Hey, welcome everybody to Fred in the Fantastics. We talk this, that and everything in sports, and a little bit more, with Art, with Laura, and yours truly, Fred. You can email us at sportsfred@aol.com, sportsfred@aol.com. We’re heard on PodClips and BLEAV, and love you to join us by emailing us again at sportsfred@aol.com. So, you know, based on the number of emails we get, a lot of people from the New York area listen to this show. And USA Today has come out, every week it changes, of course, but USA Today comes out with the ratings of all Major League Baseball. This week, they have the Mets at 7 and the Yankees at 12. Now, there’s no way the Mets should be 7, and there’s no way the Yankees should be 12. Art, explain. And I listen to WFAN a lot. There’s no conceivable way that the Yankees aren’t better than the Mets. I don’t care the streak they’re going through now. Art. What do you think of 7 and 12? For the Mets and the Yankees? Is that insane, or is that not insane?

Well, but the Mets are scuffling, and so are the Yankees. I mean, they’re scuffling hard times right now. I mean, they had Aaron Judge on the, on the IL for a while. Lindor went 0 for 35, but now he seems to be coming around. For the Mets, it seems like it’s pitching, and for the Yankees, it seems like it’s pitching as well. So, I mean, you know, you look at the, the AL East and you see what’s going on with Toronto, by the way, Toronto playing in L.A. tonight, that’s gonna be a heck of a series. I mean, you’ve got, I think, two potentially great teams, you throw Milwaukee in there, what they’re doing, you know, in the National League. But you know, the Mets are a little scary for me right now because, you know they, Sean Manaea looked so good last year when he lowered his arm angle coming from the left side. He’s getting hammered. I looked down the lineup, the Yankees just got rid of Stroman. You know, I just, I just think either one of those teams, they’re gonna need to turn it around really quickly.

But, but, but. But you played a seven-game series,

Right.

One team has Rodón, and one team has better pitching. In the Yankees versus the Mets,

Mm-hmm.

The Yankees would be favored, so how is it possible to be 7 and 12 with the Mets on top?

Maybe they have the worst manager in Major League Baseball. I really believe that.

That’s what the people in New York and WFAN are saying. Laura, you’re a big baseball nut. Yankees better than the Mets or not better than the Mets?

I think the Yankees are better than the Mets, but I, you know, there’s, there’s gonna be a lot of shifting around between now and the end of the season, so we’ll have to see where it all shakes out. I noticed that Yardbarker, I think it was Yardbarker or the Athletic, ranked the Dodgers now second in the Major League after. They make the Brewers as the best team right now in Major League Baseball. So you know, we’ll see. I think this series coming up tonight with the Dodgers and Toronto, it’s going to be Kershaw against Scherzer. They were, they came up together as rookies, and they, it’s the first time that two, two pitchers that came up as rookies both got over 3,000 strikeouts and are playing against each other, I think in something like since in 1890 or something,

And they had a big article on it in the New York Times.

Yeah,

Huge front page, I mean, it’s really gonna be excellent.

Yeah, I think the total might be like 9 or 8 1/2 tonight. I would say the final score would be 9-8. So I’m,

I was gonna say gonna be 7-5. I think five years ago, this would have been one heck of a matchup.

Who’s favored?

I’m going over. The Dodgers, probably because they’re at home, with Kershaw surprisingly getting the job done. But he’s gonna eventually get bombed. You know, folks, we’re taping this Friday afternoon, August 8th, in the year of your Lord, 2025. Bottom line, you mentioned the Dodgers, Laura. It’s not August 15th. We got one week for Snell to get hurt again, for Glasnow to get hurt again. Yes or nay. Do you think they’ll make it to August 15th?

You know, Fred, I just read an article about super-agers, you know, people over 80 that are active and, and what, what the common denominator was among super-agers and, and one of it was having a positive outlook on life.

Was that pointed at Fred for some reason?

No, I’m, if you’re a Dodger fan, you have to, but you have to, don’t you have to be objective?

Well, yeah.

Take a look, get a baseball card or get a record annual and take a look at how many innings per season a Snell or a Glasnow usually pitch, and the Dodgers knew that when they, when they traded for them originally.

I agree.

I thought, they thought they had a surplus of pitchers. I mean, in the beginning, before the season started, remember there were articles,

There were like 14 or 15 of ’em, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, they have too many pitchers.

I hear that Roki’s coming back, though.

Oh yeah. I hear that too.

That’s good news.

Here’s the problem with Snell, and in my humble opinion, here’s with Snell. Well, Glasnow is pretty young, but Snell’s getting up there,

Yeah,

I don’t know how old he is. But you know, when you’re young and you get hurt, like, like Sasaki, I mean, you can recover a lot faster than when you’re mid-thirties. And,

Did you notice he was never hurt until he came to the Dodger Organization? I’m not saying they’re jinxed or whatever,

And I think that’s worth delving into right there, Fred, what’s going on with what the pitchers? I mean, I remember in, in my era when I worked for Mizuno, you know, and I would go to the training camps. And, and Nolan Ryan would be on the treadmill and on the life cycle for hours upon a time, building his legs up, guys would be running in the outfield. I go to a game now, and they’re tossing footballs around. You know, I’m wondering, I’m wondering if the strength of the lower body and the fact that these pictures are only going five, six innings, if they’re going out there and just gunning the ball instead of pitching, which is changing speeds, moving the ball in and out, up and down. I mean, I look back to the great Claude Osteen or Mel Stottlemyre, those guys, and Catfish Hunter, those guys were my epitome of pitchers. They wanted to go nine innings, and they always talk about a perfect inning, right, or some special inning. To me, a perfect inning is two ground balls to shortstop on three pitches, not nine strikes, not nine strikes.

Yesterday, yesterday, there was a game where the pitcher threw 17 pitches to get an out, 17 pitches to get an out.

And they were all probably fouled off the top of the bat, right?

But, but, I, right before we go to this break, I just got to throw you the latest stat that I heard last week. The announcer indicated that this pitcher, no, this hitter, was a .333 hitter in the third inning. Okay, now, now, now, now, now, now, explain to me, I love numbers, I mean, I dream of numbers. I knew the ERA when I was five, I swear to God, my dad taught me. Everything in my life is numbers. But when I hear somebody say the guy’s batting average is .333 in the third inning, I have to say, enough is enough. Art. What do you think?

I agree. I mean, I love Ross Porter, you guys. He was one of my favorite broadcasters. But I always visualized Ross in the press box, and I would always visualize Vinny being by himself, because that’s how he called baseball, the greatest of all time. But Ross would pull a stat out of the air, and he’d say, Ron Cey, with a runner at second and one out or less, he’s hitting .237. I’m like, wow, who looked that up? That’s kind of what we’re talking about here. You can go overboard with statistics, and that great word, I remember my statistician friends in college, truncated stats. I said, what is, what are truncated stats? Well, they show you the graph, but they don’t show you the whole graph, they just show you the parts that supports with their idea, you know?

So it’s sort of like redacted Epstein files. All right, we’ll take a break,

Oh, yeah, I like that.

Right here on BLEAV and PodClips, Fred and the Fantastics right after this.

All right, USA Today, I have it in front of me. They rate the teams going into the NFL season, they’ve got last year’s Champions, the Eagles, number one; they’ve got Baltimore, two; Kansas City, three; Buffalo, four; the Rams, five; but, you know, first thought I would have, Art, is that Stanford’s got a back problem. What do you think of the Rams being listed five?

Well, I gotta tell you that surprises me because the latest odds that I have for the NFL have the Rams at a little higher odds. You know, they’re, they’re down around 20 to 1. But then again, you know, when you look at McVay, Sean McVay as a coach, he’s, he’s got the props to be able to back it up. I will say one thing right now, based on what I saw in the first three preseason games last night. The, the Colts are in trouble because their quarterback, and they’re playing their, They’re, you know, they have two good quarterbacks, Danny Dimes as well as the kid from Florida. He gets hit by a linebacker coming on the blind side and breaks his pinky finger on his right hand. Now, people go pinky finger on your throwing hand, well, to a quarterback, the last thing that touches the ball is your right pinky. So I, you know, I’m trying to figure out, some coaches have their guys running around, like, you know, like Lamar Jackson, you know, with his t-shirt on and having his hat like this, having a great time. And I, you know, I mean, it was just, it’s amazing, that’s fine, but I’ve gotta wonder at what point in time, are these meaningless preseason games, gonna do something like what happened to the Chargers on, you know, not even a big play in practice. Rashawn Slater, the offensive tackle, at fresh after a $113 million, four-year deal, $92 billion guaranteed, like you were talking about on Sports Overnight America, Fred, you know, he’s done with a patellar tendon injury. You know, are these, are these quote-unquote, we used to call them exhibition games in my era. We played six or seven of them. Now they play three games, and I’m wondering if they just ought to, just go to a, an 18-game season and do, like college does, just go straight into the season.

Laura, your Raiders are listed, the Rams are listed fifth, your Raiders are listed 26th. You think it was too high?

No, I don’t.

No, no, I actually. I thought they played really well in the second half last night. I was really impressed with their young, young quarterback, Cam Miller. They could have won the game. They, I was impressed, impressed with their game management and how they managed to come back and, and position themselves to win the game. So I think I think the Raiders are underrated, as usual. They have a great coach now, they have a great team in place, I think, a management team. But I, I agree with, I don’t understand why any team would play their starters in these meaningless preseason games.

Hey, here’s a great idea, guys,

I think it should just be tryouts for the players that are trying to make the team and the start, the ones, the starters, who everybody knows are going to be on the team, like Lamar Jackson, or they should not play in these preseason games. Because, first of all, they don’t mean anything, and second of all, they can get hurt and ruin the entire team’s chances in the upcoming season. And I, you know, typically I don’t usually even watch preseason games because I think they’re usually sort of boring. But, but I was, I was surprised last night at the level of intensity that the game had. I mean, it felt,

It was Pete Carroll coming home to Seattle. But it was Pete Carroll coming home to Seattle.

Yeah, I mean, it was very, it felt like a regular season game.

It sure did,

And the players seemed like they were really committed to it. But I, I don’t, see, that’s the problem. Why be committed to a game that doesn’t mean anything and, and risk injury?

And the fans are still paying full price.

Yeah, well, listen to this one, Fred. According to StubHub, tomorrow, this Saturday’s game, in SoFi, you can get tickets on StubHub for this game for $2, New Orleans and the Chargers, all right, $2. But here’s the caveat: the parking is $75.

Come on, no, you’re kidding, you’d have to park miles away. But,

Yeah, I would have somebody drop me off,

And there’s no place to park,

No, there is nowhere, somebody’s gonna have to drop you off, and that’s a heck of a long walk, as you know, to get to the stadium.

Before we conclude the show, I gotta throw something out here. The last few years, I have DirecTV, Laura’s got DirecTV. You don’t, Art. You’ve got, what do you have?

Verizon.

Okay, DirecTV, if you have all the sports channels during the season, you get the RedZone for free. Now there’s a change with ESPN controlling it. I am not sure and I won’t know it until the first game of the season if I’m gonna get. One of the reason I stuck with DirecTV is because the RedZone for free, and I hope that DirecTV doesn’t pull that too. Art. What do you think the odds are? You’re, you bet a shekel or two now and then. What do you think?

I don’t feel good about it. I, you know, I keep checking on my Verizon thing to see if you know the Red Channel is still, at least on that channel, that it’s on it. It’s on the channel, but knowing ESPN and the switch from linear, you know, TV to streaming, and I mean, it’s, it’s just. It’s a real, real tough situation. I mean, ESPN just bought NFL Media.

Yeah,

Really? Oh, how’s that work? So how are they gonna be objection, how are they gonna be objective in covering the NFL when they own each other?

No, it can’t be. I mean, it’s physically impossible. And Laura, what do you think? You’ve got DirecTV, I don’t know if you’ve got all the sports channels, but if you get them, the last two years, they’ve given you the RedZone for free.

No, I have the sports pack,

That’s it?

It doesn’t have all the sports channels, because I couldn’t get that Major League Baseball game a couple of weeks ago, it was on some sort of special baseball station,

Was it on Apple TV?

No, it was on Roku, it was on Roku.

It was on Roku, but it was also, if you had a certain baseball package with DirecTV, that wasn’t on the regular sports pack, you could have gotten it.

No, you need, you needed the MLB package too.

The MLB package, right, I have the sports package, so I get NFL Network.

But today, if you call DirecTV, just throw this out to you. For $25 a month, you can get all the games for the rest of the way on the MLB package.

MLB Network. Yeah, that’s right.

So I mean,

Well, I’ll tell you one thing DirecTV did that really impressed me because I, I recorded the Raider game because my husband, it doesn’t matter, I recorded, ended up watching it. I’m getting into real time, but I recorded it on NFL Network because that’s what DirecTV told me to record it on. But NFL Network was actually blacked out in L.A. because we did that, our local, our local station, still broadcasts Raider games when,

The same thing happened to me, I wanted to watch the Eagles in Cincinnati, and they had blacked out the game and put both channels, both channels we watched Indianapolis play against the Baltimore Ravens.

But you know what DirecTV did? Even though I recorded it on network, on NFL Network, it switched the recording to Channel 5 and recorded the game, which really impressed me.

Wow! That is impressive.

I love DirecTV, by the way.

It asked you a question, it says, we’re working, it says we’re searching for the right channel, and they found the right channel, locally Channel 5 in Los Angeles.

But I mean, I had it actually recorded off the DVR on NFL Network, and it switched, I was impressed.

You guys, it’s gonna be wild times here the next three, four weeks. Because people don’t know how to get the ticket, they don’t know how to get the, you know, the Red Channel. You’ve got all these college things like we talked about with ESPN, you know, coming up with their bunch of products and linear versus streaming. There’s gonna be, I think, for a couple weeks, there’s gonna be people looking around to try to find games. And it’s really tough, unless you really are, you know, honed in on where you want to go. I think it’s gonna cause some problems for a lot of fans.

Yes, I think it’s like the goose killing the golden egg. There, they’re getting, they’re not gonna have any fans left. I mean, they’re only gonna have fans that are willing to go through that morass and try and figure out where the games are. And gee, what do I? What apps do I need to subscribe to? And you know what, yeah, it’s, it’s gonna, and they’re saying, forget it, I’ll just go out and play pickleball, you know?

Before we go,

It’s National Pickleball Day today!

Is it?

I have to say that, I have to say this, you know,

It’s National, International Cat Day today.

Okay, okay.

The kitties and pickleball!

Pickleball. Pickleball is fine, this is fine, tennis, okay, ping-pong is fine. ESPN, a couple of days ago, and I swear folks, this is true, carried chess underwater.

Underwater chess, not basket weaving.

I didn’t watch more than one minute of it.

It was one of my classes at USC.

But they were playing chess, I don’t know how the pieces weren’t flying away, they were playing chess underwater as a sport.

Blub, blub, blub, so instead of it’s your move, it’s blub, blub, blub.

That’s ridiculous.

I swear to God it’s true.

Chess isn’t a sport to begin with.

Well, that’s why they’re going from ESPN Ocho to ESPN Diez. Ten.

Hey, where are the Savannah Bananas when you need ’em?

All right, Laura, in 15 seconds, your thoughts about the future of the world of sports as we know it.

I don’t know about the future, but I had a thought the other day about, and I’m just throwing this out to everybody, every sport except baseball, the coaches and the players that aren’t suited up, they dress, how, kind of how they want to dress. I mean that in football, they usually wear a hat, but they don’t, they’re not wearing uniforms. Baseball, everybody wears the same uniform; it doesn’t matter if you’re a manager, if you’re a coach, if you’re a player, that’s on the IL. Everybody’s in uniform, exactly the same uniform. And I just, I think that’s very egalitarian, on the one hand, although the uniforms are not all that attractive on some of the coaches and managers, I have to say. But, and they’re kind of unforgiving anyway, baseball uniforms.

Yes, I miss the old days seeing Tom Landry in a suit or, or, you know, Coach Stram out there, you know, dressed nicely in his blazer.

Oooh, like Pat Riley would wear his Armani suits.

Yeah, Pat Riley used to wear his suits. Pat Riley, one of the great-looking guys of all time. On the sidelines,

At least they’re not wearing basketball shorts.

And that’s what I mean, yeah.

I mean, so what, so how, why is, why does, how did baseball evolve to where the, the, everybody wears the uniform?

The managers were the uniforms. I mean, yeah, that’s yeah,

It’s interesting,

It is interesting.

Dave Roberts could be a playing manager, I guess. Um, before we go, I have to say this, Art, I’m very disappointed. I discovered, Art, you’re the guy that threw the d***o on the court of the WNBA game.

How did you find that out?

Did you feel guilty? How guilty do you feel?

Nothing is hidden in the days of cell phones.

All right.

How did they find out? All right, you know, I, I know I’m a little heavy, but I thought I could be a little more svelte and sneak around on there.

And on Saturday, folks we’re taping this on Friday, August 8th. On Saturday, we have the first woman, female MLB umpire at a game at Truist Park, so we’ll go from there.

It’s, she’s gonna be doing the game, the actual behind the plate, calling the balls and strikes, on Sunday.

I wonder if anybody’s gonna throw d****s out from the stands?

Oh gosh.

All right, for Laura, for Art, for Mario, who put the show together. I am Fred. Thank you guys and gals for listening to BLEAV, PodClips, and Fred and the Fantastics. Bye, everybody.