Hey, it’s that time again, folks. Fred and the Fantastics on BLEAV and on PodClips. Laura Snoke, Art Sorce, Mark Mancini. We’ll discuss anything and everything in the wonderful and wacky world of sports, and even more than that. But in USA Today this week, interesting article “How Ex-MLB Player Learned Dad Was a Legend”. Eric Anthony, who was actually a fine outfielder for the Astros in the ’80s, found out after he retired just a few years ago that Willie Davis of the Dodgers actually was his dad. His mom never told him. Laura, I’m sure you’re a Willie Davis fan.

Three Dog.

He never told his son, never got to tell his son that, yeah, I am your dad. His son was always looking for his father and he found out, but Willie had already passed. Laura, you remember Willie Davis for the Dodgers?

Oh, sure, of course I remember Willie Davis, but did Willie Davis know and not tell? Or did Willie Davis never know?

Willie Davis knew.

Oh wow.

Did he do that to honor the mom?

Yeah, I mean, you know, again, Eric Anthony was not a bad outfielder, he was a very good outfielder. In fact, people even said in center field, he resembled Willie Davis in the way he ran after the ball. You know, and if it wasn’t for some injuries, Willie Davis may have made the Hall of Fame. That’s how good he was.

Hey Fred, I got to tell you something. Nobody had a deeper voice than Willie Davis.

Yeah,

And he used to chant the Buddhist chants out in center field. And I mean, he was one of my favorite players growing up with the Dodgers.

Yeah, but why wouldn’t you clear the deck and tell him, I mean, shades of embarrassment, I guess.

Different times, I think.

It’s, you know, let’s talk about different times. In the past, NFL players would play until they’re 35 or longer, as long as they thought of themselves as healthy. But the last couple of weeks, Mark, five or six have retired before the age of 30. Worries, I think, about CTE. They just wanted to have a life after football. Mark. Do you have any comments about players retiring early?

Well, you know, it’s funny, you bring that up, because earlier this morning, talking with the Pirates on that, about Derek Carr standing up to the podium and saying, You know what? I don’t want to steal somebody’s money, I’m not good enough. I got an injured, you know, shoulder here. I’m going to, you know, push it aside. So we saw Andrew Luck kind of give it up. I mean, I don’t know. Unless they come up with helmets that can protect these guys. A couple of these guys are coming to the forefront saying, You know what, it’s not really worth it, man.

Hey Mark.

Yeah?

You grew up in Pittsburgh, you’ve been with the sports radio in Pittsburgh. Have you ever, Mike Webster? Have you ever talked with his son or about Mike?

No. But I know Mike Webster, great player.

Yeah, that was a real travesty, I guess, at the end, he was living in his car. And then Bruce Furness, Steve Furness, another defensive tackle, went through the same thing. You know, the NFL has to get a better grip on this. When you’re throwing around billions and billions of dollars, commissioners are making 75 million dollars a year. And you’ve got people out there that are in their 60s and 70s who are having trouble, like Joe DeLamielleure. And they just kind of, I mean, I got the letter. I was talking about it on Sports Overnight America. And it’s all basically set up to take care of the guys that are 55 and younger, and the ones that really need the help, that are on disability, that are hurting, are the guys that are older. And I think that’s the young owners and the older owners.

Art. Let me intervene here. The NFL has proven they don’t give a blank blank about the players or the fans. Bottom line is otherwise, just forget the CTE thing for a moment. What about the fans and all the streaming? All they care about is how many dollars they can make this Christmas.

Fred, If you’ve got a family of two kids and a wife and you want to go to an NFL football game, that’s $1,200, $1,200 plus,

I’ll take it up one step further. November 17th, on my granddaughter’s birthday, the Raiders are hosting the Cowboys on Monday night. A friend just bought a ticket that cost $800 to go to that game. Are you kidding me?

Well, at a regular party you can have at the house,

Are they good seats?

I would pay $80 to go see them. They could play those two teams in the L.A. River.

Laura, You’re a Raiders fan.

Oh, Mark,

Laura, you’re a Raiders fan. How much would you pay? The most you would pay with your husband Ed to see the Raiders play football?

You know, those caviar tacos in the orange booths are pretty good, though.

We used to go to the Raiders Games when they were up in Oakland, we’d fly the Raider Express out of LAX. It was so much fun. I pay money to go to sporting events because they’re expensive, but make it once a year. I go to the Raider-Charger game here, which is essentially a Raider home game.

I talked to you guys about this. Last year, Jacqueline and I went to a Baltimore Oriole game. Sat in the center field bleachers $10 tickets. Yeah, no kidding, you guys. Beers were $2. I mean, parking was only $10, but we got out of there for like $75. Had a great time, you know?

A friend of mine sort of lives part-time, a friend of Fred’s too, part-time in Cleveland. And he got tickets to all three Dodger games behind home plate for like $110.

So listen to this, Nancy Finley had said, and she’s been on the show quite a few times, sent me something about they can’t even sell out in Sacramento for the A’s, they’ve only sold out opening, I think with the Cubs when they came, now they’re going to Las Vegas, and who’s going to put up with that?

Well, Las Vegas will be a real ballpark, they’ll make it a major league ballpark.

And Fred, they’re going to do what they do in football. There’ll be more fans from Philadelphia and from all around the country, New York, coming out there to watch a three-game series. The casinos will be raking it in. And that new stadium looks state-of-the-art, with the big TV in right field. It looks like the Australian Opera House in Sydney Harbor.

I mean, even the Raiders fans who go watch them in Vegas don’t live in Vegas. There’s not much fan base in Vegas,

They come from California. You’re right, or all over.

I mean, Raiders, there truly is a Raider nation, unlike some teams. I remember I was in the Bayou once and I saw this guy wear a,

Laura and Fred. The war starts Monday. The Dodgers have San Diego, come home, after that get San Francisco and San Diego again. Wow, this is going to be a grand nine, ten days of National League West Baseball with the Padres.

Football season is here you guys. The CFL is this weekend and we have conference championships in the XFL and the USFL.

All right, we’re going to take a break on Fred and the Fantastics on BLEAV and on PodClips, with Art, with Laura, with Mark. I am Fred back right after this.

Hey everybody, it’s Fred and the Fantastics with Mark, and with Art, and with Laura on BLEAV and on PodClips. We’ll discuss this, that and anything in sports. After the break, I want to bring this up. I broke my hip a few months ago. Folks. Actually, it was four months now. And so I go to rehab once or twice a week, and the lady that does the rehab has got two kids, one playing high school baseball, one playing middle school baseball. And told me a story about one of her kid’s friends who actually transferred to another school. And all of a sudden, remember, this is high school, folks, he’s driving a brand new car around and things like that now. Art, in California In some states like California, you’re allowed under NIL to pay high school kids. Art. Do you have any thoughts?

You say he’s 13 or 14 years old?

No, the kids are 13 and 16, so he’s 16 or 17.

Oh, he’s 16. Okay, yeah, that’s ridiculous. To me, it really is ridiculous. I mean, the whole idea of high school football and high school sports was to get together with the guys you grew up with and play against the cross-town rivals and have a great time. And if you got successful, you got lucky enough, maybe to get a scholarship to a great school to go, what study and play sports, academic athletic scholarship. Now it’s just, it’s Katie, bar the door, they’ve let the horses out of the barn, and I mean, it’s just it’s ridiculous. We’re going to have eight-year-old kids, you know, they’re going to be getting signed contracts and playing all runs of the league.

Mark, go ahead.

Let’s play Devil’s Advocate here. Three of us live in California. So, the cost, I mean, the wages, haven’t even got caught up with the rent here, so there’s a big discrepancy in that side of the coin. So if a kid’s getting a fancy car and they’re giving him plenty of money, he’s just trying to keep up with the California lifestyle. Like, yes,

You know, going back to 1973, when the California Sun came out of the Old World Football League, they kicked my 57-yard field goal and they were thinking about signing me out of high school. And you know what? My father said, You don’t have enough money, okay? And I said, Dad. He goes, Are you 18? I said, No. He said, then you’re not making this decision, you’re going to play football at USC.

In this case, do you think his decision would have been different if you were offered some money?

Well, he was best friends with Jerry Davidson, the commissioner. So, I mean, I’m sure they had some idea of what was going on there. But, you know, looking back at it, to be able to play with some of the greatest players in NFL history. Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen, Charles White, Anthony Munoz, Jeff Fischer. I wouldn’t trade that experience for all the money in the world, honest to God.

But you had a very tough job at USC. What did you do?

Well, I told you, Fred. Turning those lights off at Dedeaux Field was really important, especially when they were automatic lights.

Let me throw a curveball and I like Justin Tucker a lot. I hate the Ravens, but I like Tucker as a kicker.

That’s a poor ball.

No, wait, wait, wait as a kicker. But is there really a difference between when we look at all the presidents who have had all these affairs and done stuff and nobody’s brought that up?

We’re not the owner in the National Football League, Robert,

Yeah, but now, all of a sudden we ridicule a guy, we don’t have all the facts on the guy yet.

Well, now I’m hearing that Trevor Bauer has been exonerated. In that case, with the young lady, he lost a hundred and something million dollars. And we’re not talking about, you know, an altar boy here. We know that, but that’s a pretty bizarre situation, too.

The woman had to pay back $300,000, I believe, to Trevor Bauer.

He lost a hundred million.

Yeah, so maybe we should do the Justin Bieber effect and let somebody, you know, the bartender and the server. Hey, I’m going up and doing whoopie with this girl upstairs. I’ve just got to sign a contract. I mean, because a lot of these people are just thinking, man, if somebody’s got plenty of money, maybe I can take this a little further than I really want to.

Laura, let me ask you a question. You’ve got a 16-year-old son and somebody offered him some money or a car or something like that. But he’d have to move, he’d have to go to a high school 20 miles away or 25 miles away. As a mom, how would you feel about that?

I’d consider it, I mean, I’d make sure I put it in trust, you know, for the kid. And I would talk to, I mean, a 16-year-old kid isn’t going to make the decision, but they’ll have an opinion about it. Go through the pros and cons. And I mean, I wouldn’t just discount it out of hand. But it would depend on a lot of different factors. Where the other school was, you know, whether he could get there easily, you know, a lot of factors, but yeah, I’d consider it.

Fred, let’s be honest here. Mater Dei has done this for a lot of years.

Yeah.

Servite High School did it.

Oaks Christian.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of schools do it under the table, you know, for years, so, you know, at least it’s out in the open. And I don’t know. Yeah, I’d consider it.

All I know is forget the high school level for a moment, go to the college level. I can’t keep track of which players are playing for what school. In basketball, even the Tournament doesn’t mean as much to me as it did before. I couldn’t tell you who’s starting for UCLA, and if I can’t tell you who’s starting for UCLA, I certainly can’t tell you who’s starting for Columbia or Princeton.

Hey, Fred.

Yes.

Did Flagg really make $28 million last year at Duke?

Well, at least from two sponsors. He made $28 million and he had a smaller sponsor. But he had, New Balance was $13 million, and he had one for $15 million. That’s $28 right there,

Why wouldn’t you stay in school for another three years, I mean?

Well, I was hoping he would stay in school.

Well, I think this is a prediction, not a spoiler, but I think Cooper Flagg could be going part of a deal in Milwaukee. Because I think, big, you know, the Greek Freak is going to be out in Milwaukee,

How did this Milwaukee,

Hopefully, he’s going to be in L.A.

I think he’s going to be traded this summer, and I think L.A. always seems to get these big guys.

Always seems to,

Yeah.

Let’s hope.

I think, I don’t know what we’re doing the other way.

How about Luka, have you guys seen Andjusic? Since he’s been on the LeBron James fitness program?

Yeah,

Where he looks like he’s lost about 20 pounds of where it didn’t shouldn’t have been and gained it.

How about this list that came out in the NBA, the greatest all-time players? And LeBron wasn’t even on the list, and neither was Wilt Chamberlain.

Yeah, that’s a travesty, that’s a travesty. Who made that list?

I was listening to WFAN this week and they think the Knicks might make some kind of offer for Giannis.

And who’s going to coach the team? I mean, the guy took them to the Finals,

How do you get rid of that guy?

They jettisoned him out of their team.

The latest word is Jason Kidd. If Dallas allows him out, he might talk to the Knicks and we’ll see how that works out. Art. Final comments on BLEAV and PodClips right here.

I’m looking forward to the last big horse race of the year tomorrow afternoon at the Belmont. And so I know Laura doesn’t like horse racing. But I’m excited about it because it’s my last race of the year and I want to see, let’s see who do I have picked here?

Sovereignty or Journalism?

I’m going to go with Journalism and Sovereignty in my chalk exacta.

That’s very brave of you, yeah, but now I read that it’s going to rain in New York on Saturday. Folks, we’re taping this Friday afternoon. It’s going to rain. That might make a difference. And who knows,

It’s pouring as we speak here in the Commonwealth of Virginia,

There it goes. Laura, final comments on Believe and PodClips.

Wow,

I’m really looking forward to the NBA game on Sunday, and looking forward to a sport we don’t talk about too much, looking forward to the Semis and the Finals of the French Open, and see you all next week.

And, Mark, final comments.

Well, at least I get to see some tradition, the Phillies and the Pirates this weekend. And I think Sunday’s on the MLB Network, at least I don’t have to watch that force-fed Red Sox-Yankees series all three games,

Mark, one more time, my bookie’s listening in.

Oh, yeah, I’d like Indiana, I really do, and I’d like the Florida Panthers,

Over Edmonton?

Over Edmonton.

They need an ark out here, you guys. It’s really coming down!

And the Pirates, the Pirates will still get in there as a wild card.

Anything is possible. And whatever Mark says, remember folks, he is the world’s worst,

And the Steelers are going to win the Super Bowl, right?

All right for Laura, for Mark, for Art, for Mario for putting the show together. Stay tuned for much more of BLEAV and PodClips and Fred and the Fantastics.

Bye, everybody.