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Heights of Victory with Mark Griffin · Heights of Victory

• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Heights of Victory.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Jeff Horn, CEO of Mass Rider Capital, and uh we're proud to present our fifth episode today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Got a great gentleman here with me today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Another Monterey baseball player, Mark Griffin, uh, joins us here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Known Mark a long time, lifelong Lubbockite.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um been involved in a uh uh big-time you know business with Rip Griffin companies and then transitioned to family office and uh just a terrific uh record of service with a lot of different organizations and can't wait to visit with him uh today.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: So without further ado, Mark, welcome to the Heights of Victory today.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Jeff, thank you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's an honor to be here.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I really, I really appreciate it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're glad to get you here and visit with you and pin you down for a few minutes, you know, so and go over everything.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, I we like to start off with history of and and your experience and all of those types of things.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so you're a Lubbock guy, through and through, raised and uh here in West Texas.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Share a little bit about your family and what it was like to grow up here and it was like to be a a young Mark Griffin.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was I I would say it was interesting, uh, Jeff.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We my mom and dad were both my dad was born in Matador, my mom and O'Donnell, and they met here at Tech.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they were they just out of school and out of the service for my dad when I came along.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had an older brother and three younger sisters, and it was we were all engaged in the business.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: My dad had a little fill-in station that he built into kind of a a truck stop uh group, and we worked at the truck stop.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's all we knew how to do.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta say a word about my mom though, because with five kids, she was that was her life.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And meal on the table three times a day, dessert always after dinner, every day.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And with a family that size, we really couldn't go out to eat.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You they couldn't afford the reputational risk of taking us out in public.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so because we had a restaurant at our truck stop, that's where we would go eat Sunday lunch.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget those days.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I know why my dad did it to control the environment, but the price was right too.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we grew up in that we didn't know any better, Jeff.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: We thought we had a wonderful life.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We we wanted for nothing, but we had to work for for our things that we had, and and our experiences were just fabulous.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Roscoe Wilson, Hutcheson Junior High, Monterey High School, and then I finished a course uh the last semester of my senior year.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was over at over at Monterey High School, but just I I can't imagine uh and then we were in the same house from the time I was in kindergarten until I was uh a junior in high school.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Brother and I shared a bedroom for the all those years, and so you get to know yourself and uh your family a little better when you're in those types of environments, I think.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: I I am curious, appreciate that.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Where do you fall in the line of all of the kids?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I have an older brother, David, okay, and then three younger sisters, Julie, Jill, and Suzanne.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you were number two.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was number two.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and when it all shook out, they all went to tech and graduated and moved on with their lives.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the only one left in Lubbock, and still am today.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the so getting out of school, when I got out of college and came back here to law school, my brother David was finished up at tech and and he went, he's an artist by trade, and he was in the Dallas area uh beginning his career and applying his trade.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then my sisters just married and moved off.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was the left last guy standing from the children's standpoint.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_03: What was your what was what was Rip like as a as a father?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was I would say, Jeff, he was pretty hard charging.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: He had to open the store up at 5 a.m.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: and he'd get home about six, and a a fond memory of mine was this.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: My mom would meet him at the door and make sure that he took his boots off because there was diesel and oil on them.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: They s they had that certain aromatic flair to them that she didn't really care to have in the house.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So he would that was his first move was to take those boots off and come into the house.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he was he was a driven gentleman.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let me I'll just say that about him.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: He had an idea what he wanted to do, and he was motivated to to see it through.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that to say to say it didn't rub off on me would have been a lie, to tell you the truth.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: But um uh I didn't really get to know him though, Jeff, until I came back and started working.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I told people I worked for my dad for about 15 years or 20, and I worked with him for about 10 years in the business.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But he was uh he he that was his personality, and the only person he was intimidated by was my mother.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of marriages that way, don't you think?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm one, that's for sure.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: I know that my grandfather was intimidated by his grandfather, you might remember her.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the Horn and Gladden, my dad would talk about them, and he was he held them in high honor because they were self-made and shirt sleeve going to work and mate and had a beautiful business.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: They had a beautiful business.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, your dad was hard charging and all that.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I know that you were hard charging youth as well, playing all the sports and all that.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: Did your dad coach you ever?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you think yes?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, baseball was a big part of his life.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: He had played at tech and and played some semi-pro ball, and so that was a big deal to him.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: We he didn't he didn't discount the other sports.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I played, I I played football and baseball in high school, but uh he didn't discount those other sports, but uh baseball was going to be the sport we were going to play, and so he coached us um probably all the way through until uh Colt League, you know, the 12, 13-year-old, American Legion, no.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and then I played semi-pro with his team that he would sponsor, the Hubbers.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and that was really a fun experience.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But that from about 11 or 12 years old, he stopped and handed me off to to others, and that was probably in everybody's best interest, right?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that's where I learned the game was from my dad.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: Then you develop and playing and and uh played over at Lubbock High, and you decide your senior year to move over to play for Monterey High School and and uh Coach Magel, and tell us a little bit about that experience and what that was like.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's as much my dad's idea as it was mine.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you really want to know the truth, yeah, I think he was and and we had just built a brand new house, brand new house on 10th Street in the Coronada district.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I could have gone to Coronada too.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he he and I talked about it and decided I'd go to Monterey, but I don't think he may have told Coach Magel that we were going to be moving over there, but that was probably the full extent of that conversation.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I never talked to Coach Magel.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I never approached him about it, I didn't ask permission at really, and so here we have this brand new home.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a year old on 10th Street, beautiful home.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm living in this little one-bedroom or maybe two-bedroom apartment where I can walk to Monterey High School just so I can go to school there.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: My mom's over there every night cooking dinner.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: My brother would stay with me.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes dad would stay over there because we were we lived in mortal fear that someone was going to come knock on the door.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if I wasn't there, they said, well, he's not really living there.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was not gonna risk eligibility of my teammates or myself by that.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we were faithful, believe it or not, in our in our residency, I'll say that.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: As a fellow Monterey baseball player, at what point in the season did you think that you had signed up for maybe the wrong sport and thought you were on the track team instead of the baseball team?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's very that's interesting, Jeff, because I I'd heard reputationally about that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had dear friends having gone to Hutchinson Junior High.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Half of our class went to Monterey and half went to Lubakai because of uh 34th Street, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: South and north.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew I knew a number of them.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, my very best friend, Jim Killian, was on the team.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I would see Jim, Jimmy from the just playing ball and seeing him in the summer and talking about that.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I was prepared for that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing I missed out on was the Coach Magel treated me uh very fairly, I will say, and probably more fair than he should have, quite frankly.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I did not get the negative experiences that that just about everybody else on that team had grown up with at Monterey because I was just there for a semester and he just didn't he didn't want to, I guess, waste his time on me doing that.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was what I was there.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't gonna be uh there wasn't gonna be a big transformation other than I had to learn to play another position.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason uh he I enjoyed the trust he had in me, and that was a that was that was really a significant aspect in my experience there at Monterey.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he played a huge part in my life as well.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I I struggled.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: I told you this when we were preparing for the show, and I won't go through all that, but I really struggled the first part of my senior year uh after a football injury in the last in our playoff football game.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, he let me know about it, you know, because you know, horns weren't supposed to be that bad of a player, you know, and got up there, but really taught me to swing the bat, you know, and everything that I do, not just literally swing the baseball bat, but to swing the bat and go for it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: And um, deeply appreciative of that man for teaching.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think he taught thousands of West Texans how to compete and how to how to attack life vigorously.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it for for my sake, from my perspective, I would not have had the opportunities going forward in that sport but for him.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, quite frankly.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I owe that completely unequivocally to Coach Magel.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then you joined a great group of guys there that were already there playing as well, and you obviously bolstered their team, and y'all went on to win his first state title there at Monterey High School in 1972, not to put too much of an age on this thing, but that was a neat experience, I'm sure.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was unbelievable, Jeff, because we didn't know.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: We we didn't we didn't start off great pre-conference before we got in, but then we just kind of rolled through the conference.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh we probably had uh one of the top three pitchers in the state, and and the other two I got to play with at UT, quite frankly.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Donnie Moore, we rode him as far as he could take us.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which was all the way all the way, yeah.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Something similar to our group, too.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: In 96, Mark Martinez went 17 and oh.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, and uh it just a I mean unbelievable performance by by guys like that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: But Donnie was something.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: You got to have those those bell cows, you just have to.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every team I ever played on, that they were they existed because they were the ones that were gonna be able to take you beyond what you could even dream or hope for.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: So you have a great experience there in winning state.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: And tell us a little bit about how you ended up playing at the University of Texas next.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: When the when the season was over, Coach Magel said, Do you want to play, Mark?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to play in college?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, I really would.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, I can help you two places.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of surprised.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I can help you at Texas or Oklahoma.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't mention tech.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, Well, if I had to choose between those two, let's try let's try Texas.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So Donnie Moore and I they flew us down there to Austin to have lunch and to visit with Coach Augustafson.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in retrospect, Coach Augustafson really wanted Donnie Moore.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: He could have taken or leave it with me.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was not the reason.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he really wanted Donnie, and Donnie would have been the first African-American baseball player at the University of Texas in the history of that program.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that that happened until probably four or five years later, Jeff.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: But he really wanted Donnie.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and Coach Gus is recruiting philosophy.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: He he might go to San Antonio or to New Brunville's or maybe Houston to see a kid play, but he wasn't gonna get too far from home.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he relied on scouts, pro scouts, to say, well, this kid can play or this guy can't play.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess I got a little bit of an endorsement from the scouts to send down here.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a I got a partial scholarship and was thrilled to do.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think he probably regretted when I thought he said, Yeah, Mark's not gonna take this.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when I said yes, he probably went, Oh no, what am I gonna do now?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a wonderful experience on the plane ride back with Donnie.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I knew good and well.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He says, well, that was enjoyable.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but I'm going to, you know, he'd gotten drafted, didn't think apparently he wasn't gonna sign with Boston, the Red Sox organization, so he said, I'm gonna go to Ranger Junior College.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly enough, that next year, his freshman year at uh Ranger, they win the National Junior College Championship.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he pitched probably in of the seven games, I think he pitched in five of them in the in the World Series format that they had, unbelievable.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: And not surprising.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, then goes on pitching the majors.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Big league league career.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: You um, you know, don't play much, I think, your freshman year, and then end up playing more and more as you go along, and you you win, uh help Texas win their first uh national title in the modern era in 1975.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: What do you remember from that experience?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that it was it started off a little slow, Jeff, for me.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even get a uniform my freshman year.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was catching bat and practice, throwing bat and practice, and and uh he had recruited two other catchers, one from Lufkin and one from Dallas, and both were better than I was defensively.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I I knew I was gonna have to find another position to play, and so he he put me in the outfield and and there were good players there.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: That the the the strength and the frustration of playing at UT is this.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great opportunity, but if you're in the lineup, you've got to kind of produce because there's somebody sitting on the bench that's as good or better than you are, that he'll just move.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he was very he took a very professional approach.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of similarities between Coach Magel and Coach Gus, but but Coach Gus treated that like a double A or triple A ball club, and uh if you couldn't play, we're gonna find somebody else who did.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew good and well in my situation, if I didn't if I didn't get a hit or produce or get a hit at least a hit or two, I knew I probably wasn't gonna play.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: There was gonna he was gonna skip a game for me.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Other other guys that were the day-to-day, the regulars, he would he'd give some deference to, but I was having to I I kind of had to prove myself regularly, and that was uh that was okay.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a wonderful each year he gave me a few more opportunities, a few more opportunities, really about uh a third of the way through the season my sophomore year, he finally gave me a chance and got a couple of hits and a couple of hits, and then I was kind of in the mix, and that it took off from there.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: I know that you you spoke very fondly of all three of these gentlemen, but the opportunity to be raised by Reb Griffin, play for Coach Magel, who's one of the all-time winningest high school baseball coaches, Coach Guffison, who set tons of records on the c collegiate level, that's a pretty neat pathway for you.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for sure.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine playing for better baseball men than than Coach Magel and Coach Gus.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: E they each had their respective strengths.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the similarities was was the the emphasis on fundamentals.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: We would and we had guys that we knew were gonna well out of my class, uh four out of the eight recruited played at not just uh professional baseball, played at the big league.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: In the big leagues.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So these guys were they they were talented and yet uh Coach Gus took nothing for granted.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fundamentals just like Coach Magel and you he would just work and work and work.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: We got we'd get one day off during fall training to go to the Texas OU game.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, it was six days a week of playing baseball, intersquad and doing fundamentals.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So not only were we there's there was a talented group, but we were fundamentally sound.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember my dad say making this remark early on.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Mark, just the precision and the way that y'all just take infield before the game.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You're three runs ahead of anybody before they even start, because they look at you and say, we can't beat these guys.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time that was correct.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it but two two different gentlemen uh but similarities, neither one of them were known for nurturing.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were they took it very they were very professional in how they did it, and you either performed or you didn't.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and they they were steeped in the fundamentals.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Coach Megel out of the cardinal organization, and I think uh I think Coach Gustafson came, I think he may have played the cardinal organization too, believe it or not.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they were well versed in fundamentals and took a lot of the spring training tips and implemented them into preparing you to to play to the very best your ability.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a high level of expectation at Texas.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: They had the reputation, so there was uh there was the performance level needed to be at a at a high level.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: And this was we were a little bit removed from the NIL era back here, right in the in the mid-70s.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: And so you were going to school, wanted to go to law school.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: What were you majoring in?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was I had the I had the the most worthless major was I was political science major because I knew, Jeff, for some reason, going down there, I just knew I wanted to go to law school.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't I didn't have visions if it worked out beautiful, but I didn't have visions of playing professional baseball.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if it worked out beautiful, but I was gonna go to law school and if I was gonna do that, I had to have good grades to get in school, so I needed to be take something I was interested in.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, you talk about that NIL deal.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm so glad it wasn't in effect, it'd have cost me a fortune to play down there because I was gonna have to pay people, you know, to play, probably.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that was uh I would have had the reverse NIL probably in my situation, but academically, you know, great.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this the school academically was really good and and um a few too many TAs I had that were trying to get their master's or doctor instead of professors, but if you got in with a a true full professor, you were gonna get you were gonna get some uh a good education.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I had the opportunity to re ha to study with some fascinating and fabulous teachers.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: You meet your wife?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, met Claudia down there as a sophomore.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: She I it was it wasn't a blind date, but uh one of my dear friend's teammates, his sister was in the same sorority as Claudia and decided she was going to try to set us up.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we Claudia and I got off to a kind of a rocky start.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: We had we had one date after a baseball game, and uh I'd had a pretty good day that day.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: We played a doubleheader, and I was kind of tired.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we go out to dinner and and uh I I take her home and I'm dropping her off about 9 or 9.30.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is just when the kids are girls are coming out of the dorm to go out, not come in.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking at you, what are you doing?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he just dropped me off and said, and so she she broke about the next two or three dates, Jeff.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: She I don't guess she had a bunch of ants die on her or something.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happened, but but she was it we got off to kind of a rocky start, but I finally, I guess I just wore down.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but uh just a beautiful lady, and uh I'm I'm honored to be uh to be married to her, but it was a great experience.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I never and as the only girl I ever dated in school.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: You you graduated.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: University of Texas, come back here, go to law school, eventually get Claudia here.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us about that little transit.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was an interesting little scenario.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was we got married halfway through when I at law school's three years, so a year and a half in at semester break, New Year's Eve of 1977, we get married.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: She got out of school and immediately went to work for Eastern Airlines, no longer in business, but she was a flight attendant for them and based out of Miami.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we I really would see her maybe once every two or three months, maybe.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so this long distance relationship, I think, was a struggle more for her than it was for me, because I was preoccupied with law school.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we we end up getting married over the over the semester break, and she goes back to Miami to finish flying.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in retrospect, she should have just stayed there till I finished law school because she comes back here, doesn't know anybody, and I'm at the library from either in class or in the library from eight till about midnight.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: I come home to eat dinner, and then I'm gone again.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't know anybody.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What am I doing here?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of ridiculous.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't I wouldn't have blamed her, but she hung in there.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh now, having raised her family here, Jeff, I don't think you could, I'm not sure even a court order would be effective getting her out of here in that.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And her first time ever come here was like a big dust storm.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was horrible in high school.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: She came out here to visit Look at Tech, and she lands in a dust storm.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: She'd never been out here before as a young adult, and everything was brown, and and then she had some day with a cowboy and a pickup truck.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think she'd ever even been in a pickup before.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: She she called her mom and said, Look, I'm never coming back to this godforsaken place.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And on our wedding night, her mother slips her a little note, and and it's those words quoted specifically, you know, knowing she was going to end up in Lovick, Texas.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: Y'all have three beautiful children, Laura and Emily and Jeff, and raised a great family here.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's that's been a great, this is a great place to raise a family.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would put it.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I have you know, I've I've not been to other places.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have probably you've traveled more than I have or lived in other places, but I can't imagine a better place to raise a family than Lubbock, Texas.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: So you got your family going, get Claudia here.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Before you decide to transition into the family business, you know, you did pass the bar exam and you're an attorney.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a miracle in and of itself.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: What is your claim to fame as an attorney?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's uh my legal career was about uh consisted of about four years of primarily litigation, trying lawsuits, but I I had my I'd gotten my license and I was had it for about six weeks.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the the senior partner in the firm, we were going to try a criminal case that we were appointed on.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: This guy couldn't afford it, so it was a court appointed, and uh we go and try the case, and the the senior partner, he he we pick a jury and he cross-examines the first witness, and then he says, Mark, I got a hearing.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: You need to take it from here.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he had not warned me about that, he had not told me about that.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: So once I put myself up off the floor, you know, and start doing this, it was it was excruciating, Jack.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't like he gave you a winning case.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they had pictures of the guy.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was a lay down.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And John Monford, Chancellor Monford was on, Senator Monford was on the other side because he knew this was a laydown case.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we get through it all, and the jury's out about 17 seconds, long enough to elect a foreman take a vote.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they they give him life because this was his third felony conviction and under state statute at that time.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: The jury only had two options if you were found guilty, 50 years or life.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they opted for life on this guy.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I'm shocked they didn't send another note out to the judge saying, Hey, can you give that young lawyer about 30 days?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: He needs some work.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that well, that wasn't very good.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But so I my claim to fame is my first client got life, and that was the high point of my legal career.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: So four years in, yeah, you you decide to go to your dad and want to transition to the family business, running truck stops, and we'll get into the growth of that business.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: But what spurred that decision?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think I don't know.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think the Lord moves in mysterious ways, Jeff.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can say that, because I was not disenchanted, but the law practice was not what I had envisioned, especially what I was doing.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't miserable, but I wasn't getting a sense of fulfillment that I'd hoped.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And part of it was my own fault, I'm sure.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I looked up and I said, David's gone.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: None of the girls are in the business.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: If he gets hit by a bus, we are in trouble here.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, you know what?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna go see if I can go to work with him.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I I went in and said, Dad, I'm I've I'd like to transition out of what I'm doing.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can I come to work?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I asked him for a job and he he he agreed, and uh best decision ever made.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh got to work with my dad every day for 40 plus years and learned a lot from him.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I learned what to do, and frankly, from him I learned some things I wouldn't do.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and it that's just the nature of the relationship, but it was the best decision ever made.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we were we were building the truck stop chain, we were freight liner dealers, we had uh wholesale fuel business and lubricant business.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So he was he was stacking those bricks up on the on the on his wall of of accomplishments and business.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a thriving, going concern when I got there.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had it had nothing to do with building it out.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it it was going, and so it was a real education for me.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was still able to use a lot of my legal training to help.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did all the contracts.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I even tried a couple of cases, represented the company, and did a little better.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: At least I didn't have to serve hard time on those, but uh did a little better and and it was just fulfilling.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they were we had our rough patches just because of the we were, for example, freight liner dealers in Odessa, Texas, and the crude goes to six dollars.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had these autocar trucks, big.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: These were strictly designed for the for the oil business, for the oil patch, and for the and the boy, those were sitting out there, and that floor plan interest was running.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it there was some financially tough days, but my dad would, he had found a way.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: He he could find a way, and I learned a lot about resilience under in that situation.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in uh ultimately we grew the business, sold the truck stops in 2005 to a public company.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then about five to seven years earlier, I'd started another wholesale fuel company with fuel terminals, shipping on the pipelines to the west out of the Gulf.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we we had terminals in Phoenix and Las Vegas and Lubbock, and so we were building another business paralleling the truck stop business that I was really more engaged in at that point in time, and ended up selling that in 2019.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it was been a it was a fun experience, a wild ride in some respects.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: You said some of the growth, you know, just such, you know, unbelievable growth and you know, doing something over here.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: We're we're counting on this over there, managing cash flow, I think, is what you were really talking about.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and and yes, managing it down to the minute.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: We we dad was well versed in about when those checks were gonna hit the bank, and we would can we'd cover them, but it it was they probably had uh they probably had 30 seconds to spare and the money was there.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it was he he was he he had his sight set on what he was gonna do, and many times he we would get a little ahead of ourselves financing-wise, and he'd just go ahead and start the project out of the petty cash box instead of having some interim or permanent financing, and we'd ultimately get it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: But boy, those were interesting days building those things.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it was uh I loved the way I loved his concept, and I think it resonated with uh the traveler on the interstate highway.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: The true entrepreneur.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, because that's we work with business owners here at Mass Rider Capital, and lots of people have great ideas and all of that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: But really, I mean, until you experience those types of things, my uncle used to call it signing both sides of a paycheck.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Until you sign, until you write yourself a paycheck and until you endorse your own paycheck, really don't quite grasp the magnitude of what it's like running a business.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and people, I think those who are truthful with themselves say that those relationships and the people you surround yourself with are really your greatest assets in in any, whether it's a family business or a public business.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and dad was very, very, very astute, I think, in in in the way his hiring practices, but he had this heart.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many guys he gave second or third chances to to come back and try again, you know, and that was that was not lost on me, Jeff.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, you do these divestitures with the truck stop, and then your wholesale field business, which was wildly successful as well.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: And um, you know, do that, you know, towards COVID and all of that, and then, you know, embark on transitioning really the Rip Griffin companies into more of a family office, a legacy, you know, business with a foundation, all those types of things.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Talk to us a little bit about that transition and what that's been like.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that it's been this has been a it's really been a lot of fun.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been I can't I guess, Jeff, not the day-to-day pressure that you would feel in running that type of an operation, a little more stabilized, if you will, and predictable to some degree.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought when we sold those businesses that that my responsibilities to my brothers and sisters were gonna go away.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the way my dad had the estate plan set up, I guess I'm gonna work for him for the rest of my life.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: He had me trustee on some of the trusts and my brother and I, and then we just by just by nature of the fact that we were we were handling the businesses, uh, we started this family office and son Jeff, I recruited him.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: He he was a lawyer and had been practicing law in Midland and was at a firm in Fort Worth, and these transactions were coming on.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, This is gonna be a this would be a great education if he's interested.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Jeff, I'd love for you to come work with me just and start with these transactions because they were fairly sophisticated, Jeff, and complicated.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, he's gonna get a great education on this.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love for him to be with me.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't sure what his answer was gonna be.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Dad, I this is the this is what I always wanted to do.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that was I excelled on that one, and it's been it's just been so much fun and and working with you guys, the experience, the opportunities that that would with credible people of integrity to be able to build your investment portfolio in partnership with guys that you think the world of, you and Dusty, that's just been fantastic.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: It really has.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I appreciate it.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: We we think the world of Jeff, you know, it's been great working with him and uh look forward to working with him for many years to come here.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh one question I do want to ask is like you have the unique perspective.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've worked with several family businesses and I work with a lot of investors that are either family offices or or whatnot, and they're you know passing it on down to the next generation, but you have the unique perspective that you did work with for your father and with your father for 40 years, and now you're in the you're in his role and Jeff is in your role.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm curious what your perspective is on that and how you go about doing that, probably feeling a little bit the way Rip used to feel, but also not wanting to forget how you felt when you were the son.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm curious what your thoughts are there.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you you can't have those experiences and not be changed or influenced by them.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this the aspect of dad's his patience with some people, not with everybody, don't get me wrong, but his patience was not lost on me in that regard.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: His his risk taking measured, but still risk.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't he wasn't risk averse, I'll just say that.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's played a little bit of a role, but then also trust, Jeff.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at the end of the day, he he when he was riding off into the sunset, and it was difficult to get him off that horse.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell that's another story.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But he needed to be, uh but the trust he had in me is what I'm trying to impart to Jeff that that I I trust him.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that has plays a meaningful role in any young person's life.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: If they feel the trust of the person they're working with or for, I think it it enables them to do things that they may not have ever thought they were even capable of.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that's a big word in in in our family and in this family business relationship is the trust factor.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_03: Coaching them a little bit, you know, back to an athletic day of like you know, Coach Magel expecting you to that you could be something that maybe you didn't even think you could be at that point in time.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can say that for sure for me.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, me too.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh digging a little deeper here, you know, past your experience, like who are some of your early mentors besides the three people that we've talked about, and what do you what did you learn from them?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously uh coaches, teachers have profound impacts.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there was there's four people that have been influential in my life, and I'll start, I'll start with the obvious one.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't live and work with a fella, my dad, without being influenced by him.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I took all the good that he did and was able to distill and filter out some of the things that I I remember telling myself, I I I respect dad for doing it, but that's not the way.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: If it's if when I get to be, if I'm in charge, we're probably gonna do it a little different way.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a knock on him as much as it was through our experience I was developing my own set of uh of strategies and persona, if you will.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So my dad.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Coach Megel and Coach Guskin were profoundly influential on me.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they gave me a chance, they trusted me, they knew what they were doing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: But Jeff, you know this too.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you're successful, you see the world differently.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: You don't you know it's challenging, but you've also been successful, so you have a certain error not arrogance, not ego, but a certain confidence.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I I've been through this.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I can figure this out, we're gonna figure this out and get it done.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: You and I both were in those experiences and they change you.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: They do.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not trying to be egotistical about it, but when someone trusts you and has confidence in you, yeah, it it it it stays within you and it influences you and impacts you in every facet of your life.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then one more.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go for it.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: My third grade teacher, Mrs.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thelma Laughlin, Roscoe Wilson, I was to say I was a struggling student was an understatement.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: I my first grade teacher told my mom, he said, I I'm not sure he can make it in the second grade.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he can move up.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom, in true Geneva Griffin fashion, said, Look, I got four other kids at home.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I can't stand, he can't, he ain't gonna stay here one year longer than I then he needs to.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're moving him.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care what you think.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he if he flunks out of it, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna blame it on you, but you ain't holding him back, please.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: I you gotta do it for me because I to preserve my sanity.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: But third grade, I was really struggling.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one day, Miss Laughlin, everybody said, Mark, would you stay after class?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh I'll try not to get emotional about this, but I I I was struggling.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Mark, sit down.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Listen to me.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen what you can do.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: You can do this work, you're gonna be okay.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to just relax and let it come to you.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be okay.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be okay.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was never the same after that.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: That those just the words my mom and dad could say it.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: That that you hear it out of one ear, but when you hear it from a different side, sometimes it resonates with you.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Miss Lyle always cherished that conversation with Miss Laughlin because she's the first person who said, I I believe in you, you can do it.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that that changed me.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: If it changed me.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's Lubbock ISD has had a ton of great teachers and great programs.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that you served the school district a a long time, and I'm very thankful.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: I had a little different route.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: I went to Honey uh elementary, went to Matthews.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's build I drove by the other day, building's not even there anymore.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, went to Evans, was an Evans Eagle, and then uh I'm honored A.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: Plainsman.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: We're very thankful for all of the teachers that you know supported my life as well.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: And they they have a bigger impact than they even imagine sometimes.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and that that's the reason you uh anybody, I think, if they're truthful with themselves, were shaped and formed by those teachers who took that extra care.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And my goodness, it's an honored profession that we've allowed our culture to compromise, and it's unfortunate, in my opinion.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't they their heart is not to be compromised, but they've forced them into it because of other things.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: But that's another conversation.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, at MRC, you know, we we focus on working with business owners and operating a lot of businesses and those types of things.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: What what are what are some of the lessons that you've learned specifically about managing people that you've learned in your times of operating these businesses?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you I think first of all, you've got to understand who you're dealing with, Jeff.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody's everybody brings some baggage with them to the job.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to understand the little nuances.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that you try to be everybody's dear friend.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can't afford to do that.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I I never, while dad would socialize with some of the managers and some of the office, his VPs and stuff, I never did that.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't I I respect him for it, but I felt like I needed to have an arm's length s uh relationship with them.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I didn't respect them and enjoy their company, but I just didn't see my style being that way.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you need to understand who you're dealing with and I think have an have the willingness, have the willingness to listen.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most on entrepreneurs are not, you know, they don't pride themselves on their listening ability, but the truly good ones are willing to do that.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: To set their ego aside a little bit.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Am I missing something here?
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: And to have trusted, I think it's important you have some trusted you got three or four people within your company that you can go talk to.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's very, very important.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't necessarily have to be at the managerial level.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I I know that I saw that through my dad.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and you need to be flexible.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: We probably had the first women general managers of truck stops in the entire country.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: The dad saw the value of these people.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: He knew they were ladies by nature, females, detail-oriented, and and we we did famously with with really good female managers.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was not he wasn't stuck in a sexist environment.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was willing to listen, willing to kind of change a little bit, maneuver to for the good of the customer.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: But boy, he was he was customer-centric, Jeff.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: They came first.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and we'd worry about everything else a little bit later, but we're gonna make sure we're gonna take care of that because we might not have a second chance.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Sticking on the business uh side of things, uh, you know, from an entrepreneur's perspective, what do you what are the the three qualities, and they may be the same qualities, you know, that you just you know mentioned, but what are what are the three qualities that make a great entrepreneur in your mind?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, I think resilience, you've got to have the ability to take a punch.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's coming.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming, whether you want it or whether you see it or not, you're gonna have to take a punch.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think secondly, you've got to be able, I think you've got to be comfortable with who you are.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's got to be an internal sense of integrity as to who you are.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: You bear you've got to be able to look in the mirror and be able to face yourself and take care of yourself too.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, I think there's got to be I've learned this over time.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: The value of patience, Jeff.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen overnight.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so many times the things I've tried to rush have ended up uh being worse than when they were before they before they before I started that even.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's those those would be three that I would I would say have influenced me as much as any.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying I'm perfect on any of those regards, but when I implement those strategies, I seem to do a little bit.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's hard for Christian people sometimes.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like I fight that too of like, I want something to happen on Jeff's timeline.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but you know what?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it doesn't always go that way, right?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: The good Lord has a timeline and it's gonna be on his timeline.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that that's right.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you need you've got to have that, I think you've got to have that resilience to be able to ride.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: You got to you sometimes you gotta stay at the party a little longer than what you thought, but at the end of the day, I think many times you see and and in time you understand that and you appreciate that, and you understand you you you you're comfortable with it.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're comfortable with it, at peace with it.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: Talking more about this area, you know, you went to, you know, lived in Austin uh for four years and then moved back, and you know, you've been here a long time.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: You've seen really a lot of change in Lubbock and West Texas, and really Lubbock, you know, truly becoming a big hub of the South Plains.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: I'm curious, you know, you know, it's a great place to raise a family, all that, but what are your thoughts on Lubbock and m looking forward from where we're at today?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: From a community standpoint, I think when I was when I was on the school board, it was it was very interesting.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Families would move into town and uh depending on what their level of interest was, if you for example, if they said, Okay, my son's really interested in baseball, we're gonna go, well, you go to Monterey, okay, for example.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And but the if they didn't have this mindset before they got here, it's not going to take them long to understand that this is a place and West Texas in general.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not singling out Lubbock per se, but West Texas in general is made up of people who are not who are not um braggadocious on their own.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: West Texas people do not toot their own horn very well.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they're just they have a certain reluctance to do that.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that they don't have confidence, it's not that they're not talented, it's not that they don't have integrity.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: But by nature, we just don't do that very well.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh the the bigger cities, there's other places where it's it's more prevalent and more prominent.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: But out here we just take care of our business and we expect everybody else to take care of their business, quite frankly.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not gonna we're not gonna brag about it.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that was one of the biggest transitions I felt like when I was on the board at tech.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: That I said, we need to tell our story.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to be taking a back seat to anybody, but that's not our nature.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciated that.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: You could I don't know how many handshake deals my dad did.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: As a lawyer, I said, Dad, we need a contract.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Eh, we don't need that.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: The guy gave me his word.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know him, we're gonna go do it.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Quick story if I can.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: We had the Whisperwood development out north of town there, off of 4th Street.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and we struggled in that development.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: We thought we knew what we were doing, we didn't know what we were doing.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so Delbert came by, he and Rip were friends, and they came by and said, We Mark and I want to buy this.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so he brought Mark over for a meeting at ha at the at the office, and he says, Mark, you and Mark go in the other office.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Delbert and I will we'll be out in a little bit.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this nice conversation, and Mark is like, I can only imagine what's going on in there.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: 15 minutes later, so okay, we got a deal, we'll close tomorrow, Tuesday or Wednesday the next day.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a million-dollar deal, and we closed without a contract.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: And of course the title company was beside themselves.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we got a contract.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can't do this if they have to figure out a way.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we'll scratch something out.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: They did it on a handshake.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that was, I still think uh our culture has not allowed us to do that, but I still think West Texas people are capable of it.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great on a handshake, and and that means something, I think.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's I think it is indicative and a characteristic of this area of the state in which we live.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, to that point, I mean, Texas Tech specifically is telling their story a lot now on a on a national stage and and and doing that not only in sports, but in academia and the medical center.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's a great time to be a red raider.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: And and the two go hand in hand with Lubbock and all of that.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I know you served two to two terms on the Texas Tech System uh Board of Regents, and then the last one, you know, finished up your your career there as the chairman of the board.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: What are some of your memories of serving on that board and and what what was that like?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the you're I think you your the biggest indicator for me was the leadership style.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Ted Mitchell was the chancellor.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: He was a physician by nature, so you knew he had some some detail to him.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: But what he did was implement a culture there, Jeff, that was that resonated with me and appealed with me, appealed to me, and I think impacted the board profoundly.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: We had a culture and we there was some integrity, there was gonna be honesty, there was gonna be community, and we were not going to compromise on those.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it impacted our decisions.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: We had to make some hard, some hard decisions while we were there.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and sometimes as chairman, you've got to do some things that that's maybe impacts you more, but i it's it's for the good of the of the the group.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say this, Jeff, I've served on a number of boards and that board I served on my last two years, it was the finest board I've ever served on in my life.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: In my life.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I I just can't find anything to compare to it.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the the honesty, the integrity, the character of the people we got to serve with, and it manifests itself, I think, in some of the things we were able to do because we trusted each other.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a we had a leader who was saying, let's go, let's go do this.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so Dusty was a part of that.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think in many ways he was the North Star of that board.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I just uh it was just uh uh I was honored to be a part of that.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: It really was in a time when we were able to do some things and get some stuff done and have friends and partners that would say, come on, we can make this happen.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: Dusty's commented a time or two too.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a really unique board in the sense that you have usually made up of a lot of people that have made decisions for their businesses and that you come together to make a unifying decision.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: It may not always be unifying decision, but um sometimes there is checking ego at the door, sometimes there's not.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: But but it's a it's a really unique uh situation.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got, like you said, you've got eight other people who are successful in their own right.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you as chairman, you've sometimes you've got to kind of meld and mold and kind of bring these coalitions together with varying degrees of interest and varying degrees of success to get to the higher calling.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: What is the higher calling?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: What's the ultimate decision that we're trying to get to here?
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: You may not agree with it or may have problems with it, but is it for the best, is it in the best interest of the institution?
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we had great leadership on the campus level.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our presidents, President Skuvenek, uh at Angelo State, at the Health Sciences Center, at Midwestern State.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: We had quality people leading the charge, and that makes when you're not having to manage them, Jeff, that gives you the freedom and and liberates you to do things that that are for the best of the whole institution because you're not having to manage around a personality.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, you're exactly right.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: The one more thing I want to mention, you know, you and David Alderson started the Alderson Griffin Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll hear the story one day on how Alderson got his name in front of yours, but but we don't have to do that today.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: But what what is the what is the mission that you're trying to serve there for the university?
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: David and I had a common vision, and and it just happened, it was by happenstance.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: We were we were at the country club.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: We had had a downtown development meeting, and David was meeting Lisa and Claudia was meeting me at the country club for dinner.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: We we didn't we weren't together.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw him and said, let's go over there and sit down and have dinner.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well I sit down and David says, Mark, I want to share something with you.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this vision.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he started laying out the big for this family business center and entrepreneurship.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, David, that's what I've wanted to do.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had spent a week in the mid-80s at the Wharton School and at the University of Pennsylvania on succession in the family business, and it was so profoundly impactful to me.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I get out, I said, if I ever can do it, I'm gonna, at the academic level, I want to expose kids, not to run them into the business or run them out of the business, but expose them to the business and the dynamic of dealing with a uh an entrepreneur.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Their mom or dad, their uncle or aunt, their grandma, their grandpa, whoever it is that found her, because there's a certain dynamic there.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a so there's there's a certain psychology there.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think David and I, growing up in the family businesses, we saw that.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, I said, okay, what are we looking for to find?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, I'm gonna do this.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to raise this.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, I got the other half.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we shook hands on it, and uh it's it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: David's a he's a great partner, and tech has been a great vessel for us to be able to develop this.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, I couldn't be prouder of that organization and the guy we've got running it at the at the school level and what the beauty of it is, while it's housed in the business school, we are getting kids from all over campus, architecture, performing arts, engineering, that are coming into these classes.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a certificate program where they can learn and understand the dynamics of family, and they get to hear from business leaders like you that can talk about the family business and what it's about.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't be more happy or thrilled.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: When you're just getting started, too.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it is y'all have had some wonderful speakers there, and I mean it's been I just uh that program, what it's gonna look like in 10, 15 years is gonna be off the charts.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: We want to be a resource.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not just in West Texas, not just in the tech system.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be a resource way beyond that for people looking to say, I've got this family business, I can't even talk to my kids about it.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or my kids are saying, Dad won't listen.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't understand dad what he's doing, and we bring them together and and in a granted, academic, but there's a lot of practicality too, because we bring in speakers who come and talk the practical aspects.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's always going to be that academic side, but we want the practical side too, and I think if we can blend those together, we've got something special.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, appreciate all your thoughts and stories.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're such a fantastic storyteller, but we do have one segment to go.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: Are you ready to enter the around the horn?
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sitting down.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, these are these are quick hitters.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them might not be quick hitters, but you haven't seen any of these.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna come out of the gate swinging here.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_03: So get you a little drink of water here as we get started.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if if if I cut your forearm with a knife, are you gonna bleed red and black or burn orange?
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_03: Red and black.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a terrible ex-student.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was I enjoyed my time down there, Jeff.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was wonderful.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have traded it for the world, but that was not me.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I was ready to go.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had I made some of my dearest friends, teammates, friends still dear, lifelong friends together.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: Special time.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm proud of my time there.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: But Lubbock is my home, and Texas Tech is my school.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: Where's your favorite place to travel to?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I t where I can go, and Claudia says, Mark, you're different down here.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a place at Horseshoe Bay and a lake house down there, and I really enjoy down there because I can just kind of turn it, turn it down, turn the volume down a little bit and exhale and and relax, and I've got good friends.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: David Alderson lives right across the street, has a house right across the street from me.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that when I first got the house, but that that would be if I had to put someplace consistently that I where I like to go, that's where I that's where I love to go.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: Golfing's great, great restaurants, close enough to Austin to see some of my friends, but I can get out of there too.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_03: What is one talent you wish you did have?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: And you got a lot of talents, but what's one maybe that you wish I would I wish I was better uh math-wise.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I was never a good math student.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh people ask me why.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't know, but I said, because of my personality, I acted out a lot in class.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, it's hard to learn algebra standing out in the hall.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say that.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I wish I was a little more schooled in math, and I wish I'd have stayed playing the piano.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: My mother, my mother started with piano lessons, and the the uh there was a bay window, and here I am with Mrs.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Webb, and there's there's this big bay window at her house when I'm and I'm trying to play Swans on the Lake and learn my scales.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: And here my two, I had two dear friends that they did it to antagonize me.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: They'd get a football or a bay, and they were just playing catch right out there in front of me and just making me watch it while I was while I was taking less.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally I said, Mom, can I can I move on from?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: We don't use the word quit very often, but I said, Can I move on from fianoless?
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I just beat her down.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: She's I wish she'd said no, you're gonna stick through this, because I think I would have enjoyed being able to play an instrument.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: What is one thing people would be surprised to know about you?
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoy teaching Sunday school.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm I'm at a at a church in a class right now where I teach three three Sundays a month, and out of the four, and uh it does me more good than it does them, but uh I might not strike somebody as being somebody who likes to do that, but I just I've done it for a long, long time, and it's uh it's a part of kind of who I am, and like I said, I get more out of it than I'm pretty sure than anybody sitting there listening to me.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_03: You were telling me, you know, preparing for this, that you actually you you enjoy going and listening to other sermons and exploring that and looking at a researching, and they don't really give you a curriculum, you just come up with your own curriculum, but you really enjoy doing all of that.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: But but I also to quote that noted philosopher Bum Phillips, everything I know I learned from somebody else.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a that's a blessing to me and it does me more good.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's uh if you're gonna be, if you're gonna call yourself a believer, uh maybe you ought to be engaged to the full extent.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess that's maybe it's it's not out of guilt, but I I I sure get a lot of satisfaction out of it.
• 1:00:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's your uh what's your favorite tech memory?
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna you're gonna think this is really weird.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: This was back in the Coliseum days, and uh Tech was playing Texas at the Coliseum and was behind by I don't, there was two minutes left, and they were down by 10.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: So my friend, Steve Kreyer, who's a UT alumnus, we say, uh, let's go down to the Brookshire Inn, or not Brookshire, but uh they're on Broadway and go just go get something to eat.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: This game's over.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going by there and we're going, we leave the game early and we're listening to it on the radio.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: And tech starts pressing and they start catching up, and they start catching up.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then they end up beating them.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was an overtime, but they end up and they were down by 10 points with less than two minutes to go, and they end up winning the ball game.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and I got a lot of quiet satisfaction out of that.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: My uh my friend Steve was a little more devastated than I was.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I that the how weird is that?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that's kind of a favorite memory of mine.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really is.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've had so many experiences, but that's one that kind of sticks out in my mind.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, all of the victories against them are a lot of fun.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: I remember as a kid, we at Tech won uh in triple over time, 128, 125 in the Coliseum.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you remember that game or not, but that was crazy.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was wild, and the Coliseum was, you know, it was like sitting in your living room watching a ball game, very compact, and the atmosphere was unbelievable.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's unbelievable at the Spirit Arena, too.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it's really we've been in there 25 years.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: I know it.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: I know it.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to believe.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it is, it really is.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's that's a t that's a tech memory that I have.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: We last question here on this.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta give me a great Coach Magel story.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: People want to hear a good Coach Magel story, so give us one that we can tell on the podcast.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this one.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I I I'm gonna try this one and we'll see.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: Donnie and a couple of other guys, one of one of the Saturday nights had gotten decided to go out, and they ended up in a club.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: And at least one of them was another baseball player, and may have been another friend, maybe been two players, I can't remember, but they get into a scuffle and Donnie throws a guy through a plate glass window.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, I don't know if they call the cops or any somehow they Coach Magel's aware of it, and so he calls the guys in and he he throws one of the guys off the team, the book the another baseball player off the team, not Donnie.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not, I wasn't there, so I don't know all the facts.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I heard.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: So about 30 years later, we're at a baseball reunion, and I'm saying, Coach, what do you do you think you made the right decision there on that?
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he and he goes, Well, Mark, uh, I may have thrown the wrong guy off the team, you know.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: But he was Donnie was not going short of you know getting indicted for murder.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was going to be on the team no matter what.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: But and the second one was this we're getting ready to go play Houston Bel Air, state championship game.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: Been a rain delay, and we were kind of edgy and antsy, ready to get going.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he gets us all in the dugout, and he goes, Well, you guys, I don't know if we got a chance or not.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all just go do the best we can.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, everybody was mad, pissed off the way he we don't have a chance.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and a lot of us thought, like, maybe we did have a chance, but that was just his motivation.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was his, you know how he was.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, we were we were ready to run through a brick wall just because he had insulted us, how we felt like by saying that.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_03: He had a weird way of it wasn't weird, it was just his way of getting the whole team to band together basically to to defeat him in a way, you know, to to make you play your best and all of that.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: And it was it was awesome.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I uh I'll tell one quick story.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_03: Mark Martinez, our stud pitcher, our Donnie Moore, right the day before the regional final to see who was going to Austin, Mark does not come to practice.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: And me and a collection of four or five other people would always go throw bullpins, and Coach Magel would pretend to be interested when we would go throw a bullpen, but he he really didn't care.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was I I don't think that's the case.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I went down, I was the last one to throw a bullpen, and I was like, Coach, uh I finished my bullpen and I and I looked right at him and and I said, Hey, uh, Mark's not here.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what do you who's gonna pitch tomorrow with Mark not showing up for practice?
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_03: And Mark or Coach Magel goes, do you want to pitch tomorrow?
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, No, I'd really prefer Mark.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, if Mark's on the bus, Mark's gonna pitch.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh man, I was like, what a great answer, you know.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't a coach Magel story, but I can't I can't let you go without sharing this one with you.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh your daddy will will vouch for me on this one.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: But uh a couple of our players, I'm not gonna name names, but the decided after we won the state championship they had somehow found somebody and they bought a few uh a case of beer.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they were hiding it in the in the bathtub of their hotel room and Coach Dudley comes by to check or on a checked on us to make sure we were in the rooms and everybody was there, but but they had covered it up or pulled the curtain or something.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they didn't quite finish the beer.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they were a little tight fisted.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they just put what was left in their suitcases.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: So here's this beer sitting in and all of a sudden we're driving back from Austin on a bus and it's a little warm down in the the the bowels of the bus and about Slayton.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden we start hearing this pop, pop, pop, pop.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well it was the beer exploding in this guy's suitcase.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we get I said, oh this is going to be fun.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we get off the we get off the bus and one of the players says hey Mark would you go would you go ask Coach Dudley a question or Coach Mayo, I need them distracted for a second so I can get my suitcase.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he goes and grabs his suitcase and he's running to his car and this stream of fluid is flowing out of the back of his suitcase.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there was a lot in uh I don't think there was a lot of beard left by the time he got in his car.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that was that was a fun great story.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah that's that's great.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we he didn't coach Magel we had to tell him about he had no idea and and that was another one of those 30 years later when the statute of limitations is run, you know that we could tell him about it.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah no he's been great.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well mark I really appreciate you joining today.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_03: You've been a been a been great for for the heights of victory you've been great for Mass Rider.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_03: Really enjoy working with you and Jeff and thank you for all you've done for this community and for Texas Tech and I know the people out here will gain a lot from today's episode.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_03: So we appreciate you being here.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's an honor to be here thank you.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_03: Mark's a great story his family is a great story and he and the companies they built with Rip Griffin companies and now their family office as they carry on the the Griffin legacy and we're just really appreciative for Mark to be here today to share his his wisdom with us.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_03: If you have a comment you can leave it below or you can send us an email at the heights of victory at massrider dot com.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_03: We really appreciate you tuning in for today's episode and we'll see you next time on the Heights of Victory