Hey, welcome everybody. Fred and the Fantastics on PodClips and on BLEAV. Mark Mancini, the World’s Worst Sports Handicapper, Art Sorce with us. And, you know, I want to talk about
something on Thursday night that I saw. We’re taping this on Friday, folks. On Thursday night,
I saw the ESPYs, which I’ve seen almost every year that it’s been on. But the heartbreaking
part of it was Steve Gleason, the former all around player for
New Orleans who 14 years ago was diagnosed with ALS Lou Gehrig’s
disease. And the doctor gave him three to five years. And
he’s lived now 14 years, and he came on and he can’t talk
anymore. But you know, technically, they made it
possible that if you stare at a computer, it’ll basically
talk for you. So he talked to the audience. And let me ask
Art Sorce as a former player. Now, again, as a kicker, that
didn’t count, but you certainly played defense growing up.
Higher percentage of football players and boxers, and people
in those kinds of physical sports seem to get ALS – your
comments.
Well, yeah, and I’m gonna tell you something, you know,
Steve Gleason was a great special teams player, like
Matthew Slater. A lot of great players like that. The Buffalo Bills had another one for
years that was really awesome. Steve Tasker. You know, those guys are going down in collision
situations. And those are high speed collisions. They’re like traffic accidents. So I mean,
I can understand, you know, where the frontal lobe gets attacked like that. But to see
someone go through what Steve Gleason has gone through and God bless him for living
so many years past what they what they truly thought he would live at the beginning but I
remember the game he had on Monday Night Football or I believe he blocked two kicks for one for a
touchdown one for a safety and I mean it propelled that team, I believe, to the title in 2007 and
you know I just I’m very I’m very thankful in my life because I’ve had a lot of concussions
And, uh, you know, sometimes, sometimes I wake up a little foggy, but that’s when the
awakened comes in.
And, uh, so, you know, it helps a little bit, but yeah, I, I, I have a lot of empathy
for those guys, you know, and football takes a tear, a real wear and tear on your
body.
So what, what does the NFL do?
What does college football do if we now know that a higher percentage of players
end up
Well, I like the idea of the little, the little halo helmets they wear in practice.
Okay.
I like the idea of the new tackle.
We can’t slide up on the guy and, and ride them down.
Um, I like the fact that they’re trying to do something with the kickoffs.
Um, but I really think that they need to go a step further.
They need to use the technology from war and from motorcycles to, to
make the helmets a little more safe.
I think there’s a, there’s enough out there.
where each human is important enough,
because you’re talking multi-billion dollar businesses,
whether it be the NFL or college football
at this point in time,
get these guys the best possible helmets
and teach the game the way the fundamentals were
in the thirties, forties and fifties,
where you use your shoulders, you trip guys up,
you know, you don’t take them square on
with your neck bowed,
because that’s not the game anymore.
and you know you look at all the great people that we’ve lost over the years
or, or even if we haven’t lost them they’re not, they’re, they’re very debilitated.
Mike Ditka of course said that if he had a grandson he would tell him not to play.
Mark, again, you, you do have grandsons what would you tell them if they wanted to play football?
No I’d steer them into another sport, safer sport where you can make more money.
teach him how to punt and teach him how to kick field goals.
You know it’s funny you know we’re talking about the brain and everything because yesterday in a
podcast I always send you guys a show with Dr. Greg Roscoe talking about Parkinson’s disease
and I lost my father-in-law to that about seven, eight years ago and you know that’s it
that’s another one that’s just sneaking up on people too is Parkinson’s. Look at Dave Parker.
Oh, that’s, watching that happen in the last three years.
Yeah, it’s really been sad to watch.
And what I didn’t know about that subject is I didn’t know the
stages of Parkinson’s.
It’s almost like the stages of cancer.
You know, you think you have Parkinson’s and whoop,
Here it goes.
It goes to stage four, stage five.
Okay.
But how do you turn down all the money you can make playing football?
And, and I think about, we talk about the word greed here, maybe survival.
Maybe Barry Sanders had it right, Fred, or maybe Jimmy Brown had it right.
Get out after eight, nine years.
You know, you’re unscathed.
You don’t need that.
You don’t need that.
Or, or, yeah, or, uh, Andrew Luck, another one.
That’s very, yeah.
So, so the Steve Gleason, of course, uh, bad news, good news, bad news, good news.
But again, how he’s surviving is hard to believe,
but again, the doctor gave him three to five.
See, this is what’s crazy.
We have millions and billions of dollars to spend
on this and that and whatever the case might be.
Lou Gehrig died in two years.
The doctor now gave at least an originally three years.
You’re telling me we’ve only gone up like one year,
two years in the improvement
to keep these people alive longer in 85 years?
And then July 4th, of ’39 is…
I wonder where a lot of that money goes to Fred.
Well, yes, these like cancer, is as much as I’d like to help the rest of the world.
What about our country? What about our inner cities, Fred?
Yeah. St. Louis, South Side of Chicago,
Braun, you know what kind of impact we can make with 10 less nuclear weapons?
Just 10 less that could be each one of those cities having, you know, playgrounds for kids,
Boys and girls clubs, places for mom and dad to take the kids so they could go and get a job and put food on
the table for their youngsters
That’s what I’m talking about
Fred and the Fantastics with Art Sorce and Mark Mancini and heard on PodClips, heard on BLEAV.
You can email us at sportsfred@aol.com, sportsfred@aol.com.
And so Fred, what are, what are the Dodgers gonna do with this pitching problem they have? Last time we found out they’re down to their 13th starter.
The Dodgers right now don’t have a pitcher.
They don’t have a starter and they spent the most in the off season.
Again, next year, we understand the Tampa Bay thing the other night where they,
they throw a guy out to start the game and, uh,
two home run he gave up to the Phillies.
Let’s talk to that. I can’t pronounce his last name. Start with a W, Wo,
but let’s, let’s talk about the Phillies. You’re close to that. Uh,
You got Harper back, although you might be hurt again.
You got Schwarber back, and you’ve got two top-notch starters in the field.
And Wheeler’s got a little bit of a sore back right now, but he says it’s nothing
to worry about.
I’ll tell you what, Aaron Nola looked incredible in that three-game sweep of the Dodgers.
He was striding.
I think he might have had 14, 15 strikeouts.
The guy was just winning it.
But I mean, it’s just amazing to me that an organization as deep as the Dodgers,
because I remember us talking about it last week. We went through the roster of 12 pitchers
that were slated to be able to be there. And then they traded a couple because they had so many,
Pepiot. And now they’re, I mean, if I was them, I would go either. And I say the same
with the Pirates, go get Anderson. He had a great year with the Dodgers. He’s still
doing well. He’s one of the best road pitchers in baseball for the Angels. You need an arm.
The Angels are going nowhere. Here’s the thing. Here’s the thing with the Dodgers. I mean,
I hear, you know, that they’ve won 12 to 13 titles, but that’s fine, well, and dandy
in most books. But here’s the thing ,out of those 12 division titles, they’ve won.
How many years have they ever been tested in the regular season? Every time I looked,
blowing the division out.
This is the first year where the Diamondbacks are at least at 500 coming off last year where
they’re great.
You’ve got the Padres starting to play great ball right now.
Who would have thought that Jurickson Profar would be a starting outfielder in the All-Star game?
I don’t follow them as much, but when I heard during the winter meetings that
they had a chance to get a Corbin Burnes, they shot that down, they shoot it down, they
try to get two, three, you know, four or fifth starters to blend in.
Mark, do they look at a guy like Julio Urias?
Do they look at a guy like Trevor Bauer at this point?
You know, I don’t know.
Fred, let me ask you a question.
The O’Malley group would stick by a guy like Steve Howe.
If the O’Malley group was still running this organization, do you think they’d give a second chance to a Julio Urias or a Bauer?
Well, for Urias, it wouldn’t be a second chance, at least a third chance.
And as far as Bauer, I wouldn’t touch him with a 10-foot pole.
He didn’t get along with anybody at UCLA.
He writes things that you can’t believe.
He’s a flat-earther type guy, and he thinks he’s the smartest guy on earth.
Well, what do you do, Fred? Do you go to your AA team? Do you bring kids up before they’re
ready? I mean, do you go to your long relievers? Do you just look at it like a day-to-day
situation?
You know, it’s interesting. It’s sort of like our political situation right now. Honestly,
you’re just gambling. No matter what you do, it’s wrong. If you don’t make a trade
and Glasnow’s healthy, okay, you’ve got your number one guy. Fine. And if Yamamoto
comes back, then you got your number one and number two guy, but how far are they from
potentially coming back?
Whatever they say, it doesn’t matter.
You know that.
I know that, uh, Kershaw was supposed to come back a month, you know, a month ago.
Now they don’t, you know, uh, Buehler who’s been two years, basically, I think I can
hit him right now.
I think it’s like an eight.
He’s a throw.
He lost, he lost about six, seven miles an hour off the zipper.
I was going to say if there was a hitting machine here, I think I could hit it, I mean,
Well, and not only that, and for the people that tell me Shohei Ohtani’s coming back to pitch,
who survived two Tommy John surgeries? Yeah, so we don’t know. So this guy’s
going to give you five wins. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s amazing.
Let me say one thing we opened this Fred and the Fantastics segment talking about Steve Gleason, lets talk about a positive.
Uh, hopefully, uh, Simone Biles, she won the award as Comeback Athlete of the Year.
That’s hope in the Olympics, uh, she does make that comeback.
I, I used to watch gymnastics.
Hey, how about the class the Bears showed in allowing her husband to
actually go to Paris for a week to support his wife.
That was so awesome.
I mean, to me, that’s, that’s what it should be all about.
Yeah.
I mean, it’s, it’s one of the most important things that
Sports is exciting now.
Like, you know, my wife’s got Colombian blood in her.
Columbia is playing Argentina.
Spain’s playing England, Spain and England.
Oh, that goes back to the 1400s.
You got an Italian playing in tennis.
I mean, things are good right about now.
All right.
Hey, we got the British Open next week too.
Oh yeah.
I, did you think that Scheffler had a shot on the ESPYs to win, uh,
Athlete of the Year? When they’re not going to give a
golfer Athlete of the Year. They gave it. I think one time
Tiger got it, but that was after he was trading with the
man. I like DeChambeau, man. He’s, you know, speaking about
Tiger. Hopefully soon on Sports Overnight America, we
will have the author of a brand new book on Tiger. So
we’re we’re waiting for the book. If it does come,
We’ll definitely talk about it, but Art, 30 seconds, final thoughts for this week on
Fred and the Fantastics.
I just said it’s a great time of year, I mean, we’ve really been sweltering all over
the nation.
I want to remind people to make sure they’re drinking their water and keeping hydrated,
but the most important thing is treat each other with respect, be good to each other
out there.
There’s a lot of things going on, hey, nobody’s ever lived in a world at this
point in time, so be cool.
So be, be nice to people and remember always tune in to Fred and the Fantastics. Mark, your comments.
Well, I live in a building with seven single women in eight units.
So I was trying to help one of the ladies that got locked out today till my wife came
out and said, what am I doing outside?
So you had the right idea there at least.
My thoughts would be, politically, folks, how did we end up like this?
It seems impossible.
All right, to Mario, thank you very much, Art, thank you very much, Mark, thank you
very much, Fred and the Fantastics all the time, and thank you for listening.
Bye everybody.