Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Cal Ripken Jr.

Transcript

Cal Ripken Jr. · The David Rubenstein Show

0:02
Speaker 1: One of the greatest baseball players ever is cal Ripken.
0:06
Speaker 1: He set a record for playing in two thousand, six
0:08
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty two consecutive games over seventeen years. He
0:12
Speaker 1: was an All Star nineteen times, a member of the
0:14
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, twice most Valuable Player in the American League,
0:18
Speaker 1: and also once.
0:19
Speaker 2: A World Series champion.
0:21
Speaker 1: I had a chance to sit down with cal Ripkin
0:22
Speaker 1: recently to talk about his current life working for and
0:26
Speaker 1: with Baltimore Orioles, a team that he made very famous.
0:29
Speaker 2: So it was said in baseball.
0:31
Speaker 1: That the unbreakable record was Lou Garrick's record of spend
0:35
Speaker 1: playing in two thousand and thirty games consecutively. Nobody thought
0:39
Speaker 1: that could ever be broken.
0:40
Speaker 2: You broke it.
0:41
Speaker 1: You played in two thousand, six hundred and thirty two
0:43
Speaker 1: games consecutively over seventeen years.
0:46
Speaker 2: Why did you do that?
0:49
Speaker 1: I mean, did you ever think if maybe taking a
0:51
Speaker 1: day off.
0:52
Speaker 2: Would be a good thing?
0:53
Speaker 1: Or so?
0:55
Speaker 3: You're not going to ask me what my secret was, right, Wow,
0:58
Speaker 3: I'll get that. I don't know if I have one.
0:59
Speaker 3: I mean, I love the game a lot. Your everyday
1:02
Speaker 3: player was to find in those years as playing every game,
1:07
Speaker 3: and it was an honor to be thought of and
1:09
Speaker 3: counted on each and every day by your teammates. So
1:12
Speaker 3: I had my dad, who was also a coach when
1:15
Speaker 3: I first came in, probably for the first eleven or
1:18
Speaker 3: twelve years of my career. And I think the real
1:21
Speaker 3: reason that I played is that I couldn't come into
1:25
Speaker 3: a ballpark and say you have turf toe where you
1:27
Speaker 3: stubbed your toe and say, okay, I might need to
1:29
Speaker 3: miss a game or two. I couldn't face my dad,
1:32
Speaker 3: you know, let alone the manager.
1:34
Speaker 1: Of the team like I've been, you know, working for
1:37
Speaker 1: many years, and I have not done seventeen years consecutively,
1:41
Speaker 1: going in every day. You know, you have a headache,
1:44
Speaker 1: someday you don't feel good. You never had a headache,
1:46
Speaker 1: no cold, nothing happened.
1:48
Speaker 3: Yes, all of those things that fight through it. You
1:52
Speaker 3: learn to play through different things, and you find out
1:54
Speaker 3: really quickly that I can still compete, I still can
1:57
Speaker 3: play even though I might be less than one hundred percent.
2:00
Speaker 1: Baseball was called the national pastime for a long time,
2:02
Speaker 1: but obviously other sports have taken a lot of attention
2:06
Speaker 1: away from baseball. Basketball and football, for example, do you
2:09
Speaker 1: still feel that Americans have a certain passion for baseball
2:13
Speaker 1: that is similar to what they had twenty thirty, forty
2:16
Speaker 1: years ago, or do you think it's really changed a lot.
2:19
Speaker 3: I think there's a deep love for baseball still in
2:21
Speaker 3: the country. And I see that the ripping baseball was
2:25
Speaker 3: a kids business that we developed experiential when you play
2:28
Speaker 3: tournaments and we teach and those sorts of things, and
2:30
Speaker 3: you can witness it right in front of you that
2:32
Speaker 3: the kids eight to twelve year olds feel the same
2:34
Speaker 3: way about baseball that we did. I think what's happened
2:37
Speaker 3: in sports overall is that there's specialization that happens earlier
2:42
Speaker 3: in the sports, and so you're not playing baseball, basketball,
2:46
Speaker 3: and football all that time. You're specializing really early on.
2:50
Speaker 3: So there's a lot less kids, I think that are
2:52
Speaker 3: playing baseball, but the ones that are playing are actually
2:56
Speaker 3: playing more of it because they play spring summer.
2:59
Speaker 1: And speaking of that, lots of pictures these days have
3:02
Speaker 1: elbow problems. They now get surgery called Tommy John surgery,
3:06
Speaker 1: and players have to take a year and a half before.
3:08
Speaker 2: They're really going to play again.
3:10
Speaker 1: Why are there there's so many pitchers and I seem
3:12
Speaker 1: to have this problems now and they didn't have as
3:13
Speaker 1: many of those problems when you were playing.
3:16
Speaker 2: Is it because they're playing.
3:16
Speaker 1: So young and they're throwing so many different kind of
3:19
Speaker 1: pitches that really hurt the elbow on the arm?
3:21
Speaker 3: Well, I think some of that is true because Tommy
3:23
Speaker 3: John surgery has come down even to like high school
3:25
Speaker 3: and sometimes kids younger than that. And I think some
3:28
Speaker 3: parents feel like, we'll just keep throwing and if it
3:32
Speaker 3: breaks or whatever else, we can always fix it and
3:34
Speaker 3: you'll come back throwing harder than you did before. I
3:36
Speaker 3: think that's the wrong way to look at it. But
3:38
Speaker 3: I think in the big legs, with all the analytics
3:41
Speaker 3: that go around, I think pitchers are chasing velocity more
3:45
Speaker 3: so there's more training for to get your arm stronger
3:48
Speaker 3: to throw the ball harder, but they let they're chasing movement.
3:52
Speaker 3: So there's two things that happen. If you throw a fastball,
3:56
Speaker 3: you get behind the baseball. But then when you try
3:58
Speaker 3: to make it move with the same power, you're torquing
4:01
Speaker 3: your your elbow or your wrist right at the end
4:05
Speaker 3: to try to make it move, to try to and
4:07
Speaker 3: then all these pressure goes right here. And I think
4:10
Speaker 3: a lot of chasing speed and chasing movement. The combination
4:14
Speaker 3: of those two is causing it.
4:16
Speaker 1: When a golfer is lining up a pott on a tournament,
4:19
Speaker 1: everybody has to be quiet.
4:21
Speaker 2: Nobody's throwing anything in his head. Why does he need
4:24
Speaker 2: to have so much quiet?
4:25
Speaker 1: But you're not allowed to talk or say anything when
4:27
Speaker 1: you're putting for five inches, But if somebody's throwing a
4:29
Speaker 1: ball at your head one hundred miles an hour.
4:31
Speaker 2: They can scream and yell.
4:32
Speaker 1: Why doesn't it seem much ass backwards?
4:34
Speaker 3: Yes? Yes, the uh It is interesting though, when you
4:39
Speaker 3: play in front of a packed house, it's just noise,
4:42
Speaker 3: you know, it's not you don't hear the individual things.
4:44
Speaker 3: I mean. In here in New York, I think the
4:47
Speaker 3: fans felt that they were part of the game, and
4:49
Speaker 3: so they were trying to get inside your head. They
4:51
Speaker 3: were screaming things out at you try to play a
4:53
Speaker 3: little mind game with and and if you beat them
4:56
Speaker 3: and you did really well, you know, it'd almost go
4:58
Speaker 3: ah caw see you tomorrow. It was all part of it.
5:01
Speaker 3: The Boston fans were a little different, is that they
5:03
Speaker 3: were they were more personal that if you beat them
5:05
Speaker 3: or whatever else, they'd hold against you for your whole life.
5:08
Speaker 1: You can challenge a call now and they go up
5:11
Speaker 1: to New York and they watch it on video and
5:13
Speaker 1: they make a decision there.
5:14
Speaker 2: You think that's good or bad?
5:15
Speaker 3: I like it, yeah, I mean because one play could
5:18
Speaker 3: turn the whole outcome of the game, and they have
5:21
Speaker 3: the technology to do it now. And I think what
5:23
Speaker 3: you're going to see in the next couple of years
5:25
Speaker 3: is some form of the robotic strike zone. You know,
5:28
Speaker 3: whether they're testing it in the minor leagues on a
5:32
Speaker 3: challenge system or like every third game, they just they
5:36
Speaker 3: have something in the year of the umpire and the
5:39
Speaker 3: robot or whatever calls the whole game based on when
5:41
Speaker 3: the balls on the plate. He just tells the guy
5:43
Speaker 3: what to do. And so they're testing those things out,
5:46
Speaker 3: and I think the challenge system might be good because
5:48
Speaker 3: a key pitch in the eighth inning with the bases loaded,
5:51
Speaker 3: you know, and it's called a ball or a strike,
5:53
Speaker 3: you know, the ball turns it in favor of the
5:56
Speaker 3: team that's got the bases loaded. A strike kind of
5:58
Speaker 3: gets them out of it.
5:59
Speaker 2: Professional athlete are idealized.
6:00
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to believe this, but they're like
6:02
Speaker 1: more than politicians, right, So athletes are really well liked
6:06
Speaker 1: and admired and so forth. But then when you finish
6:09
Speaker 1: your career, you have the whole different life. So you
6:12
Speaker 1: were tired at what age? Forty one?
6:15
Speaker 2: Pretty one?
6:15
Speaker 1: You played twenty years, twenty two years, twenty one years
6:18
Speaker 1: in the major leagues, and you were tired at an
6:21
Speaker 1: age that you know is old for a professional athlete,
6:25
Speaker 1: but young for somebody in private equity or something like that.
6:28
Speaker 1: So when you were tired at that age, did you say,
6:30
Speaker 1: what am I going to do the rest of my life?
6:31
Speaker 1: And what did you decide to do for the remaining
6:34
Speaker 1: ten next twenty years of your life?
6:36
Speaker 2: What did you do?
6:37
Speaker 3: So if you save your money pretty well, then you
6:39
Speaker 3: have choices, you know, and you could decide to learn
6:41
Speaker 3: how to play golf and like a lot of people
6:43
Speaker 3: do and kind of retire early.
6:45
Speaker 2: Are you a golfer?
6:46
Speaker 3: I play a little bit, but no, I could be
6:50
Speaker 3: pretty good.
6:51
Speaker 2: I think I have try a minutes for golf. That's
6:53
Speaker 2: what I do.
6:55
Speaker 3: So I looked at it as you know, you kind
6:58
Speaker 3: of get bored. How can you do that? I look
7:00
Speaker 3: at it as a second chance for a career opportunity,
7:04
Speaker 3: And so you look I wanted to learn business, and
7:06
Speaker 3: we bought minor league teams and so you could. It
7:09
Speaker 3: was a comfortable business model that you can kind of
7:12
Speaker 3: learn business that way, and that was kind of fun.
7:16
Speaker 3: At first, it felt like I gave I spotted everybody
7:19
Speaker 3: else twenty years ahead of me. I'm forty one, but
7:22
Speaker 3: it seemed like I'm twenty one. You know, in the
7:23
Speaker 3: business world, you come out and then you learn that
7:26
Speaker 3: a lot of the things you learned along the way
7:28
Speaker 3: in baseball can apply to your I mean, your worth, work, ethic,
7:33
Speaker 3: how you go about doing picture preparation, and all that
7:35
Speaker 3: kind of stuff that all applies to what you're doing now.
7:37
Speaker 1: So now that you're an owner of the Baltimore Orioles, well,
7:41
Speaker 1: how do you feel about these high price contracts that
7:44
Speaker 1: players are getting. Used to be a player, probably wanted
7:46
Speaker 1: higher price contracts. Now you're an owner, how do you
7:49
Speaker 1: look at that differently?
7:52
Speaker 3: Slightly? I try to think of what are the other
7:56
Speaker 3: other intangible values that you can offer a player besides
8:00
Speaker 3: the bottom line dollars because the bottom line dollars are
8:02
Speaker 3: so big now or whatever else that you can make
8:04
Speaker 3: a case you're saying, well how much? But I mean
8:06
Speaker 3: it's about ego, and it's about breaking the bank, and
8:08
Speaker 3: it's about agents wanting to continue to make it go
8:11
Speaker 3: up for other people that come through. But if you
8:13
Speaker 3: take my situation, was I wanted to play in one place.
8:19
Speaker 3: I wanted to have control of playing in one place.
8:21
Speaker 3: So I think if we get to a point where
8:23
Speaker 3: we're trying to convince one of our players to stay,
8:26
Speaker 3: you know, you want to try to tell them all
8:27
Speaker 3: the values that are associated with you know, Derek Jeter
8:31
Speaker 3: playing his whole career in a Pinstripe uniform, Me playing
8:35
Speaker 3: my whole career in the Orioles And what's that mean
8:37
Speaker 3: for you in the bigger picture? And hopefully they'll value
8:40
Speaker 3: some of that. But it's going to be a competitive
8:42
Speaker 3: landscape where we're going.
8:44
Speaker 1: To have to pay some excite And Baltimore is a
8:47
Speaker 1: smaller city compared to some of the New York.
8:50
Speaker 2: Los Angeles.
8:51
Speaker 1: Is that a big problem and you're in a smaller
8:53
Speaker 1: city in Major League Baseball?
8:56
Speaker 3: I think overall, I never liked the idea because you
8:59
Speaker 3: were a small market team you couldn't compete, Because I
9:02
Speaker 3: think competition is in your knowledge. You know you're drafting,
9:06
Speaker 3: you get the draft you get to sign players, you
9:08
Speaker 3: get to develop players. You know, that's not all free
9:11
Speaker 3: agency that's happening. But if you're a big market team
9:15
Speaker 3: and you make a mistake in judgment or a player,
9:17
Speaker 3: you can throw more money at your mistakes. When you're
9:20
Speaker 3: a smaller market team, you have to be better at
9:23
Speaker 3: your baseball decisions.
9:24
Speaker 1: So I played the Little League All Star shortstop and
9:28
Speaker 1: when I was eight to nine, and I didn't know
9:30
Speaker 1: whether I was going to get to the major leagues
9:31
Speaker 1: or not. When did you realize you were going to
9:33
Speaker 1: be better than someone like me? Did you realize that
9:35
Speaker 1: you were a little leaguer when you were a little leaguer,
9:37
Speaker 1: Did you really realize you were going to be really
9:39
Speaker 1: good enough to play in the major leagues?
9:41
Speaker 3: I knew pretty quickly. I grew up in around baseball.
9:46
Speaker 3: Dad was a manager of the minor leagues for the
9:47
Speaker 3: Oils in the first fourteen years of my life. So
9:50
Speaker 3: I went to work with my dad, you know, or
9:52
Speaker 3: as early as eight or nine. He put me in
9:55
Speaker 3: a uniform, was the bat boy. I shagged in the outfield.
9:58
Speaker 3: I had a chance to ask all the players, you know,
10:01
Speaker 3: how they did, how they caught the fly ball, how
10:03
Speaker 3: they swung the bat. So I had all these teachers
10:06
Speaker 3: in front of me, but I had the skill. You know,
10:08
Speaker 3: that was pretty obvious early on.
10:10
Speaker 1: Okay, so you played in high school. I assume you
10:12
Speaker 1: did very well in high school. Yes, okay, So you
10:15
Speaker 1: get drafted by the Orioles. And at what point, when
10:18
Speaker 1: you're in the minor leagues all the players played in
10:20
Speaker 1: the minor leagues for a while, did you realize you
10:22
Speaker 1: weren't just going to be an average player, you were
10:24
Speaker 1: really going to be a super player or did you
10:26
Speaker 1: not realize that in the beginning.
10:28
Speaker 3: Now I was seventeen. I was a second round draft
10:31
Speaker 3: pick by the Orioles. It turned to eighteen at the
10:34
Speaker 3: end of the summer, and so it was my birthday's
10:37
Speaker 3: August twenty fourth, So I was playing a couple of
10:39
Speaker 3: months before my eighteenth birthday. And when I first went
10:42
Speaker 3: away to play pro ball, you were pretty big fish
10:44
Speaker 3: in a small pond in high school. You thought you
10:46
Speaker 3: were pretty good, and then you go and all of
10:49
Speaker 3: a sudden, you're part of a team and you look
10:50
Speaker 3: around and no longer you're not the big fish anymore.
10:53
Speaker 3: There was one short stop by the name of Bob
10:55
Speaker 3: Bonner that came out of Texas A and M. He
10:58
Speaker 3: was like a sixth round pick for US that year,
11:00
Speaker 3: and I was taking ground balls and doing stuff with him,
11:02
Speaker 3: and he clearly was light years ahead of me. He
11:04
Speaker 3: had a better arm, he could field the ball better,
11:07
Speaker 3: he was quicker on the transfer, and I kept looking
11:09
Speaker 3: at him, going, I'm never going to play. You know,
11:12
Speaker 3: this guy's too good. I'm not that good. And they
11:15
Speaker 3: moved him immediately to Double A, so that which opened
11:18
Speaker 3: up the spot for me, and then I got my
11:21
Speaker 3: feet on the ground. I started playing pretty well and
11:24
Speaker 3: started hit a couple of home runs in my next year,
11:26
Speaker 3: and then I got to Double A and then I
11:28
Speaker 3: had a breakout season, and in two years I caught
11:32
Speaker 3: Bob Bonner and passed him to the big leagues. So
11:35
Speaker 3: he stayed the same and I got better.
11:37
Speaker 2: What year did he get into the Hall of Fame?
11:40
Speaker 3: I think he's a minister in Africa right now.
11:44
Speaker 1: So, speaking of the Hall of Fame, you were elected
11:48
Speaker 1: with ninety eight point five percent of the vote. Have
11:51
Speaker 1: you ever figured out who that person was that didn't
11:53
Speaker 1: vote for you? I mean, who is this person waiting.
11:55
Speaker 3: For I've hunted all five of them down. I think
12:00
Speaker 3: that my particular year, I think Marianna Rivera just went
12:03
Speaker 3: in one hundred percent right, the only one of the vote.
12:06
Speaker 3: And in my particular year there was a protest to
12:10
Speaker 3: vote where where five people didn't turn into ballot in
12:13
Speaker 3: that particular year as a protest to the steroid era.
12:16
Speaker 3: They said, well, and so they counted against you.
12:20
Speaker 1: Did anybody ever come to you and say, look, you're
12:21
Speaker 1: really good, but you could be even better if you
12:23
Speaker 1: take some of these drugs.
12:24
Speaker 3: They didn't try that, And looking back on it, you
12:29
Speaker 3: could probably see signs in hindsight that players that might
12:32
Speaker 3: have used. But when you're playing, if you're not in
12:35
Speaker 3: this secret society, you don't know. And I didn't know.
12:38
Speaker 1: So some players they were like one hundred and eighty
12:41
Speaker 1: pounds and then later there are two hundred and fifty pounds.
12:43
Speaker 1: You didn't suspect maybe they were doing something unusual. Yes,
12:51
Speaker 1: you're six foot four and traditionally shortstops were more my height,
12:57
Speaker 1: and when you came along, people didn't want people like
12:59
Speaker 1: me to be short stops anymore. So did you change
13:02
Speaker 1: the game of baseball by saying short stop should be
13:05
Speaker 1: big and better hitters?
13:07
Speaker 2: Or or is it going back to the.
13:08
Speaker 1: Old mode of speaking fast and good baseball steelers but
13:12
Speaker 1: not great hitters.
13:13
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of the shortstops, Derek Jeter being
13:16
Speaker 3: one of them, gives me credit for my success at
13:18
Speaker 3: the position as a bigger shortstop. That gave them opportunities
13:22
Speaker 3: that maybe otherwise they wouldn't have had. But I kind
13:25
Speaker 3: of think, Derek, you would have carved at your own path.
13:27
Speaker 3: But I did move from third to short I signed.
13:32
Speaker 3: I was six two when I came out of high school,
13:35
Speaker 3: and then I had a lake grospur. It almost grew
13:37
Speaker 3: three inches and I put on, you know, five to
13:40
Speaker 3: eight pounds a year. By the time I got to
13:42
Speaker 3: the Big Legs, I was almost sixty five to twenty
13:46
Speaker 3: and they had put me at third base. But then
13:49
Speaker 3: Earl Weaver had this vision that I could play shortstop
13:52
Speaker 3: and we'd be a better team if I went over
13:54
Speaker 3: to shortstop. So he one day just put me there,
13:57
Speaker 3: and and my success at the position as a bigger guy.
14:02
Speaker 3: Maybe it's like when I'm a basketball fan, I wish
14:06
Speaker 3: I could have been a basketball player, But I remember
14:08
Speaker 3: Magic Johnson changing the thought of a point guard at
14:12
Speaker 3: six y nine. He's sixty nine, all of a sudden,
14:14
Speaker 3: the advantages he had at the size. I think people
14:17
Speaker 3: started to understand that a bigger guy could play shortstop
14:20
Speaker 3: and second base. And today there's some of the more
14:22
Speaker 3: celebrated positions are contract.
14:25
Speaker 1: I think your highest compensation level six million dollars a year.
14:29
Speaker 1: Six million dollars a year. That's a good compensation level
14:33
Speaker 1: in those days, for sure, and today for the average
14:35
Speaker 1: person that's a great income. But today there are some
14:38
Speaker 1: players that are making two three four hundred million dollars
14:41
Speaker 1: over here yours one seven hundred million dollars. Do you
14:43
Speaker 1: ever think maybe you should have waited a little bit
14:45
Speaker 1: longer to play in the major leagues? And do you
14:47
Speaker 1: evergre at the fact that some people are making seven
14:49
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars and they're not likely, you know, be
14:51
Speaker 1: as good as you, So every.
14:53
Speaker 3: Day I think that, yes, No, it is really interesting
14:57
Speaker 3: is that I had a really good job. You know,
15:00
Speaker 3: I was a baseball player, and you got paid for it,
15:02
Speaker 3: and in the compensation, I was one of the early
15:05
Speaker 3: ones that broke a million a year, and then I
15:07
Speaker 3: got to two million a year, and then and then
15:10
Speaker 3: after the towards the end, you know, I was at six,
15:12
Speaker 3: but then it started going crazy, and you know, I
15:16
Speaker 3: look at it and I remember all the old players
15:18
Speaker 3: that said, you know, I wish that I would have
15:21
Speaker 3: played in that era. But I think the game evolves
15:25
Speaker 3: the business of the it used to be in baseball.
15:28
Speaker 3: I think we looked, at least I looked at myself
15:31
Speaker 3: as a sportsman. You know, maybe the value of the
15:33
Speaker 3: entertainment was in the collective where you're playing well as
15:36
Speaker 3: a team and you win and that's cool. Then all
15:39
Speaker 3: of a sudden it seemed to step over to I
15:41
Speaker 3: think a lot of players might think that they are
15:43
Speaker 3: entertainers now. So it's a little bit more than what
15:46
Speaker 3: you do in the field, and it's what maybe your commercials,
15:49
Speaker 3: things you do off the field. I think they see
15:51
Speaker 3: themselves differently.
15:52
Speaker 1: Do you think that's good to have the games now
15:54
Speaker 1: maybe two hours, twenty minutes or something like that.
15:56
Speaker 2: Is that making better for the fans?
15:57
Speaker 1: Or are they saying I want more baseball and I
15:59
Speaker 1: want the game the last longer.
16:01
Speaker 3: Well, it's better, And I think what they did is
16:02
Speaker 3: they cut out the dead time. At the end of
16:04
Speaker 3: my career, the walk up music started to become popular.
16:07
Speaker 3: The young players kind of liked it, and they would
16:09
Speaker 3: tell them what to do. And sometimes they'd be when
16:13
Speaker 3: the on deck circle and they hadn't played the song yet,
16:15
Speaker 3: and so they'd wait and look upstairs like this until
16:17
Speaker 3: they played the song, and then they'd make their entrance
16:19
Speaker 3: to the ballpark. The shot clock or the pitch clock
16:23
Speaker 3: that they have now allows the umpire to to gives
16:27
Speaker 3: them an enforceable tool to shape the behavior. There was
16:30
Speaker 3: always a rule that the pitcher had to throw it
16:32
Speaker 3: within twenty seconds of each pitch, but that got away
16:36
Speaker 3: from everybody, and now it's shaped the behavior, and I
16:38
Speaker 3: think the game moves.
16:40
Speaker 1: When you were playing, it was sometimes said that pittress
16:42
Speaker 1: might put the substances on the baseball, or it was
16:44
Speaker 1: called a spider.
16:45
Speaker 2: Did you ever see that?
16:47
Speaker 3: Gaylord Perry was the most famous of all spitballs. He
16:51
Speaker 3: actually wrote a book called Me and the Spinner. So
16:53
Speaker 3: the first time I face him, ball comes in, it
16:55
Speaker 3: sinks a little bit, and then I hit a groundball
16:57
Speaker 3: to shortstop by make another out, and I'm thinking, if
16:59
Speaker 3: that's that's a spider's that's nothing special. But then I
17:02
Speaker 3: came up with the bases loaded my third time up,
17:05
Speaker 3: and he threw me three pitches that dropped about this
17:07
Speaker 3: far and instruck me out, you know whatever else, and
17:10
Speaker 3: then kind of walked off and shook his head at me,
17:13
Speaker 3: like that's the spider.
17:15
Speaker 1: I have a grandson who four years old. If he
17:17
Speaker 1: wanted to be a major League baseball player. What's the
17:20
Speaker 1: best advice you would give to a young person? He
17:22
Speaker 1: meets a little young for advice, maybe, but what is
17:24
Speaker 1: a six or eight year old or ten or year
17:26
Speaker 1: old who aspires to be a baseball player?
17:27
Speaker 2: What should they do?
17:30
Speaker 3: Well? I think the worst thing you could do is
17:31
Speaker 3: put too much pressure on your kid, you know, like
17:33
Speaker 3: if you want it for him as opposed to him
17:36
Speaker 3: wanting it. You know.
17:37
Speaker 1: I think father didn't put pressure on you. He was
17:38
Speaker 1: a professional coach.
17:39
Speaker 2: He didn't know.
17:40
Speaker 3: I mean, as a matter of fact, I could tell
17:42
Speaker 3: you that because my dad was in professional baseball. He
17:45
Speaker 3: only saw two of my games between the age of
17:48
Speaker 3: eight and eighteen before I go, you know, got drafted
17:50
Speaker 3: in parts of two because he had.
17:53
Speaker 1: He didn't give you tips or anything or tell you
17:55
Speaker 1: to do this or that.
17:56
Speaker 3: No, I mean he was a great instructor. I witnessed
17:58
Speaker 3: him instructing other people in the minor league. So I
18:01
Speaker 3: learned through kind of through his instruction everybody else. But
18:03
Speaker 3: he never stood over me and said you got to
18:06
Speaker 3: do You've got to play.
18:07
Speaker 1: When you're a professional baseball player or a former professional
18:10
Speaker 1: baseball players, famous as you are, people come up and
18:12
Speaker 1: all the time they want autograph selfies and they say,
18:16
Speaker 1: I hate to bother you, but can I bother you
18:17
Speaker 1: with a selfie or an autograph request? What do you say?
18:20
Speaker 1: You say, I'm too busy, or you just do it?
18:21
Speaker 1: Or how do you deal with all that? And when
18:23
Speaker 1: you go to a hotel and you're a major league
18:24
Speaker 1: baseball player, people have all these little kids are trying
18:27
Speaker 1: to get autographs.
18:28
Speaker 2: How do you deal with all that?
18:31
Speaker 3: When you get old, they don't do it so much anymore. No,
18:36
Speaker 3: I'm thankful that I still can't believe that I get
18:41
Speaker 3: recognized as readily as I do. And to me, you
18:44
Speaker 3: always keep in mind. And sometimes someone approaching you, they're
18:48
Speaker 3: all nervous and they lose their mind and they say,
18:51
Speaker 3: you know, you're my biggest fan, and I go, I am,
18:55
Speaker 3: but they lose it. But then you have to keep
18:57
Speaker 3: in mind that it's meaningful to them. So at that moment,
19:01
Speaker 3: you know, by signing your name for a little kid
19:03
Speaker 3: and their eyeballs get all again. They run back to
19:06
Speaker 3: their mom or whatever else and say, look what I got.
19:09
Speaker 3: So you helped that happen. So if you remember the
19:12
Speaker 3: what happens afterwards, you'll focus on you know, and you
19:16
Speaker 3: just manage it and just get through it.
19:18
Speaker 2: And what was it like the day that you broke
19:20
Speaker 2: the record of Louke Garrick?
19:23
Speaker 1: There was an enormous fan out pouring, everybody's calling you
19:28
Speaker 1: your nation y TV and you're running around the stadium
19:31
Speaker 1: and so forth.
19:32
Speaker 2: Was that like the highlight of your life professionally?
19:35
Speaker 3: I would say there's two moments. I answer that question
19:37
Speaker 3: in two parts. The best feeling I ever had on
19:41
Speaker 3: the baseball field was catching the last out of the
19:42
Speaker 3: World Series forty two years ago, forty two years ago,
19:46
Speaker 3: forty one years ago, nineteen eighty three, little humpback line
19:50
Speaker 3: drive when you catch it. This part of the dream
19:53
Speaker 3: of being a baseball player is to win the World Series.
19:55
Speaker 3: And then now because I caught the last out, that
19:57
Speaker 3: I won the World Series. So that's the best feeling.
19:59
Speaker 3: Second best feeling, probably the best personal moment was to
20:02
Speaker 3: lap around campdy Yards. I was embarrassed that the game
20:05
Speaker 3: was stopped because the game became official halfway through, and
20:08
Speaker 3: then everybody kept clapping. I kept saying thank you, thank you,
20:11
Speaker 3: and then Bobby Buni and Ralphiel Palmero pushed me out
20:14
Speaker 3: of the line and said, you're gonna have to take
20:16
Speaker 3: a lap around here before we'll never get the game started,
20:18
Speaker 3: and I thought it was a silly idea, so I
20:20
Speaker 3: went around and started shaking hands. The celebration went from
20:23
Speaker 3: almost fifty thousand down to like one on one, and
20:26
Speaker 3: it was kind of cool that way, and by the
20:27
Speaker 3: time I got come down to third base, I could
20:29
Speaker 3: care less if the game ever started again.
20:32
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You
20:34
Speaker 1: can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or
20:38
Speaker 1: wherever you listen.