, but baseball's changed in away that I think for the from the
player's standpoint, isn't the greatest.I was a senior in college. I

(01:06:15):
had nine starts, nine complete games, and nine wins. That would never
happen today. Now, it wasa different generation. You didn't have the
relief pictures that you do, butthat whole mentality that you know, guys
go five innings, it's a qualitystart five innings. I was just getting
warmed up. You know, Idon't understand you know, well, you

(01:06:35):
know what, here's the thing,coach, Okay, I've always been a
catcher myself, and that was thebest position for me because it was no
good in anything else. But Iwas mentally in the game at all times.
I probably got hit with more catcherinterference calls. I used to distract
the up so you know, you'reway off of that call, and then
i'd get out of the road oncein a while. If he didn't go

(01:06:57):
along with me, I let himget hit by the ball back there that
you're one of those guys. Ohyeah, oh no, we're not even
doying yet. That's not even thetip of it. Then I would make
life tougher on the hitter that Igo out there and talk to my I
did whatever you could do. Sowith that said, I'm really curious now
that you brought up why do youthink catchers make good managers? For for

(01:07:18):
the reason that you said, youknow, you're in that game thinking about
the game constantly, the guys in, the guy in right fields checking out,
you know, the blonde down theline, you know, or he's
thinking about is that? Or youturn around, he's practicing his you know,
he's taking his swings and then looksin at the last minute. Yeah,

(01:07:39):
you know, come on, it'sa whole different game. Behind the
plate, you're in charge of everything. You see everything, how it happens.
So you know, your perspective isis the perspective that a manager has.
It's actually better because you know,you're you're right up on the field.
So I think that that's one reason. And and you know they've got
to handle and every picture is different. A good catcher knows which picture he's

(01:08:04):
got to kick in the butt whenhe goes out to the mound, what
picture he's got to put his armaround him, and hey, come on,
but you're okay, you know whichpicture he has to give an intelligent
answer to which picture he needs todistract and make a joke. So I
think that and you do use thatas a manager as a coach all the

(01:08:24):
time. Well, amazingly enough betweeninnings as if that wasn't done. I
was so hyper I would warm upthe pictures in the bullpen between innings.
I couldn't sit still. I waslike a jumping jack back there. And
you know before they knew about it. Well, I hear that's the truth,
and I will never be afraid toadmit I was hyper. But here's

(01:08:45):
the thing. The reason why Ibecame a catchers are two starting catchers didn't
show up that day. My dadwas actually managing the team and he wanted
to know who wanted to catch.When my arm was raised so high and
I was loud and I meet orreally loud, he put me in there
and those guys never saw behind theplate again. One of them quit.

(01:09:06):
I won the job and I stayedthat way. And here's an amazing thing.
I tried to catch a fallowball onetime. I did with my mask
on and caught it. Then whenI had to take it off, and
then I didn't catch anymore because Ihad my eye on the ball at all
times. Or what I lost it'sa tenth of a second then at that
particular point, but it doesn't matter. And I won't tell you how many

(01:09:26):
My dad owned a sporting good store. So I won't tell me tell you
how many cups I used behind theplate. The guy I got hammered,
but I loved every bit of thebeating there. I want to bring that
up to you. All right,let's go back to Chad. All right,
Chad, there we go. Gofor Kevin. Coach, Kevin,
do you think the pitch is goodfor the game? What pitch? What

(01:09:48):
pitch you referring to? All right, I'm sure he'll respond back. When
he does, I'll put that one. Maybe maybe he means the change in
pitching the way it is now.Oh, I don't, Chad. I
think that it's really hurt major Leaguebaseball more than anything. You know,
who wants to watch people strike outall the time and basically the ball's not

(01:10:09):
in play. It's a whole focusof all these rule changes that they made
is to try to get more action. A baseball is a great game when
the ball gets hit, and becauseyou get to see great athleticism that you
don't see anywhere else. So apparentlyhe's referring to the pitch clock. Now,
oh, the pits Okay, sothe pitch clock. M I liked

(01:10:31):
the idea of the pitch clock.I used to I had a picture.
He used to go, he goescoach, I work fast. I want
to get out of there before theyknow I'm horse shit, and uh,
there's a lot to work in fast. I worked. I worked fast as
a pitcher. I knew what Iwanted to do. I threw strikes and
I wanted my infielders to be ready. So bumbo, I didn't want to

(01:10:53):
fool around out there. We became. We really slowed that game down.
The hitters, maybe more than thepictures. Okay, so you should maybe
call it a hit clock because DerekJeter. I may, I love Derek
Jeter, but how many times youhave to step out, take the deep
breath, do your batting gloves,take your two practice swings, get back
in every bat, in between everypitch. That's nonsense. So that's been

(01:11:17):
eliminated. It's not that I wantedto get the game over faster. The
game's beautiful. I want to seethe game played. I don't want to
watch you preening and doing your breathingexercises that some yoga guy taught you.
You know, it's all crap.Just trying to eliminate the extracurricular activities.
It's Gonake to Joyce Dykorn for amoment. He says, I may have

(01:11:40):
missed this, coach, but doyou prefer players who are drafted by MLB
teams to a guy go directly inMLB or to stay in college for more
development. I guess he's referring tothe high school player versus a college Yeah,
George, I think it depends ondepends on a number. You know,
what's your family situation and and andknowing what that is, you can

(01:12:06):
make a decision. Okay, Nowfinancially when they're talking to me, my
family is well off, so Iyou know, the you know, the
money isn't the driving force for me. Now. If it's life changing money,
I think that's you know, theway you got to look at it.
Somebody gives you two million dollars andyou're eighteen years old. You can

(01:12:29):
have that two million dollars invested andit can really change your life. Um,
all right, I think now.Of course, the money is crazy
now compared to even when I coached. But you know, I would always
counsel guys, you have to understandthat if you sign out of high school,
you are you are working for aliving you're not playing baseball, you're

(01:12:51):
working for a living. You're goingto go someplace you've never been before.
You're going to be surrounded by abunch of people that might not even speak
English. Not that that's a badthing, but unless you speak their language,
you're gonna you're not gonna form,you know, the friendships as easily.
You're gonna get paid extremely poorly.You will play, you will live

(01:13:12):
in bad conditions, and you willtravel poorly. That's minor league baseball.
And when you do get close tosome guys, you walk in one night
and the guy's locker is empty becausehe got released. I've had that happen
to me when I was in theminor league. So the dynamic of a
team feeling will not be there foryou. Then you're gonna have to come

(01:13:34):
home in the offseason and they're gonnatell you when you can go to school.
Yeah, well, you'll probably gethome too late to register for classes,
and they want you to train,so you're gonna be training, you
can't be doing your school work,and then you've got to go to spring
training. So they make it soundeasy. I think it's really comes down
to you know what you value inlife, and if if I just want

(01:13:57):
to get in play minor league baseball, because I want to be in the
big leagues in two years. Andyou're better off from a big league standpoint
the way it's structured right now,to sign out of high school because then
you get to the big leagues ata younger age theoretically as opposed to somebody
like and that helps you in termsof arbitration, eligibility and free agency where

(01:14:19):
you're going to make the big,big money. Like Aaron Judge. Because
he went to college, played threeyears of college, he's on a different
clock than guys that signed out ofhigh school, and so they were eligible
for arbitration and free agency sooner thanhe was. So he got paid peanuts
for six years by the Yankees.It was ridiculous, right, And so

(01:14:40):
that's the negative to it. Thesystems kind of messed up in but it's
their system. They want you togo into pro baseball. All right,
We'll go back to Wayne again,your favorite guy here. Let's let Wayne
roll. I think when a pitcheris throwing strikes, he wants to get
on the mound keep throwing as quicklyas he can. I guess it's pretty
You agree with that, don't you. I agree, but some guys have

(01:15:02):
been taught to be very methodical,to repeat, do everything the same way.
You know, throw your pitch,get it back, turn around,
rub the ball up, get backon. Take a deep breath now looking
for the sign you know, nowshake you. Ten minutes have gone by.
So I agree with you, butI also think it's like, well,

(01:15:24):
my style is a little faster thansay, your style. We still
maybe not dilly Dallian, but oneguy is slower than the other. Okay,
back to chat. I love anew shift rules in larger Yes,
one of your feelings. I lovethem. You know. It disappointed me
when I started to watch the regionalsin the World Series, because I'd forgotten
that the shift is not you know, shift is still there at college baseball,

(01:15:48):
in pro baseball. It's they haveso much information and so they every
ad bat you've ever taken, oreven they ad bats you've dreamt about,
they probably saw where you hit theball and they can feed that into their
computers and boom man, how manytimes you want to see a guy hit
a one hopper to a second basemanthat's playing forty feet into right field that's

(01:16:10):
not the way the game was designed. Now that being said, back in
about ninety five ninety six, Istarted really using it. You know,
we started shifting, not to theextreme that they did, but I would
put my shortstop on the other side. If we had a guy, you
know, Lefty, You're looking athis freight chart. All his groundballs are

(01:16:31):
to the right side, his flyballs are scattered, so you know,
and you know, it was kindof scary sometimes the first few times I
did it, because I know,with my luck, I'll move them over
and he'll dribble one the other way. It's a good idea, but again
it got beat to death. Allright, Well again, Wayne's got another
good one. So I'm just gonnakeep riding a chat coach. That's because

(01:16:55):
there so many players with superstitions inbaseball who had the weirdest the superstitions at
you go, wow, that's agood one. Yeah, he's on a
roll, this this guy. I'llgive you my weirdest superstition. It happened
one year, um in ninety nine. We had a great year. I
mean it was phenomenal. We didn'teven know we had this winning street going

(01:17:18):
until at somebody pointed a guy fromthe Boccanos showed up at practice. I'm
like, what are you doing here? Nobody covers us, and he goes,
well, you're going up and ifyou if you win these three games,
you tie the state record for consecutivewins. And that was the first
our kids even knew about it.Anyway, but I knew we had we
were I knew we were winning,and U I went to this sandwich shop

(01:17:40):
in in Boca and I had to, you know, I had a turkey
with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise,and I had that for lunch. And
then, you know we're winning.I going, you know, I'll go
there again, and I stopped drinking. I used to have two beers with
dinner every night. But I wasworking out a lot in the weight room

(01:18:01):
and I was taking protein shakes andso when I got home, I you
know, I had worked out,I had a protein shake glass and I
want it was a bottle of beer, so I did and then I realized,
well, way, man, Ican't have a beer because we're winning.
So I had that same sandwich withall the time, and I didn't
came close to drinking. We wereon the road, we got rained out
and the four coaches went to thehotel bar and come out to have a

(01:18:24):
drinking and what do you want behindit? No, I can't have anything.
So but yeah, but other players, you know, they're okay,
I remembered it. Who asked this? Wayne? Yeah? Okay, Wayne,
so crazy superstition. Now this isnot fau Monca State. Monka State
nineteen eighty seven. We're in theDivision three World Series. Had a kid
named Pepe Herrero, big strong Cubankid. His mother. His mother had

(01:18:51):
all these Saint cards, you know, the Catholic Saints, and they had
their prayer cards and she gave themto him to keep in his pocket when
he played in the game. Soevery game he played he had I don't
I don't know what saints they wereor even he had like four Saint cards
in there. So I took himout for a pinch runner. In this
one extra inning game he got,he got the third, we had one

(01:19:14):
out. I figured, you knowwhat, we need an extra run.
If we got to pop up ora pass ball, he's never going to
score, and so I took himout. It was eighth inning and it
took him out, and I comeinto dugout from coaching third base, and
he's ready to kill me, andyou go, you don't ever do that.
You're gonna take me out? Hegoes, here, you take these.
He's handed me these cards. Butwhat the heckut ease, Peppy?

(01:19:34):
Go Jerry my mother gave me.Did you gotta take them now? And
the scary thing about that was thatPeppy was the first baseman. We had
a huge right field or who wasa natural first baseman, but I had
to move him in take Peppy's placefor the ninth inning or tenth whatever inning
it was. And and the backupoutfielders are just a short kid. He's

(01:19:54):
like five to seven. And thelast out of the game was a ball
hit the right field and it lookedlike it was he was gonna have to
jump at the fence to catch it. And Peppy, standing next to me,
he goes, he better catch thatball, He better catch I can't
say what he really was. Andthen he just turned and he looked at
me and he took the cards back. After the last down, he goes,

(01:20:15):
don't ever take me out again.All right, Well, you know
what, We're going to the crewand I still have more for you.
But I'm rolling with these guys,what's your favorite baseball movie or documentary or
realistic to the game by Chad,that's a good one. Um, that's
why there, that's why we're puttingthem up. Yeah. Well, now

(01:20:40):
the easy answers feel the dreams,especially if you're a father or if you
ever had a father. Um,that's a good movie. The realism in
it was not very realistic. There'ssome bad baseball players in that movie.
Um. I was actually at thefield of dream Site and dis really cool
play. So I recreated it twoyears ago in my in our garden and
I had picture of me my FAUuniform coming through with a bat through the

(01:21:04):
corn. My players loved it whenI posted it. Um, I really
liked The Natural. The Natural again, not great realism. You know,
Roy Hobbs was not really the bestpicture that you ever saw, but that
I thought that was a great,great, great movie. And I still
in the music. Of course,the music was phenomenal. It's hard not

(01:21:28):
to like that movie. And BingoLoongs Traveling All Star. That was a
movie with Richard Pryor and Billy dWilliams. Find that somewhere Bingo Longs Traveling
All Star something like that all right. Well, Chad, you know what,
there's no way that we cannot evenmentioned Mark the bird federch I mean,

(01:21:50):
God to watch her what that was. He was amazing that year,
him and his The documentary on him, I think was one of the best
if you want to see a documentarythat kind of tugged your heartstrings because of
you know, it just kind ofhis arm got ruined and um but he's

(01:22:10):
just a down earth guy. Ithink he's passed away now. Yeah,
yeah, because of an unfortunate trailer. We're going back to Wayne. I
have a few other questions. I'mgonna get to you sooner or later.
But that's okay. I love itwhen we have guys like this, and
now we have one of our youngguys you're gonna get to meet pretty soon
too. So back to Wayne.How many games do you feel we're one

(01:22:31):
duty team's not adjusting to the heat. That's I've always wondered about that.
Um, I don't know. Idon't know how you put a number on
that. That was a difficult thing. You know, you playing in South
Florida on Sunday mornings, and thathe could get to you and then depending

(01:22:54):
on your dug out, you know, Yugge. We go up to mercer
Um and their dugouts were just seeconc mean hearts or concrete. But they
had no no ventilation, you know, there's no open block. At least
we had like an open area there. And that man had baked you if
you were in that dug out andit was small, so everybody's cramped in
there. And we had one kid, Alex Fonseka at severe cramping issues,

(01:23:16):
hydration issues. But a lot ofthat is kids don't take care of themselves.
You have to, you know,you have to monitor what they're drinking
and making sure that they're drinking.Okay, all right, now I've any
contact with FAU to the final four. I know run because I know they
played Tennessee in Madison Square Garden thefinal four. And then you mentioned that

(01:23:38):
you had a little bit of interactionaltime herman and football coach. Is that
correct? No? You did?Um? Well, I did, okay,
Yeah, I had interaction. Well, I wasn't going to go.
I wanted to go. My sonwanted me to come up and see them
play Tennessee at the garden. Mywife wanted me to go because my one
son lives in New Jersey, andI didn't. I just didn't want to
do it. My wife is acaretaker for her ailing dad and there's a

(01:24:01):
lot of responsibility here on our farm, and I just I just didn't want
to do it. Then on aone we're driving a mask that Sunday morning.
As I'm pulling in the park alot, my wife goes, okay,
and she's on her phone the wholetime we're driving. She was,
Okay, you're all set, Likewe mean, I'm all set because I
got you. I got this flightto go to Houston. You want me
to book it. I'm like,no, No, you're rushing. I

(01:24:24):
can't do that. Anyhow, longstory, my other son out in New
Jersey, who in h I'm sorry, in Missouri, who pitched from me
at FAUM. You know he's onit from Pops, you got to come
out here. So anyway, thewhole thing got together. My one son
flew in from New Jersey. Idrove to Springfield, Missouri. Then my

(01:24:45):
grandson and my and my son Jim, we drove to Houston to see the
game, and then after the gamewe turned around and drove to Arkansas because
his son had a tournament game ateight o'clock in the morning. It was
tremendous. It was It was justa tremendous event. I got to see
alums from my first team. Isat next to Brian Covin, he's a

(01:25:10):
captain airline pilot for American Airlines.I saw Pat Murray, who's a fire
chief I think in in Boca.I saw Dave Dinger was his dad is
a retired fire chief at Boca.Some old fans that had been there forever,
and everybody's staying low to me andshaking hands with me. I was

(01:25:31):
trying to go up to get abeer at halftime, and it's a pretty
good looking woman is in the rowbehind who I'm talking these people I'm talking
to, and she's like, areyou a legend? She goes like that
to me. I'm like, well, if you want me to be,
honey, I'm a legend. Soshe gave me a hug and she said

(01:25:53):
thanks for everything you did. Sheknew who I was, but it was
it was great. It was reallynice and just surpride, you know.
And it was just like getting stabbedin the heart when when the buzzer went
off and that ball went through itwas. It was tremendous. It's just
so proud. You know, youdon't understand when when when it's your school

(01:26:15):
and and you're working there, andyou know it's got all its warps and
bad size, but it's your schooland and and you're that close, you
know. Um, it was it. I talked to a lot of former
men's basketball players on that walk,and you know, they were so happy

(01:26:35):
to see what had happened. AndI wrote something on Twitter and on Facebook
or somewhere that gosh, it gotlike eight hundred nine hundred some likes and
shares and stuff, and people justall of a sudden, people from other
other teams at FAU. I rancross country, I played tennis. I

(01:26:59):
know what you're talking, you know, because I wrote about you don't know
what it's like to change, youknow, have no locker room, change
in a dug out, this that, and the other things that we all
went through. The vans, wehad to drive in, fifteen hour bus
rides and so all these other andthey said, don't forget our soccer players,
don't forget I played this. Itwas really touching the people that reached

(01:27:21):
out to me after that. Youknow, the interweb you never know,
you never know who's out there.All right. Now, there's a good
question from Chase Blake, and you'regoing to meet him on one hundred and
eighth, such as baseball talk.This kid's one of the brightest young kids
I've ever seen, and I liketo develop talent here as well, and
he's definitely one of them. Sohe says, does definitely use basketball says

(01:27:42):
help success help, and they userecruiting for baseball. Oh sure, definitely.
You don't have to mean, youdon't have to explain who you are,
where you are, where you're located. You're right away of a talking
point because you know, the Finalfour's entertainment. Everybody is aware of the
Final Four. You don't have tobe a basketball fan, So yeah,
definitely should help it. George Ikorn, do you prefer the aluminum or wood

(01:28:06):
bats for hitters in college? Beforeyou answer that, though, chat out,
I'm glad you're loving this show.What a great guest. You know
what. We appreciate you coming onhere asking great questions. And I work
as hard as I can, especiallywith the one on one interviews, to
get to know people a lot more, particularly the ones that I have relationships
with Chad. You know what,we appreciate the kind of words thinking so

(01:28:29):
much and thanks for being a veryloyal participant. I tell you guys like
you are a classic. Thanks Chadvery much. Not back to George,
iikor do you prefer the aluminum orwood bats hitters in college? And doesn't
make it a tougher transition when theyfinally go to the wood bat when they
play professional baseball? Yes, there'sno question, but they do get a
lot of playing time with wooden bats. You know you most collegiate summer leagues

(01:28:56):
are wood bat leagues now, soyou know you'll play not as many games
with a wooden bat, and alot of guys that that are going to
be prospects, they'll practice with awood bat. I like the sound of
it, there's no question, butyou know the hang up on aluminum versus
John McCormick, You say this allthe time. He was everybody said,

(01:29:18):
oh, it's a little aluminum bathit You know that. You'd hear that
all the time when the guy fifthone, Well, it's the only bat
anybody's used since nineteen seventy six.Think about that, So since nineteen seventy
that's a lot of years ago,isn't it. I can't do that math
in my head. Nobody's known anythingbut an aluminum bat. All the leagues,

(01:29:39):
all the colleges, all the highschools, So let's get over it.
You know, that's the bat wehave. And although some people have
tampered with them. There was aschool in Florida was accused of rolling their
bats. It does something molecularly tothem, put them in some kind of
roller, and their home run productionwas greater before they got called out on

(01:30:01):
it then after. Okay, allright, So now let's talk about FAU
baseball under John McCormack. You've workedwith him for a lot of years anyhow,
So when I talk about FAU baseball, you know what area is that
both of you recruit locally, nationally, sprinkled outside. You told me that
John Mac used to like to recruitin Florida, Paul Beach, Broward and

(01:30:25):
in state kids. So let's putthe two together and give me your observations
about where the state of the programis. With coach Mac obviously, and
he inherited it from you. Youmade sure there's enough money for him to
hang around until he got the job, and then we'll take it to the
recruiting side. Yeah, he's donea great job. Everybody that knows the

(01:30:45):
situation at Florida Atlantic and the restraintsunder which you operate has nothing but high
praise for the coaches that have gonethrough there, and John certainly is worthy
of that. You know, he'swon several conference championships. They've been in
a number of regionals. Um.Yeah, so, and they've been he

(01:31:08):
has one. I can't pronounce hiskid's names s sc H, A,
U, n e L, buthe was He's a finalist for the Golden
Spikes Award one of the best collegebaseball players in the nation this year.
So you know, he's done verywell. His recruiting when he came to
US was to change our focus fromout of state. I didn't think that

(01:31:30):
we had anything really good to offeran in state kid compared to the in
state colleges. My focus was,you know, if we can get a
kid from Iowa or New Jersey orPennsylvania, all you gotta do is show
him, get him down here ona warm day, he's going to come
and and some of that worked andsome of that didn't. And so John
just one day saying I think wecan do better. There's a lot of

(01:31:53):
kids just in the county, twocounties, and so I turned kind of
turned them loose. And that's howwe And then and then we made a
mix. We we did. We'dget some Florida junior college kids tied in
with that, so those kids wouldbe from the West Coast to Florida wherever.
And that would tap you into somehigh school kids from the West coast.
And and and so we gradually gotmore kids from Florida, from all

(01:32:16):
different areas in Florida. And still, you know, you still get some
really good kids from out of state. I mean, we had some Danny
Jacksons, one of the greatest pitchersever at Florida Atlantic. He was a
kid from Chicago. I went toa junior college up there and came in.
He had two unbelievable seasons for us. One of the greatest pitchers I
ever saw. Um, you know, he was now a state kid.
And um, we've had a bunchof kids from from all over the country,

(01:32:43):
and I know that Johnson got themfrom different areas. Now too,
you can't just stay in one spot, all right, Let's go back to
Chad. A pretty interesting question hereall that, and so that wasn't a
safety issue to not have a luinumbets at MLB due to the ball off
the bet speed. I like thatquestion. How do you feel that was
always the rationale? You know that, and now they can quantify it with

(01:33:08):
you know, I'm so tired ofwatching it. Here's okay, get off
my lawn. Here's an old mancomplaining. I'm so tired of every baseball
broadcast, especially Call Rabbits, whodoes the baseball the college oral series.
Every pitch he has to tell youhow how how fast the pitch was.
Who cares and strike with a ninetythree mile hour fastball? And and then

(01:33:30):
the eggs if last that was eightynine or one hundred and nine whatever,
Come on, who care whatever?After you gott he hit the crap out
of that one. You know,it's like, I'd rather get a job
as an announcer and change some ofthe new ways they do things. Yea,
but yeah, I think that thatwas That was definitely one of the
reasons from the beginning. Uh youknow, of course baseball such a steeped

(01:33:54):
in tradition sport. I think that'dbe a really radical change. It's bad
enough. We now a pizza boxesforces with the rule change making that extra
large base, which is stupid.And those oven mits they let the base
runners wear. What's the purpose ofthat, right? And so if if
I slide with my hands out likethis into the base, but I have

(01:34:16):
the ovenmit, I'm going to getthere sooner? How is that fair?
I don't get it. But I'mseventy two all right, Well, mither
Wayne Weinstein question, and we're goingto sprinkle them two more or whatefore it's
over. There are so many kidsdown here that play over play in the
Perfect Game tournaments and don't get recruited. So there are a ton of players

(01:34:41):
available that aren't even being recruited bymajor programs or even being drafted. I
need to justify that. Okay,Well, first, that's not true.
The whole Perfect Game thing another thingwell intentioned and has a purpose, but
it's a moneymaker, that's a cashcow. And they put perfect game the
name perfect And one of my dearfriends, the former player, is one

(01:35:03):
of the head guys for a PerfectGame, Tony von daltren Um. There
are Perfect Game sponsored tournaments, sowe got to go to Perfect Game here,
a Perfect Game there it does becauseof this perfect game doesn't necessarily mean
the quality of the players at thatperfect game event are are that good.
Secondly, if you're good, you'regetting seen. Um, if you're not

(01:35:26):
in today's age, you're there's somethingwrong with you. Because you can promote
yourself just you know, just bysending a text message with short video to
a coach. And and there areand my son runs. He's the youth
director from a routine Midwest Baseball inSpringfield. Well it's headquarters in Ozark,

(01:35:47):
Missouri, and they're the largest,you know, youth baseball program. They're
playing every weekend, you know,every weekend from March the beginning of March
on. They're going everywhere. It'sfreezing cold. They're in someplace and those
parents are paying for hotel rooms everyweekend. It's amazing the money that's spent.
So from a young age. Youknow, baseball is a rich kids

(01:36:10):
sport. It's not a poor kidsport anymore. It's not like you're going
to play American Legion ball and it'snot going to cause you anything. You
know, you've got to be onsome sort of travel team today or and
and just and it starts at youknow, seven years old, eight and
under the eight and under travel teams. What's the are you kidding? Mate?
You know your your eye hand coordinationisn't developed at age eight. So

(01:36:32):
I think if you're I think youare being you know, if you're a
good player, you're being seen.There are a lot of good players,
and uh, I think I thinkwhat young people and parents have to understand.
One, you got to identify whatdo I want to go to college
for aside from baseball? Because youknow it's not just baseball. So what

(01:36:53):
do I want to study? Okay, what schools will offer that? Where
do I want to go to college? What part of the country? All
right? And don't just say Iwant to go play in the South.
You got to have a couple ofoptions. Then I think you have to
say, okay, how good amI? And you get some feel from
that by players that in your highschool that signed and went away and played

(01:37:15):
at a Division two school, Well, I'm way better than him. So
maybe you're a Division one player orthe guy went to a Division two school
and you're nowhere near as good asthat guy. Well, don't be trying
to go to Florida Atlantic because you'renot good enough to go to a Division
two school. So you have torealize that there's a place for everybody.
You have to find that place,and you have to take your ego out
of it, and you have totake your desire out of it. Isn't

(01:37:40):
like I want no, I needthis. I need to fit here academically,
environmentally because I'm going to live thereand baseball isn't every single day and
it's academically and then can I playthere? Do you want to go to
school where you have no chance toplay? That's why we had that transfer
portal. You had all these kidsgoing to buying you know, a pipe

(01:38:01):
dream, and the next you know, they're in over their head. Well,
you know, we've had kids thatHey they didn't start as freshmen and
sophomores, but they had good yearsas juniors and seniors. They had good
careers. They'd have been gone nowyou know today's day and age. I
want it now, but I shouldhave had it ten minutes ago. That's
the attitude of everybody. So that'swhat makes it hard. So I don't

(01:38:24):
think I honestly don't think kids.You know, somebody's gonna get missed.
There's no question but a lot ofthat. If you're playing ball, you're
gonna get seen. They're out there, but take it upon yourself. That's
all I was told. You know, I've talked to parents and stuff and
kids that come to our camps,and you know, I said, hey,
you can't play. I don't thinkyou can play here, but you

(01:38:45):
know you your Division three baseball.I played Division three baseball. I coached.
It's great baseball, I said.I always told them. The biggest
game of the day isn't Florida versusWake carst It's not TCU versus Arizona.
It's not Florida Atlantic versus UCF.It's the game you're playing in. So
if you can't play in those othergames, it's not a big game.

(01:39:08):
You gotta go someplace you can play, all right. Well, back up
with Wayne, and I have threequestions I want to get to as well.
So he says, I think someof these kids have delusions of grand
wire. I think it's pretty safeto say that. Oh yeah, not
just kids mommy and daddy. Allthese parents think that athletic scholarship is their

(01:39:30):
retirement fund. A lot of parents. I had a guy come, I
live on a farm, we're tryingto get at rid of a lot of
old stuff. My file law.I had these massive tractor tires that I'm
giving away on Facebook marketplace. Sothis good old boy comes driving up in
his pickup and he gets out withhis kind of a little overweight ten year

(01:39:51):
old or eight year old, I'mnot sure how old he was, and
I go, so, what areyou gonna do with these these tires?
And he goes, he points tohis kid. He goes, he's my
meal ticket. He's going college andthen going to NFL. He's going to
flip these tires like I'm using askid steer to lift these tires. You
know, but everybody thinks their kid'sgoing to go to college. You get

(01:40:13):
a scholarship. Now, that's reallyharder in baseball, there's not as many
scholarships. It's a little easier inbasketball and football. All right, Kandambling
has a great, great question.I want to get that up there as
well. Coach, do you thinkthat kids playing only one sport has contributed
to the number of Tommy John Surgery'sBoy, we get this out there a
lot. I think that's definitely apossibility, because kids pitched more than they

(01:40:38):
did they pitch. They use theirarm the exact same way more than they
ever did. And I just Idon't think playing the same sport all year
round is good for for a kid. I love two sport athletes, you
know, especially if you've got awrestler, man I got it, spends
all day getting his face ground intothe matt that's practice, you know,

(01:41:01):
those those other athletes, they've learnedto win and lose and keep coming back.
And I think that's I've always likedhaving two sport guys. Came back
to Chad guys on a roll toogood. Keep it up, Chad doing
great work tonight if you call itwork or We're glad to have your comments,
all right. He says high schoolersdown south can practice outdoors. Steners

(01:41:23):
they see five days a year outdoorslong Northern kids can't. Is that an
advantage to being recruited. I'll sayno now because there are limits as to
the weeks that recruiters can be out, but I have say, yeah,

(01:41:44):
probably not what it was, butyeah, it's definitely an advantage. But
you know what you can You canhit and pitch indoors, you can field
groundballs, and as I said before, with so many fields being field turf
now outdoors, that transition from beingindoors to outdoor is not as big a
deal now it is on the ballhit in the air. We always used

(01:42:06):
to have them playing in Northern school. It's like, hey, every ball
you hit in the air, run, just keep running because there are no
fly balls in the gym. Nowthey do have some field houses now where
they can get some flyballs. Butso I don't I don't know if they
answered your question. Oh no,you're fine, okay, So let me
ask you an easier one here.Did you play Lynn University much and how

(01:42:28):
much did you enjoy playing them?Well, it was initially College of Booker
ratone. When when I got there, um, and I'll tell you a
quick story. We were we wereplaying College Booker ratone and this kid was
pitching. Uh, Jim say somethinglike this, So are you saying that
Lynn University was considered College of bookrotone. It was called the College book

(01:42:53):
rotone, and then the Lenz gavemoney and U and it was renamed So
yeah, so this was probably we'reon the old field. So this was
eighty nine, Yeah, eighty nine. So this kid is pitching for them,
right handed pitcher, a good one, and he's got a glass eye.

(01:43:15):
His right eye lost his eye ina fight when he was in junior
college kids a baseball fight. Kidsstepped on him and he lost his eye
tragically. It's a great kid.So he's got his right eye, can't
see. I'm coaching third base,and uh, I got a couple of
really fast runners on that team.We were very aggressive base runners. So
this kid, he rob commentary.He sent me a Father's Day message and

(01:43:44):
he gets. He gets, Hegets on second base and I give him
a sign steal third. So he'ssteals third. Now he was there.
It's a close game, you know, we could use a run. And
and the first pitch, I lookat their pitcher. He goes, he's
in the wind up. Well,he said, well he can't see the
runner. So I go, Igo, Rob, get the biggest league
you can get and steal home.He goes, what And I go,

(01:44:08):
he can't see you. He goes, Coach, that's terrible. He does
to me like that. I'm like, he's playing the game all right.
If he doesn't look, you gothome easy. He goes, Okay.
So the kid never looks and ourkids steals home easy, and everybody's hooting
and Hollard Well, the catcher forCollege of Boca Ratone now Lynn University,
was a young man named John McCormack. Oh really, well, yes,

(01:44:32):
So Mack goes out to the moundand he talks to Jimmy their picture.
By now my other runner has stolenI'm sorry. My two sons keep texting
me here. So my other runnernow has moved up and he has stolen
third because it was first and second. No, it was it was second

(01:44:57):
and third. So now he's atthird base. Jack penroy Man, great
hitter, twenty two home runs anduh, and he goes, can I
take it? Can I take it? And I go, let's see what
he does. So I'm waiting.I'm expecting him he's going to go into
stretch because he's in the stretch.Now he's looking at you with his good
eye, so you can't get abig lead. But he doesn't. He
stays in the wind up. SoI go, you're on, buddy,

(01:45:17):
and he takes off, steals homeand McCormick was so mad that the umpire
was dusting off home plate and McCormickpretended like he was going to kick him
in the butt. So later on, you know, I said, Mac,
would would you tell him? Andhe went out there? He goes,
I told him I would yell ifI saw him coming. Yeah,

(01:45:40):
And I wanted to say, wellyou should have told him go in to
stretch, but he didn't need tobe told that. But yeah, we
had a good rivalry. Yeah,it's safe to see. He didn't have
to fell very far to go thereat all, did you no? But
there we weren't real good near theend. This one year ninety one almost

(01:46:00):
got I got fired. It wasn'tbecause I lost to them, but it
was right after losing to them,We lost a close game, and and
I went in the office and thenext day and my boss is like waiting,
what's going on to Lynn? Andyou know, because by then it
was Lynn And I go, well, they can get anybody in the school.
I mean, if you'd pay,you could get in. You didn't
have that grades. And they gotkids from New Jersey that are really good

(01:46:23):
players that we can't get into school, and blah blah blah. And he
goes, well, yeah, okay, well we're not renewing your contract.
And really they just said not torenew your contract after the wins such as
no, I mean they had alreadydecided because it was all typed up and
he said he had the president's approvalfor it and everything. And but two
weeks later at my job back,So that's a whole other story. Yeah,

(01:46:46):
well we'll talk about We'll leave alittle bit for one hundred and eighths
such as baseball talk. So let'stalk about the top players. Are you
in touch with these guys? AndI have to tell you, I'm amazing
at fa used successful thirty year run. I mean, you know, let's
Facebook between you and coach Macca isone thing. But you know, do
you stay in touch with a lotof your top players? Yeah, the
main ways through Instagram and Facebook andthen every now and then to my birthday

(01:47:11):
and stuff that people reach out tome Father's Day. So yeah, not
as much as not as much asI would want to, especially now because
I don't have a vested interest instaying in touch with them, so that
I asked them for a donation.You know, when you're the coach,
you know you're kind of asking themfor a donation. But yeah, quite
a few of them. It wasgreat seeing them all out in Houston.

(01:47:35):
Do you feel that when you're finalyou were done coaching FAU, that you
could have left on a more positivenote or what was the departure like leaving
FAU with all the time and workthat you put into that. Well,
the honest answer is it was easierto leave than a lot of people thought.

(01:47:57):
You know, my son was verydisappointed, he said, you know,
and I remember the day I toldhim I was going to be leaving.
I was driving him to the airporthe had been visiting. He was
going back to New Jersey, andI told him. He was devastated because
you know, he grew up spendingsummers with me down there, every vacation
Faus. You know, he bleedsFau. He goes, I said,
Jeff, they're not nothing's going tochange, and he goes, No,

(01:48:19):
they're going to get in another coupleof years, they're gonna get a ballpark,
you know, blah blah blah,you'll be in the World Series.
And I'm like Jeff, in acouple of years, if we don't do
even better than we're doing now,they're gonna say your dad's too old.
They're gonna say he's falling asleep.And the dugout. I go, do
you want people to be happy thatI'm going or do you want them to

(01:48:43):
say, oh, you should stay? We want you, you know,
I said, And that isn't whyI'm doing it now. But I don't
see. I didn't see what Iwanted for the program, and I my
wife, I knew, wanted tobe back here, but because she knew,
I was waiting down the road withboth of her parents and taking care

(01:49:04):
of them. So you know,I had a good out. You know,
you know what I was going todo, but I was going to
live on a two hundred acre farmon the Tennessee River. Figured I'd figured
something now and it worked out great. I mean, the next stage of
my career was the best stage soworked out, which we're going to lead
to that in a moment. Butthere is a question that you brought up

(01:49:26):
or given you an idea. Hadthey have had a stadium that you felt
was acceptable, would you have statedat au I think at that point,
yeah, because we if we haddone the right things, we it would
have been easier to progress, youknow, because we really haven't progressed.
And I don't mean as a knockat any of Max teams. You know,

(01:49:48):
they're just as successful as we were, but we're supposed to take the
next step, and that's what weall were in this for. And I
think that the last back of supportfinancially and stadium wise. Coaches salaries are
atrocious there, or have been atrociousthere for years, so it's hard to

(01:50:10):
keep good, good staff. Yeah. You know when we talk about me,
boy time, I haven't had timeto cover them, but I'll admit
to you the stadium to me wasunacceptable. It was very tight, is
what it was even then. Andyou know, I don't complain about anywhere
that I worked, but there comesa point in time that you have to
make the press's job a little biteasier so we can do our job.

(01:50:31):
And I felt like that's you knowwhat's amazing. I thought the softball stadium
in a better press box than thebaseball one. Yeah. Yeah, And
that was just a sad commentary.So we'll lead up to the final question.
Finally, how has the retirement beenand treated you? I know you
talked about that you had three livesleaving FAU. You owned a antique mall,

(01:50:57):
church, truth minister and started thefarm back up. Twenty years of
nickel act. I mean that tome is a pretty cool ending when you
think of where you're at in yourlife and knowing that it was time to
because not what you really have toldme that you wouldn't go back to coaching
under any circumstances because all the niland the transfer portal. But let's talk
about those three things, and thenChad does have a comment. Then I'm

(01:51:20):
going to put out there. Watchplease answer your Chad. Let's see Chad
first. Okay, we'll do him. Okay, we'll put your head,
but we'll hit the fun It's signrelayed to batters, still as prevalent as
it was in the past. Second, one, great job, Chad.
Well it's being eliminated. If youwatch the College World Series, you'll see
the guys looking at their watch.That's where the sign is. The signs

(01:51:43):
are all electronically transmitted. Now.Very the other day somebody was given signals.
It was the first time I'd seenit in any of the World Series
games. So it's all you know, you rarely see it any longer,
you know, depending on the school. I don't know what Fau is doing.
I know that Fu went to likean ear thing where the coach could
tell the catch or what signed tocall to speed things up. But then

(01:52:06):
you're going through the sign series andsign stealing was rampant by a lot of
schools. Legal. Well someone wasillegal. That's a whole other show.
Well, now Wayne has ay,thank you. How do you like that?
All right, let's go ahead.I'm gonna read it. Coach,
thanks for everything you did for theAll Spaceball and thanks for answering my questions.
Who who that's Isn't that a nicething? Appreciate it. It's a

(01:52:30):
nice thing to say. Your greatjob. Wayne. He'll be appearing on
another edition of The Sports ex Changein the future date. Now back to
the retirement. Okay, I mentionedyou had three lives since leaving after the
antique mall the youth Minister. Nowyou're back on the farm. Tell me
what life is like. Well,you know, when we came up here,
didn't really know what I was gonnado. Uh kind of. I

(01:52:54):
bought with I bought a triplex upnear Dollywood and refurbished it with I was
like the laborer with a guy thathad some skill, and we partnered on
it and then it just kind offell into it was one hundred year old
building down in town south of USwhere we had bought a lot of our

(01:53:15):
house is furnished with primitive antiques,you know, things from stores and signage,
and actually behind me is a signfrom the original sign from the store
that we bought. Anyhow, fellin love with the building it was the
buildings for sale. Sat down mywife and said, hey, we should
buy this place. It's you know, we'll take a second mortgage on the
house that were just built. AndI goes one hundred and she goes buy

(01:53:40):
it. It goes one hundred yearold building. And she's like, you
don't know anything about antiques. Andthen she looked at me and she goes,
and you know less about business?And I go, come on,
let's take a shot, you know. So we did it. It was
a mall. It was already setup so vendors would rent space. I'd
get a commission on their sales,and then once I figured out what I

(01:54:02):
liked, I started buying things.I really got to enjoy that. But
it was really empty, you know. I was like, oh, how'd
you do today? Well, wemade eight hundred dollars or we made two
thousand dollars, Like who cares?That I never thought about how much money
I made in a day before.And you know, I got to flirt
with a bunch of old ladies thatthought I was funny, you know,

(01:54:24):
and have people tell me y'all ain'tfrom around here, are you, And
I'm like, no, I'm not. So you know, it was enjoyable,
but it was empty. It wasempty. I had spent my entire
life dealing with young people and havingsome effect on him, hopefully positive,
and that was very meaningful to me. It was a big part of my

(01:54:45):
life. And it's just it.I really was unhappy. And then job
opened at our church and its fortunateto get it. It morphed into it.
It was actually gonna be a sportsministry. They were going to build
this big field. The whole thingfell through and their youth minister got fired.
He was a train wreck. Niceguy, but a train wreck.
And uh and the pastor called man, he goes, well, you're the

(01:55:08):
new youth minister. I'm like,whoa, I'm a baseball guy, you
know, And I said, Iwent to Catholic school and everything, and
you know, a Catholic high school. And I said, but I you
know, I can't quote your Bible. I can quote your Bruce Springsteen songs
and lyrics, but he goes,well, you better start reading about the
other boss, not that boss.So I got the job, and it

(01:55:31):
was the greatest thing that ever happenedto me. If if I if you
could say, well you had tohave your youth ministry or you have to
have had your baseball career, youknow which one would it be, I'd
say youth ministry. I couldn't takethat out of out of my life.
It was. It touched me personally, very deep inside it. You know,
my faith had been reawakened somewhat throughmy wife and um, you know

(01:55:55):
typical laps Catholic. You know,you get all that Catholic stuff beating into
you and then you walk away fromit, and then you come back to
it. You know, it's likeonce they got you, they just keep
pulling you back. So what wasgreat about it is the demographic of our
parish, of our young people,is probably about ninety percent maybe ninety five
Hispanic, and you know most youknow, I won't say I don't know

(01:56:19):
how many of them were born here. Many of them were born here,
so they're you know, they're alwaysreferred to as Mexicans or uruguada molnor here
to Mexican. No, I wasborn in Knoxville, you know, like
why are they referred to that way? I wasn't referred to as the Irish
born in New Jersey. I wasan American, So anyway, you know,

(01:56:39):
there's a lot of struggles that thosekids go through. And then there's
the kids who were brought here withparents, um you know, with papers
or without papers, many of themwithout papers, and just great families,
hard working families, and they chasethey those young people face challenges that that

(01:56:59):
the ridge white teenager doesn't face.You know, you're in here, your
mom and dad might not even speakEnglish. So when when you have a
conference at school, you have togo to school and translate and they're talking
about you, or you have togo to the doctor with your mom,
you got to translate because you canspeak English, the mom and dad can't.
So now a mom and dad aretrying to raise a teenager in this

(01:57:23):
society with these phones and what wewhat a kid can see at the first
time he looks at a smartphone.I used to have to like try to,
you know, find the Playboy magazinein the store and not get caught
to now are you kidding? Sothey're bombarded. This generation is toughnest generation

(01:57:45):
in history to grow up in.And when you factor into you, you
have two worlds in which you live. You have mom and dad's world from
some small village in Mexico and theygot here and dad works six and a
half days a week usually, andmom stays home because because she's got little
kids, because they're all Catholics,so to keep having kids. And you

(01:58:09):
want to be American, but yourparents want you to speak Spanish at home,
but you don't really speak Spanish.So I had a girl tell me
in tears one night. She goes, I know my mom's suffering with this
issue. I can't talk to herabout it because I don't understand Spanish well
enough to get what she's saying.And I can't counsel her or comfort her

(01:58:29):
because I don't speak Spanish well enough. So I had those kind of kids
just dealing with growing up let alone, you know, trying to make them
realize that you know, there's aplace for God in your life. You
know, you don't hear about Godall day long. You're not allowed to
mention his name. So once aweek when they drive down the driveway to
our church and we're you know,we're talking about stuff that they never get

(01:58:50):
to talk about. And we madeit fun. I mean it was fun.
We do crazy things. Addressed asa unicorn and hid in a box
with this big question box that theywould put these questions in. And and
so the night, the teaching night, I don't even remember what it was
about, but I was dressed asa unicorn hiding in the box while all
the kids came in the room andmy assistant is there, and uh,

(01:59:13):
and so well, Kevin's Kevin's notgoing to be ready. He's doing something.
He's not ready, So we'll justlet's say our prayer and then get
started. And also I just poppedout of the box, just in a
unicorn onesie, you know, likecrazy stuff, crazy stuff, just had
We made it fun for kids,you know, we want they wanted to
be there, and and it wasspecial. It was really special. And

(01:59:39):
you know, I had to counseldads that you know, I'm counseling his
dad about his daughter, and I'mhaving trouble with my own daughter. You
know, I had a teenage daughterat the same time, same age,
and I'm like, well, Sergio, you talked to Maggie, and I'll
talk to Elizabeth, you know,and we'll try to get it squared away.
So it was it was great forme, but you know, it

(02:00:00):
got to the point at COVID.The COVID year came, and so that
changed everything. It came at agood time in my life because my son
in Missouri was going through a terriblesituation and I was able to go back
out. I'd taken some time offand been out there with him. I
had to go back out. Andthen I just realized, you know what,
twenty twenty, I'm gonna be seventyyears old. So in August,

(02:00:21):
I'm retiring. They don't need ayouth minister older than seventy, which that's
irrelevant. You know, those kids, they don't you know, it doesn't
matter. So I did that,and then my mother in law got sick
and passed away, and my followlaw started to go downhill. And he

(02:00:43):
had been he was a train wreck. I follow up a good guy train
wreck. This farm. He hadjust completely let it deteriorate because he was
running some scams with a crook outof state and they were trying to make
money on the side, and itall blew up in our face and we
had to sell part of the property. I had to do all that.
I had to clear all the propertythat around it so it would be tracted

(02:01:06):
to sell. And then I partneredwith my buddy across the street. I
got to know him and he's ayoung guy, forty two, and he
wants to be a farmer, andwe have more land. I said,
well, you want to raise hay, and I said, you raised the
hay. I'll help you, butyour cost the first year is you got

(02:01:27):
to get this farm looking good again. And bump, this place is beautiful
now, you know. We rentedmachinery came in, you know, big
cutting machines on a I don't evenknow what you call an excavator like,
and pulled trees out all along theriver bank. And you know, we're
lucky we didn't get arrested with someof the trees. We took it out.
But and then we cleaned up allthe brush and sold off a whole

(02:01:49):
bunch of machinery that was no good. And then we planned. We killed
all the weeds in one hundred andtwenty acres, fertilized it all planted it
all and we've had two cuttings onall the fields but one we only had
one fields had one cutting. Sofar, so far successful. Looks beautiful,

(02:02:11):
I told him, I said,if we can make this farm look
like it was when my wife remembersit coming here when they bought it in
nineteen seventy one, and it wasgorgeous and they really farmed it. I
said, that's what I want.And there was a day where we cleared
out a section of the water downthere's a pond, a little river area
that comes in and I called heron the phone. I said, you've

(02:02:31):
got to come down here and seethis. And it was horrible before,
it was all crap everywhere. Wedug it all out, dug a big
hole buried at the hall and itwas beautiful. And she started crying.
She goes, this is where Iused to fish with my mom. It
looks just like it did then.So I'm blessed. You know, it's
really good. All right, Well, Chad, once again, what a
great human being coaches. I applaudyou, sir, And you know what's

(02:02:56):
amazing about you? Though, asyou turned you put the floor Atlantic University
program on the map and now asyou are later in your life here retiring,
you took a twenty year firm andneglect and turn it around. So
what I gotta to call you?The turnaround came? I don't know you
turn around every day, So youknow what a show this has been.
I also want to let everybody knowthat Coach Cooney will probably come out one

(02:03:20):
hundred and eighth such as baseball talkcertainly be a much simpler thing that we
have here. But before I broughthim on here, I wanted to make
sure that everybody had a chance toget to know Coach Cooney the way I
had a chance, the good pleasureof working with them for a while,
and also kind of let this outof the bag a little earlier. I've
joined the company called the Egg ElevatorCorp. Or Eagle of Corp. And

(02:03:43):
I'm working on my own show downthe line. Coach, I want you
to be the first guest on it. Told the Motor Sitting Madmouth Show.
I feel this is a great wayto start, and you'll be on one
hundred eight stitches baseball talking to Butmy partners Edwin Hernandez, and this guy
is great and he's going to giveme the opportunity to go out there and
take a broadcasting division starter from theground up like you have. So what

(02:04:06):
I'm going to do here and putit on public notes now a coach,
I hope that you'll have the opportunityto be my first guest on the Motor
City man Mouth Show. Thanks,yeah, I really do. I mean,
I appreciate you being, you know, a good friend to me,
a coach person I always look upto, and I am very, very
blessed to know that you've been inmy life for a long time. And

(02:04:29):
you know, let's not catch Yourselflaryboycotting. That's not about boycotting. I
worked well with you and the stadiumwasn't very good. And you know,
I mean, I work with coachDon McCormick. It's not a bad guy.
I have no problem. It's agreat guy. It just so happens
that I'm When I was working forthe Deerfield Beach Observe. At the time,
I did a lot of baseball,But as time went on, I

(02:04:50):
had I created my own thing atthe Self Order Tribune, and I have
to spread myself around as an ownerinstead of just being told by a paper
what to do, and now it'sa wholly different animal. As you can
say, I should love everybody knowanother time here. I know we started
early, but No Limits is beingbroadcast around the world. The audio version
of No Limits can be heard aroundheard on iHeartRadio, Apple, Spotify,

(02:05:14):
Google, wherever you get your podcasts. Please hit the red subscribe button on
YouTube selfword Tribune. We're striving fora thousand subscribers. Please also come and
like and share the broadcast. Imean, if you know, this is
a very inspiring one and I lovedoing one on one interviews as well as
the other shows. I want tobe a guest. I'll tell you what
some topic I need selfware Tribute atgmail dot com. Do you want to

(02:05:35):
advertise costs officially call me nine five, four or three or four or four
nine for one. We broadcast liveon Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and
YouTube, our website www dot selfwordatribute dot com, Twitter that tribute South
and Candy Emling's been behind the scenes. She puts content on the website and
well let's participate on josel and weneed our coach. Is there any way

(02:05:56):
you want anybody to be able toget a hold of you or no I'm
in the I mean the Witness Protectionprogram. All right, well then I'll
tell you what I can make asafe statement. If you want to get
ahold of Coach Cooony, you canjust reach me and I'm I'm on Twitter.
Um, I don't even know whatmy Twitter thing is, but it's
Kevin Cooney and it's a picture ofman Bruce Springsteen. Um that I'm on

(02:06:19):
Instagram. So there you go.Well you if you don't find him in
both places, contact me. I'llmake sure we get sending out there.
And what Coach Cooney, thank youpleasure would be able to have you on
Coach. So we have a lotmore work ahead of us. But I
just wanted to bring you on thisshow so everybody had an opportunity to get

(02:06:40):
to know you in depth. I'dlike to think we accomplished our objective,
don't you I hope? So allright, well I wanted in. Yeah,
thanks a lot for the people inthe chat room. You guys were
in the eyes of Jimmy Walker dynamite. But no, I'm not going to
strain my voice doing that. Soonce again, thanks again for joining us
on this additional no minutes on behalfof coach Kevin Cooney. My name is

(02:07:01):
Scott Morgan, rot Them Motor City, Manmouth. Thank you for joining us
and we will catch you the nexttime on no Limits

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No Limits with Kevin Cooney - Former FAU Baseball Coach

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}No Limits with Kevin Cooney - Former FAU Baseball Coach