Hey everybody, it’s that time again, Fred and the Fantastics, and we will talk about this, that and anything in sports and more. Along with Art Sorce and Mark Mancini, I am Fred on BLEAV and on PodClips. You can email us at [email protected], [email protected]. Art, Mark, I’m going to read you guys a list, and I want your comments. You ready?

Yeah.

Junior Seau, Conrad Dobler, Frank Wycheck, tight end; defensive back, Irv Cross; wide receiver, Charles Johnson; wide receiver, Demaryius Thomas of Denver Broncos; tight end, Aaron Hernandez, we know about him. Wide receiver, Chris Henry; wide receiver, Vincent Jackson; wide receiver, Jovan Belcher; and lineman, Terry Long. This was written in 1993. Art. What am I talking about here?

You’re talking about fantastic football players that have their careers and lives cut short from CTE and/or encephalitis, I guess it’s called, the combination of too many hits to the head, and how the NFL has basically dropped the ball hook, line, and sinker in all of this. And you had something happen in the New York Offices on Madison Avenue in New York this Monday, and it was really amazing how the media basically downplayed it. You didn’t even hear about the NFL until, like, almost a day and a half later. To me, the collusion involved with the crap that’s going on in this world right now, whether it’s politics, the NFL, sports, the NIL, college football. It has gotten to the point where the horses have left the barn and nobody’s in charge, Fred. It’s all about those five letters we’ve talked about on this show and our Sports Overnight America show, greed. And at what point in time do you take these men who sacrificed themselves to play for these teams, and you not take care of them? And I told you, Fred, years ago, next to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, there was tons of land available for less than $100 an acre. They could have made a deal with the National Football League and the Mayo Clinic to take these guys and help them, and put a little area together with casitas, and fans could come in and kids could come in and see their football heroes. And Paul Tagliabue said, Artie, if we did something like that, we would prove that we’re complicit. And I said, but you are.

I go to rehab two or three times a week. One of the ladies that does it, she played flag football, and we started talking, and I said to her, Mark, intervene here, Mark. She said, yeah, I really love flag football. And I said, 50 years from now, we won’t have the National Football League. Because eventually, as Art said, we will wake up and the greed will have to back off. And some way, somehow, we will not have the NFL. Mark, do you agree or disagree?

I agree with that, but here, you know. And not to bring the politics to the forefront of it. But we’ve seen Trump get involved with the Redskins and the Indians. Maybe Congress should get involved with the NFL and tell these guys, hey, you know what? Maybe you need to protect some of these guys. Because we can’t, you know, save some of these cases, we’ve got a backlog of these cases.

Here’s my theory, Mark. When they sell these teams for $6 billion or $10 billion, why not take 5% of that and put it toward the careers of these guys and the players? When they sign these $50 million contracts, take 1, or 2, or 3%. And maybe the agents can throw a little in there, too, to help with these gentlemen that play for the shield. And, you know, you want them living under underpasses at age 65? I sure hope not.

Well, and that’s the problem. And you know, when we talk about unions and everything, the baseball union is the biggest. And we’ll get into that with Harper and Manfred going at it. But I think these other three sports, the owners control it, football, basketball, and hockey, and these players really don’t have a say. Maybe it’s,

Hockey has a big problem with this, as well as you’re well aware of. You look at all the hockey players, and I mean, I remember the Sports Illustrated picture of Gump Worsley, who was the Minnesota North Stars goalie, who was a goalie without a mask. I mean, the guy, he was like crazy.

Yeah.

It’s a crazy situation, of course. They went to the forced headset, the players, the goalies that didn’t like it didn’t have to wear it. So I mean, that’s how crazy this world is. You can email us at [email protected], [email protected].

Fred. What do you think of analytics in sports? Do you think it’s overrated?

Oh yeah, big time.

We talked to Joel Bradley on our Sports Overnight America last week, and you know what they’re doing now? They said yesterday, or the day before, one of the games I’m watching, and it said he’s hitting a .333 in the third inning.

In the fourth, he’s hitting .194.

I swear to God. They said three something in the third inning, I said to myself, Joel Bradley. Correct.

The Dodgers could be banking on, they’re big on two things, the Dodgers: analytics and deferred money.

Can you guys imagine Danny Murtaugh or Walter Alston or Billy Martin having some guy come up to him and say, You know what? The analytics say we have to do this. Well, listen, I’ve been in this game for 40 years. We’re going to bunt right now and get the guy over to second base because then we’ll have two chances to get him in.

Well, here’s the thing. What I don’t understand, Fred, I mean, the Dodgers are sitting pat again thinking, okay, we got this mediocre pitching staff and the bullpen’s been not bad with Visayas down there. But you’ve just seen the Phillies get the best reliever from the American League, and the Padres, the same thing. And these teams are all loading up, and you don’t load up on the most exposed thing that’s been shown the whole year to you.

Yeah, and Seattle, and Seattle goes out and gets Eugenio Suarez, 38 home runs.

I thought for sure,

To go with Cal Raleigh, and then they have Naylor, too. I mean,

I thought, for sure the Dodgers would get Miller or Steve Kwan, or somebody like that.

Ah, what a ball player that kid’s turned out to be, in Cleveland.

They, they, they bring back a Brock Stewart, and they get rid of an Outman and a May. And you’re telling me May is not as good as Blake Snell?

Well, he’s coming back, right, Fred? You said Blake Snell’s on his way back?

I don’t know if that means anything, but he’s on his way back. He’ll be starting in a couple of days. Folks, we’re taping this on a Friday afternoon. You can email us at [email protected]. We’ll take a quick time out and come back with more on Fred and the Fantastics.

Hey, we’re back on Fred and the Fantastics, on BLEAV, on PodClips, along with Art and Mark. I am Fred, and Mark, you wanted to talk about the ingenious baseball commissioner Rob Manfred. Is that what you want to talk about?

Yeah. You know, when you look at Rob Manfred, he reminds me, kind of a, a, a, a, numbers cruncher, you know, maybe fell out of Harvard or Yale or something.

With his green eyeshade on?

Never, never, uh, played the sport of baseball. But he’s going to try to do what everybody else couldn’t seem to do: he’s going to try to get a salary cap in baseball. Well, they tried to bring it in Comiskey Park when the Phillies were playing the White Sox the other day, and Harper didn’t want anything of it. He said. We’re not, get the f out of here. And, uh, Castellanos had some comments for the commissioner. Commissioner tried to stay his ground, but, uh, you know, he was outnumbered, still trying to clean the egg off his face. And let me tell you something, you guys have been around the sport, we will not see the day baseball has a salary cap, it’s not coming. The union there is the strongest union, probably more so than the Teamsters in this country. They’re not going to settle for a, a, a union, a cap in baseball.

I was going to tell you, Mark, you know, here’s something else that baseball’s doing that they kind of, I questioned it a little bit. They want to break a record that goes back to early Sixties, late Fifties, when the Coliseum held 90,000 people, and the old, the old L.A. Dodgers had a couple of games where they drew almost 90,000 people. I mean, Campy’s Night was one of those nights they did that,

Yeah.

Ninety-three, 103. I was there with my dad.

Yeah, at the Coliseum.

There you go. So now at Bristol Speedway Major League Baseball Classic, which is going to happen and might be happening as we speak, they’re looking at 150,000 potential fans. Now, they’re talking about they’ve sold a hundred thousand tickets to this Atlanta-Cincinnati game. Now, we know that Atlanta is going nowhere this year. They were favored to be one of the better teams, but Cincinnati, they’re actually going to take NASCAR numbers of like, you know, of like use them on the back of the uniforms. And I wonder what your guys thoughts are on that?

Merch purch. Yeah, more, more uniforms, more hats, more everything else. And yeah, it’s, it’s funny how we,

The almighty dollar.

We kind of, we grew up, what did we grow up with? One cap in baseball. They wore it on the road and home, and now they became the roads and homes. And now we’ve come to alternates and Mother’s Days and July 4ths and everything else.

Let me ask you something on baseball. On, on Sunday, of course, I don’t like ESPN’s four o’clock Pacific, seven o’clock Eastern telecast. I don’t like the fact that they’re interviewing players as they’re playing; that’s ridiculous. Okay, so I tried to watch 209 on DirecTV, which is the statistics on the game, and Art, I made about three innings, and then I just turned the whole thing off, totally. I couldn’t take it. Everything is stats, everything is stats, they write stats, they talk stats. But the other one, the other game, I mean, the, the other announcers, with the talking to the players, just as sickening. So I mean, I don’t know how many people they’re turning off to the National Pastime. That’s still my favorite game. But some of these ideas are art. You’re 127, I think you’ve got to speak up and stand up and say, enough’s enough.

You know, we’ve talked about this before on the show, and one of my things is, it takes total focus to play professional athletics, athletics, okay, and I don’t care how good you are with the media, how a part of it is, you know, I, I. My favorite thing nowadays is when a center fielder pulls out his card.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Where the guy comes to the plate and he’s, oh, this guy hits it over here. I, in the old days, you know, guys in the dugout with a towel going, go over that way a little bit. You know, it’s like the game pizza box, first base, you know, I don’t know, even college baseball, I saw the extra base they have now, you know, on the right, on the, on the baseline, it’s like, can’t we play the game the way Abner Doubleday invented the game to be played?

Well, they’re trying to, they’re trying to get the attention of the younger generation.

Who could care less, that’s it. You want to get the attention of the, of the younger generation, instead of having all those people dressed like seats in the stadium. Once you go to the schools, pass out tickets, make sure the parents, the teachers are going to be there with the kids. Get them to go to the games in the summertime. Believe me, the parents would appreciate the four hours off. Okay, it builds some fans, that’s how you build a fan base. You, or you had built little league ballparks and have the players come down and, and, and, you know, and actually interact with the kids. That’s how you get the young people to love the game. You have to, you have to get them involved, and that’s where we’re missing it in all aspects. I mean, Boys and Girls Clubs. They should be building them in the inner, inner cities, rather than building F-35 bombers. Why don’t we build ballparks in the inner city? So that these kids can have a sandwich and a burger, and a, and a malt, or something like that, and play ball? I mean, how many times have, we were kids, guy,s to be going to the park? And there’d be three or four of us, and we’d be forced to play over the line? Most fun game ever.

I loved it, I loved it.

I, I, I, I’d be at the park from three o’clock to five o’clock. I go home between five and six, back for over the line at 6:30, and take four people, and you see what you can do. Mark, final comments on BLEAV and PodClips and Fred and the Fantastics.

Well, Paul Skenes will win the Cy Young. That, that you can take to the bank. Um, and as far as, you know, when you, when you look at what we were talking about, people can’t afford this, people can’t afford that. You lower, lower the ticket prices if your team is below .500 going into the second half of the season.

Good luck with that one.

Yeah, yeah.

Art, 30 seconds.

It comes down to this, you guys, if you’re a fan, you go to the ball game, even if your team is 60 and 92, it doesn’t matter, you love your team, you love your city, you love your community. But I’m getting a little tired of the Pittsburgh Pirates selling all their good talent. The Orioles did it to me just the other day, you know? And, and I just, I’m wondering, I’m wondering what the answer is. There’s got to be a way to, to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots. I did have fun last night watching football, though.

Yeah,

I can only make it through the first half, you know? And I thought Brent Musburger stole the show, you guys,

Oh yeah.

It was so great to see him at 86,

Phyllis George, Irv Cross.

They ought to put him on one of the pregame shows.

Is Phyllis George still living?

No. They ought to put him on one of the pregame shows to do the gambling editions. Just five minutes.

All right, for Art, for Mark, for Mario, I’m Fred. Thank you for listening to Fred and the Fantastics on BLEAV and PodClips, and we will definitely see you around the corner. Bye, everybody.