Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: The Ruben

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The Fifth Hour: The Ruben · The Ben Maller Show

0:01
Speaker 1: Kabooms.
0:02
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
0:05
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
0:09
Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
0:13
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
0:16
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow, it's the clearinghouse
0:20
Speaker 2: of hot takes. Break free for something special. The Fifth
0:23
Speaker 2: Hour with Ben Mahler starts right now in.
0:29
Speaker 3: The air of rewhere The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
0:35
Speaker 3: Mahlor and you there were hanging out side by side
0:38
Speaker 3: on this two hundred and sixth day of the year.
0:41
Speaker 1: There are one hundred and fifty nine days to go.
0:45
Speaker 1: On this episode of the Fifth Hour, we have the
0:48
Speaker 1: Great Chair Caper and the Ruben among other things. But
0:54
Speaker 1: we're gonna begin with this before we get into all
0:58
Speaker 1: of that. The holidays. It is Culinarians Day today. What
1:03
Speaker 1: the f is that one of these made up holidays
1:06
Speaker 1: to celebrate the art of cooking. Now, the idea I
1:11
Speaker 1: am told behind culinarians Day is to celebrate the chef,
1:16
Speaker 1: because often if you go out to eat, you will
1:19
Speaker 1: compliment the waitress at a restaurant or the person giving
1:23
Speaker 1: you the food, not the actual person cooking the food,
1:28
Speaker 1: the soux chef or the person back in the kitchen.
1:30
Speaker 1: So this is an opportunity to celebrate the culinary arts,
1:35
Speaker 1: the chef's kiss to the actual chef. It is also
1:37
Speaker 1: the day of the Cowboy today, the fourth Saturday in July,
1:42
Speaker 1: which today is the day of the Cowboy. Now, I
1:46
Speaker 1: don't have any fun facts about cowboys, other than the
1:48
Speaker 1: fact that the Code of the West, which I often reference,
1:53
Speaker 1: comes from cowboys live each day with courage. Take pride
1:57
Speaker 1: in your work. That's a big one. Always finish what
2:01
Speaker 1: you start, do what has to be done, all of
2:04
Speaker 1: that stuff. There's ten principles of the Code of the West.
2:09
Speaker 1: The most important are take pride in your work, finish
2:12
Speaker 1: what you start, do what has to be done. Those
2:15
Speaker 1: are the most important parts. And the ride for the
2:17
Speaker 1: brand right also important. It is National Carousel Day today.
2:23
Speaker 1: The Merry go Round as it is often called, otherwise
2:27
Speaker 1: known as a carousel and perfect for the summertime, right
2:31
Speaker 1: July twenty fifth today. The holiday occurs every year at
2:36
Speaker 1: this time and nobody knows about it. Now. The term
2:39
Speaker 1: carousel and marry go Round are interchangeable. They claim that
2:42
Speaker 1: in the United States, most people use the term carousel.
2:46
Speaker 1: I use merry go round. That's how I do it. Now.
2:50
Speaker 1: The fun fact on this, for alf the Alien opiner,
2:53
Speaker 1: is that carousels have been around since mid evil times,
3:00
Speaker 1: remember medieval times. They just thought they were living their life.
3:03
Speaker 1: They didn't realize they were living in medieval times in
3:05
Speaker 1: Europe or in the Middle East. But that's exactly what
3:09
Speaker 1: they were doing. And they say that the carousel or
3:13
Speaker 1: the merry go round was actually used as a training
3:15
Speaker 1: device in combat. That the knights from the Middle Ages
3:20
Speaker 1: would use carousels to practice jousting and swordsmanship, and they
3:24
Speaker 1: would hone their skills for battles in different competitions, and
3:29
Speaker 1: they would sit on a horse. Figurines would be going
3:34
Speaker 1: round and round and round and round, and they used
3:36
Speaker 1: their swords to swing at objects that were spinning around
3:43
Speaker 1: the carousel. And it wasn't until eighteen sixty one when
3:49
Speaker 1: Thomas Bradshaw who unveiled the first steam powered merry go
3:55
Speaker 1: round in England, and then in eighteen seven and he
4:00
Speaker 1: went ten years later, a guy named William Schneider received
4:03
Speaker 1: a United States patent for the modern merry go round design.
4:08
Speaker 1: He is considered William Schneider, the father of the modern carousel.
4:14
Speaker 1: Now often there are brass rings. Back in the old days,
4:19
Speaker 1: there were these brass rings above the ride. And did
4:23
Speaker 1: you know the legend is and I don't remember this,
4:25
Speaker 1: it wasn't around, I guess in my life. But if
4:27
Speaker 1: writers managed to grab and pull the ring, they were
4:31
Speaker 1: given an extra ride for free, for free. And there
4:35
Speaker 1: are only about twenty carousels left in the United States
4:39
Speaker 1: and the world that have that brass ring setup. So
4:45
Speaker 1: do what you want with that. Now we flip the page.
4:48
Speaker 1: It is Saturday. It is the Life of Malor, a
4:51
Speaker 1: tradition on this podcast. Now radio at its essence, and
4:56
Speaker 1: I know this is a podcast, its same concept. It's
4:59
Speaker 1: theater of the mind now, as I have pointed out
5:02
Speaker 1: in previous episodes, and I've gone out and met listeners
5:05
Speaker 1: to the podcast and the radio show, and some of
5:08
Speaker 1: you people, some of you people, have this whole alternative
5:12
Speaker 1: reality for me. You think you know how my day unfolds.
5:16
Speaker 1: You imagine a glamorous lunch at a high falutin restaurant
5:21
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills, right off for Dale Drive meetings with
5:24
Speaker 1: network executives, a photo shoot. Limo ride, or at least
5:29
Speaker 1: a car service, a Hollywood powered dinner with movie studio moguls,
5:34
Speaker 1: where everyone says things like, let's circle back on that.
5:39
Speaker 1: We'll get back to you on that. That whole thing. Yeah, well,
5:41
Speaker 1: I just show up. Everything's done for me. I don't
5:43
Speaker 1: have to prepare for the show. I have a staff
5:46
Speaker 1: that works all day, puts the show together, that doesn't
5:50
Speaker 1: show up a minute after the show starts and says
5:52
Speaker 1: what are we doing today? No, in your world, I
5:55
Speaker 1: have everything done for me because I'm the big star.
5:58
Speaker 1: And that's it. Now the reaction is I steal chairs
6:02
Speaker 1: while steals the right word I rescue. I rescue chairs.
6:06
Speaker 1: There is a difference, a big difference.
6:08
Speaker 2: Now.
6:08
Speaker 1: Recently, I was driving the Malormobile down a long, winding
6:13
Speaker 1: road back to the north Woods after another overnight excursion
6:18
Speaker 1: into the industrial complex of sports talk. Nothing exciting, just
6:23
Speaker 1: another commute, pasted hundreds of billboards for ambulance chasing lawyers.
6:28
Speaker 1: The Malormobile, which has more miles than some regional airlines
6:33
Speaker 1: at this point, lumbering along la la la la la
6:37
Speaker 1: d Now we know each other so well that the
6:40
Speaker 1: car and I have this bond. There's this kinship. There
6:45
Speaker 1: it complains. I ignore it. It's a healthy relationship. Now,
6:48
Speaker 1: as I turned onto one of the streets in the hood,
6:53
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, I spotted what can only be described
6:57
Speaker 1: as a curbside estate sale. I don't know how else
7:00
Speaker 1: to describe it. There was not one, but two leather
7:03
Speaker 1: sofas you had dining chairs. There were some end tables,
7:08
Speaker 1: odds and ends, all that stuff. And it was standing
7:13
Speaker 1: there like unemployed actors waiting for someone to give them
7:17
Speaker 1: one last chance on the big screen. And then I
7:20
Speaker 1: saw it. I saw it right there, the sign for glory,
7:24
Speaker 1: not the sign from the previous episode, the sign flour
7:27
Speaker 1: glorious letters on this piece of paper, this white piece
7:30
Speaker 1: of paper. And it started with an F and then
7:33
Speaker 1: there was an R. Can I get to ease? Free? Now?
7:36
Speaker 1: There are words that can change your life. Love, win
7:41
Speaker 1: and win and winter vacation, refund full refund Yeah, free
7:47
Speaker 1: though free is the keyword. They're free is undefeated. Free
7:50
Speaker 1: makes perfectly rational people behave irrationally. You'll drive twenty miles
7:57
Speaker 1: to save four dollars and have a smile on your face.
8:00
Speaker 1: You'll stand in line for an hour because someone promised
8:04
Speaker 1: a complimentary cookie. Even though you don't like oatmeal raisin.
8:08
Speaker 1: That's all they have. You take it because you waited
8:10
Speaker 1: online for an hour. You'll convince yourself that a bowflex
8:14
Speaker 1: from a twenty oh one infomercial, which you probably will
8:19
Speaker 1: never use, somehow belongs in your garage. Your garage because free.
8:25
Speaker 1: That was a good infomercial back in the day. I
8:27
Speaker 1: had twenty five years ago, that bowflex infomercial. It's free.
8:31
Speaker 1: If it's free, it's for me. That's practically family scripture.
8:35
Speaker 1: At this point, it is the law of the land.
8:38
Speaker 1: Now I should point out, I should point out that
8:42
Speaker 1: I was not looking for furniture. I was not. In fact,
8:45
Speaker 1: I would say, we don't have room for furnisure. We
8:48
Speaker 1: don't need furniture. We have too much furniture. And I
8:51
Speaker 1: would say, also, nobody wakes up on a Tuesday morning saying,
8:54
Speaker 1: you know what would really improve my life today, random
8:58
Speaker 1: neighborhood chairs or a sofa. But once free enters into
9:05
Speaker 1: the chat, well, need becomes irrelevant, need leaves the building.
9:12
Speaker 1: Need gets replaced by opportunity. The chairs knew this, I
9:16
Speaker 1: swear they did. They looked at me, They practically nodded.
9:19
Speaker 1: Ben we've been waiting. I said, really, you're talking to me. Yes,
9:24
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you. Really, you in for me. We'll
9:27
Speaker 1: wait for you. Come on, big guy. So I immediately
9:31
Speaker 1: contacted the wife. I sent her a text. I said, hey, honey,
9:36
Speaker 1: good news, great mitzvah, free furniture down the block. Now.
9:43
Speaker 1: She didn't even consider what this meant. She didn't look
9:48
Speaker 1: at it. There was no glance, there was no follow up.
9:52
Speaker 1: She didn't ask any questions. She didn't ask how many,
9:57
Speaker 1: what shape they were in. She didn't match, She didn't
10:00
Speaker 1: ask where they matched, what we have in the house,
10:03
Speaker 1: or they match each other? Just two letters n oh,
10:09
Speaker 1: one syllable, no conversation, O V E R. So I
10:15
Speaker 1: tried again. Of course, I said, listen, actually looks pretty nice.
10:17
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie here. The same response, one syllable No.
10:22
Speaker 1: I said, there's leather sofas, you know, expensive leather sofas
10:25
Speaker 1: are there in pretty good shape. No, how about the
10:28
Speaker 1: dining room chairs. Come on, those is pretty good. Those
10:30
Speaker 1: are high class. No, we don't even have to rent
10:34
Speaker 1: a truck. I point out, no, no, no, no, no, no,
10:38
Speaker 1: no no no. Now, if you're a marriage, married person,
10:41
Speaker 1: you know a married dude. Anyway. I don't how women operate,
10:43
Speaker 1: but married guys know, and I've learned this over the years.
10:46
Speaker 1: It's largely marriage is one person proposing a idea, which
10:52
Speaker 1: is often ridiculous, and then the other person preventing them
10:55
Speaker 1: from doing the idea. And normally she's got a pretty
11:00
Speaker 1: good batting average. She's like a softball player hitting seven
11:03
Speaker 1: hundred or something like that. Usually, So I let it go.
11:08
Speaker 1: Except I did not let it go because every time,
11:13
Speaker 1: and this happened to for a few days, I drove
11:15
Speaker 1: by those chairs when I'd go to the store to
11:18
Speaker 1: pick up some fruits or whatever. They were still there, waiting, patiently,
11:23
Speaker 1: almost mockingly. You'll be back, they whispered, you'll be back.
11:29
Speaker 1: We're waiting, We're ready for you. And so a couple
11:32
Speaker 1: of days went by. My wife eventually, of course, drove by,
11:35
Speaker 1: and she finally noticed them. And then she knows them
11:39
Speaker 1: again and again, curiosity, generally speaking, undefeated, and sure enough,
11:47
Speaker 1: eventually she broke. You always know the moment. It's subtle,
11:53
Speaker 1: it's you know, we could probably use a couple of
11:57
Speaker 1: those chairs, I said, a couple a couple an hour earlier.
12:03
Speaker 1: They were radioactive contraband, and now if probly use a couple,
12:10
Speaker 1: now their possibilities. So this is where you must remain calm.
12:14
Speaker 1: You cannot celebrate, You cannot measure the drapes, yet you
12:18
Speaker 1: cannot spike the football. You do not say I must
12:24
Speaker 1: stress this. By all accounts, you cannot say I told
12:27
Speaker 1: you so. That will kill the vibe. Those words have
12:33
Speaker 1: never improved a negotiation in a marriage in recorded history.
12:38
Speaker 1: So instead I casually replied, oh, my own, one syllable
12:42
Speaker 1: word oh, with a question mark at the end, very understated,
12:46
Speaker 1: like I'd completely forgotten about the chairs. That was worthy
12:50
Speaker 1: of winning an oscar for my performance. Then more hesitation,
12:53
Speaker 1: and I don't know. What if someone wants them, they
12:58
Speaker 1: could get better use out of them than us. What
13:00
Speaker 1: if they're damaged, Maybe they're damaged, they've been sitting outside
13:05
Speaker 1: for a couple of days. What if they're uncomfortable? What if?
13:07
Speaker 1: What if? What if? What if? What if? What if?
13:10
Speaker 1: It's like the old Mike Marts thing. Yeah but yeah
13:11
Speaker 1: but yeah but yeah but yeah but what if somebody
13:13
Speaker 1: wants them? Yeah but what if they're damaged? Yeah but
13:15
Speaker 1: what if they're uncomfortable? Yeah but yeah, but yeah, it
13:16
Speaker 1: they abit rabbit, the yeabit rabbit, yab at rabbit. So
13:20
Speaker 1: my wife a wonderful woman. She also enjoys conducting roughly
13:25
Speaker 1: six months of market research before making a five minute decision. Now, meanwhile,
13:33
Speaker 1: I'm over here operating on the costco sample philosophy of
13:38
Speaker 1: the world. Looks good, let's go. So another half a
13:45
Speaker 1: day past I came home from the FSR compound. It
13:51
Speaker 1: was around four in the morning, maybe closer to five.
13:58
Speaker 1: Nothing really moves at that time of the morning except
14:02
Speaker 1: some raccoons. Raccoons are always working overtime. They really are.
14:06
Speaker 1: There was a skunk, a rogue skunk looked like it
14:09
Speaker 1: was a union skunk. The neighborhood was silent. The chairs
14:14
Speaker 1: were still there. They remained. So I asked my wife
14:17
Speaker 1: one final time. I said, do you want this is
14:19
Speaker 1: likely your last chance? Someone's going to pick them up.
14:21
Speaker 1: I'm shocked no one's picked them up. She delivered the
14:24
Speaker 1: classic non answer answer, I don't know translation. The decision
14:32
Speaker 1: had been delegated to me, to me without actually saying it. Now,
14:41
Speaker 1: us a man, we know exactly exactly what that means,
14:46
Speaker 1: and you know what I'm talking about. So we said,
14:51
Speaker 1: let's go with OCR. What is OCR. That's Operation Chair Recovery.
14:57
Speaker 1: It officially commenced. The key to any successful after midnight
15:02
Speaker 1: furniture mission is confidence. If you run, guilty with a
15:09
Speaker 1: capitol G. If you sneak, you're not guilty, right, but
15:14
Speaker 1: you look guilty. That's the problem. So if you confidently
15:17
Speaker 1: carry a dining chair, you can't run, you can't sneak.
15:21
Speaker 1: Even though you're not guilty, you look guilty. So if
15:23
Speaker 1: you're confidently carrying a dinner chair down the street at
15:27
Speaker 1: four thirty in the morning, apparently nobody questions it because
15:31
Speaker 1: most of them are all sleeping. So I started with
15:33
Speaker 1: one chair. This was a reconnaissance mission. Reconnaissance mission on
15:38
Speaker 1: the flight log. I carried it home down the block.
15:42
Speaker 1: Here I am middle of the night, early morning, quietly,
15:45
Speaker 1: no scraping, no banging, no drama. Now the chair and
15:50
Speaker 1: I worked beautifully together, good solid teammate, well made chair.
15:56
Speaker 1: Cost a lot of money. Whoever bought this originally retail?
16:00
Speaker 1: And I then presented it to my wife, I said, madam,
16:05
Speaker 1: here is the chair. She inspected it like she was
16:07
Speaker 1: working on an episode of PBS's Antiques Roadshow, sat down
16:13
Speaker 1: on it, looked underneath ran her hands across the wood,
16:19
Speaker 1: and then the universal sign thumbs up, thumbs up, not
16:24
Speaker 1: buns up, thumbs up. That's all I needed, and it
16:28
Speaker 1: was game on green light, go back outside. Chair number
16:32
Speaker 1: two done, Chair number three? Can I have a fourth? Yes?
16:36
Speaker 1: Chaer number four like clockwork, not a sound, not one sound.
16:42
Speaker 1: If mission Impossible had a furniture division, I am now qualified.
16:48
Speaker 1: If the United States Navy Seals ever need someone to
16:54
Speaker 1: recover abandoned dining room sets under the cover of darkness
16:59
Speaker 1: in a d her zone, call me. I'm available. The
17:04
Speaker 1: chairs arrived home safely. Mission accomplished. Now, the next part
17:09
Speaker 1: of this story surprised me. The next part of the
17:11
Speaker 1: story surprised me. The next chapter. My wife loved them.
17:16
Speaker 1: She thought, well, these are great. You were right. You
17:18
Speaker 1: know when every time you get to your right, that's
17:19
Speaker 1: a big deal. When a woman says you're right, they
17:21
Speaker 1: very rarely say that, that's a big deal. She couldn't
17:24
Speaker 1: stop talking about. I'm like, this is great. You know
17:26
Speaker 1: how much these would cost? And we went on to
17:27
Speaker 1: the store and bought them new. Oh my god, they're
17:29
Speaker 1: they're as good as new. She then announced that they
17:33
Speaker 1: needed a small upgrade. I said, oh my god, what
17:37
Speaker 1: kind of fugazy nonsense are you going to come up with? No, No,
17:39
Speaker 1: they need they need some little touch up. I said,
17:42
Speaker 1: they're fine, they look good. They wouldn't the natural wood,
17:45
Speaker 1: they've got the lacquer on it. She said, you know
17:48
Speaker 1: what they need. They need to be painted. Oh, come on,
17:52
Speaker 1: and they just need to be painting. And she said
17:54
Speaker 1: how about pink? And I'm like, come on, what are
17:57
Speaker 1: you doing? A pink that screams across the room, a
18:01
Speaker 1: pink that says notice me. Now. Normally I would have objected.
18:07
Speaker 1: These are really good looking, classic wooden chairs. Just set it,
18:14
Speaker 1: forget it. It's your lucky day. These chairs are fine.
18:18
Speaker 1: They need nothing. Furniture does deserve some dignity. But you
18:25
Speaker 1: know what that means, free furniture. So if you get
18:27
Speaker 1: free furniture and it's got a second life, it gets
18:31
Speaker 1: a reboot, it gets a makeover, it gets a new identity.
18:35
Speaker 1: It's furniture's witness protection. Besides, the chairs had already survived
18:41
Speaker 1: several days outside in the elements. They could certainly survive pink,
18:47
Speaker 1: not that I'm a fan. And somehow, against all odds,
18:50
Speaker 1: they look marvelous, absolutely as terrific as pink chairs can look.
18:58
Speaker 1: Not a huge fan of the color, which leaves me
19:01
Speaker 1: with this random thought, this again is my life. By
19:06
Speaker 1: by night, I host that big sports radio thing, which
19:10
Speaker 1: very lucky, very blessed to have a show that's heard
19:13
Speaker 1: on six hundred radio stations. Pretty cool. By early morning, though,
19:16
Speaker 1: I am conducting tactical furniture recovery missions with the precision
19:22
Speaker 1: of military special forces. I'm an operative, is what I am,
19:27
Speaker 1: so if needed, the Mallo mobile can also become a
19:31
Speaker 1: getaway vehicle if I need to use that. My wife
19:35
Speaker 1: will man mission control. The raccoons will work as the
19:40
Speaker 1: neighborhood surveillance. The chairs now have found there forever home,
19:45
Speaker 1: at least until we find something better, also free on
19:48
Speaker 1: the side of the road and somewhere. The garbage truck
19:53
Speaker 1: drove by the next morning, wondering what happened to those chairs?
19:58
Speaker 1: Where are they? I'll never tell. Somebody did also pick
20:01
Speaker 1: up the sofas I wanted one, my wife would not
20:03
Speaker 1: allow me to get that. Although I suspect the chairs
20:07
Speaker 1: the chairs were the better option. They were. They were
20:10
Speaker 1: just grateful that someone finally listened to them and said
20:14
Speaker 1: the most beautiful words in the English language. Free. This
20:20
Speaker 1: is not the first time that I have picked up
20:21
Speaker 1: random stuff around the old house. During the pandemic, picked
20:27
Speaker 1: up a laundry cart. There was a rogue laundry cart
20:32
Speaker 1: that was on the side of the road, covered in
20:35
Speaker 1: trash and had been out there for a while. And
20:38
Speaker 1: I drove by that thing for several days and eventually
20:43
Speaker 1: got up the courage the Hutzba to take that laundry cart,
20:47
Speaker 1: place it in the back of the malamobile and take
20:50
Speaker 1: it home. And we used it until we moved to
20:53
Speaker 1: the latest Malor mansion, and we left it behind to
20:58
Speaker 1: give it a nice burial. It was a really good
21:01
Speaker 1: burial right there in a landfill, all right now, turning
21:05
Speaker 1: the page on that. A funny thing happened on the
21:10
Speaker 1: way to doing absolutely nothing productive. I learned about a
21:15
Speaker 1: guy named Ruben. Now, not that Ruben, not the sandwich,
21:21
Speaker 1: although for many, if you're ranking Rubens, the one with
21:26
Speaker 1: the corn beef, the Swiss cheese. Some like the sour kraut,
21:30
Speaker 1: the Russian dressing, the rye bread that for many is
21:33
Speaker 1: a championship sandwich. I'm not a big sour kraut guy.
21:36
Speaker 1: I like the corn beef, the Swiss, the Russian dressing,
21:39
Speaker 1: the rye bread. That's pretty good. Don't need the sour kraut.
21:43
Speaker 1: But not about that. This is another Ruben, a forgotten
21:46
Speaker 1: New Yorker who accidentally changed baseball history because he was
21:51
Speaker 1: stubborn enough to tell the New York Giants baseball team
21:56
Speaker 1: to pound sand. Now, if you listen regular to the
22:00
Speaker 1: Overnight showing, God bless you. If you do, you already
22:03
Speaker 1: know the name Ruben Berman. I talked about this the
22:07
Speaker 1: other day during the week because of the malor riddle
22:10
Speaker 1: of the day. Now, as the late great Paul Harvey
22:15
Speaker 1: used to tease, you're going to get the rest of
22:19
Speaker 1: the story, and naturally it all starts with me wasting time.
22:25
Speaker 1: You can blame the augo rhythm. So back during the
22:28
Speaker 1: pandemic when the world collectively forgot what day it was
22:33
Speaker 1: out of an abundance of caution, and you must socially
22:37
Speaker 1: distance and wear these masks and all that. Now I
22:41
Speaker 1: developed some unusual viewing habits. I wasn't baking sour dough bread.
22:48
Speaker 1: I wasn't learning Italian, I was not doing that, or
22:51
Speaker 1: Russian or Chinese. I wasn't making TikTok dance videos. Thank
22:55
Speaker 1: goodness for that. Nobody wants to see that. I started
22:58
Speaker 1: watching marble races. We talked about this. I was doing
23:02
Speaker 1: monologues on Marble races because we had the show. We
23:04
Speaker 1: had more listeners ever meet talking about marbles. I bet
23:07
Speaker 1: on the blue marble. Oh you should have bet on
23:08
Speaker 1: the red marb Why? Why should have been the red
23:10
Speaker 1: red marble? One? But I like the blue marble. What
23:12
Speaker 1: about the green marble? I don't know purple? Is there
23:15
Speaker 1: a purple? So it turns out it wasn't just me.
23:17
Speaker 1: Thousands of people apparently found marble racing compelling to watch it.
23:21
Speaker 1: Just a little glass ball roll down a course. And
23:25
Speaker 1: that was what we did during the pandemic. Now, looking back,
23:28
Speaker 1: cabin fever is not just to catch you phrase. It
23:31
Speaker 1: is a real thing. Now. At the same time, YouTube
23:35
Speaker 1: would be sending the other videos, and I started watching
23:38
Speaker 1: these ancient baseball games during the pandemic. I'm not talking
23:42
Speaker 1: about classic World Series games and no, no, no, Now.
23:45
Speaker 1: I had a rule. Okay, I'm not talking games. I
23:48
Speaker 1: had a rule. The rule was listen, all right. The
23:51
Speaker 1: way this works, if you know what the score of
23:53
Speaker 1: the game is. If in the YouTube description, they tell
23:56
Speaker 1: you the score, don't watch. If they tell you the score,
23:59
Speaker 1: don't watch because I don't want to know. I don't
24:01
Speaker 1: want to. To me, it's a brand new game. To me,
24:03
Speaker 1: it's a brand new game. I can go on Baseball
24:05
Speaker 1: Reference and look up the box score and see how
24:06
Speaker 1: the game turned out. I don't want to do that.
24:07
Speaker 1: I just want to watch a random Saturday afternoon game
24:12
Speaker 1: or a Monday night baseball game of the week from
24:14
Speaker 1: forty plus years ago that had somehow survived on VHS
24:18
Speaker 1: tapes stored in someone's garage, And so I watched those.
24:24
Speaker 1: And once the algorithm figures this out and it realizes, boy,
24:28
Speaker 1: you're kind of weirdo, it really leans into it. It
24:31
Speaker 1: really does lean into it. So fortunately, the Marble recommendations
24:35
Speaker 1: eventually disappeared. Once the pandemic ended, I stopped watching. The
24:39
Speaker 1: baseball games have not ended. I occasionally will fall into
24:43
Speaker 1: that trap. In fact, a few weeks ago, I was
24:45
Speaker 1: watching a Giant's Chicago Cubs game from Wrigley Field, and
24:51
Speaker 1: so instead of I'm on the treadmill right, I'm on
24:53
Speaker 1: the treadmill, the latest rabbit hole I dropped into. I'm
24:56
Speaker 1: on the treadmill, and instead of watching the clock and
25:02
Speaker 1: just minute by minute cardio misery, I clicked on the
25:06
Speaker 1: thing of a jig on YouTube. It was a game
25:09
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty five, forty one years ago. The Detroit Tigers.
25:14
Speaker 1: That's a baseball team. The California Angels. That's also a
25:17
Speaker 1: baseball team. He had Jack Morris, Kirk mccasko on the mound.
25:21
Speaker 1: It was a day game on a Saturday afternoon, sun
25:25
Speaker 1: soaked ninety plus degrees at the Big A. And immediately
25:29
Speaker 1: I transported back to being about eleven years old, and
25:33
Speaker 1: I was like, WHOA. They did a whole baseball broadcast.
25:37
Speaker 1: Vin Scully did not mention pitch clocks, exit v low.
25:42
Speaker 1: There were no ghost runners, there were no replay reviews.
25:46
Speaker 1: There was no strike zone challenges sponsored by SO and so. No,
25:54
Speaker 1: there was no sensory overload with three six hundred and
25:59
Speaker 1: eighty three advertisements on screen and in the background. In fact,
26:03
Speaker 1: all they had at the Big A behind the home
26:05
Speaker 1: plate was a green It was like a green backstop.
26:09
Speaker 1: That's it. Rod Carew not a jew hit a home
26:13
Speaker 1: run for the As. Isn't that The Adam Sandlers song
26:16
Speaker 1: Lou Whittaker sweet Lou. He answered he had home run
26:21
Speaker 1: for Detroit. Alan Trammel played, Kurt Gibson, Chet Lemon, great names.
26:28
Speaker 1: Lance Parrish was the catcher, Sparky Anderson was the manager. Now,
26:31
Speaker 1: the game itself was entertaining enough, However, that wasn't what
26:38
Speaker 1: grabbed me. It was the presentation NBC's Game of the Week,
26:45
Speaker 1: Vin Scully Joe garagiolda, that is baseball comfort food. It
26:52
Speaker 1: just felt like a big event, a big old event.
26:55
Speaker 1: It was important, and it is a forty one year
26:58
Speaker 1: old baseball game. It's it's like the stadium was packed
27:02
Speaker 1: and like ninety nine percent of today's broadcasts are just
27:06
Speaker 1: rinky dink. It's a shame. Companies are cheap. They don't
27:10
Speaker 1: want to invest the money, the production value, and so
27:14
Speaker 1: you get a lot of slop, a lot of slop. Now,
27:18
Speaker 1: this is likely an age thing. I fully admit that
27:23
Speaker 1: it is a byproduct of living in the access age.
27:27
Speaker 1: You can get whatever content you want, whenever you want,
27:33
Speaker 1: and as much of it as you want. For me,
27:36
Speaker 1: listening to Vinsko, who I was lucky enough to know
27:39
Speaker 1: casually when he was doing the stuff at the end
27:42
Speaker 1: of his career with the Dodgers. But listening to Vin
27:45
Speaker 1: narrate a routine flyball, somehow he made it sound like
27:51
Speaker 1: Shakespearean reading. It was just great. And Joe Garagiola chimed in,
27:56
Speaker 1: He's like your favorite uncle who everyone loves. It was
28:00
Speaker 1: always smiling, and he had funny one liners, and he
28:03
Speaker 1: somehow knew everybody in the sport of baseball and all that.
28:07
Speaker 1: There was even the full NBC pregame show. Yeah, it's
28:13
Speaker 1: like a half an hour. That's back when networks actually
28:16
Speaker 1: treated baseball like an event instead of squeezing every second
28:19
Speaker 1: between gambling ads and all that. Now some part of
28:23
Speaker 1: the country got some parts of it, got the Tigers
28:26
Speaker 1: and Angels. Other viewers got regional coverage of the Twins
28:29
Speaker 1: in the Red Sox from Fenway Park regional television. Now,
28:34
Speaker 1: kids today will never understand you. Kids will never understand
28:39
Speaker 1: that world. Anyway, during the pregame show, as I was
28:43
Speaker 1: on the treadmill doing my thing, getting my steps in,
28:46
Speaker 1: they aired what probably seemed like a harmless little feature
28:51
Speaker 1: about foul balls, and that is where I was introduced
28:55
Speaker 1: to Ruben Berman. Until then, I had never heard that name,
29:01
Speaker 1: which is amazing because every single man, woman and child
29:06
Speaker 1: who's gone to a baseball game has benefited from the
29:10
Speaker 1: possibility of getting something because of Ruben Berman. He's like
29:13
Speaker 1: Santa claus So. Back in nineteen twenty one, Ruben Berman
29:17
Speaker 1: was a thirty one year old stockbroker in Manhattan. He
29:21
Speaker 1: attended a Giants game at the Polo Grounds. He caught
29:24
Speaker 1: a foul ball, pretty standard, except it wasn't. Back then,
29:30
Speaker 1: many teams claimed that foul balls belonged to the club.
29:34
Speaker 1: The ushers demanded that he handed the ball back. So
29:38
Speaker 1: imagine catching a ball. You're at a Twins game, or
29:41
Speaker 1: a Red Sox game, or wherever, Yankees, Cubs, you name it,
29:45
Speaker 1: and you get a ball, and then these security goons
29:50
Speaker 1: come over and they said, listen, you can't keep that. Congratulations,
29:55
Speaker 1: now give the ball back. And this caused a lot
29:59
Speaker 1: of problem. It caused fights. People would get into fights
30:02
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to give the ball back. Well,
30:04
Speaker 1: Berman wasn't having it. So instead of giving the ball back,
30:07
Speaker 1: surrendering the baseball, he threw it further into the crowd
30:12
Speaker 1: where nobody could recover it at the time. Now that
30:16
Speaker 1: is commitment or pettiness. Sometimes those are interchangeable, right, they're
30:21
Speaker 1: the same thing. So the New York Giants baseball team reached,
30:26
Speaker 1: reached into the bag of Adduchnis. They reacted with all
30:30
Speaker 1: the restraint you'd expect from people who apparently believed baseball's
30:33
Speaker 1: were national treasures. So this is nineteen twenty one. Nineteen, yeah,
30:39
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one. So they detained Ruben Berman, They dragged
30:46
Speaker 1: him into a back office, they threatened him with arrest,
30:50
Speaker 1: they kicked him out of the stadium, they refunded his ticket. Basically,
30:55
Speaker 1: they treated Ruben Berman like he tried to steal the
30:59
Speaker 1: pitcher's glove instead of catching something that literally landed in
31:03
Speaker 1: his hands. So Berman did what many New Yorkers eventually do.
31:09
Speaker 1: He lawyered up. He hired a lawyer, and he sued
31:12
Speaker 1: the Giants for twenty thousand dollars. I said, well, that's
31:16
Speaker 1: not that much money. Twenty thousand dollars in nineteen twenty one. Today,
31:22
Speaker 1: that's enough money to buy half of parking space in Manhattan.
31:28
Speaker 1: With inflation, it's about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
31:32
Speaker 1: So he sued for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
31:35
Speaker 1: Now Rubin claimed humiliation, unlawful detention, emotional distress and damage
31:43
Speaker 1: to his reputation. Now, the New York Giants baseball team
31:46
Speaker 1: argued they could throw anyone out at any time because
31:49
Speaker 1: of the tiny fine print on the back of the ticket.
31:55
Speaker 1: The judge didn't buy that story at all, not all
32:00
Speaker 1: of it. He bought some of it because Berman did
32:02
Speaker 1: win a decision. He won one hundred dollars. Now one
32:05
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in those days, not very much, not very
32:09
Speaker 1: much about eighteen hundred dollars in today's money. That's not
32:14
Speaker 1: exactly retired to the French riviera money. However, the damage
32:20
Speaker 1: done from that incident was much more valuable than one
32:26
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. He won the principal, and sometimes the principle
32:30
Speaker 1: is worth more than the payout. You see that the
32:33
Speaker 1: Giants got absolutely killed. There were like twenty newspapers at
32:37
Speaker 1: the time. There was no internet. All the newspapers apparently
32:40
Speaker 1: ran stories about this Giants team and they lost in court,
32:44
Speaker 1: and so the Giants quietly abandoned their policy, and then
32:50
Speaker 1: other teams followed, and eventually, eventually baseball embraced the idea
32:55
Speaker 1: that if a fan catches a foul ball, it's theirs.
32:58
Speaker 1: Simple added bonus and add on item A little perk,
33:04
Speaker 1: A little perk. Now today it is one of the
33:06
Speaker 1: great traditions in sport. Parents dream about it, kids bring
33:10
Speaker 1: gloves hoping for it. Adults suddenly transform into linebackers when
33:16
Speaker 1: baseball heads towards their baseball comes at them. So I
33:22
Speaker 1: actually did that. I don't have time to get into
33:23
Speaker 1: it here, but I have great stories. I'll have to
33:25
Speaker 1: do that in a future episode of the podcast. When
33:28
Speaker 1: I was in high school, when I first got my
33:30
Speaker 1: driver's license, I was like fifteen and a half, and
33:34
Speaker 1: I would scramble. I lived close to the Big A,
33:38
Speaker 1: not near Dodger Stadium, and I would head out there
33:40
Speaker 1: all the time, and I'd always get there early for
33:42
Speaker 1: batting practice and I'd get so many baseballs. It was awesome.
33:45
Speaker 1: And I had all the tricks, all the tricks of
33:48
Speaker 1: the trade I learned. I learned, and it was just great.
33:51
Speaker 1: It was just great. And you've seen it. If you've
33:55
Speaker 1: been to a game, maybe you've gotten a foul ball.
33:57
Speaker 1: You grandma getting boxed out. That's funny. Six year old
34:01
Speaker 1: loses the baseball, starts crying, and then a man in
34:07
Speaker 1: his fifties got the ball, and that guy is public
34:12
Speaker 1: enemy number one. Some guy wearing cargo shorts suddenly believes
34:16
Speaker 1: he's Pete Crow Armstrong tracking a fly ball without Ruben Berman.
34:22
Speaker 1: That grifter. This is his name, Zach Hampell. I believe
34:25
Speaker 1: he is a guy's name as I've heard it. He's
34:28
Speaker 1: a grifter. I don't know the guy, but he wouldn't
34:31
Speaker 1: have a career, all right. He's the YouTube guy who
34:35
Speaker 1: made a career from snagging over twelve thousand balls at
34:40
Speaker 1: baseball games. That's a lot of balls, including Mike Trout's
34:44
Speaker 1: first career home run, A Rod's three thousandth hit. Now,
34:48
Speaker 1: the retail value, according to the Google Machine retail value
34:55
Speaker 1: rollings Major League Baseball game Ball is thirty thousand dollars.
35:03
Speaker 1: And that's about three hundred and sixty thousand dollars in
35:08
Speaker 1: value today's money, which is kind of interesting because it's
35:11
Speaker 1: a little more than Ruben Berman sued the New York
35:16
Speaker 1: Giants for he wanted three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
35:20
Speaker 1: And the value of the Rawlings baseballs this guy has
35:23
Speaker 1: picked up face value. Obviously they're worth more because they're
35:26
Speaker 1: special balls. Three hundred and sixty thousand dollars. This guy's
35:30
Speaker 1: written books, or at least one book on how to
35:33
Speaker 1: snag baseballs. The guy is obsessed. However, for regular folk,
35:39
Speaker 1: when a ball goes into the crowd, civilization briefly disappears,
35:43
Speaker 1: and yet none of us ever question who owns the baseball.
35:48
Speaker 1: That's because of Ruben Berman. His son later pushed to
35:53
Speaker 1: have his father recognized by Cooperstown and the National Baseball
35:59
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame eventually did preserve the court records, and
36:03
Speaker 1: so Ruben Berman, a thirty one year old stockbroker in
36:06
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, long dead, long dead. His life, part
36:11
Speaker 1: of it, anyway, is saved for posterity sake in the
36:15
Speaker 1: hallowed hallways of Cooperstown, right next to the Bambinos bat.
36:20
Speaker 1: That's kind of nice. However, let's be honest. You're being
36:22
Speaker 1: remembered at four point thirty in the morning on a
36:25
Speaker 1: radio show or on a weekend podcast where we routinely
36:30
Speaker 1: discuss weird food, random trivia, dogs, vomiting mountains of pumpkin.
36:36
Speaker 1: That's the real hall of fame, mister Burman, that's the
36:39
Speaker 1: real hall of fame. And if you're listening to this, congratulations,
36:43
Speaker 1: you have now become one of the few, the proud,
36:46
Speaker 1: the brave people walking around with unnecessary knowledge that will
36:52
Speaker 1: probably when you absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing. Although it's possible
36:58
Speaker 1: that JT. The Wingman could walk in to an establishment
37:03
Speaker 1: somewhere in his town and somebody at the bar will say, hey,
37:10
Speaker 1: you know what's going on? Let's talk some sports. And
37:13
Speaker 1: then so I say, who decided the fans get to
37:17
Speaker 1: keep foul balls? Somebody asked that, and JT. The Wingman
37:21
Speaker 1: casually said, well, actually it was this guy, Ruben Berman,
37:24
Speaker 1: And can I get a beer? Sure? Why not? Here's
37:26
Speaker 1: a beer. Everyone will stare, somebody will accuse you of
37:30
Speaker 1: making it up. You'll smile because you know you're right.
37:33
Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of useless trivia. I love useless trivia.
37:36
Speaker 1: It has almost no practical value, and somehow it's incredibly satisfying.
37:42
Speaker 1: The funniest part is that I never would have found
37:45
Speaker 1: this story if the algorithm hadn't decided that I needed
37:50
Speaker 1: to watch a random nineteen eighty five baseball game between
37:54
Speaker 1: the Tigers and the Angels in order to survive forty
37:58
Speaker 1: five minutes on a treadmill. And that is the Internet
38:01
Speaker 1: in a nutshell. Now I have taken many shots at
38:04
Speaker 1: the matrix over the years. One minute you're trying to
38:08
Speaker 1: burn calories. The next you're learning obscure legal history involving
38:13
Speaker 1: the Polo Grounds from more than a century ago. And
38:17
Speaker 1: what's old becomes new again. Ancient television broadcasts become fresh discoveries,
38:23
Speaker 1: forgotten stories get another another swing in the batter's box.
38:27
Speaker 1: And man, this guy, Ruben Berman died in nineteen seventy five.
38:31
Speaker 1: It's been over fifty years, and here we are. He's
38:34
Speaker 1: getting talked about in twenty twenty six because I just
38:37
Speaker 1: happened to watch an NBC pregame show that survived being
38:42
Speaker 1: videotaped and got into the algorithm and they said, hey,
38:45
Speaker 1: algorithms said, hey, this guy seems like a big whack job.
38:50
Speaker 1: He's a whack adoodle. He'll appreciate this. And so the
38:53
Speaker 1: algorithm finally got one right. See the matrix is not
38:57
Speaker 1: all bad. Every once in a while he gets it right.
39:00
Speaker 1: And now Ruben Berman gets another moment to be featured
39:04
Speaker 1: and not bad for a guy who simply refused to
39:07
Speaker 1: give the ball back. That's the way to do it.
39:10
Speaker 1: On that note, we are going to get out of here,
39:12
Speaker 1: have a great rest of your Saturday, and we'll have
39:15
Speaker 1: a brand spanking new bail bag that'll be coming your
39:18
Speaker 1: way tomorrow. The Sunday mail Bag a staple. I already
39:24
Speaker 1: saw a couple of questions from Reggie one question per customer,
39:29
Speaker 1: one question per customer. Please, yeah, no't be sending to
39:33
Speaker 1: I think I saw out back John and Joanna. They
39:37
Speaker 1: sent a question in. So there we go. Anyway, have
39:40
Speaker 1: a great rest of your Saturday, and we will talk
39:45
Speaker 1: to you next time. As Dick in Dayton would say,
39:49
Speaker 1: bye bye, bye bye,