MLB Roundup: Nats finally fire Dave Martinez! Will Marlins now be buyers!? BIGGEST All-Star snubs!

MLB Roundup: Nats finally fire Dave Martinez! Will Marlins now be buyers!? BIGGEST All-Star snubs!

Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Un ceremonious. That’s the nothing personal word of the day. It is Monday 7725. Unceremonious is what happened to the general manager, president of baseball operations, Mike Rizzo. Long time been there since 2007. Canned. Dave Martinez, World Series winning manager. Gone. A twofur, totally unceremonious. The day all stars were announced, including two of the Nationals players who the Nationals received in the trade with the Padres’s for Juan Sodto. McKenzie Gore, you are an allstar. Let me give you the process here because I know the Learner family and you know that Ted Learner I was extremely close to. He was the patriarch of the Learner family. He bought the Nationals from Major League Baseball. They had Mike Rizzo and they had a team that was run extremely responsibly. They got a lot of negative attention. The same we bonded over that because they were accused of being penurious as were we. They were accused of running it as a business. Ted Lerner was a businessman except he also loved baseball and he brought Major League Baseball back to Washington. But part of what Ted Learner had was a big family. There were sons, there were daughters, there were sons-in-law, there were grandchildren, all sorts of people, although the grandchildren weren’t involved in the running of the team. But the the son who was always going to take over was Mark Learner. But that was only for baseball’s succession plan. Mark Learner is just one of the children, a great great guy who I’ve known a very long time, but he acts on behalf of the family, but from baseball’s point of view, he’s the control person after Ted passed away. The Nationals have been for sale for years. They’re still for sale now. They’re only in the period where you say you’re not for sale because you can’t get the price you want. It’s like when you put your house on the market, you don’t get the price you want. You take it off the market just to put it back on the market thinking that maybe that’ll make a difference. But the truth is, it’s still on the market. It’s not like there’s a break in the action. The Washington Nationals are for sale. But the one thing that the Nationals have been is extremely disciplined, except as it relates to Scott Boris. If you look back at the players they’ve signed and the deals they’ve done, you’ll remember that they’ve done some crazy Boris deals that have not worked. Then they’ve done several several player moves. Max Sherzer is an example actually of a Boris deal that did work. And then you’ve got their number one pick in the draft. Remember that pitcher, World Series MVP? Yeah, they extended him. Then he didn’t barely pitch at all during that entire run after the World Series. Remember when the Nationals won the World Series in 2019 and they couldn’t benefit from the World Series, there was no halo. There was no wake because of co and so the next season when they played no fans and then by that time the window had closed that national team where there’s a ton of deferred money still being paid to players because the learners did not want to operate on a losing cash loss basis. They did operating losses but not cash losses. Yeah. The Nationals who were fighting with Peter Angelos and the Orioles for decades over the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, a network created by Major League Baseball out of thin air. When the Nationals came into being, when the Expose moved to Washington, the payment to Baltimore to add a team to its territory was to create this network. And this network would pay rights fees to the Nationals. And they fought over the amount of rights fees for decades. It just got solved, by the way, as the network is now worth pretty much the price of your computer. the Nationals who have done a really interesting job by committing to a GM, Mike Rizzo, watching him win, watching him lose, but committed the way we were committed to GMs while moving managers around more often than other teams, less often than some. When Dave Martinez was hired, it was looked at as a fantastic hire, not realizing they’d win a World Series the next year. But when the wheels fell off the wagon, there’s several things that contribute to a team losing its way. One, if you do not hit on a overwhelming majority of the trades you make when you trade away highric players, if you don’t get back at least one piece per trade, you don’t have to do better, but one piece per trade, you’re not going to succeed. some trades like with the Sodto deal, they got three pieces that are all working. But if you average one real major leaguer, not average, above average major leaguer, you win that trade. Second, it’s in the draft. It’s you draft players, which means you have to have good amateur scouts. It means you have to not just be analytic. It means you have to have people with eyes on the ground looking for players, looking at players, fighting amongst themselves as they put together a draft board. And then once the players are drafted, they move over to the development side. And so you need the scouting department to feed players into a system that the development side then takes over and teaches the players how to be major leaguers, how to be productive major leaguers, how to play the Nationals way. Yes, of course. It’s not just the Cardinals way. It’s not just the Red Sox way. All 30 teams say it’s our way because they all have a way. So, you have scouting, you have development, and then what you try to do is throughout your organization, you try to have one guidepost, one north star. What are we? Are we pitching? Are we speed? Are we defense? Are we hitting for power? Are we hitting for average? What is it that defines us? And what the Nationals thought they had was a rebuild that was going to be finished already. When it turns out that the Nationals were not performing this year, they decided unceremoniously to make this change. But people are viewing it incorrectly. You’re going to read a lot of articles today that how could you make a change a week before the draft? It’s impossible to believe because yes, it’s true. Major League Baseball draft is coming up and the Nationals have the first pick. But when you have the first pick in a draft, you really don’t need to have a GM in place. Though they’ll have an interim GM, which who they named they they uh promoted their assistant GM to interim GM. They haven’t even named their manager yet. They’ll name him today at some point. But when you’re number one one, you don’t have any arguments up to the point when you’re on the clock. You’ve decided well before now who your top pick is going to be, who your first pick is going to be. You’ve already decided whether you’re going for someone who’s going to get more than what’s slotted or less, whether you’re going to use a extra amount of your total draft allocated budget or less. and you’re going to spread it out to other players throughout the draft. Those are financial decisions that each team has. You get a bucket of money and then you decide how to allocate it. And there are limits to what you can do per pick except you can go over those limits, but you get in trouble and you can lose money, you can lose picks, all sorts of rules in order to keep salaries down. It’s not collusion. These are collectively bargained rules of the draft of the amateur draft. It’s all in rule four. You can Google it and read it. But when you’re 1-1, as you know, you’re not subject to the whims of another team. If you’ve got the second pick or the eighth pick, you have so many iterations on your board. What happens if the team in front of us drafts X? What happens if the team in front of us by two picks drafts Y? Then what are we going to do? The way we used to solve it is we had a draft board that we would number. So, we would number every player we wanted and is when a player got drafted by another team, we’d cross them out and we go to the next person on our board and so it didn’t really matter to us what round it was except when money was involved. So, when you’re drafting in the first round, in the second round you have slotted money and you do pre-draft deals. Totally illegal, not allowed, but every team does it. You communicate with the player you want to draft and negotiate what you want to pay that player and you find out whether that player will sign at that dollar. And if he will, then next to his name on your board is the number he is on your board, then the name, and then signable, not signable. You put on the board whether it’s a two sports star, whether they may play football instead of baseball. You put on the board, is it a high school college? If it’s a high schooler, what college did they commit to? What’s the likelihood of that player going to that college? Or is it just a fake? So, that board is done. So, firing Rizzo now is not going to impact in any way, negatively or positively, how the draft is run because you’d be shocked to know that the GM of a team, the president of baseball operations, they don’t run the draft. Did you know that? the scouting director, the head of scouting, VP of scouting, whatever title you want to give, that’s who runs the draft room. Now, the GM’s involved, the president, the owner, you’re informed, but that room is for the scouting director. That’s his job. It’s their Super Bowl. They are hunkered into a room and they stay there for seven days before the draft using blackout shades and making sure that no cleaning people come in who could take a picture of the board. We have to clean our own trash in that room, which is totally absurd to me. Like the people who clean the stadium give a crap what number 69 is on the draft board. I guess if the price is right, they would. So when the Nationals made this announcement yesterday, my reaction was not, oh, you know, it’s too close to the draft. My reaction was, let me hear what the statement is and what the reason is because did something acute happen with Mike Rizzo? Because we know Dave Martinez was going to get fired. We gave you a wait to see in June that he was going to get fired. Back on June 17th, we told you Dave Martinez will not be the manager of the Nationals next year. We got it right. Why did we say it? Remember when he came out and talked about, hey, it’s not on the coaches, it’s on the players. And I told you that was it for Dave Martinez and that was it. What would explain when you do the GM and the manager? Well, when you go to the GM and you say, “We want to make a change.” There are GMs who would put their foot down and say, “I’m not doing that. I do not want that manager to be fired.” And then you say to the GM, “No problem. Are you sure?” Because if you don’t want him to get fired, we’re going to fire you, too. It’s not like you have two separate conversations and you decide two separate ways that you’re going to fire a GM and a manager. It’s like a package deal. And when you read the statement that Mark Learner released starting with of course because it’s what I described to you on behalf of our family because that’s what it is. I first and foremost Mark Learner said want to thank Mike and Davey for their contributions to our franchise and our city. Again, I have a tear in my eye. Our family is eternally grateful. Well, not eternally because our gratefulness ends on July 6th, but anyway, our family is eternally grateful for their years of dedication to the organization, including their roles in bringing a World Series trophy to DC. While we are appreciative of their past success, and here’s where the music plays in the background. What have you done for me lately? While we’re appreciative of their past success, the onfield performance has not been where we or our fans expected. I love that. You got to put the fans in there. You got to make it just so we’re not the ones upset that it’s also the fans. You’re upset. You wanted us to make a move. You wanted us to can everyone. Our fans expect this is a pivotal time for our club. And we believe a fresh approach and new energy is the best course of action for our team moving forward. Amen. Brother, way to go, Mark. Here’s the thing. When you do a mid-season change, because there’s different press releases you do if you fire someone during the season versus firing someone during the off season, you take a different approach. The midseason firings are meant to change something immediate. like when the Rockies or the Pirates when they fired their manager. I would argue during the season that the Rockies just did it because they were on track to lose 175 games and they didn’t necessarily want Bud Black to have to be associated with that. So, it’s almost like they did him a favor. When the Pirates fired Derek Shelton during the season, they said, “Hey, there’s a chance. We have the best pitcher in the game. We have a chance still to turn this around. There is no way the Nationals are looking at their team right now and where they are at this date on July 7th and saying we have an opportunity this year to make noise to be in a playoff race to invoice people for playoff tickets. They know that’s not happening. So short of something acute, why make the change? And then we found out because the way that Rizzo and Martinez contracts read is that by the middle of this month, either they had to pick up the option, there was an option for the 2026 season for the GM and the manager. Either pick up the option or let it lapse and they’re not under contract. Therefore, now’s the perfect time. Except you can do what the Marlins did with Don Mattingley. You or Skip Schumacher. You can say we’re not going to bring you back. We’re not bring picking up the option, but manage the rest of the year and then say your goodbyes and that’ll be it at the end of September. So for the Nationals to try to convince us that this is a move for today, it it just doesn’t hold water. And the reason why I called it unceremonious is that when you are a team that has an interesting April and May, which the Nationals had, and then you go into June and you’re 9 and 23 and you say to yourself, “Oh, that really has changed our season.” You’re just deluding yourself. And we’re going to talk about this throughout the show today, but a 9 and 23 month is terrible, no doubt. But the Nationals were not a playoff team this year. They went into this year knowing they were not a playoff team. And what they did in April and May is the story that we like to think about in a front office. And what we talk about on Nothing Personal is do we want to believe what we’re seeing or believe what we think we were going to see? And you’ve got to make the right decision. There’s a point when what you thought you were going to see is not what you see and you have to believe what you see. But if you do that too early, you make mistakes with your team. I did this. So the Nationals are going to name a manager today. Likely they’ll bring up a could bring up a guy from TripleA. Promote the bench coach. Whatever it is, they’re going to end up in last place. Either way, the Nationals are in a position where they’re going to keep trying, which is good. People are accusing the Pittsburgh Pirates of never trying, which is bad. I’ve never been a party to that. I don’t believe in that. Bob Nutty, the owner of the Pirates, wants to win as badly as anybody else does. And he’s got the best pitcher in baseball. And something happened with Paul Skins that I had to bring up as we start this week because the guy can’t get a win. And all of the baseball analytic people out there are saying wins don’t matter to me. Hi, I’m David. Wins are the only thing that matters. We’re trying to win games. We’re not trying to win at the minor league level. We’re trying to win at the major league level. We’re not trying to lead the league in stolen bases. We’re not trying to lead the league in earned run average or in home runs. We’re trying to win games. Every game a pitcher gets a win. If a starting pitcher goes five innings or more and you have a lead early and you hold on to the lead with a decent bullpen, pitchers can win a game. Paul Skins is your workhorse. He’s got one win in his last 13 starts with an earned run average of 1.72. I want to put that in perspective for you that uh when you win once in 13 starts, forget no decisions, forget losses because none of that is actually relevant to me. What’s relevant is that that means that on winning day and when you have an ace and we’ll hear about it with the Yankees where Max Freed pitched, he’s their ace and they needed a win. The team got a win. Whether Max Freed was involved, went more than five innings, doesn’t matter. There’s called winning day. The Pirates have winning day whenever he pitches and he’s been able to get one win in his last 13 starts. Now, it’s not because he’s given it up. He’s given up one runner fewer 12 times this season. Just think about that stat. One runner fewer 12 times and he has a total of four wins. The general rule is when you give up as a starting pitcher, one run or fewer. And there’s only one number fewer than one, and that’s zero. So, the theory is you give up one or zero, you’re going to win games. But nope, Paul Skins is the king of the ND. 17 no decisions in his 42 starts. His career record is 15 and 10 with a sub2 ERA. You’re talking about someone who is a generational pitcher who I was suspect of and worry about whether or not he’ll be able to perform consistently with all the hype, with all the internet distraction, the Instagram distraction, and everything else with all of his willingness and desire to be great. Guess what, man? Has he backed it up. He has turned into the best pitcher. I would say certainly in the top three. Koka, while we’re moving on here, just tell me where Paul Ske is in the National League Sai Young race. I would assume he should be leading. I’m trying to think who would be ahead of him and I can’t because in the American League, you’ve got Scooble who I think will repeat. I would say that DraftKings, our friends at DraftKings likely have Paul Ske as the favorite to win the Saiya with Zack Willer right behind him. Coincidentally, the two pitchers who are competing to start the All-Star game. So, you want to talk to Samson is a segment that we do on Wednesdays and I want to promote it now. So, you call this number. Just wait. If you’re watching on DraftKings Network, thank you. And wait until 10:00. If you’re watching live with us now, wait till 8:43 a.m. Eastern and then call 6313774869. That’s the So, you want to talk to Samson phone number and there’s a voicemail. Literally leave a message. Don’t leave a fourminute message. We’re not going to play four minutes of message. Leave a 30 secondond message with a question. And Wednesday, hour two, every Wednesday show, hour two will be. So, you want to talk to Samson. That number again, 631 DPS4869. deciding about what you’re seeing and what you’re not seeing. I don’t know how I can emphasize it more other than to say to you that when I’m evaluating players or general managers or people in sales or marketing or finance or any employee who I’ve ever hired, when I’m evaluating them, I’m doing it according to are they meeting expectations? Are they exceeding expectations? Are they failing to meet expectations? Expectations are set by me. It doesn’t matter that you think they’re unrealistic. It only matters whether I think they are realistic. If you set a bar too high for a salesperson, they don’t hit it. You have the right to fire that person. And that person has the right to say, “Dude, there’s no way we were going to have 20,000 season ticket holders.” And I say, “But that’s what I wanted and you didn’t get it. We’re moving on. no stake knives for you. When you put a team together on the field, you’re doing the same thing. You are putting together what your expectations are and you are assuming them in your mind to be rational. That’s why I never said 20,000 season ticket holders was a goal. But when you’re going into the season as the Atlanta Braves or the Baltimore Orioles and I want to talk about Orioles, Braves Marlins as three fascinating teams right now where there is never been a more important moment for those front offices because who are we? Who were we supposed to be? And are we too late to be that today or can I do something where we can be what I thought we were going to be tomorrow? The Baltimore Orioles fire their manager, Brandon Hyde. You may recall that the Baltimore Orioles are a significantly underperforming team who have played better of late. However, they find themselves seven and a half games out of the Wildard. President David says that’s only two and a half games away from being five out. If you’re five out, you’re good to go. Baseball people telling me, David, we have to catch six teams. Unrealistic. It’s hard. You can’t jump that many teams. You’re going to need some sort of streak that our team has not shown that we’re able to do. What do you do as you head into the end of July and you’re the Orioles when you keep waiting? I spent an entire season, 20 years ago today, 2005, waiting, waiting. We’re so good. How are we not winning more games? We are better than this. Let’s go. Let’s add. Let’s What a mistake, Koka. What a mistake waiting for something that was never going to happen. Of course, hindsight’s 2020, but the Baltimore Orioles and their new owner are going to have to decide what they’re going to do with their recent success. Are they going to try to buy at the deadline and try to say, “Hey, our young hitters, they’re going to start performing. They’re going to start performing the way we expected them to to perform this entire off season as we put the team together. The Yankees are vulnerable. The Blue Jays are so h they can’t stay that hot forever, can they? The Red Sox are a mess. We are here. Oh yeah, I don’t want to talk about the race. That’s what ALS I have a little side note, Coco. Very quick. Very quick. Two minutes. Do you know teams in the AL East, much like teams in the NL East, do something funny. As a matter of fact, every division does it. You take a team in the division and you just dismiss them out of hand as you’re calculating where you fit in the division for whatever reason. So, if you’re in the NL West, think about the Dodgers and their payroll. All those teams, they claim they’re competing with them. The Padres’s want to be them. The Giants are trying to catch them. making trades, but they’re all saying behind the scenes, it’s the Dodgers, man. There’s nothing we can do about them. Let’s ignore it. In the in the AL East, they don’t say it about the Yankees. They say it about the Rays. They ignore them. They just say, “I’m not trying to catch them. I’m not trying to be them. I can’t beat them. Can’t catch them. I’m not going to think about them.” In the NL East back in the 90s, you would say it about the Braves. Even in the 2000s, we would say it about the Braves. It’s like I I don’t know what we can do to possibly be the Braves or catch the Braves or have that sort of team. So, I’ll ignore it and I’ll focus on the Mets and on the Phillies. So, the Orioles are saying, “All right, we’re good here. I think we should buy.” Except the new owner there is going to be smarter than that because they’re not going to be seduced by the fact that they are the longest odds to even make the playoffs. They’re plus a thousand right now on DraftKings. the Orioles are to make the playoffs. The thing about plus a,000, it’s better than plus 4,000 Marlins, but plus 1,000 generally means NGTH. And if you’re smart and you have a not going to happen, you have to act accordingly. What stinks about the whole thing is you spend so much time getting ready for your season. The Braves spend so much time putting their core together, signing all of those players to those long-term deals and being so successful and then having injury upon injury where you can say to yourself, it’s just it’s injuries. It’s not our inability to scout or develop. It’s not our mistake in evaluating. We got bit by the injury bug. We have pitchers, fractured ribs, fractured elbows, Tommy John’s, hamstrings torn left and right. So, you easily can dismiss what the Braves are doing as a one-year problem because the Braves are out of it. The Braves are not going to make the playoffs. The Braves are going to be part of the stat where you start 0 and7 and you do not make the postseason ever. I said to you if there were any team that could start 0 and7 and I said this on the eighth game of the season it’s the Braves. The Braves are positioned and then they hit 500. They had Akunia back. They had Strider back for a hot second and the thought was they are going to roll. It turns out the reason stats are stats in this case is that it sort of ends up being the case. But when you’ve got your core sign, which is not what the Orioles have, it’s not what the Marlins have. What do you do? Do you re-evaluate the core that you signed? Do you try to move some of the long-term deals because you’ve changed your evaluation based on what happened this season? And my answer is an unequivocal no with a huge asterisk. The asterisk is that if you’re the Atlanta Braves, you are Alex Anthopoulos running the baseball operations. You are on the phone. And I mean on the phone hard and long up to July 31st cuz if someone’s going to overpay for your core because they’re signed, you’re going to do that deal. The Marlins are in the same position where they’ve had great success. I couldn’t be happier for them, but they were not expected to perform and they are in a position where they’re still seven games out of the wild card. It is irresponsible in my opinion for them to change their path. They are doing the right thing. They’ve putting young players together and this season was about trading Sandy Alcantra just because you’ve had a run where you’re winning a bunch of series in a row and there’s so much excitement. You have an allstar Kyle Sters. You made a great trade with the Orioles to get Norbby and Sters. Everything’s going great. I love it. You can’t change. You’ve got to trade Sandy. Get more prospects in. Win the trade. Get an above average major leager. Your young players will stay young for three years. You’ve got to keep that plan because you have to be realistic of where you are. And the Marlins at plus 4,000 where they basically have the worst odds of anyone in the National League even with this hot streak. And the fact that they pass the Braves and the Nationals, it doesn’t mean they’re any closer to actually making the playoffs. This is when, and we’ll pay close attention for the next 24 days, this is when front offices differentiate themselves, and we will see very plainly how it’s all going to play out. But I’ve got a prediction. Wait to see when we tell you something’s going to happen. Orioles, Braves, Marlins, all three of these teams with three different stories all at the same place right now between seven and eight and a half games out of a playoff spot. All three will be sellers at this trade deadline. Even, and I win this, Koka, even if they also buy, they will be looked at as having sold. All three of those teams will be sellers. After the break, we’re going to get to a review and the Allstar rosters were announced. And there’s so many stories that came out of one little announcement on a Sunday. Can’t wait to talk about it right after the break. Welcome back to Nothing Personal. It’s David Samson and after break of hour one, you know what that means? It’s time for the review. Sydney Sweeney in a movie. I’m going to watch it like it’s Tom Cruz or Dustin Hoffman. Julianne Moore won’t miss a movie she does. Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney together in a movie called Echo Valley. You can bet your sweet bippy I’m going to watch it and then I’m going to spend about an hour and 43 minutes and I’m going to say to myself, “Holy criies, this is bad.” But it did bring up something that I wanted to discuss. It’s the story of a mother and a daughter. Yes, it’s true, folks. For the 37 currently 37% of you who are sort of within 5 years of my age, I will tell you that Julianne Moore is now the mother of Sydney Sweeney. Yes, I know. Stay calm, everybody. What would you do if your daughter were in a pickle? How far would you go? We saw a whole TV show that we reviewed with uh Brian Cranston called I was going to say oh it’s I was going to say with honors and that’s Joe Peshy and Brendan Frasier. It’s called your honor with Brian Cranston. What would you do for your child? Well, Julianne Moore does some crazy stuff for her crazy drugaddicted Sydney Sweeney, who I don’t know how they did it, but they made her look as unattractive as possible, as drugaddicted as possible, as crazy as possible. The chemistry between Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney was zero. The story was absurd. A piece of parental advice from someone who is the anti- Kevin Mar. I’ve never won father of the year. Never been nominated for father of the year. But here’s some advice. Call the authorities. If your child has potentially murdered someone, don’t cover it up. Just, you know, throwing it out there. Echo Valley, you’re welcome. Skip it. Tomorrow. I had a long weekend, Koka. It has been a binge festival. Last night, I started at midnight Eastern time and I got through just about all of Department Q. I went up until I had a shower and get ready for our show this morning, Coco. But that’s not what I’m reviewing tomorrow. You have one day to watch Squid Game season 3, six episodes. I’m reviewing it tomorrow. Watch it before tomorrow. If you are upset that Clayton Kershaw is an all-star, then hit the mute button for the next three seconds and three 4869. Clayton Kershaw. While I may not always necessarily agree with his political views or what potentially could be his political views, I will tell you that he’s a first ballot Hall of Famer who deserves to get his 11th All-Star nod, having just gotten his 30,000th strikeout and baseball not knowing whether his career will continue after this year. The commissioner, as part of the collective bargain agreement, has the right to name a legend to the All-Star game. He named Miguel Caber and Albert Puhol in 2022 their last years. This CBA provision is meant exactly for a player like Clayton Kershaw. I am so thrilled that he will be honored in Atlanta as an all-star. Thank you. This commercial brought to you by your next collective marketing agreement. People love when the All-Star rosters are announced. They love it. Why? You get to write articles. You get to write articles. Snubbed, skipped, missed. They got it wrong. Allstars are done in a weird way. Players vote for a bunch of all star. The commissioner gets to name a bunch of all star. Fans get to name a bunch of all stars. So, it gives the media ample opportunity to say, “Oh, they got this one. They screwed that up.” All of New York is in an uproar. How could Juan Sodto not be an all-star? The guy was the player of the month in June. That’s onethird of the season where he was the best player in the National League. How is that not good enough? The process of choosing all stars where the commissioner bats cleanup and comes in and decides how to fill out the rest of the team after the players have voted is all part of the rule we talked about where every team must have a player that freezes out certain individuals who play certain positions. There were no spaces in the outfield. However, starting today, you are going to see at least 5 to 10 new allstars named. Jeremy Penny is an all-star. He’s not going to play the All-Star game. Chris Sail is an all-star. He’s not going to pitch in the All-Star game. There will be replacements. Every pitcher who starts a game this coming Sunday, July 13th, if you’re an all-star and you start the Sunday before the All-Star game, you are automatically taken off the team. You still get your bonus. That’s important because you are an all-star. You still go to Atlanta and you still get to line up for introductions, but there’s a replacement all-star named. This was a major source ko of negotiation with the union because there’s so many allstars named as it is the roster expanded to like 32 up from 26 for each side. But above that you get all these replacement allstars named so you look at your team and you’re like my god our annual all-star poster is crowded like the Dodgers have five people going without Mookie Betts. So Juan Sodto is going to get named he will be in Atlanta. I promise you that. For all of you in Chicago, you may have listened to Boo Shambi and you may have heard him tell you that, hey, Kyle Tucker’s been huge. So is PCA and those guys are starting. But guess what? You got to talk about Suzuki. Suzuki is like the glue. He’s the guy in the lineup that gives us depth, gives us power. Well, he’s not on the All-Star team, but here’s a surprise. He will be. I believe Sodto and Suzuki will be named to the All-Star team, but Mookie Bets, you’re gonna miss him for the first time in a long time. Not an all-star, not eligible to be replaced in my mind because I think they’ll go stood first. Couple other things that I noticed that I wanted to point out. Number one, congrats to Jacob Deg Grom. You have gotten your way right to not being my pick of the day, but he is back to being an all-star first time since 2021. And I thought he was finished. It turns out he was only finished with the Mets. He’s been great. Kok, how much would you like to have Jacob Deg Grom on your team right now? But nope, he’s an all-star for the Rangers. We also need to give credit to Craig Brezlo. Remember that GM? The guy who traded Devers and everyone in Boston, including my friend Chris, you know who you are. Totally despondent beyond repair because he’s an absolute nothing. How could he do it? He’s ruining the team. He’s all analytics. He doesn’t pay attention. He can’t have a conversation with anything other than a keyboard. That guy, well, how did your keyboard do this year? Not too shabby. Chapman allstar. Bregman Allstar. Crochet allstar. What did those three have in common, Kok? Do you know? Well, I’ll tell you in case you don’t want to guess and we run out of time. They were all just brought in this year. Trade and free agent signing. Free agent signing. and they’re all all stars. I also can’t miss an opportunity to mention the name Dan Ugla. Love you, Uggs. Do you know what? Dan Ugla was in a class by himself. He was the only player who was a rule five draft and then an allstar the year after he was a rule five draft. What does that mean? A rule five is a rule in baseball. You can take a player from another team’s roster that’s not part of another team’s 40man roster. So, it’s generally schleers and you can draft them and take them for very little money. Call it 50 grand. And the rule is you have to keep that player on your team the entire year that you draft him. Because if you take him off your team, and I mean your active roster, for a minute, he can be offered and must be offered back to the original team from whence he came. while Dan Ugler was taken in a rule five draft by us and then the next year 2006 he was an allstar. Pretty amazing. How about Shane Smith? Not much positive to say about the Chicago White Socks except when you’re a team that’s young like the White Socks and the Marlins were in ‘ 06. You’re going to give rookies a chance to play. And so the White Socks took Shane Smith, rookie, pitcher, allstar. He is now with Dan Ugla. Dan Ugla has a friend. There are now a total of two players who were rule five drafted and then Allstars the following year. That’s pretty cool. I want to stay with the Mets right now. The conversations we have with our players about the home run derby goes something like this. The All-Star games in Miami, we said, “Stanton, please participate. We’d like you to defend your title that you won the year earlier in San Diego. When you are Atlanta, you’re hosting all game. You want a [ __ ] to do the home run derby. MLB wants to get the anti-slam dunk derby. What I mean by that, and this is conversations that actually come up, we never wanted our home run derby to be like NBA’s recent slam dunk contests where it was just nobody anyone’s heard of. You want your superstars in the derby. Pete Lonzo is synonymous with home run derby. He is a great performer. Fans love to watch him. He came out yesterday. He was named an all-star. That’s another thing that can happen. Wink wink. No one will tell you this, but players don’t want to do the derby if they’re not allstars. So, if there’s a player who the league wants to do the derby, they may wink wink, make the player an all-star, so he’ll be there anyway, and then he’ll participate in the home run derby. Shh, don’t tell anyone that. Alonzo was named an all-star because he earned it and he said no to the derby. Why? He gave you a quote that was absolute horse hockey. Go get the shirt at davidamsonodcast.com and wear it when you read about this. He said, ‘I want to fully be able to enjoy the festivities. That’s really what it boils down to. As fun as it is for me, it’s not necessarily the work or the swings. It’s more the adrenaline spikes up and down. So, having that Monday off, I’m really excited. Do you know why it’s horse hockey? Because guess what Pete Alonzo did last off season? Do you recall the contract that he didn’t get? He didn’t get the long-term contract that he wanted. And you’re going to call me Mr. Cynical, but don’t. This is actual. He and his agent got together and said, “Is it in your best interest to win the home run derby or to continue to perform during the course of the season, stay healthy, keep hitting bombs, driving in runs, then we can go Chapman on your tus?” That means you take the Snell Chapman pillow deal, then you resign for the huge long-term deal that you didn’t get the year before. But if you’re hurt or you win the Derby and then all of a sudden have the Derby curse, which is absolute hoie, it doesn’t exist. But if by chance you have slump in the second half, which is not really the second half because they’ve already played more than 81 games, but if you don’t hit bombs, then I don’t know if I can get you that deal. So why don’t you skip the derby? So Allonzo tells baseball, “Thank you, but no thank you.” And then he wants you to believe that he’s just about helping his team in the second half. No, this is about helping him. What I would have expected more out of Pete Alonzo is just give it to me straight. Yeah, I listen. I I got to get that long-term deal first. The minute I get the long-term deal, I’m in like Flynn. Instead, he says, “Ah, I don’t really like hitting a truest park. If it’s in Fenway or Wrigley, count me in.” Hm. I wonder why he would say that. Let’s go to nothing. Personal pick of the day, please. Okay. So, we haven’t had a show since Thursday, and we’ll talk about my weekend and uh some concerts and some stadiums I got to go to, but we had the Giants and Robbie Ray over the Diamondbacks on Thursday. You may recall that Robbie Ray, I believe, uh Koka that he tossed a CG. Complete game. That’s a win. Hopefully you paid attention and bet Joey Chestnut. We won six cents on Joey Chestnut winning Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. And then we lost with Corbin Day. Corbin won yesterday. So we went two and one. We’re 89 and 87 for the season. I want to talk about Joey Chestnut for a minute because I was not in the United States on July 4th, but I did watch the hot dog eating contest. Obviously watch it every year. Why? Because I keep hoping that I’ll get a standby me moment during the pieting contest. I keep hoping there’s going to be unceremonious just immediate vomit projectile. I love watching. Do they dip the dog and the bun in the water? The dog. How many in a row can you put in your mouth? I’m in on all of it. It is so disgusting. But you’re talking to a guy who never had a ballpark hot dog. But then I read something about Joey Chestnut. Do you know how many food eating records this guy has? There’s a list that you can find online, like the most chicken wings, the most sliders, the most this, the most that in 8 minutes, 10 minutes. One of them that was my favorite. He ate like 80 Twinkies in 8 minutes. Can you picture a Twinkie like a hot dog? Except when you bite in, instead of it being sort of sausagey and disgusting in the middle, it’s that white cream filling. And you know, he can bang three Twinkies in a second right down the shoot. He may not even get to bite in. Or he breaks them in half and puts them in. Either way, I want to see a real man do the Hostess cupcake challenge, not the Twinkie challenge. Such gluttony. 121. Did he really cocoa? 121 Twinkies in 6 minutes. Uh, that’s 20 Twinkies a minute. That’s a Twinkie every 3 sec. Twinkie, everyone Twinkie. That the the whole thing you buy when you’re excited to get two Twinkies done just in that 3 seconds. We had to finish two Twinkies. I’m nauseous thinking about it. I’m not nauseous about my pick today, though. We’re going with the Angels. The Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles and their all-star pitcher Kikuchi is plus 128. When you can get him plus 128, you’re going to take it. Ignore the fact. Don’t tell anyone it’s against Deg Grom and the Rangers. Yes, we went against the Rangers Sunday and lost. We’re going against the Rangers again because while you were sleeping and I was not paying attention to Anaheim, the Angels are sort of totally in it under no longer manager Ron Washington. We’re taking it. I try to do nice things for nice people every once in a while. Just don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to ruin my reputation. But I’m raising money for the Bridgeampton Child Care and Rec Center. That is a area out here in uh in Bridgeampton that serves underprivileged kids. And there’s so many underprivileged kids, it’s hard to even imagine. And so on Charity Buzz, I’m auctioning for I think the third or fourth year in a row lunch, which means you can bid to have lunch with me. It sounds so egoomaniacal, but it’s fun. Somebody gives money to charity, you get a deduction and I’ll take you to lunch. We can go in the city. We can go in the Hamptons. We schedule it. It’s a fun lunch. There’s drinks. There’s conversation. All you have to do is go on Charity Buzz and search David Samson and bid. Bidding ends July 17th. There have been some bids already. Uh it’s pricey, which I appreciate. Thank you. But it’s worth it. It’s for the kids. So, you’ve got till July 17th. There’s, if you’re watching this, there’s um that red thing on the on the screen is a QR code. Thank you, Kok. Hi, I’m David Samson. Yes, I am. You can point your click to the QR thing and bid. I think I can’t say that I ever traded for a player and didn’t know. Oh, we didn’t go to break yet. Oh, it’s the end of the show. It’s the end of hour one. It goes so quickly. I didn’t even realize. Come back. We’re going to take a quick break and then when we come back, we’re going to talk about a trade that may happen, may not happen, but probably will happen. We’ll be back in just 3 minutes. Yeah, heat. Heat up here. Welcome back to hour two of Nothing Personal on Monday, July 7th. So excited to be back live on the Nothing Personal with David Samson YouTube channel. I forgot that we take a break, but not for long. How many more players do we suspect are going to get caught screwing around and gambling? I assume there’s no end in sight. The news that happened this weekend was shocking to me in a not shocking way. Luis Ortiz is a player for the Cleveland Guardians. He is under investigation by Major League Baseball right now. And here’s what happened. There is some question whether he may have been involved in some sort of bet based on a pitch thrown. Yes, it’s true. There are markets like that. And before we start criticizing gambling companies, and this has nothing to do with the fact that DraftKings is a sponsor, I’ve said the same thing back when I was still in baseball. the opportunity to have gambling companies. The business is good and the oversight is good. The business is better, but the oversight is real. The ability to catch people doing things is easier now, not harder. The players are told this. They know it. It is in every language. English, Spanish, Japanese, Latin, it doesn’t matter. Italian. What Luis Ortiz is accused of doing and what they’re investigating is whether or not there was a pitch where you can say, “Will that be a ball? Will that be a strike?” That there was an unusual bet for a ball and then a ball was thrown. And it wasn’t like, “Oh, is the umpire in on this?” It was one of those where when you’re watching a game, you say, “Wow, he held on to that pitch too long.” Or, “My god, he’s got no command.” It was not even close. It’s the equivalent of saying that you are going to get the under in rebounds in a game and what you do after the opening tip is you immediately sprain your ankle and leave the game to guarantee the under. Meaning, it ain’t close. Baseball is not going to work with the gambling companies to eliminate these type of prop bets. The fans want it. The gambling public wants it. The excitement of live betting, it is a real revenue source and it’s money that gets passed on from companies to teams and leagues. It’s not going away. The question is when will players get the memo? And I have a new thought on this and I didn’t think I would come to this so quickly in July of 2025, but here we are. And here I am. We’ve done the story this year already of Porter in the NBA suspended for life. We have Malik Beasley. We did that story. I I don’t remember when we did that story, Koko, but it’s recent. Detroit Pistons. Now we’ve got Luis Ortiz with prop bets. Luis Ortiz is going to get kicked out of baseball forever. He will get a lifetime ban. But as of July of 2025, I have a new thought, which is there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s no warning. There’s no letter we can write. There’s no sit down with a team and sit down with players. It’s like telling a kid not to try a cigarette or not to try a joint or not to try a beer. It’s like telling someone in school, “Don’t ever glance over your shoulder at the paper next to you during an exam.” It’s like telling a kid, “Don’t touch that. It’s hot.” And the kid looks and says, “Oh, let me try that. Man, that was hot.” There are certain things that people do that no matter how much you tell them not to do it, they’re going to do it. And you can spend billions of dollars on studies or advertisement campaigns that prove that doing a certain action will always result in a certain outcome. Except there’s no such thing. You don’t Marijuana is not a gateway drug to crack. You don’t have to be not buried. That’s too many negatives. You can still be buried in a Jewish cemetery with tattoos. You can survive touching an oven with just your pointer. I wouldn’t suggest taking a lighter out of a car and putting on the tip of your nose, but I digress. There is no way that you will get full compliance on anything that is so obvious that who exactly wouldn’t wear a seatelt today. No matter what we do, no matter how much money the government spends, no matter how much money you spend as a parent or as a teacher or as a friend or as a lover, no matter what you do trying to make things better because of your experience, you tell people, “I’ve been there. I know what will happen if you do it. what could happen. Don’t hit someone in the eye in the back when their eyes are crossed. They’ll stay crossed. Not true. But in this case, there will be players who gamble on their sport. There will be players who feel that financially the juice is worth the squeeze. It’s why so many players still do steroids because not everybody gets caught. There are more people betting on sports who play sports than get caught because while the odds have increased, it’s not 100%. The testing has gotten so much better that some people are dissuaded from doing stories, but not everybody. The odds of being caught by the gambling companies have improved greatly. the odds of Listen, how do we stop? Here’s here’s an interesting side note. Do you know that if you think, “Oh, I’m just gonna have my friend do it for me.” The way the gambling companies and the investigators work, the department of investigations within MLB and the other sports, there’s a chance you’re going to get caught, even if you think you’re doing it in a way that you can never get caught because you use the name John Cocktoen instead of Malik Beasley 15 as your account name. But the reality is that no matter how many players get caught, no matter how many times someone is sentenced to death, people still commit murder. No matter how many times people get suspended for life, people still will gamble. Is there a level of acceptance that we should just have a necessary part of the equation? Why is it so wrong to be okay with that? Companies do this every day. It’s called slippage. There’s budget that we would do in a baseball team for accounts that don’t pay, a season ticket account, a corporate sponsor. There are budgets within retail stores for shoplifting, loss of items because they get stolen from you. It’s all part of the business and the game that we choose. So therefore, instead of saying, “Oh my god, how could Luis Ortiz do it?” I’m going to say it differently. How could Luis Ortiz not do it? He thinks, “Hey, I need a little extra money. I’m in trouble. I could make an extra money. And if I get suspended for life, I get suspended for life. It’s not like I’m in the middle of a $100 million contract and I’ve saved 50 members of my family. The opportunity for slippage in baseball and basketball will continue. The latest is Luis Ortiz. And what you will see is that MLB will investigate and then they will suspend him for life. Which of course means you can apply for reinstatement, but he’s not going to get it. You will never see Luis Ortiz pitch another major league pitch ever. Is it worth it? There’s still people who are going to say yes. Hi, my name is Yonas Valenunis. I now play for the Denver Nuggets. I was just traded at 33 years old from the Sacramento Kings to join Nicole Joic and the almost defending champion Denver Nuggets. Except I’d rather play in Greece and the Denver Nuggets have told me no. That’s so mean. No, it’s not. What a story this is. So this guy who’s good by the way, he was good on Sacramento. He’s going to be a good backup. He’s toward the end of his career. He is Kareem Abdul Jabbar age 33, Larry Bird age. The Denver Nuggets just told him outright. They said, “Yonice, just so you know, we traded for you. We’re not letting you go to Greece.” And he said, “But wait, I’ve got a chance to make money and go home. I want to be closer to Europe. I want to not be in Denver. I’m only going to make 10 million this coming year and then I’ve got 10 million the following year. Greece is paying all sorts of stuff for me. They think I’m the Greek freak there. If you’re blaming the Denver Nuggets for taking this position, then we’re not friends. And this is not me being pro management or anti-player. It’s called a contract. We didn’t make you sign it. And one of the things that happens when you sign a contract that doesn’t include a no trade clause, which the majority of players sign, is you are saying, “Pay me the money and if I have to live somewhere else for 41 games a year or 81 games a year, depending on the sport, that’s what I’m signing up for.” Sacramento didn’t force him, Yonas, to sign this contract. He was of sound mind, sound body, and now he has a change of heart and says, “Pretty please.” Now, if you’re not under contract, this is what we talked about with Kevin Mard. This happens with players who want to go to Japan or Korea. This happens with players who want to get moved. They want to leave as free agents. There are rules in place in a book, yay thick, inches thick, that give the rules of engagement. Isn’t that what we just talked about with gambling? Isn’t that what we want? Just tell me the rules. Tell me the consequences. I’ll make the decision. And if I’m willing to take the chance that maybe I can convince a team to let me do something that I’m not that they’re not contractually obligated to let me do, all they can do is say no. I’m going to ask. Well, you should know that he asked and he was told no. If the Denver Nuggets were smart, and it’s hard to know with the changes that they just made, remember during the course of the season, they got rid of their coach, they got rid of their general manager. They there’s new sheriffs in town in Denver. When they made this trade with Sacramento, the general rule when you’re trading with another team is that we talk about doing the tampering. You tamper. You talk to the player. You talk to the agent. You have players talk to the player. Before you make that trade and you trade away Daario Sich, you are saying, “Will this guy come? Is he going to be good? Is he going to have a good attitude? What’s he like in the locker room?” You go through all of those things. The fact that the Nuggets had to go public and that this became a posttrade issue is a real problem for the Nuggets because they should have dealt with this prior to the trade. Either if you want to trade for him and you know that he doesn’t want to be in the NBA anymore, he wants to go to Greece, you have the conversation beforehand and you say, “Hey, we would love to have you. What’s your view of being high like mile high in or out? Well, apparently they must not have had the conversation or he was Stan Van in and then decided to be Stan Van out right after the trade. Either way, you put your team in a position to look like meanies and that’s not nice. No employee should do that to their employer. No employer should do that to their employee. Try not to throw people under the bus. But in this case, now Denver looks like, “Oh god, sour grapes. Why not give players freedom? Give them the right to go home and be the man they want to be.” Forget it. You’re under contract. Play. The big beautiful bill has passed. Who’s excited about the big beautiful bill? I’m not going to go through the 75 things that are contained in the big beautiful bill. That was President Trump had an idea of what he wanted to do with the economy, what he wanted to do with taxes. He had an idea that required passage in the House and Senate. the rules of our country because there are still rules in our democracy is that in the Senate you need a simple majority. Forget what he had to do and all the different things that I did when I only needed a simple majority versus a major majority. Um when you try to get public financing, there’s times you need nine of 13 votes, times you need only seven of 13 votes. In baseball, sometimes you need only uh 16 of the 30 owners. Sometimes you need 23. So, just take what I’m saying as for granted, please. Legally, the White House said we have a bill here and it needs simple majority is what it’s called. It needs 51 votes in the Senate. 5149. Well, our constitution, we have rules. It’s a very simple rule. There’s an even number of states, 50. Every state has two senators, 100. If there’s ever a tie, then the vice president gets to cast the tiebreaking vote. That’s how it’s been. Whether it’s a Democrat in office, a Republican in office, it doesn’t matter. When JD Vance was the 51st vote to break the tie, the big beautiful bill passed the Senate. Hard stop. But one of the things we have in our system is that the House of Representatives and that’s done according to the census and it’s done according to gerrymandering and all different ways that you can maneuver and finagal ways to get the advantage you want for the party that you want given who you are in the uh executive branch. But the theory is that a bill has to also pass the House and once it passes the House and the Senate, then it goes to the president to be signed. The president could veto. But in this case, the House and Senate both agreed to pass what Trump is calling the big beautiful bill. Another little nugget is that every bill has to be exactly the same in the House and the Senate. So you may read about, oh, the Senate made this change, the House made this change. That’s not exactly the whole story. If the Senate changes a punctuation mark in a 900page bill, then what the House did to pass it, it’s null and void, and the bill has to go from the Senate back to the House and get revoted with the new punctuation mark, then it’s voted, and you have one bill reads the same, and then it’s signed into law, which the president did on July 4th. Not a coincidence. There are a few things in there that aren’t getting enough attention. And I wanted you to Everyone is focused on something right now solely. Everyone is focused on food stamps. Everyone’s focused on Medicaid. Everyone is focused on, oh, fewer people will get fewer things. More people will have less. The people who have more money will pay less in taxes. The people who have less money will have to pay more and actually work or not work or get food stamps. There’s all sorts of things inside the bill. It’s not quite as paired down and simplistic as people make it out to be. So, for example, you can’t stand on your tippy toes and say part of the big beautiful bill is guess what folks, no more paying taxes on overtime wages. No more paying taxes on tips. If you are someone who gets a lot of tips and you think that this bill is for you, my suggestion is you call EF Hutton and listen closely or you can call Professor Robert Goldstein. Whoever you want to call, call Murray Freedelland. I don’t care who you call. There are limits. If you make over a certain amount of money, then you will be paying taxes on your overtime and on your tips. It is not a blanket, oh, we’re good to go here. One of the provisions that I was looking forward to talking about and hearing about was the depreciation provision. God, am I a geek, but oh, is it important, and it’s not in any of the summaries you’ll read. However, here’s the story behind it. When you buy a team, you get to depreciate the assets that you’ve purchased in an asset purchase agreement. Assets include player contracts. They include pitching machines. They include anything and you get to depreciate that and you get to do it over a period say of five years. What depreciation means is that if you have income of a dollar and you have to pay 50 cents of tax on that dollar, I’m using round numbers as though we had a flat tax. you can depreciate in which case instead of it looking like you have a dollar of income which we said you have that you only have 40 cents of income therefore you don’t have to pay the amount of tax you had to pay it is a huge benefit to people who buy teams not to the people who sell teams to the people who buy teams one of the reasons why Mark Walter will pay $10 billion for the Lakers is it will be depreciation heaven for him. But the big beautiful bill was going to take it away. It was going to amend it. It wasn’t going to take it away altogether, but it was going to limit what could be depreciated, how much, what percentage of the assets, and over what period of time. This got a lot of attention from a lot of rich people. Now, the irony of everyone thinking that Trump is only there for the top 1% off for the rich people. This was something that he wanted in a bill that would have had a terribly deletterious impact on a group of people who he doesn’t like. The reason he doesn’t like owners, well, because he never was able to be one, I would think. But whatever the reason is, that clause caused a lot of teams and leagues to lawyer up and lobby up. That means that they called on the lobbyists and lawyers who they have under retainer who they pay monthly to pay attention to what’s happening on the hill. And they were out there with the senators and the representatives of their states and they were saying, “You better vote no to this depreciation clause because otherwise we’re not going to keep giving money to your campaign. Reelection, forget about it. Your career’s over.” Do you think leagues and teams, existing owners, or even potential owners, would call up the president, senators, and representatives in order to get that provision released? You can bet your bipsters. And guess what? It didn’t make the bill. And it’s only a little thing. It only impacts like a hundred people. Well, actually, that’s not true. You’d add up the 30 and the 32 and the 30 and the 30 and you’d say 60 and 64. You’d say 124 and then you’d say, “Oh, there’s some who own more than once.” You’d say 90. So, pick a number. It’s not the masses. But when you’ve got an 800 plus page bill, there’s going to be a bunch of stuff in there that no one’s paid attention to except people who are paid to pay attention to. And now you know the depreciation for new owners, it’s intact. There was something added though. There’s a very strange provision about gambling. And while I’m still waiting for an opinion because it’s a whole industry now, you’ve got this 800 plus page bill and now you’ve got people who are hired who are part of accounting firms and law firms and investment banks and their job is to read the entire bill. Yes, it’s true. Every word, whole bill. And then they summarize it for clients. They summarize it for the for their employees. They summarize it for the managing directors, for the owners, so you understand because when you go to your accountant and you’re wealthy, the accountant has to know all the new rules. What can be deducted? What can’t be deducted? Oh, the child care tax credit went up by 150 bucks. Oh, you make more than 200 grand. Doesn’t apply to you. All sorts of things are going on and it’s got to find a clearing house, a summary. And you can go on the web and you can find a couple of summaries, but they’re not good enough for what accountants use or lawyers or what clients need. One of the things that’s being discussed and it’s in the bill is what is rumored is a tax on gambling winnings that could be substantial enough that the claim is that even if you win money gambling, you may end up losing money because of the taxes you’ll pay. My response to that is I’ll believe it when I see it. I want to understand the theory here. Is the theory that if you win $500 gambling and you’re supposed to report that as income and you lose $600 gambling, do you know that means that you lost $100 gambling? But you can only claim the loss if you’ve also declared the winnings. And I’m not giving you tax advice to all of my friends and associates. I am not telling you whether you should declare, not declare, whether you should keep track, not keep track. But I will tell you that when you do cameos, you get a tax report. When you do gambling, I would assume there is a line in your account that you don’t see about that is your tax report. And my advice to you, again, not an accountant and I’m not practicing tax law, but you ought to print it and report it. That said, is there really a rule that could be put in place that if your net is a loss, meaning you’ve won 500, but you’ve lost 600, so your account would say that you’re down a h 100red bucks. But is it really true that they’re going to tax the 500 as though you won the 500 without taking into account the 600? To all of my tax friends out there, I’m talking to you, Greg. Get me the answer to that. Cuz here’s what I’m not doing. reading the 800page bill. I’m trying to summarize it for you. I’ll get back to you with the final final on this, but I’m going to guess that there’s a lot of provisors and provisions which would indicate that this will not impact people the way they are concerned it will impact them. In terms of some of the other things that are important to understand in a sweeping legislation like this is you’re going to read that our deficits going up by 3 trillion. You’re going to read that there’s going to be money in there for uh defense. There’s money in there for a border wall. It’s like a budget is basically what was passed. And certain things, certain expenses add to your deficit. Certain help your deficit when you’re saving money and cutting budget. Is it true that there is savings coming from a food stamp program which instead of being fully federally funded that the states will have to pick up some slack? It’s not the whole slack, it’s some. Is it true that people will be impacted by changes to Medicaid? One of my favorite things was you’re not allowed to collect insurance payments from two states. Uhoh. Yeah, I’d like to eliminate insurance fraud. That’d be nice for my premiums. People make a living off insurance fraud. I would like dead people to stop getting paid social security. Call me crazy. I think that’d be amazing if once you croak it stops. I think that we should be promoting people going to work and not paying them necessarily not to work. It’s my favorite thing. We’re going to pay a farmer not to grow crops. It’s a really true thing. If you go around Koka, where was I? Somewhere in the United States sometime in my life, but recent. I feel like it was in the last year, but with me that could be 5 years ago. I went to a farm. Why? I don’t know. because I was getting something maybe on the side of the road, who knows? And I was talking to the farmer who said, “Yeah, I get paid more money by the government to have this open dead farmland.” And he said, “It’s totally crazy. Why wouldn’t they want to incentivize me to work now? I have a I have a fruit stand or I grow they grew something different.” I could keep going. I know you don’t want me to, but it’s such a big topic of discussion. I’m going to move on to talk about the World Cup and the Club World Cup, but I’m not supposed to tell you I’m doing that. I’m just supposed to do it. So 4869. Let’s don’t say let’s talk about David. The Club World Cup is in the semifinal round. If you’re not paying attention, there’s been a lot of activity. Yes, it’s true that there is no MLS team alive. Yes, still playing. Yes, it is true that uh PSG has a shot here, but there’s something else that happened with the Club World Cup that is pretty interesting. Couple of things and they were inside the bill. There is actual money that is being set aside to give host cities federal funding. What’s your view of that? Are you against federal funding for hosting the World Cup? Or what about hosting the Olympics when California is getting a bunch of money in order to help with the cost of hosting the Olympics? Are you of the view that it shouldn’t happen? Are you of the view that allocating a billion dollars for security, planning, and other costs for the Olympic Games is something best left to California, best left to the state that did the bid? It’s the country that did the bid. It totally makes sense that the country federally would help that along with the private sector, but they’ve got to do their part. The Club World Cup that’s going on in the US is part of the precursor. It’s like a dress rehearsal for FIFA’s World Cup, which is coming next year, which is a really big deal. It’s a huge money maker. And remember, it’s being hosted by North America. So there are games in Canada, there’s games in Mexico, and there’s games in the United States of America. Well, those games just don’t happen. And there is billions of dollars that get spent to host World Cup. There are studies that tell you there’s billions of dollars in benefits. When the Club World Cup was decided that it would be hosted in North America, sort of like the dress rehearsal for the World Cup, the thought was tickets would be sold like crazy. We’ve had articles and you’ve seen stadiums that were not full. You’ve seen weather issues. You’ve seen teams complain about it. You’ve now seen seen teams complain and management of international teams complain about the fields in the US. All that grass that has to be grown over the turf, not good enough, doesn’t feel good, too hot, too scratchy, not even. lot of complaining about surfaces, lot of money going into changing of the surfaces because one of the conditions that FIFA gave was you’re going to host you’re going to host on grass. Our people are not playing on turf. So, how does it actually happen? Well, the money gets allocated from a bill like the the bill that just passed. And then you’ve got the different cities who figure out how to make their stadiums ready. And then you get information that the Club World Cup has a problem and that the semi-finals which are taking place this coming weekend in East Rutherford, New Jersey, but they call it New York City. It’s sort of like saying that the Marlins play on South Beach or the Panthers play on South Beach. Have you ever noticed that when they show a Dolphin game that they show South Beach, but Dolphin Stadium is nowhere near the beach? It’s just funny. That’s the same thing with East Rutherford and Metife Stadium. It’s not in New York City. If you’re coming for the Club World Cup semis and finals, just know leave some time, a lot of time. Ticket prices for Club World Cup are ex incredibly low. There is a problem there. They were budgeted to be like 500 bucks average and now they’re going for like $40. But none of that will in any way change FIFA’s view of North America hosting because FIFA when they chooses who will host the World Cup doesn’t really focus on anything other than what will benefit FIFA. And once you know what your benefits are, you also understand what the cost is, what the PR negatives could be, and you live with that trade. No one will complain about the Club World Cup when the semi-finals and finals are done. You’re not going to hear a word about ticket prices or revenue. You’re going to hear about success. You will hear about the billion dollar in prize money. You’ll hear about the great broadcast deal that was done with the zone. You’ll hear about the interest worldwide. You’ll hear from cities how successful it was, how many people were there, how great the ingress and egress was, and the lines at the concession stands and the pitch was perfect. They’ll have Anna Kendrick doing her cup song. That’s how perfect the pitches will be. At least from a PR standpoint. The reality though is slightly different. The reality is that the planning that will now take place post club World Cup, preWorld Cup is going to be even more costly than what was allocated in these in the bill in the allocation they got. Because behind the scenes, when you host an event and you run the stadium, you are not just taking suggestions from the league. When you’re hosting an all-star game or a World Series, they’re in charge. Part of the contract you sign when you host an All-Star game or when you own a franchise and could host a World Series is that you acknowledge that during those jewel events that you lose control of your stadium. FIFA when they grant games to different cities and stadia. I assure you that contractually there are obligations on behalf of both a community and the stadium itself. And those obligations are costly and FIFA doesn’t care a lick about it. They care that they get their money. And if you get yours at the end, great. If not, fine. It’s why you read about, “Oh god, the Olympics are so costly. Why bother? You’re losing billions of dollars. And that’s when the elected officials say, “But no, all of the ancillary halo benefits of hosting those exist. It’s so good for New York City to have the Club World Cup and the World Cup and the finals and the semiis. All of that is so positive because we get to say that people went to Katz’s Delhi two extra times because they came in for it. Forget the fact that people are scared to come in because they’re scared they’re going to get deported out. again don’t want to take away from what the reality of the conversation is surrounding the Club World Cup and the World Cup. There is work to be done and it will be done. I don’t know what to say about what happened in Texas this past weekend and I wasn’t going to let the show pass without addressing it. I am uh I’m mortified as a former camper, camp counselor, ski boat driver, ski director, waterfront director, someone who loves the water, loves swimming, ironmen, whatever the case is. The flooding that took place in Texas over the weekend that devastated a community, devastated a camp. When you send your child to camp, you cannot It’s like sending your child to school. It is unreasonable for anyone to expect that your child will not come home. It is a nightmare that should not be part of the conversation. It shouldn’t be part of the thought process. And there will be double-digit kids from Camp Mystic who will not make it home, including the camp director himself who got who drowned, who died with these massive floods. I’ve been fighting with myself since this story came because about eight days ago where I live, there was a forecast for rain and I chose to run inside because it was supposed to rain cuz that was the forecast. And it ended up being fine and I ran inside for nothing. And when you live in the northeast, you run inside enough months, you don’t want to do it during the summer months. And I was speaking to a friend who is training for a marathon with me or a half marathon, whichever. And I was told, this is before I’d read anything about this. I was told, “Yeah, there’s a problem with forecasting right now.” And the problem is that there have been cuts to the NOA staff. And that means that there’s been a change in how we can forecast emergencies, how we can predict weather, predict emergencies, and the administration was blamed by my friend. I don’t have the facts quite yet on whether or not we need to blame the forecasters for what happened in Texas. I know that I can blame the forecasters for what happened with my run, my inconsequential, meaningless run for charity, given that lives are being lost. If it is true, it is indisputable to me that if it is true that the cuts that are being made to NOA staffing is the same thing that I view air traffic controllers, if you’re cutting air traffic controllers to the point that there’s going to be midair collisions, you’re probably not going to want to make those cuts. And my guess is they’re not being made. If you’re going to cut staffing to the point where no one can do a forecast because there’s no one to read the forecast or no one to sound the alarm because no one’s working because there’s no one hired to work, my guess is that is not the intended unintended consequence of any bill or any policy cuz I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on. You’re not rooting for death. And I am not talking about it’s because water temperatures are up and therefore the world is ending because of this climate change that. Forget all that. However true it may or may not be. If there’s a chance that one child died at camp because there was a problem with the emergency system, that is one child too many. And that is outrageous. You cannot have that in your country, in your state, in your city, in your county, ever. Ever. There is nothing that will change. And for the kids who survived the flood, their lives are changed forever. For the kids that didn’t, the famil family’s lives are changed forever. And it is lights that are burnt out too damn early. I went to Sanro Stadium last week and I got to see Bruce Springsteen’s final two shows. The reason I went, if you if you’re on Twitter at David P. Samson, you may have seen a picture I posted with Pat Riley, who is as big a Springsteen fan as I am, and I’m talking music. I don’t always agree with everything he says politically, that’s for sure. But certainly musically, I love his concerts. They’re transformative. And these could be the final two concerts. July 3rd may have been the final concert for Bruce Spring in the East Street Band. You never know. There’s nothing scheduled. The reason I love traveling cuz I’m fortunate and so lucky enough to be able to do it. I love seeing other stadiums. I went to Milan where AC Milan and Inter Milan play cuz that’s where Bruce played at Sanro Stadium. That building is about to be a hundred years old. I kid you not. You want to know why American owners when they buy European teams walk in the door and say, “Oh, I I hear you. I love that you’re emotionally attached to your stadium, but this is the worst stadium I’ve ever been to. Oh, but it’s got this great history. How could you not want to keep San Zero in place?” And the answer is you got to get a new stadium immediately, if not sooner. And they are 65 in with all the p pizza I just ate last week. Probably a buck 38. I couldn’t fit in the 200 level. And I’m a tiny guy. My knees could Have you ever been in a bleacher in a plastic seat in 90° weather where it’s canopied except for the field? And so you’re inside a blow dryer and you’re small and you’re used to fitting anywhere, but you still don’t fit. But you’re trying to be in the moment to appreciate what’s happening, but you’re also not passing out. But there’s no hawkers with water because there’s no hawkers with water. And you go to the concourse and the exit, god forbid, there’s an emergency because there’s no emergency evacuation from a stadium like this. None. It reminded me of going to Anfield where our plan was we’re going to run on the field. That’s our only shot here to go to the clubhouse for Sanro. There was no access to that because there was general admission on this floor where the grass is, where the soccer is. The only exit was down a thin stairway, up another thin stairway into a tiny vomiator. Then down another set of stairs and ramps through a locked gate which you had to open manually that could fit two people side by side. Assuming you’re not the McCreary twins. So yes, it’s true. I had a little anxiety, but the epiphany that I had was of course American owners walk in there and say there’s no revenue here. The concession stands are so old that they can’t produce anything. There’s no sweets. There’s no ability to do anything that we know how to do here in America. And in America, what we know how to do is make money. And we know how to build a stadium that will extract the last possible dollar from both the public and from you, the fan. And we’re going to have places in a stadium for everybody. We’ll have it for the rich. We’ll have it for the super rich, the really rich, the incredibly rich, and then we’ll sprinkle a few middle class seats somewhere. Sanro, I felt the history. It was cool. Would I go back maybe one more time just to see an AC Milan or Inter Milan game? But man, when they build that new stadium, it’s going to be a whole lot different. And I was thinking to myself, when you see 70,000 Italians and maybe 200 Americans and all the Italians are singing the Springsteen lyrics, I was saying to the people I was with, if I go to an Italian opera, I can’t sing it. Not cuz I don’t have a voice for opera. I don’t know what the words are in Italian. Now, there’s some people who can say, “Oh, I can do Mark Anony’s lyrics to the songs that are in Spanish or whatever, but this entire audience knew every lyric from every Bruce song.” And do they know what it means? I doubt it because they thought Born in the USA was a patriotic song to be played on the 4th of July. It’s not. Spoiler alert. They weren’t quite sure that darkness on the edge of town may mean that there’s darkness on the edge of town. But man, they can sing it. I was quite impressed with that. And when you go do something and when you are able to have an experience, and it’s not about having the money because you can make experiences out of nothing. You can go to the park and have an experience playing ultimate frisbee with strangers at a free park on a nice day in Central Park. Done it. There’s so You can go have a catch. My suggestion is have as many as you possibly can because life is short and every day we hear about things that happen whether it is the tragedies at the summer camp whether it is a plane crash whether it is an individual car crash that just claimed the life of Liverpool’s player Diego Joda died in a onecar Lamborghini crash with his brother in Spain just last Thursday and it’s created quite a stir in and around the sport in and around sports period like it always does in the stories you go back to Roberto Clemente go back to lab bomba go back to Joseé Fernandez go back anywhere you want there are stories of athletes of people who die young famous people die young people who are not famous th young. This got the attention because this was a player who on Liverpool they had just weeks earlier celebrated a championship. He’s part of the Portuguese national team, but Liverpool had just raised a trophy and it just snap of a finger whether his tire blew out, whether they were speeding, we’ll find out what happened, but it doesn’t really matter as a consequentialist. What happened is that we were face to face with the reality that sports or entertainment is a moment of distraction from the reality that is from point A to point B that is filled with tragedy. And so how do you do it? How do you navigate a world where in your mind you’re waiting for the next shoe to fall? You’re waiting for the next brick to drop. What do you do? I can’t think of a better reason. I’ve never had anyone give me a better reason or a better plan than mine. My plan is I’m going to make it so in between tragedies there is nothing that will stop me from exploiting my fun. Nothing will stop me from having a connection, sharing a moment because it’s going to get interrupted. All runs come to an end. Your baseball career in a flash can come to an end. And you know what? You’re thankful for the moment. You’re thankful for the run. Hard to be thankful. Hard to be a God-fearing, God-loving person, isn’t it? When the children were camp Mystic, it was it was a Christian camp. You say to yourself, “How could God take away a player, a person in a car crash like that?” And these things happen every single day. So apparently, it’s not about God letting you live a full life. Maybe it’s just about God giving you the opportunity to live any life for any period of time. Whether it’s dying as an infant because you’re undernourished, you’re not given medicine because all the money’s dried up and you’re dying of AIDS as a kid in Africa, or starvation here in the United States, or a disease that could be cured if more money were put in, or just bad damn luck. All you can do is live the run. I want to think back at Liverpool and their season and I want to think back of what they were successful at achieving and then as time will pass we’ll be able to compliment and appreciate the moment but the tragedy point to point it’s not ending anytime soon. Before we go I wanted to do a shout out. There’s a tournament going on in England right now at the All England London Tennis Club and there is one of the big three who is still playing of Federer Joic and Nadal and it’s Yokovic. I said Joic. I didn’t mean Joic. He’s the basketball player. You know who I meant. He won his 100th match at Wimbledon. He’s still around after the first week. There have been a ton of upsets on the female side. We talked about it briefly last week when Koko lost in the first round. But what Yokovic has done ties him with Martina Neverallovva and Roger Federer. They’re the only three people to ever win 100 matches at Wimbledon. Just think about that math for a second. Do you know how many matches you can win? What’s the maximum number of matches you can win per year? Maximum. Wait for it. First round, second round, third round, fourth round, quarterfinals, semifinals, finals. Do I have that right? Seven is the most. And if you win the tournament, you’re seven and0. 100 divided by seven, you win it 10 years in a row, you’ve only won 70. That’s 10 in a row. The sustained greatness that you have to have to win a 100 matches at a major at any tournament is simply flabbergasting. I’m flumxed through it. All of it watching it. I love the time change. I love getting to watch things very early in the morning. I love watching greatness. I love watching the fact that center made it through and broke a record. Made it through the first week. He lost the fewest number of games ever in the first week. That breaks a record. I think he lost 17 games only in a week. Collision course with Alcarez to do the redo of the French Open Classic final. We’re already on the next major. If you’re not into tennis, be into the athlete. Be into the moment. Be into the fact that you have to wear all white. No matter who you are, you have to wear white cuz those are the rules of the club. Cuz it’s a club when Wimbledon’s not going on. I love that. I don’t I wouldn’t belong to a club like that. But that said, it’s pretty cool. So, when you’re deciding how to spend your day, how to spend your time, I want you to think of two things and two things only. One, what did you do today? What did you learn today? two, whatever you’re planning for tomorrow, remember, do it today. We will be back tomorrow because it’s Tuesday and it’s a regular full week. No more of this holiday stuff because I miss doing the show and there’s so much we never even get to. I didn’t get to the Yankees Mets series, which bothers me. I didn’t even get to talk about Schmidt having Tommy John surgery. I didn’t get to talk about Koka and his Mets fans because it’s over. It’s just business. We’ll be back tomorrow. This is nothing personal.

#NothingPersonal #DavidSamson #MLB

Today’s word of the day is ‘unceremonious’ as in Mike Rizzo as in Dave MArtinerz as in the Washington Nationals as in fired. That’s right, same day as two Nationals make the All-Star team, the owner fires the GM and manager. Why now? Well, the team has been bad bad bad, but the timing is just odd. Paul Skenes can’t get a win. 42 career starts and 17 No Decisions. And it’s not like he’s been bad! He’s been an ACE! How should you react during a surprise season? With the MLB trade deadline fast approaching we take a look at three teams: Marlins, Orioles, Braves. How should they each respond? Review: Echo Valley. MLB All-Star rosters are close to complete. Clayton Kershaw got in as a Legend pick. Nice. Who were the biggest snubs? NPPOD. Another professional player is under investigation for gambling. This time it’s in baseball again. Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians is on leave right now as the league looks into a few pitches he threw. That’s right… this is on PITCHES! Jonas Valanciunas has to honor his contract. That’s what the Denver Nuggets said after trading for the center. He wants to play in Greece. Oh well! Big Beautiful Bill talk. My time at the San Siro in Italy. What a stadium. An old stadium.

0:00 – Intro
1:20 – Nationals firing
18:00 – Paul Skenes
23:00 – Surprise Season
32:20 – Review: Echo Valley
34:40 – All-Star Snubs
45:20 – NPPOD
53:20 – Luis Ortiz
62:15 – Jonas Valanciunas
67:15 – Big Beautiful Bill
79:00 – World Cup
86:00 – San Siro

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