Hey everybody, welcome to Fred and the Fantastics today. Fred and the Fantastics, and Art Sorce from Galaxy Sports. Laura’s off, Mark’s off. And we forgot to call Andy Baran, and that’s totally on me. You can email us at sportsfred@aol.com, Fred and the Fantastics on BLEAV and on PodClips. We’ll talk about anything and everything in the wonderful, wacky world of sports, including the Kentucky Derby. We were taping this Friday about 1 o’clock, Kentucky Derby, 151st version Saturday, about 3 or 4 o’clock. And apparently they’re having a hard time selling the cheapest ticket there at $1,000. Any comments?

Well, let’s be honest, Fred, I mean, $1,000 is your cheapest ticket, yeah? That’s very Dodger Stadium-like to me. I look at the race, I’ve got to be honest with you, I was all excited for Rodriguez, which is a Baffert horse, that opened on the morning line at four to one. The number four horse, excuse me, 12 to one. And he has a little bit of a hoof problem, so I’m going to hold him out until the practice. And I look down the list here and I got to tell you, there’s 19 horses running and it’s a tough one to call. I mean, your favorites are the 18-horse, Sovereignty. But I don’t believe anybody’s won out of the 18th hole in a long, long time. The 10th spot is the spot that most of the winners come out of, and I think Journalism in the eighth slot might be the horse to beat in this race. Your thoughts on that, Fred?
I know you can follow it a little bit.

Not as much this year than in past years, but yeah, Journalism will probably go off the favorite in the eighth hole, and there’s a horse, and I forgot the name again, in the one hole, in the one hole.

Citizen Bull, that’s the Baffert horse that they say. Unbelievable speed. And you know, the Kentucky Derby’s not that long of a race. If you can get out to maybe a four- or five-furlong lead, you can hang on and take this baby to the house.

Except that if you’re in the one hole,

You’ve got to get out, you’ve got to get out good.

Otherwise, you’re going to be crunched. And then you’re going to have to run it originally and you won’t have anything left in the stretch. I think it’s a mile and a quarter and we can discuss that if you’re so inclined. You can email us at sportsfred@aol.com, sportsfred@aol.com. Kentucky Derby 151st version. And both Art and I used to be major horse racing fanatics. I used to schedule my college days around Santa Anita or Hollywood Park, and I would take night courses just so I could go to Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. I didn’t realize how some of these horses were treated, but there was another horse there that was bought for $2,500. And apparently has a chance there. Read me the like, who’s in the 19 hole?

Oh, Baeza.

No, that’s not it.

How about Owen Almighty? Chunk of Gold?

What is it? Chunk of Gold?

Yeah, that’s it. I think it’s a $2,500 horse that is now running for three million. If he wins the Kentucky Derby, that’s something incredible.

Yeah, that’s a sweetheart boom. Hey, the other thing I was thinking about is, how awesome is it to see D. Wayne Lucas back in, back in the Kentucky Derby with a horse by the name of American Promise, who’s a long shot. And I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to take five bucks, I’m going to throw it on there. And just because I’m a big D. Wayne Lucas fan. Because that goes back to when I was really having fun, I got to believe he’s in his late 80s by now. Yeah, and so, I mean, I love the pomp and circumstance of the three, you know, Triple Crown races, I love it. I’ve actually gone to the Preakness a couple of times because I live just, just north of Baltimore and it’s just a wonderful environment. Everybody gets dressed up. And, you know, I know, horse racing, much like heavyweight boxing, is gone, you know, in a bad direction here. But I do enjoy the, the, the three Triple Crown races.

Folks. We’ll take a break and come back with a whole lot more. On Fred and the Fantastics, on BLEAV and on PodClips. Welcome back everybody, Fred and the Fantastics, Art Sorce and Fred. This afternoon, we’re taping this Friday about 1:10 Pacific Daylight Time. You can email us at sportsfred@aol.com.

Fred, let’s talk about Aaron Judge, what a season this guy’s having. I mean, I look at the statistics and the hitting in the USA today, and I was like, Wow, he’s almost leading in every possible, you know? I mean, other than him being tied with Cal Raleigh, the great catcher for Seattle, he’s on top of almost every offensive position there is. And I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it and I realize we’re only 35 games into the season.

Yeah, the Yankees this week again for the second time, it’s never done before. First three batters, all homers. They got four home runs in the first inning. Yeah, there’s no question, and that doing it without Bellinger was a little bit over .200. So again,

Trent Grisham has got eight home runs. He looks like the second coming of Bobby Mercer.

All right, so is it the lively ball or the torpedo bats? What is it?

I think it’s both, I think, Major League baseball and Manfred, the commissioner, Rob Manfred. I have a funny feeling because years ago, I’ll never forget the old shortstop David Eckstein of the, of the Angels in 2002. He said You know, the ball that Barry Bonds hit in that World Series that almost went through the tunnel in the upper deck. He goes, You know, those balls were sitting over there in the ball bag and they were jumping around. And I mean, they can tighten those laces up a little bit down in Haiti and they can do that. So, I mean, and you know what, everybody loves the long ball, right Fred?

Oh, yeah, I mean, that’s why the guys with the drugs were allowed to do their thing in the 90s.

So yeah, the McGuire, Sosa, Brady Anderson and we go down the whole list. Some of them were even in the Hall of Fame. But that’s a story for another day.

You know, baseball is so far, it’s interesting, you know? The Dodgers scored 12 runs on Wednesday, They scored 15 on Tuesday, and you know, it’s interesting. The Cubbies certainly can hit the Reds. Oh, this is interesting. The Dodgers trade Gavin Lux to the Reds, and I watched,

Having a great year, isn’t he?

Yeah. Amazing,

But he’s sitting over .330, but have you seen him in left field?

Terrible,

He’s unbelievably bad.

He’s terrible.

He was a second baseman in the shortstop, you know, and the Dodgers tried him a couple games in centerfield that didn’t work. Now the Reds are either DH-ing him or playing left with him.

You just said the position he should play if he’s not playing second base, DH,

All he can do is DH. Because they had their rookie pitcher starting on Wednesday.

Was that Brady Singer?

He ended up giving up nine runs in two and two-thirds innings, I think, and about seven or eight of those were because Gavin Lux couldn’t catch a fly ball in left field. I don’t think either one was caught on air. It was just that he misjudged both of them. They went over his head. Anyway. He’s a fine hitter. He’s hitting over .330. He was over .350 but he cannot field a lick.

So my question is this, Fred? I’m noticing there’s a huge disparity this year between good teams, playing great at home and then playing, eh, mezza-mezza on the road, you know, 50-50 baseball. The Mets got off to a really quick start. They only had one loss in their first 15 games. The Padres did the same thing, you know, down there at their stadium. And I’m wondering. I’ve always, you know, I talk to a lot of gamblers and they always say that the home team does have an advantage because they always have that last at-bat. And I’m wondering, you know, do you think that there is a huge difference now than there was in the past between home and away?

Yeah, I definitely do. And certainly, if it goes into extra innings, the odds of scoring with a guy on second base, the ghost runner is like, 45 percent. So you know how many runs you’re going to need if you’re the home team, you don’t know how many runs you’re going to need if you’re the road team. So it’s a major, major advantage.

And the other night, the other night I saw how it works too. Because I had the over-inning game and it was 3-3 and they went into the extra innings. The visiting team scored and then the home team scored, so I caught the over. Now. I just needed my team to win, which they did. And I thought to myself, that would never happen if there was not a runner put at second base to start the inning. Because let’s think about it, Fred, the old days, if you had a guy at second base. The guy that’s at the plate’s got to hit the ball to the right side or even bunt him over to third.

Yeah,

Okay, that was the old Maury Wills. Ricky Henderson. I mean, that’s how you got to run in the old days and now it’s incumbent on the next guy. Do you bring the infield in? Well, If you do, you take a .250 hitter and make him a .350 hitter. If you stay back, and there’s a chopper to the short, the runner’s going to score. So I just. To me, it bastardizes the game of baseball, especially in extra innings,

All right. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Let’s wind up with discussing Roundup, Roundup, of course, owned by Bayer, and Roundup on the NFL draft on the NFL network. They must have run 30 or 40 spots at least over the three days that I watched. And Roundup kills people. Roundup has lost $11 billion in suits as far as lymphoma, leukemia and cancer, other cancers. Yet the NFL took Roundup’s money, took Bayer’s money, and they ran the spots. Art, greed is the question, and greed is the answer, but talk about that.

Well, you know, Fred, I really feel that that’s something that the NFL needs to look inside themselves at. I’m amazed that the product is still even on the market. You would think that if it does, and it’s been proven in a court of law to cause leukemia or cancer, they have to change the product. Number one, find out why this is happening, OK? And I go a step beyond that and I do agree with you on this, it’s really bad, but then again, you know, you’re playing on ground up tires that have terrible effects on people. That’s been proven as well. You know, these, these polyturf, these super turf fields that they play on. And we talked about the World Cup on Sports Overnight America. How they want to bring grass into these big stadiums like MetLife Stadium, and you know, all the stadiums you know, SoFi, that are turf based. And the other thing is the Raiders, they have a turf based field there, and the Raiders actually bring in grass every Sunday to play the game. Because they understand the difference. And you know, it’s just a matter of time till I think somebody’s going to tell the NFL, look, if you’re really looking out after players and you’re concerned about CTE. And I don’t know if you caught any of the spring football games this year, but every one of the kids had the auxiliary helmet on the protection helmet. So how long is it going to be, Fred, until we actually see real games? With, you know, like the old Jack in the Box commercial, which one is your son?

Very, very quickly. The Dodgers beat Florida, I think, 15 to three, and in ninth inning, the Dodgers through Kike Hernandez on the mound. He wore a hard helmet and I think that’s the same thing in baseball. Eventually, pitchers are going to be wearing a helmet.

If you watch, if you watch collegiate softball. The girls have that little, you know, that face mask on. And you know, I mean, I got to tell you, with those aluminum bats, I’ve always been scared because I was, I was playing baseball in high school with wood bats, and then we went to college and we used the aluminum bats. Adirondack made them. And I’m telling you, the ball came off the bat a lot faster. And if you’re pitching and you somebody, you know, hits a line drive back at you, like Herb Score or, or, you know what happened with Gil McDougald and Tony Conigliaro and a lot of pitchers over the years? You got to be very careful with that. And, and I just, I wonder, you know, if the powers that be really do concern themselves with the longevity of players?

Final thoughts on Fred and the Fantastics, Art Sorce.

Just looking forward to one of the Triple Crown races this weekend. It’s fun, I’m also I really enjoyed watching a little bit of the NBA. I see a step up in defense being played. I still won’t watch the whole game, but I will watch. But I will, yeah, but I will watch the last quarter and, and I feel bad for the Lakers. And I was going to tell everybody out there. As much of a Clipper fan as I’ve been over the years. Don’t get your hopes too high in game seven. OK, tomorrow night I just got a funny feeling Jokić is going to show up. And, you know, Murray all of a sudden had a 43-point outing in one of the games. It’s an interesting situation in both those teams. You know whether it’s, you know, the coaching situation for Denver, the Clippers history, it should make for a heck of a heck of a ballgame.

All right for Art, for Mario. Thank you guys for listening to Fred and the Fantastics and we’ll see you around the corner for a whole lot more.

Bye, everybody.