Speaker 1: Man All Star twenty twenty six MLB Philly.
Speaker 2: Come on, man, see why would what I appreciate you? Bro?
Speaker 1: We got a good one to start. Man, someonhe I
Speaker 1: grew up loving one of the more interesting stories in baseball,
Speaker 1: kind of disregarded, went to Japan to resurrect his career,
Speaker 1: and came back as one of the most feared sluggers
Speaker 1: MLB has ever seen. Welcome to the show, Cesso Fielder.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hate it, baby,
Speaker 3: I made it, you made it. I'm on top, I'm
Speaker 3: on the smoke.
Speaker 2: Let's get it.
Speaker 4: You know, when you think of it as a kid,
Speaker 4: the time that you're most locked into whatever sport, it
Speaker 4: is that you're a fan of the guys that you
Speaker 4: look at and the guys who are on TV that
Speaker 4: are making the name, the posters that you see hanging
Speaker 4: up in kids' rooms. For me, you gotta realize I
Speaker 4: was born in eighty three, so you know, nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: ninety one, ninety two, seven, eight, nine, ten years old.
Speaker 4: This is when you know you're following the game, you're
Speaker 4: seeing the posters up and you remember Cecil Field and
Speaker 4: you remember that it was the coast to coast posters
Speaker 4: that were up the slugging era of the early nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, big daddy. I think I.
Speaker 4: Remember seeing this exact poster right here in a friend's room. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: you're talking about the early sluggers of the nineties, you
Speaker 4: were right there amongst the top of them.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I tell you, I in my years
Speaker 3: in Toronto, which was you know, in the middle eighties,
Speaker 3: you know, we had some hell of a baseball players.
Speaker 3: I mean my homeboys. I grew up with Jesse Barfield,
Speaker 3: lower with most.
Speaker 4: Jesse because I played with the son John Yeah.
Speaker 3: George Bell, I mean Willie Upshaw. I mean I had soldiers,
Speaker 3: you know. So they they raised me in the game
Speaker 3: and they taught me how to play the game the
Speaker 3: right way. And then you got my homie, my room
Speaker 3: with Fred McGriff, myself, Willie, and then John ol Rude
Speaker 3: on the way. There's only one baseball, so you know,
Speaker 3: my best bet, I didn't know anything about Japan. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna just tell you straight up. I didn't know well
Speaker 3: ahead they were sending me, but I knew I wanted
Speaker 3: to get my ass out of Toronto, So I called
Speaker 3: Cito Gaston who was my hitting instructor. And I said,
Speaker 3: see thou, they've offered me a nice little piece to
Speaker 3: get out of here and go to Japan. And playing
Speaker 3: at my age, it didn't happen. I was twenty four
Speaker 3: years old. So at my age, you know, guys didn't
Speaker 3: go to Japan. It was the guys that already finished
Speaker 3: their cariss here and then they stepped off. So but
Speaker 3: I said, hey, I gotta go because my boy was banging,
Speaker 3: Freddy was banging. I wasn't getting enough planning time to
Speaker 3: really show what I had. So I said, yeah, I'm going,
Speaker 3: and I went on Japan. And then I did my
Speaker 3: tax free too, right, No, no, no, you had to
Speaker 3: pay all you had to pay. But it was nice
Speaker 3: stuff going from this and now this is this.
Speaker 2: Was the crazy part about it.
Speaker 3: So the young fella was making a buck in a
Speaker 3: quarter in Toronto in eighty five, age no age seven.
Speaker 3: I made a buck in a quarter, went to Japan.
Speaker 3: I made one point five from a buck in the quarter.
Speaker 3: I ran my ass to Japan. The decision, look what
Speaker 3: easy easy. I'm in my agent and the Japanese guy
Speaker 3: would negotiating the contract in Chicago. I remember like it
Speaker 3: yesterday and the night before it broke off. Both sides
Speaker 3: was pissed off. So I'm like, where the hell y'all going? No, no, no,
Speaker 3: We're gonna finish this shit right now. And everybody left
Speaker 3: them came back the next morning. That shit was done
Speaker 3: in ten minutes. So, hey, I was in Japan. I
Speaker 3: did my thing there and got an opportunity to come back.
Speaker 3: Tigers was in last place, lost over one hundred games
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty nine, so it was an easy fit
Speaker 3: for me to come in there. Sparky told me when
Speaker 3: I first got there, Hell, we lost one hundred games
Speaker 3: last year, so you come here. You can do whatever
Speaker 3: you want because it don't matter. Were Terriblething's better than that.
Speaker 1: Now, question any similarities to mister baseball Tom Selleck as
Speaker 1: far as just the energy and craziness of the crowd,
Speaker 1: he said, hell, no, none of that shit.
Speaker 3: I mean no, I mean, I was a wild bearer,
Speaker 3: but you know I didn't care. You call me whatever
Speaker 3: you want. As long as that paycheck is coming, you
Speaker 3: can call me anything. I think my time in Japan
Speaker 3: was just a time for me to hone in on
Speaker 3: what I had to do. I had. I had a
Speaker 3: thought process going on. I wasn't gonna stand Japan for
Speaker 3: the rest of my career. I was gonna come back
Speaker 3: and and rekav it. I had some form, so I
Speaker 3: did it. I did Roy Firestone show at nighteteen ninety
Speaker 3: and we were we were on Roy Firestone. I kind
Speaker 3: of take this from Mr Uh from Jerry Maguire. When
Speaker 3: my boy went on Roy Firestone told Roy he wasn't
Speaker 3: gonna get emotional. So I get on Roy and Roy
Speaker 3: asked me a question that Pat Gillick, who is the
Speaker 3: who is the man in Toronto? He said, Pat said
Speaker 3: that he got to use two and three players for you.
Speaker 3: And I told Roy, I said, Roy, I ain't gonna
Speaker 3: get emotional about what past said because he just pissed
Speaker 3: off that I'm over here beating the shit out of him.
Speaker 3: When I go to Toronto, I beat. I had seventeen ho
Speaker 3: runs off trunk. They couldn't get me out. I was
Speaker 3: hit him in the fifth deck pimp, and I was
Speaker 3: doing everything I could to let him know. Just like
Speaker 3: T I said, you better let him know because I
Speaker 3: had to. You can't just let me go and act
Speaker 3: like I ain't nothing. No, You're gonna respect that you're
Speaker 3: gonna respect it because I I was a player. I
Speaker 3: told him I was a player from the beginning, but
Speaker 3: I just didn't get the opportunity to do it on
Speaker 3: a daily basis.
Speaker 4: You have to you have to gamble on yourself and
Speaker 4: did you have to trust your ability and like at
Speaker 4: some point every player has to have that dog in.
Speaker 3: Him at some point.
Speaker 4: Oh and as you see, you know the game, and
Speaker 4: I want to ask you even how much you're following
Speaker 4: the game now because the game has changed so much
Speaker 4: from when you play to where you know the game
Speaker 4: is right now. How much do you follow the game now?
Speaker 4: What are your thoughts or how it was? What's the same,
Speaker 4: what's different from then and now?
Speaker 3: Well, I think the difference is, Man, we were soldiers. Man,
Speaker 3: we went out to play. I mean we didn't take
Speaker 3: days off. I mean I mean, like I said, I
Speaker 3: go out there. And I think that's why I earned
Speaker 3: the respect from Sparky's I did because Sparky used to
Speaker 3: be a hard liner when he was in Cincinnati. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know sports code in the lobby, you couldn't go
Speaker 3: down with jeans on and when I first got here,
Speaker 3: that's the way it was. But I kind of you know,
Speaker 3: I kind of pushed him a little bit to do
Speaker 3: some things differently. No kids in the clubhouse, no kids
Speaker 3: on the field. I'm like, dude, I got a kid
Speaker 3: that want to smell of dirt. Man, But what we're
Speaker 3: doing here? He said, says, I gotta tell you this.
Speaker 3: I love that old man. That's the only man I
Speaker 3: ever cried for that passed away. Other than my people
Speaker 3: say that man. That man was a good man. So
Speaker 3: he told me that he never had his son in
Speaker 3: his locker room. I told Skip, that's a mistake.
Speaker 2: Skip.
Speaker 3: If I if I don't give my kid the opportunity
Speaker 3: to smell this dirt and this is what he wants
Speaker 3: to do, then what am I doing. I ain't giving
Speaker 3: him an opportunity to be successful. So he kind of
Speaker 3: gave me a pathway to and my other teammates now
Speaker 3: to start bringing our kids around. Let them see the dirt.
Speaker 3: You gotta smell that dirt.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: That dirt is a motherfucker. That dirt can get you somewhere.
Speaker 2: Young.
Speaker 3: Stand what I'm saying. So I always tell myself that,
Speaker 3: you know, that was a turning point where Sparky kind
Speaker 3: of calmed down a little because he was a hard
Speaker 3: liner man sparky' even had his rules, and his rules
Speaker 3: was his rules. So I think we were able to
Speaker 3: kind of soften it up where we can also start
Speaker 3: to wear jeans in the damn lobby of the of
Speaker 3: the hotels and not have to listen. Man, if you
Speaker 3: wanted to go down and get a paper, you had
Speaker 3: to put your shoit on.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: So I skipped the Brave Row like that for a
Speaker 4: long time.
Speaker 3: It's a little rough skill. Let's let's change up a
Speaker 3: little bit. Let's just have a little fun with it.
Speaker 3: And he did.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Cali. I didn't know this
Speaker 1: until I was doing my research, but it makes sense now.
Speaker 1: I'll get the chance to talk to you. South Central
Speaker 1: La show you're right, la, Eric Davis, Darryl Strawberry, Eddie Murray,
Speaker 1: some guys around that area where you did you know them?
Speaker 2: You're on different side of town.
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, I lived on seventy seventy
Speaker 3: six and Dinker, which is right off Manchester. If you
Speaker 3: go down Manchester, you should get the seventy Sister's a
Speaker 3: little there used to be a little cleaners right there
Speaker 3: on the corner and make it right. That was right
Speaker 3: in it Piru area.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So when my mom and dad got you know, my
Speaker 3: dad was an army man. So when they got the
Speaker 3: opportunity to buy a house and used my dad's g
Speaker 3: I they moved out to Saint Gabor Valley, which was Lapointe,
Speaker 3: West Covina. Now I got the Vathos. You know, the
Speaker 3: Vathos are there, So again I was in the mix.
Speaker 3: But Eric lived on eighty fifth and Figure Roy and
Speaker 3: my cousins lived on eighty third and Figure Row. So
Speaker 3: we was in there. I mean, we was running and
Speaker 3: he knew my cousins of course because they went to Fremont,
Speaker 3: So you know, we we we've been running together for
Speaker 3: a long time. I mean Ed is one of my
Speaker 3: best friends. I talked to him quite a bit and
Speaker 3: he played with me in Detroit for a while. So
Speaker 3: I mean I always say, man, that might have been
Speaker 3: the that might have been the O G move that
Speaker 3: my dad made of getting me out of South Central,
Speaker 3: you know, getting me somewhere where I could shine a
Speaker 3: little bit. Because you know, I don't know if you
Speaker 3: know this and what you probably did your research and
Speaker 3: do know that basketball was my first love.
Speaker 1: I heard you a little bit about that game.
Speaker 3: Come on, Matt, don't get me started on that. Folks
Speaker 3: don't know. Look at yourself up stand, Matt. Let me
Speaker 3: tell you, my boy. And this goes back to aau
Speaker 3: back and you know when we were young, like twelve
Speaker 3: and thirteen, like Nigel McGill, Ralph Jackson, all them boys
Speaker 3: that went to UCLA, they was, I was running with
Speaker 3: them in the summer, right. So when I got to
Speaker 3: high school, I went to No Gallas High School. So
Speaker 3: when I got to high school, I played four years
Speaker 3: of varsity basketball and I played football, and then baseball
Speaker 3: was like eh. So my dad rested in peace too.
Speaker 3: Old man asked me to go out and play baseball
Speaker 3: one day.
Speaker 2: So I did.
Speaker 3: But in basketball, I was signing every valley player of
Speaker 3: the year in nineteen eighty one and they asked me
Speaker 3: what positions, But I said I played point guard. He
Speaker 3: said nah, yeah, I said, yeah, I did I play
Speaker 3: point guard. They said you could You're done. I said,
Speaker 3: I'll give it to you any way you want it.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I could play. That was my game, man.
Speaker 3: And baseball was like I was. I didn't think I
Speaker 3: could play baseball because I was. I was green, and
Speaker 3: I just out worked everybody. I mean, you know, when
Speaker 3: you when you're an athlete and you don't give yourself
Speaker 3: the opportunity to be successful, that's on you, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. I had to work man, because I
Speaker 3: wasn't that good. You know, my coach John Romono, he's
Speaker 3: still here talk I talked to him. He's almost eighty
Speaker 3: years old, and he always says that, you know, you
Speaker 3: chasing that ball in the dark when you had one
Speaker 3: light over the backstop, no lights in the field, and
Speaker 3: you chasing that ball and I'm throwing you vp in
Speaker 3: the dark. Hey, ain't nobody else out there but me
Speaker 3: and him, right And I tell people all the time
Speaker 3: that right there kind of helped me get myself together.
Speaker 3: Because when you're chasing the ball coming out of the
Speaker 3: dark end to the light and you're hitting it, you're
Speaker 3: doing something.
Speaker 4: What do you think skills you learn from basketball or football?
Speaker 4: That translated, because right now baseball is it's turned into
Speaker 4: much more of a country club type sport, a specialized
Speaker 4: sports where you're seeing kids only played one sport. But
Speaker 4: when you talk to the old school guys, everybody played everything.
Speaker 3: It makes you more athletic. Yeah, you can do more things, man.
Speaker 3: I mean it helped my footwork, you know, playing first base.
Speaker 3: I mean I came up with you know, Cito Gassing
Speaker 3: was a great hitting instructure. He really taught me my
Speaker 3: little lean right, and it helped me get myself but balance,
Speaker 3: I mean everything. I didn't have to use my upper
Speaker 3: body strength because I used my legs. I mean, I
Speaker 3: mean I didn't need no extra help. If you understand
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, no help, because this is one hundred
Speaker 3: percent me ain't no help. So I was able to
Speaker 3: be athletic. I was able to, you know, figure it out.
Speaker 3: I was able to trust my You got to be
Speaker 3: able to trust yourself.
Speaker 2: When you're a hitter.
Speaker 3: You can't be scared. You gotta trust it. If you're
Speaker 3: gonna sit on the breaking ball, goddamn it, sit on it.
Speaker 3: Don't change up in the middle of that bat, you know,
Speaker 3: until you get two strikes and you got to open up.
Speaker 3: But you know in pictures, I had them boys on
Speaker 3: fright night. They was matter of fact. When I used
Speaker 3: to come to town, I used to send cars to
Speaker 3: pick up mother for go get him and bring him
Speaker 3: over here.
Speaker 2: Go get it.
Speaker 3: Hey, we didn't care. We went out to play, and
Speaker 3: you know, we was all friends off the field, but
Speaker 3: when you got on the field, I felt that, you know,
Speaker 3: me and Puck rest in peace again, Puck man. I mean,
Speaker 3: we enjoyed. We enjoyed each other. I love the fact
Speaker 3: when he come to Detroit, when I went to Minnesota,
Speaker 3: he came and got me. I came and got him.
Speaker 3: I mean, and you know, but we got on that
Speaker 3: damn field.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: You know, he punched me in the face and I
Speaker 3: probably hit him in the face too, because that's just
Speaker 3: the way we went got down. And you know, back
Speaker 3: in the day, man, I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 3: but back in the day when we played, you couldn't
Speaker 3: come around the bad and cage and be talking to
Speaker 3: everybody because the manager would find you. You couldn't talk
Speaker 3: to the other team. That's our seriousness. And I'm gonna
Speaker 3: tell you all this story, and this is what I
Speaker 3: first got to the big leagues. July July of eighty five.
Speaker 3: I get to the big leagues and we having issues
Speaker 3: with Boston in Toronto. Bruce Keason that hit George Bell
Speaker 3: in Toronto, and the next batter, Ernie Ernie Wit hit
Speaker 3: a Grand Slam. So the following week we had to
Speaker 3: go to Boston. So we go to Boston and Nippers pitching.
Speaker 3: So Nippers throwing that bell. He missed him four times.
Speaker 3: So now George Beller is walking down the first base
Speaker 3: and he chirping at the dugout. The whole damn dugout
Speaker 3: charges him right. The ship ends up in center field
Speaker 3: and back then, man, I mean, it wasn't no, no,
Speaker 3: you better boy. At the corner of my eye, man,
Speaker 3: I see this brother running onto the field and he
Speaker 3: jumps in the pile. And man, when that damn power
Speaker 3: was done, it was Don Baylor at the bottom. I said,
Speaker 3: oh Lord, have mercy. I said, I ain't ready yet.
Speaker 3: That was a grown ass man, grown ass man, Rest
Speaker 3: in peace, Dom Bator. I love you to death, grown
Speaker 3: ass man. That's when I knew that I had to
Speaker 3: grow up and be ready, because these boys were serious.
Speaker 2: These were men. I'm playing against men.
Speaker 3: I'm nineteen, I'm playing against grown ass men and the
Speaker 3: dug out smoking cigarette and they smoke. I mean, I
Speaker 3: didn't you know what I'm saying, No drinking, no cussing,
Speaker 3: no fussing, no smoking. And I get to the ballpark. Man,
Speaker 3: they in you know sweet Lucy. These boys drunk sweet Lucy.
Speaker 3: And every once in a while, you know, it was cold,
Speaker 3: they'd be in the club, I said, kicking a little
Speaker 3: shot of sweet Lucy.
Speaker 2: You know, sweet Lucy is right now. I don't know who.
Speaker 3: Back sweet Lucy. Oh, cutty shark, go find a bottle,
Speaker 3: cause that's the nasty ship I've ever seen. They go
Speaker 3: back there and take him because shot and come back
Speaker 3: up and get ready. It was men's game. It was
Speaker 3: men's game when I came up. It was different. It
Speaker 3: was different.
Speaker 1: You actually enrolled in UNLV, but before you decided to
Speaker 1: take baseball serious.
Speaker 3: You know, I really didn't want to do that, but
Speaker 3: I did. My mother was always talking about education, education, education.
Speaker 3: And I got drafted by the Baltimore Orioles and it
Speaker 3: was late and uh.
Speaker 2: They had Eddie Murray and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, that ain't gonna work out because he's gonna
Speaker 3: be there for a while. And uh so I ended
Speaker 3: up going to U n l V. I really didn't
Speaker 3: men doubt. Moore never got Freddy, which I try to
Speaker 3: be nice to everybody, but Freddie and I never really
Speaker 3: got along. I was a young kid running around in
Speaker 3: the city. That was just too much.
Speaker 2: It's a lot going on.
Speaker 3: There, too much for it was too much. I mean
Speaker 3: back then they were on the street. I mean they
Speaker 3: just was lined up with the first coats on everything.
Speaker 3: It was crazy back when I was going to school.
Speaker 3: What so anyway, I got drafted in the forefront. I
Speaker 3: went back and went to Mount Sack Junior College. I
Speaker 3: didn't play, but the basketball coach had me playing basketball
Speaker 3: because he was like, says, come on, and I was like,
Speaker 3: so I was running with the basketball team.
Speaker 1: Remember that story. But compare your game to somebody your
Speaker 1: who game.
Speaker 3: My whole game. You remember Tyron Knolls, he played at
Speaker 3: UCLA then he went to UTEP. If you check out
Speaker 3: Tyron Knolls, big, big guard, strong. But I can give
Speaker 3: it to you, I can. Oh, you better ask somebody.
Speaker 2: Let him know. I'm telling you, oh my god, that
Speaker 2: they had film back then. We're gonna find it.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Listen, Okay, check this out. I gotta
Speaker 3: tell you this right, I'm gonna tell you where where
Speaker 3: where I was, where I was. So we we we
Speaker 3: in the semi final game in Sports Arena against Monrovia
Speaker 3: Sports Arena. Yeah, so we we play against a guy
Speaker 3: named Sean Holiday. Matter of fact, Sean All they probably
Speaker 3: got a couple of boys to play in the NBA.
Speaker 3: Sean Holiday was uh was high school?
Speaker 2: All American? Yeah? And Holiday three sons in the NBA.
Speaker 3: There you go, okay, Holiday was the man, right. I
Speaker 3: dropped thirty one on his ass. I dropped thirty one
Speaker 3: on his ass. I dropped thirty one on that ass
Speaker 3: in the sports arena back in the day. That's where
Speaker 3: we played c IF. So you know I can play man,
Speaker 3: but I just wasn't gonna get the opportunity. I got Pepperdine.
Speaker 3: You see Santa Barbara and all the cats. And then
Speaker 3: check this out. My off guard, I called him Pistol Pete.
Speaker 3: But Pete Williams played at Arizona and was the Pac
Speaker 3: ten rebound champ. Now Pete Williams played, did he play
Speaker 3: a little bit in the NBA, But then he went
Speaker 3: over to Turkey and play. But Pete, Pistol, Pete man
Speaker 3: my off So my starting five me Pistol Pete, who
Speaker 3: played Jeff Randol Rest in peace. He went to he
Speaker 3: went to Minnie Campbell to Kansasity Chief talked out and
Speaker 3: Mary went to Milwaukee and Big Randy Downs played at
Speaker 3: Colorado Basketball. So again my starting five, we all were successful.
Speaker 3: We did good.
Speaker 2: Did Tark recruiture? You have any Tark stories? Now?
Speaker 3: My Mount Sack? My Mount Sack coach who was there
Speaker 3: at Mount Sack told Tark when I went to U NFV,
Speaker 3: you need to let him go out there. Now Tark
Speaker 3: Sun was playing point guard, Danny. It wasn't going out
Speaker 3: but Tar. He told Tark get him out there. But
Speaker 3: then the baseball coach wouldn't let me go because he
Speaker 3: wasn't gonna let me play two sports. But I would
Speaker 3: have loved to go on the court with that team.
Speaker 2: Oh you gotta do.
Speaker 3: All you gotta do is throw the ball up in there.
Speaker 2: They gonna catch it, get it.
Speaker 3: You know. Johnson was there that Yeah, Big RJ was there.
Speaker 3: We had a team at U and W at that time,
Speaker 3: Sid Green, we had a team. What it's all said,
Speaker 3: and that I think you made the right call, No,
Speaker 3: no doubt I did, man. But I love basketball, and
Speaker 3: that was it. That was during the showtime. Yeah, Magic
Speaker 3: was doing it. That's my boy, that's Michigan boy. You
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure this had to cross your mind at
Speaker 4: some point because we're gonna move forward to you get drafted.
Speaker 4: And this is a story that resonates with a lot
Speaker 4: of players because everybody assumes you get drafted. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be the guy right out the gate. Everything gonna be happy,
Speaker 4: go lucky. Moving forward, you go to the Blue Jays,
Speaker 4: Blue Jays, classic story, veteran place with Willie Upshaw's there.
Speaker 4: You got fred McGriff there. You even with having some success,
Speaker 4: I think you had fourteen homes, one hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: five at bats one season, always was the platoon guy,
Speaker 4: never got the full opportunity. How was your relationship with
Speaker 4: Upshaw and with McGriff understanding.
Speaker 3: That you Freddy's always gonna be my dog at the time,
Speaker 3: it was good, always good. We played together in the
Speaker 3: minor leagues the whole way. So I'm gonna take it back.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I was drafted by Kansas City and I hit twenty
Speaker 3: home runs and rookie ball in sixty I guess sixty
Speaker 3: game up in Butte, Montana. So I got traded for
Speaker 3: a major league outfielder named Bill Roberts, not my Bill,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't Leon Roberts who was the outfitter with
Speaker 3: Kansas City at the time with Toronto at the time,
Speaker 3: so we slipped flip flopped, and that's when I got
Speaker 3: an opportunity to start playing. So I won the MVP
Speaker 3: in A ball. I won the MVP in high A ball.
Speaker 3: I went to double a hit eighteen and eighty one
Speaker 3: at the All Star break and went to the big league.
Speaker 3: So I was young. I was a young fucking the
Speaker 3: big leagues. I was like, got that and you know,
Speaker 3: listen here, I got my first check. I gotta tell
Speaker 3: you this, boy, Oh that first check got damn forty
Speaker 3: four hundred dollars bread. I was ma man from being
Speaker 3: in the minor leagues where you make it eight hundred dollars,
Speaker 3: can't pay your rent because you had to have three
Speaker 3: or four guys.
Speaker 2: That crazy.
Speaker 3: So I got to Toronto. Williamshaw was the best. I
Speaker 3: love Willi Upshaw to this day. My roomie Fred McGriff
Speaker 3: I mean we together today because we're doing you know
Speaker 3: the other thing over there on the other side of
Speaker 3: the stadium, and that's my roomy. When he got inducted
Speaker 3: into the Hall of Fame, I was there. I had
Speaker 3: to be there.
Speaker 2: That's my room. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And still to this day, we still I mean like
Speaker 3: we're still playing. That's my brother.
Speaker 4: What was that clubhouse?
Speaker 2: You got?
Speaker 3: George Bell, you got he was a little different. He
Speaker 3: was a little different. George was a little different. He
Speaker 3: just talked a lot of ship all the time. Me
Speaker 3: and him almost got into it one day. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: ain't playing with him. I told him, you look at here, man,
Speaker 3: I ain't the one.
Speaker 2: I ain't the one.
Speaker 4: But we play in the same room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we kind of. It's calmed down.
Speaker 3: We were very cordial now, me and George. But you know,
Speaker 3: I had Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield, I mean I had
Speaker 3: I had David Steve, I had Jim Clancy, I had
Speaker 3: Jimmy keyth Earnie with We had a great team in
Speaker 3: eighty five. That was the first team out outside the
Speaker 3: United States to win the American League championship. So we
Speaker 3: had a great team, great team and uh twenty Fernande's
Speaker 3: rest in peace again. We got we got a lot
Speaker 3: of that going on right now.
Speaker 4: And you're in a great city in Toronto.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I me something. Let me say something.
Speaker 3: When you when you're a young Feller Oh my god,
Speaker 3: a minute, man, stop it, stop it. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I don't know how my wife kept married to me
Speaker 3: all that years. She was she had to be special,
Speaker 3: I mean, princess Mama. Oh I was terrible. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was talking.
Speaker 4: About the environment in Toronto.
Speaker 3: I was terrible. Man, I'm sorry, I was terrible.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: It had to be somewhat of a culture shock, just
Speaker 4: just to move. You've been all around the place because
Speaker 4: you go through the minor leagues and you've seen places,
Speaker 4: but Toronto just stands out.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Well, man, I you know, I'm from the West Coast,
Speaker 3: and some of them times they put us in I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe they put us in them. Florence, South Carolina, Kinston,
Speaker 3: North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm.
Speaker 3: Like the arm pits of every state, you know, And
Speaker 3: that's basically the truth, because every every one of those
Speaker 3: stadiums are always in the hood, always in the hood. Knoxville,
Speaker 3: Tennessee hood, I mean hood. You ever been to Greenwood
Speaker 3: in Florida?
Speaker 2: Tampa? Okay? You know what the same path?
Speaker 4: Yeah, y'all take about you gotta be careful.
Speaker 3: You better know somebody, to get to know somebody quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's the hood. I every ballparker. Man they called me,
Speaker 3: they talked about my mama. I mean, man, these folks,
Speaker 3: I mean one night we was in uh we was
Speaker 3: in North Carolina. This one was in one city and
Speaker 3: these folks, I mean, they talked about me so bad,
Speaker 3: and they talked about my mama, and I want, I
Speaker 3: want the old man. And you know, it was almost
Speaker 3: like I felt like Jackie Robinson, if I go up there,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get in trouble. It ain't even gonna be them.
Speaker 3: They gonna blame it on me. Right, My white teammates
Speaker 3: went up in there. That's a good feeling, now, That's
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about. That's why I knew I had
Speaker 3: real teammates, because they defended me. Because these oh men,
Speaker 3: I mean, it was so bad. It's almost as bad
Speaker 3: as going to the Boston and then them Sam Down
Speaker 3: doesn't want to have a drink with you after they
Speaker 3: and talk so bad about you. I ain't have no
Speaker 3: drink with your ass.
Speaker 2: Fuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Boston was rough.
Speaker 1: So we touched on the decision in eighty nine to
Speaker 1: go to Japan. What is something you learned about yourself
Speaker 1: and your game in Japan that prepared you to come
Speaker 1: back and do what you did.
Speaker 3: I just think, man, I took what Sedo gave me
Speaker 3: while I was in Toronto, and I really, I really
Speaker 3: got a chance to learn myself, whether you know, I
Speaker 3: was gonna sit on an off speed pitch, whether I
Speaker 3: was gonna sit on the fastball, to trust, you know,
Speaker 3: trust the process, because when you're not playing all the time,
Speaker 3: you don't have time. You gotta when you're coming up
Speaker 3: to pinch hit or are you getting to play once
Speaker 3: a week, it's hard, so you you ain't. I ain't
Speaker 3: got time to be working on nothing. I gotta make
Speaker 3: something happen. I gotta try to hit this scoundrel up
Speaker 3: in the seats.
Speaker 2: I gotta.
Speaker 3: I gotta make something happen because I ain't getting that
Speaker 3: many chances. So when I went to Japan, man, you know,
Speaker 3: I started off slow. I was, they were, they were,
Speaker 3: they were laughing and talking trash and spring training in Japan, right,
Speaker 3: And then I went seven for seven and a double headed.
Speaker 3: I was seven for so I was killing them. And
Speaker 3: the big they brought this big Japanese boy, and I
Speaker 3: can remember like it yesterday. They brought a big Japanese
Speaker 3: boy and he hit me, and I told that motherfucker,
Speaker 3: you ever do that again, I'm gonna kick your ass
Speaker 3: and everybody else on your team. And I never got
Speaker 3: hit again. The whole rest of the year, I never
Speaker 3: got hit.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: So what I'm saying is this had to be before
Speaker 4: they because now they apologize that they hit you.
Speaker 3: No, they were apologizing then, but they wouldn't hit me
Speaker 3: no more. He apart, he took his head all bounding shit.
Speaker 3: I didn't go for that. I said, you hit me again? No, no,
Speaker 3: because I you know y'all was getting me out. I
Speaker 3: didn't throw my bat at you. Y'all wearing my ass
Speaker 3: out when.
Speaker 2: I first got here.
Speaker 3: What happened y'all in the dug out, laughing and carrying on.
Speaker 3: Now I'm starting to bang. Now you're gonna hit me. Okay,
Speaker 3: you do that ship one more time, one more again,
Speaker 3: as my daddy would say, do that ship one more again.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tear this whole damn place up. And I
Speaker 3: never got hit again.
Speaker 2: So I ended up hitting thirty eight home runs that season.
Speaker 3: There was in three hundred at bats.
Speaker 2: Wow, what was what was the fan fare?
Speaker 3: Like? How did oh Man cessit? The when who got
Speaker 3: you my son? That's my name, Cecil. Okay, but we're
Speaker 3: gonna Yeah. It was fans with that, he goes. Fans
Speaker 3: were great, man, fans were great. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: you have your own, your own beat. So they played
Speaker 3: the drums all game.
Speaker 2: And they're jumping around the entire game, right and they.
Speaker 3: Playing my little song I'm the Brown Bear. I mean
Speaker 3: it was just it was good. It was Oh my god,
Speaker 3: I mean Field, I had a great time, man, I
Speaker 3: mean you know, people go, Mann, man, look at it.
Speaker 3: I had a great time. Money and I make good
Speaker 3: money for a young kid. Yeah, I made good money.
Speaker 4: And when you saw the players over there, did you
Speaker 4: did did you know the guys that would be able
Speaker 4: to make the transition of going from Japan to the
Speaker 4: States was there before came over? And now you have clearly.
Speaker 3: Time fat face normal in Japan.
Speaker 4: At the time. You know he gonna be able to Oh.
Speaker 3: He gonna play.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 3: I told folks from the beginning, the Japanese are the
Speaker 3: most dedicated folks to their fundamentals. They're gonna they gonna,
Speaker 3: they gonna hit, They're gonna bunt, they gonna catch it,
Speaker 3: They're gonna throw it.
Speaker 2: They're gonna play good defense.
Speaker 3: Now, when I was there, we didn't have a lot
Speaker 3: of Japanese players that had that juice, you know, to
Speaker 3: go out out of the ballpark. But they could hit,
Speaker 3: they can catch it, they can throw it, and they
Speaker 3: knew where to go with the baseball.
Speaker 2: To me, that's baseball. Now.
Speaker 3: Now you got these big boys, you know it's you
Speaker 3: is the first guy I said that could have been
Speaker 3: a picture and a hitter athlete, but we had uh Horror.
Speaker 2: Horror was a big one.
Speaker 3: Och I could leave. They were older though, right, But
Speaker 3: the young generation that's coming now, Man, these boys done
Speaker 3: got bigger, stronger, you know. I don't you know Frank.
Speaker 3: Frank is a different vibe. He thinks something was going on,
Speaker 3: and you think somebody's taking some kool aid. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I ain't into that, but all I know is them
Speaker 3: boys are coming, they playing, and they in it. Boy
Speaker 3: in Chicago, you got yes, you got Dodgers, all these
Speaker 3: boys bang, all these boys bank which and the pictures
Speaker 3: that are coming over are really getting down.
Speaker 2: So those just got.
Speaker 4: What the American guys would struggle with in Japan.
Speaker 3: The sinker him and and the guys that I was
Speaker 3: facing was I told them from the beginning when we
Speaker 3: went over there the first time on the All Star
Speaker 3: Tour where we had you know, we had all the
Speaker 3: best players here, go over there and play play against
Speaker 3: the Japanese players. Ship, they tow our ass up because
Speaker 3: we thought we was just gonna go in there and
Speaker 3: roll them. I said, Man, these motherfuckering play now.
Speaker 4: You know, And and you saw that for a couple
Speaker 4: back to back some years ago in the World Baseball Class.
Speaker 4: If you see that Japanese style of play, the Japanese
Speaker 4: team coming over here winning a couple times in the
Speaker 4: World Baseball Class, what are the fundamentals from Japanese style
Speaker 4: baseball that you think American baseball needs to adopt.
Speaker 3: Well, we lost it because we don't take in field
Speaker 3: no more. Number one, we don't. We don't we don't work,
Speaker 3: we don't work on our defensive game like they do.
Speaker 3: I mean shit, I'd be at the ball party at
Speaker 3: one o'clock and they be doing this ship they be
Speaker 3: running around damn field. I told them, man, look here, man,
Speaker 3: I can't do that shit. Now I'm gonna come and
Speaker 3: stretch with y'all. But man, they stretch like they do
Speaker 3: like they run halfway around the field, they stop in outfield,
Speaker 3: they stretch, they run, They do that shit for like
Speaker 3: forty five minutes to a hour. Man, I can't do
Speaker 3: that for I'm be done. I ain't gonna be able
Speaker 3: to play the night.
Speaker 2: Yeah what you was?
Speaker 3: So finally the bench coach who ran the team finally said, okay,
Speaker 3: so you go out and you just get yourself ready
Speaker 3: when you get done to go ahead and take it.
Speaker 3: But the Japanese home my teammates had to do that ship.
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, no one of these boys tired at
Speaker 3: the end of the season. They you know, the pictures
Speaker 3: threw every day. So if you if you started tonight,
Speaker 3: you're throwing them all and you're gonna throw every day
Speaker 3: to your next start. So that's why I used to
Speaker 3: beat on them. Later in the scene, I beat on them.
Speaker 3: They didn't have nothing. They didn't have nothing. So uh
Speaker 3: they Japanese players, I tell you, man, they dedicated. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna put it that way.
Speaker 4: And it's it's something to be said about the culture
Speaker 4: I think of players, because like you said, you were
Speaker 4: ahead of the curb as far as going to Japan.
Speaker 4: But later down the years, I could think of Adam Jones,
Speaker 4: who was a great Major League Baseball player who went
Speaker 4: over and played in Japan and loved every part of it,
Speaker 4: Like I loved everything about every player that I know
Speaker 4: who went to Japan gained something from the culture that
Speaker 4: they didn't have before. What was the appreciation you gained
Speaker 4: for the culture that that you didn't happen?
Speaker 2: It was? It was.
Speaker 3: It was a period in my life that kind of
Speaker 3: changed everything for me, you know what I mean, just
Speaker 3: seeing that, you know, going from the underdog to the
Speaker 3: top dog. It was a good feeling. That was a
Speaker 3: good feeling.
Speaker 4: And then you and then you bring it back. You
Speaker 4: come back to the States, back in the major leagues,
Speaker 4: and everybody had to be looking at some point like,
Speaker 4: WHOA what happened? I hit hit off the muscle. I
Speaker 4: was ready when you came back. How many teams were interested?
Speaker 3: I had Boston, I had Detroit. There was three teams, Boston, Detroit,
Speaker 3: and I forget the third team, but Detroit.
Speaker 2: I seen it.
Speaker 3: Boston, I ain't the way I'm going to Boston, but
Speaker 3: Detroit it was. It was it was an automatic good fit.
Speaker 3: Number One, they lost a hundred games. Number two, Uh,
Speaker 3: they needed a first back right and number three they
Speaker 3: was gonna give me. I gave me two years, three million.
Speaker 3: I had to come back and go play.
Speaker 4: So they had to match similar to what you Yes,
Speaker 4: they had to.
Speaker 3: So you say, the best thing I had going for
Speaker 3: myself is I don't know how my agent did it.
Speaker 3: But all I had to do if I wanted to leave,
Speaker 3: because I was under contract for two years in Japan,
Speaker 3: all I had to do was give written notice that
Speaker 3: I wanted to leave. What that don't happen? And then
Speaker 3: you know the guy that signed me, he got put
Speaker 3: on in the window seat. You know when you get
Speaker 3: put in the window seat in Japan, it's a rap.
Speaker 3: So yeah, his ass sitting in the corner over there
Speaker 3: looking out the window. How the hell you let him
Speaker 3: get away like that? And you know Russell Sostrado was there.
Speaker 3: I mean we had some players, man, we had some
Speaker 3: Willie Up, Showy end Up coming over. I mean we
Speaker 3: had some players. There are big Lance Parrish, not Lance
Speaker 3: Larry Parrish who played with the Rangers.
Speaker 2: He was there.
Speaker 3: We had a good group of uh One Cromarty was
Speaker 3: there with Tokyo and after that, Lloyd Moty my teammate.
Speaker 3: After he left Detroit, he went to Tokyo.
Speaker 4: Take me through that season, because that's the year right
Speaker 4: right out the gate, come back from Japan, forty nine
Speaker 4: home runs going into the last game of the season, Like,
Speaker 4: what's going through your mind?
Speaker 2: And that?
Speaker 4: How much are you thinking about it? How much did
Speaker 4: what did fifty mean to you while you were going
Speaker 4: through it?
Speaker 3: Well, let me tell you when I got when I
Speaker 3: when I hit forty nine against Minnesota at home, my
Speaker 3: mama with her crazy, so my mama flew in. They
Speaker 3: didn't tell me my mama was coming, right. I hit
Speaker 3: one home run.
Speaker 2: It's so crazy.
Speaker 3: I hit one home run, one home run in front
Speaker 3: of my mama in my whole career or two. I
Speaker 3: hit one in the All Star Game in a ball
Speaker 3: hit a Grand Slam, And then she was going to
Speaker 3: go to Germany to see her friends, and she I
Speaker 3: didn't do it in Anaheim, I didn't. I was terrible
Speaker 3: in ana High. And then she came up to Oakland.
Speaker 3: I hit a home run in Oakland. Okay, So now
Speaker 3: I hit my forty ninth. I got three weeks left.
Speaker 3: I'm oh, oh, oh, I got hold on. Now I
Speaker 3: got this ship down I'm finished. I'm gonna make it happen,
Speaker 3: you know. So Sparky he held a ship from me too.
Speaker 3: Sparky tells me that to the game, your mom is coming,
Speaker 3: and he knew I I that was like, oh shit,
Speaker 3: mom is coming. You know, Mama needed to stay home
Speaker 3: because let me do this and get it.
Speaker 2: Over with, right.
Speaker 3: I went the whole home stand, probably got two hits.
Speaker 3: And so now we end up going to New York
Speaker 3: the last three games of the year. Man, first two games, nothing.
Speaker 4: And nobody hit fifty in the American League since Mantle and Mayson.
Speaker 2: You going to New York and you.
Speaker 3: Know, nobody hit fifty in baseball since Foster, you know,
Speaker 3: seventy seventh. So I'm like, everybody's on me. I mean
Speaker 3: every day I'm doing press. Every day, even at home,
Speaker 3: I'm doing press, and I'm like, hey, man, if it happens,
Speaker 3: I'm just like you motherfuck you do need to leave
Speaker 3: me alone. Let me try to make something happening. But
Speaker 3: every day I had to talk to the press, I
Speaker 3: had to talk to him. So finally, my boy Don Manly,
Speaker 3: he said, man, forget about all this, man, just go
Speaker 3: up there and just bang one. Let's get it over with.
Speaker 3: And I think that helped me more than anything because
Speaker 3: it relaxed me. Don't worry about he said, man, just
Speaker 3: a matter of fact. He came up to me the
Speaker 3: first time I walked, because I wasn't really getting a
Speaker 3: lot of good pictures. But anyway, I walked and I
Speaker 3: was at first base and he said, man, look here, man,
Speaker 3: just get up in there and just bust this, my
Speaker 3: fucking this, get it over with. So I said, doney, man,
Speaker 3: He said, now just relax, go up the next time,
Speaker 3: get your good picture and let it go. And the
Speaker 3: next time I was up, I hit it up in
Speaker 3: triple deck and that was fifty. And then I came
Speaker 3: up again and off your shoulders and I hit one
Speaker 3: of the way back in down back in the old stadium.
Speaker 3: I hit it all out in the bullpen somewhere, and
Speaker 3: I had fifty one. So I went one, thirty two
Speaker 3: and fifty one, and so I lost the MVP to Ricky.
Speaker 3: Rest in peace again, Ricky. I mean he had a
Speaker 3: great year twenty five sixty eight, but you know he
Speaker 3: had one hundred and some chainstone basin and then the
Speaker 3: next year I had forty four hundred and thirty three
Speaker 3: and lost to Ripkin. He had thirty four and one fourteen,
Speaker 3: but he was on the last place team. I was
Speaker 3: that one right there. I was really pissed because they
Speaker 3: told me the year before that I was. I wasn't on,
Speaker 3: you know, a contending team, and that's why Ricky won.
Speaker 3: And I got to accept that, right But then when
Speaker 3: Cal was on the last place team, I love Cal
Speaker 3: to death, but you had thirty four and one fourteen. Shit.
Speaker 3: I had forty four and one hundred and thirty three.
Speaker 3: Me and Willie Mays at that point, ninety five and
Speaker 3: two sixty five and back to back years, nobody but
Speaker 3: me and Willie Mays and I won three straight RBI titles.
Speaker 4: Right at the time. Nobody done that man.
Speaker 3: Like Ruth and I'm I'm second twice.
Speaker 4: So how did you handle the media and everything going
Speaker 4: back to back snubs?
Speaker 3: Michael art Well, I just said, you know what, it
Speaker 3: don't even matter no more. You know what mattered more
Speaker 3: to me, and I'm being real what mattered more to
Speaker 3: me was my peers knew that I came to work.
Speaker 3: My peers knew that every single day, no matter how
Speaker 3: I felt, you better watch out because if you ain't
Speaker 3: giving my boy something to hit up in front of me,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get you.
Speaker 2: I might be.
Speaker 3: I might be the worst player on our team on
Speaker 3: certain days, and say were certain days I was, but
Speaker 3: I was always gonna be in the line of for
Speaker 3: tram Lou and Prime, and I was always gonna be
Speaker 3: in that lineup because they know I'm in there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: You might done got me out the whole shit, but
Speaker 3: only take one to bat for the shit to change.
Speaker 3: So that's why I pride to myself no matter how man.
Speaker 3: On one night I was, I was coming down the
Speaker 3: stairs Aby House and gross Point and I had a
Speaker 3: sodic nerve man right, And I came down the steps
Speaker 3: and fell because my leg was number I didn't feel
Speaker 3: it right. And I got Big Iren over there with
Speaker 3: that damn Rubbert Mallet and she worked that shit out.
Speaker 3: I played the next day. So what I'm saying is
Speaker 3: you gotta find a way. And that's what to me
Speaker 3: in the game right now, that is missing. Have them
Speaker 3: soldiers ready to go. I'm coming no matter what. The
Speaker 3: mo Vaughn's, the Cecil fielders, the Reggie Jackson, them boys
Speaker 3: is coming. They coming every day. They got that dog
Speaker 3: in them that Frank Thomas I'm playing. That's what we
Speaker 3: miss him.
Speaker 4: So when you think about your success to the biggest
Speaker 4: attribute to your success, what did you would you say
Speaker 4: it was some adjustment, something from Japan, or just the
Speaker 4: opportunity to play well.
Speaker 3: When I came back, it was already in the mix.
Speaker 3: I was gonna, I was gonna get down. I knew
Speaker 3: I was coming. I knew I was coming because I
Speaker 3: figured it all out that Japan. Time just gave me
Speaker 3: a chance to figure out who I was. What you
Speaker 3: gotta know who you are?
Speaker 2: Am I am? I?
Speaker 3: Am? I a three hundred hitter? Am I a home
Speaker 3: run hitter? Do I drive in run? What is my job?
Speaker 3: And I figured out my job was to drive people home,
Speaker 3: no matter if it's a base hit the right field,
Speaker 3: no matter the three run homer, no matter's a double
Speaker 3: I my my My job was to get them boys
Speaker 3: across the play to bring him home.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna tell you one.
Speaker 3: Story real quick that that old man Sparky told me.
Speaker 3: We're in Detroit and it's late in the game and
Speaker 3: ninth inning, and I had got two strikes on myself,
Speaker 3: but we had a man on second base, So I
Speaker 3: spread out, I can hit the ball to the right
Speaker 3: and if they did that, I got to hit every day.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I can hit the ball to the right
Speaker 3: side anytime I wanted to. So I spread out, hit
Speaker 3: the ball to the right side. Man moves over the
Speaker 3: third fans are clapping. We got a chance to win.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Skip is in the dugout with his hat off, rubbing
Speaker 3: that old white hair, and I'm like, what wrong with
Speaker 3: this old lass? So we end up not scoring. I
Speaker 3: get up. I get up, dude. I get up to
Speaker 3: the well. End up winning the game. But he waiting
Speaker 3: for me. Soon as I come in the clubuse he waiting?
Speaker 3: He called me in the office. He say, where was that?
Speaker 3: I said, Skip, I mean I had two strikes. We
Speaker 3: had a man on second. I was trying to get
Speaker 3: him over to somebody. Just hit a groundball, flyball, gett
Speaker 3: him in. He looked at me, I don't ever want
Speaker 3: to see you do that again. I said what he said,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you why. I don't want you to
Speaker 3: do it again. I don't trust these other motherfuckers to
Speaker 3: drive him in. He said, from here on out, you
Speaker 3: get three swings, and I don't care what happens, but
Speaker 3: you take every swing. It was a rap at that point.
Speaker 3: I can go play now.
Speaker 1: So your time and Detroit comes to an end. Then
Speaker 1: at the end of July in ninety six. But before
Speaker 1: we talk about the Yankees. What what stands out.
Speaker 2: The most about your run with the Tigers?
Speaker 3: Just the people I played with. Man, I just had
Speaker 3: so many great friends. Tony Phillips again, rest in peace.
Speaker 3: I was like, he was like my road dog.
Speaker 1: He was so underrated though he could play any positions.
Speaker 3: And that scoundrel, oh, man, he cuts me out. We're
Speaker 3: in New York. Man, Like I said, I had one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty ribies. I was already done for the
Speaker 3: season the last couple of game, and he needed one
Speaker 3: more run scored to have one hundred and thirty run score.
Speaker 3: And I done drove this scoundrel in all year. I
Speaker 3: ain't never left his ass out there. So I'm facing
Speaker 3: Scott Sanderson, he throwing me these lobs, the breaking balls,
Speaker 3: and I'm just up there, just I'm just having fun.
Speaker 3: I ain't even paying attention. This little scoundrel cussed me
Speaker 3: out in front of all them damn people at third base.
Speaker 3: God damn it. Dad, let's go, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: I look over there. This motherfucker's cussed me out at
Speaker 3: third base.
Speaker 5: So I drive him up again, and then he come
Speaker 5: to me and bring me my glove and everything. He
Speaker 5: said that a boy dad, that little scoundrel so Detroit
Speaker 5: was just I mean, listen, man, I played with Lou Whitaker.
Speaker 5: Who should be in the Hall of Fame, Tram Kirk Gibson,
Speaker 5: Lance Parrish, I mean, Jack Morris.
Speaker 3: Who who I would I would want Game seven in
Speaker 3: the World Series for me. That'd be my picture. Dan Petrie.
Speaker 3: I mean you can go on and on all the
Speaker 3: guys that I've played with, and those friendships you never lose.
Speaker 3: You know, I could see any of those guys, Mick,
Speaker 3: Rob Deer, I mean I could see any of those
Speaker 3: guys at any point, and we're gonna act like we
Speaker 3: was together yesterday. You understand what I'm saying that, and
Speaker 3: that is it is really like all my teams I
Speaker 3: played on, you know, you know, and you know I
Speaker 3: was fortunate. I played for great managers. Bobby Cox in Toronto, right,
Speaker 3: Sparky Anderson Detroit, Joe Torre in New York. I mean,
Speaker 3: come home, man, you can't get no better than that.
Speaker 3: And most of those managers back in my period always
Speaker 3: took to the veterans to handle things. You understand what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. So even when I got to Detroit, which
Speaker 3: I was only there that half a season, you know,
Speaker 3: skip like, hey man, what's that in? What's going on
Speaker 3: in the clubhouse? You need to handle it. I'm like,
Speaker 3: skip me. Strawberry Rains, Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, Dereck Jador
Speaker 3: was a rookie, Charlie Hay, Tino Martinez, Mariano Duncan right
Speaker 3: out the gate, David Kloon, Jimmy Key, Andy Petty, Mariano Rivera.
Speaker 2: We played six innings. That was it.
Speaker 3: If we play today, we win today. We played six innings,
Speaker 3: the game's over because here come Mariano, here come Wedland.
Speaker 3: Game over ninety five and three. If we were ahead
Speaker 3: in the six, that's what all I got to do
Speaker 3: is bang one. I I mean, I ain't gotta do
Speaker 3: much because here comes straw right after me.
Speaker 2: It was crazy.
Speaker 3: So you had the kid Jeter was leading off fast
Speaker 3: as something gun I seen at that point. He could
Speaker 3: get down that first base line and he I don't
Speaker 3: know how he got three hundred hits. I mean that
Speaker 3: he can get inside of anything bad. I mean that,
Speaker 3: I mean he can get hit right here and he
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: It was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: But he had three thousand change. That was a bad boy.
Speaker 3: Then we had either mariannod Duncan hit in second who
Speaker 3: could flat out rake? And then you run into a
Speaker 3: chainsaw because now you got Bernie Williams, you got either
Speaker 3: me or tin O. Then you got Strawberry, then you
Speaker 3: got Paul O'Neill. Then you got Wade Bogs wait Box
Speaker 3: hit second something. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 3: like I said, six innings, we need to win six.
Speaker 4: I mean, what's the shift for you? Because you're going
Speaker 4: from Detroit where you didn't you didn't go to the playoffs,
Speaker 4: and you going to a team that every face.
Speaker 3: It was a little nerve wracking at first because I'm like, god,
Speaker 3: dang man, I'm on a team that I ain't got
Speaker 3: I ain't got to shine every day. I don't have to.
Speaker 3: I mean, that team was just I mean it was incredible.
Speaker 3: Missus Seinburn And I tell people all the time, and
Speaker 3: this is crazy because Bob Watson who was our general manager.
Speaker 2: Rest in peace again. Here we go. Bob Watson's daddy.
Speaker 3: When I lived on seventy six and Dinkers lived right
Speaker 3: next door to me, Bob Watson gave me my first
Speaker 3: baseball glove. It was a catchersmith, the old one, the
Speaker 3: one that didn't close. You know, you got to catch
Speaker 3: two hands with. And my dad used that glove to
Speaker 3: catch me throwing bullpens a little league. Right twenty five
Speaker 3: thirty years later, Bob Watson is my GM in New York.
Speaker 2: And he came and got me.
Speaker 4: So that's fire.
Speaker 3: That's unbelievable. Now, I was sportswriters MVP of the World Series.
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, I was getting it in.
Speaker 4: Take us through that world So you got you're going
Speaker 4: against the braves. We got everybody know, Glavin Maddox, Smokest.
Speaker 4: What's the Scotar reports?
Speaker 3: That didn't bother none of them. The only guy that
Speaker 3: was gonna come in on me was Smokes. Everybody else
Speaker 3: is gonna try to hit that outside corner. I wouldn't.
Speaker 3: You had no chance to get that ball on the
Speaker 3: outside corner. I'm gonna stand right on the plate and
Speaker 3: we're gonna go to battle.
Speaker 2: If you hit me, I'm a fuck you up.
Speaker 3: That's listen, especially if you're doing it on purpose. I
Speaker 3: learned that from Don Baylor. Though, man Don.
Speaker 4: Baylor, what Don Bayels might hit and coach with the Angels,
Speaker 4: that's my boy. And I remember when I went to
Speaker 4: the Angels. I said, what's the what's the approach here?
Speaker 4: He says, stand on top of the plate and pull everything,
Speaker 4: pull everything right here down the left field line, trying
Speaker 4: to take it do? I say, Groove? I say, people
Speaker 4: trying to hit the ball all the way? He say,
Speaker 4: fuck that, don't worry about that. Hit the bottle left field.
Speaker 4: If he hit you, he hit you. If he hit
Speaker 4: you a couple of times.
Speaker 2: You go get him. That's right.
Speaker 4: That was that's philosophy.
Speaker 2: And he told me the same thing.
Speaker 3: Me and Groove used to talk all the time. Matter
Speaker 3: of fact, Groove and I used to talk when people
Speaker 3: didn't know we was talking. I just wanted to understand,
Speaker 3: why why do you stand so close to the plate.
Speaker 2: And he just told me.
Speaker 3: If they missed, I got him, because now I got
Speaker 3: the whole plate covered up. I'm on top of the dish.
Speaker 3: I got They can't They ain't got nowhere to go.
Speaker 3: Only where they can go is they can hit me.
Speaker 3: And if you do it too many times, then I
Speaker 3: know he did it on purpose, you know. But I
Speaker 3: don't know if y'all ever seen Winfield and Nolan Ryan.
Speaker 3: Nolan Ryan used to hit Winny all the time. And
Speaker 3: finally Winnie went to get him and they had like
Speaker 3: God's climbing on Winnie trying to hold You can't hold Winnie.
Speaker 3: Oh Winnie threw a hey man with us. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: Winnie was unbelievable. He was a real He used to
Speaker 3: come out man and bat practice one hundred pund dumbells,
Speaker 3: crazy one hundred pound dumb.
Speaker 2: Belts to walk around the bitches.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he came out, he came out, He came out,
Speaker 3: and he came out the club out with two hundred
Speaker 3: pound dumb bells and was doing this ship. And they
Speaker 3: don't make him like they used to. Winfield was a beast, great.
Speaker 4: Athlete, the greatest, and that team at this time you
Speaker 4: got you got eleven years in the league, go from Detroit,
Speaker 4: you win the championship in New York? Like what if that?
Speaker 4: What did that ring mean for you? Personally?
Speaker 3: I don't know it just I mean, you just take
Speaker 3: it all the way back at that point, man, I mean,
Speaker 3: like damn. I mean, I was in the playoffs my
Speaker 3: first year in the big leagues and eighty five we
Speaker 3: played against We played against Kansas City, but that was
Speaker 3: the first year they moved it from best to five
Speaker 3: to best of seven, so we'd have won the series.
Speaker 3: We had three were three to one already and they
Speaker 3: came back and beat us three straight to go on
Speaker 3: to the World Series. And I said, my ship, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm in the big leagues, and fuck I made it
Speaker 3: to the playoffs my first year, so this is gonna
Speaker 3: happen a lot.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: I did the same thing, and it.
Speaker 3: Took me, you know, then it took me eleven more
Speaker 3: years to get there, right, And it just take it
Speaker 3: all back, man, all the shit that you go through
Speaker 3: from you know, not getting the opportunity to play, playing
Speaker 3: in the minor leagues and you had to battle roy
Speaker 3: yourself to get the opportunity to play then because they
Speaker 3: had top picks and I was drafted in the fourth
Speaker 3: round of the secondary face they don't even have that
Speaker 3: damn draft no more.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: I was one of the last guys on the Tolen
Speaker 3: Pole then I go to Butte, Montana and get a chance.
Speaker 3: They throw me in there and I bumped twenty real quick,
Speaker 3: and now I'm somebody. And then now I get to
Speaker 3: a team that got so many great athletes like Toronto.
Speaker 3: We had so many great athletes. Our minor league system
Speaker 3: was second to none. We had a lot of brothers too.
Speaker 3: It was crazy, but anyway, we were doing it right.
Speaker 3: And then you look at the big league team at
Speaker 3: the time. You got Lloyd Motley, who was probably at
Speaker 3: that time were one of the best athletes in Major
Speaker 3: League Baseball. He could run, he was an athlete, He
Speaker 3: played hoops in high school, came out of high school
Speaker 3: top pick Jesse Barfield Bump forty, got a cannon two cannon.
Speaker 3: You got ball Bump forty in the same damn year.
Speaker 3: So I got great athletes that I'm playing with and
Speaker 3: competing against and trying to figure out where I fit in.
Speaker 3: And then here come me and my Homie McGriff At
Speaker 3: the same time. I got traded from the Royals to
Speaker 3: the Blue Jays. He got traded from the Yankees to
Speaker 3: the Blue Jays the same year. So we played together
Speaker 3: from eighty three on. We've been together for a long time,
Speaker 3: a long time, and it wasn't even a competition between
Speaker 3: me and him because we both knew at some point
Speaker 3: we're gonna be in the big leagues. I don't know
Speaker 3: where you're gonna be. I don't know where I'm gonna be,
Speaker 3: but we're gonna go out here every day and put
Speaker 3: something on. It was funny story. He was telling it
Speaker 3: yesterday or the show that they were trying to figure
Speaker 3: it out between me and him, what we're gonna do
Speaker 3: with these two jackasses? He said, are we gonna Are
Speaker 3: we gonna play one in the outfield and one at
Speaker 3: first base? So they tried that, so they started putting
Speaker 3: me in Freddy and spring training in the outfield.
Speaker 2: Shit. That didn't work.
Speaker 3: That didn't work. So then they said, okay, we go
Speaker 3: DH one and we're gonna play one at first. We're
Speaker 3: gonna keep flip flopping. This is my leagues. You're gonna
Speaker 3: play first one day. He gonna play DH one day.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna And that worked because now we are
Speaker 3: both getting to swing the bat, we are both getting
Speaker 3: the day off. You know, one hundred and forty game
Speaker 3: season in South Carolina. That shit is hot humans, So
Speaker 3: you know, it gave us a breather, and you know,
Speaker 3: we both got down.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I said, I.
Speaker 3: Was MVPN and A ball both years and the last
Speaker 3: year before I went to the big League. So we
Speaker 3: were getting down, me and Freddy, and then Freddy left
Speaker 3: me in Double A and he went to Triple A.
Speaker 3: And then I ended up going to the Big League
Speaker 3: from Double A and then Freddy came from Triple A.
Speaker 3: So I mean, hey, man, we never had a competition ever.
Speaker 3: It was like we both gonna get there. And I
Speaker 3: told him, either you're gonna get into the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get in. But if we don't both go
Speaker 3: get in, if one of us get in, that means
Speaker 3: we both got in. And that's the way we look
Speaker 3: at that.
Speaker 1: We talked to a majority of our us about the
Speaker 1: decline of the black baseball player. You spoke to how
Speaker 1: many athletes were coming through the system and who you
Speaker 1: came up with. What is your point of view and
Speaker 1: your take on why we don't see that as much
Speaker 1: as how we grew up watching.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a couple of things, man, I think a
Speaker 3: couple of things coming to play as we as we
Speaker 3: look at that right now, I think the investment and
Speaker 3: in the communities of color is not like the investment
Speaker 3: in Latin America. You understand what I'm saying. They got
Speaker 3: They got damn every everybody. I mean, they going to
Speaker 3: school there, they're eating there, they're getting the nutrition there,
Speaker 3: they're lifting waists there, they're doing everything at them academies.
Speaker 3: Where they doing that at here? Nowhere they buio these
Speaker 3: little little spots they got in Compton and Houston and.
Speaker 2: Around the area.
Speaker 3: But their main what they're doing over there, they're not
Speaker 3: pouring in. No, they ain't giving the money and the
Speaker 3: cost ye travel, you gotta travel, Come on, man, that
Speaker 3: that that don't even make sense. When we were playing Lileague,
Speaker 3: I think my mama might have paid five dollars. And
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you a nothing. I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 3: this right now. Ain't no way my mama would have
Speaker 3: paid for me to play.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 3: My mama would have looked at me and said, boy,
Speaker 3: you better get your ass out of my kitchen. So
Speaker 3: you're gonna be hoping, I'm I'm trying to I'm trying
Speaker 3: to feed your ass. And yeah, I had to play
Speaker 3: something else. There's no way I could have played baseball
Speaker 3: on this level and the way I play AAU ball
Speaker 3: is because they kind of granted me in.
Speaker 2: You know, my mama wasn't paying.
Speaker 3: Now this ship right here, I mean when I was
Speaker 3: doing it, when I had my group I had from
Speaker 3: seven to eighteen. I had a lot of a lot
Speaker 3: of teams. But it was only twelve hundred dollars. That's
Speaker 3: all I charged my kids twelve hundreds and I had
Speaker 3: to pay for a lot of them because a lot
Speaker 3: at that time they couldn't pay.
Speaker 2: For it for it.
Speaker 3: So I mean, now they told me to figure how
Speaker 3: much they paying. Now it's like, oh my god, and shit,
Speaker 3: I might not even I got it. And mad I
Speaker 3: got one ten years old, looked just like Prince. It's humble.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I got me one. It looks just
Speaker 3: like Prince. Left handed hit her banger right. He played
Speaker 3: his first year this year. I'm telling you he's gonna
Speaker 3: be something special. I don't know where he came from,
Speaker 3: but he in my house. Hey, I gotta tell y'all.
Speaker 3: Though you know I was talking to you about it.
Speaker 3: I went through a lot health wise. You know, I
Speaker 3: had triple bypass, had kidney transplant, and uh, I tell
Speaker 3: folks all the time, you know my wife, she's a
Speaker 3: she's a Hungarian woman from a third world country, and
Speaker 3: that girl saved my life. And uh, you know, I
Speaker 3: always tell folks, I got to give her praise because
Speaker 3: you know, without her, I wouldn't be here. She she
Speaker 3: fought me tooth and nail. When I was I was
Speaker 3: ready to give up, I said I'm done, and she
Speaker 3: fought me tooth and nail to give myself back together.
Speaker 3: And Uh, it was a long haul. I mean I
Speaker 3: went through the whole gamut of coughing with open heart
Speaker 3: surgery to uh dialysis for three years.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I was on Dallas for three year, Matt and never
Speaker 3: missed a treatment. And I treated like a game. I
Speaker 3: gotta be there at five am in the morning Monday,
Speaker 3: winds in Friday, three four hours on the machine. And
Speaker 3: that day that you take Dallas's on that Monday, Wednesday Friday,
Speaker 3: you spend. It's over. There's nothing you can do. You
Speaker 3: go home and go get in the bed. The next
Speaker 3: day you start feeling halfway decent, Damn, you gotta go
Speaker 3: right back. So I had to treat it like a
Speaker 3: game because I wouldn't have made it. I just feel
Speaker 3: that I would have gave up. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm an amputee, I'm a blood clotter. I've had surgeries
Speaker 3: on my legs for blood clouds.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Dion and I kind of went, you know, his last
Speaker 3: episode with the bladders. That haven't had that, thank God.
Speaker 3: But with the blood clots, I've been through that too,
Speaker 3: And it's serious, man. I mean, you wake up one
Speaker 3: morning and your footage cold. You know, you gotta run
Speaker 3: to the hospital and your doctor tell you you ain't
Speaker 3: going home.
Speaker 2: We got it.
Speaker 3: We got a break the clock and then we're gonna
Speaker 3: have surgery. And he going in there with this roto
Speaker 3: ruter and cleaning out my arteries. And you know there's
Speaker 3: been some time, man, I tell you, man, I swear
Speaker 3: to God. Man, you know I ain't I'm a big boy.
Speaker 3: I can take a lot of pain. But some of
Speaker 3: the ship that I had done, man make a grown
Speaker 3: man cry. And uh and that woman, man, I mean
Speaker 3: that Dashka Field. There ain't nothing but the truth. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna tell you that she knows she probably gonna cry.
Speaker 3: She she she very emotional about me, and she every
Speaker 3: every time I go out of town because I do
Speaker 3: usually don't go out of town. Man, I'm telling I'm
Speaker 3: a homebody at this point. You know, she told me
Speaker 3: she took a straight dog off the street and made
Speaker 3: him my house mouse.
Speaker 2: And she know that that's hard to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: She she brought me on in, man, she told.
Speaker 2: Me, come on in, sign come on in.
Speaker 3: And she saved my life doing I tell her all
Speaker 3: the time. Man, you got the most appreciation with me
Speaker 3: than anybody, because I've had some beautiful women married to
Speaker 3: and they didn't they wasn't ready, they didn't they didn't
Speaker 3: treat me like you treat me. And that and that
Speaker 3: I think for me, that made the difference. It made
Speaker 3: the difference for me to wait to say, okay, mo,
Speaker 3: time for you to take your ass home. Because this
Speaker 3: woman is for real. She gonna make sure that you
Speaker 3: all right. And you know, we're the ones that is
Speaker 3: always given, We always given. And I finally got somebody
Speaker 3: that gave something to me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And it was just she's a special woman. She's a
Speaker 3: special woman. Lucky to have something like that, especially with
Speaker 3: the all shit I went through that that was a
Speaker 3: rough time.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I was gonna quite. I told my kids. I told her,
Speaker 3: matter of fact. God damn, I told her, just just
Speaker 3: take care of my kids, That's all I asked. And
Speaker 3: she was like cussing me out. You ain't you better?
Speaker 3: Because I used to always tell her when we go
Speaker 3: through some shit, it's game time. I got and now
Speaker 3: I'm telling her that I would quit, and she said,
Speaker 3: you better get your ass ready, it's game time. And
Speaker 3: I had to shake it off and get myself prepared
Speaker 3: because you know, I mean seven eight leg surgeries, I
Speaker 3: mean losing you know, half my foot. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: just it's crazy. It's just it got to the point, man,
Speaker 3: I was like, it's too much.
Speaker 2: How much weight?
Speaker 3: Did you end up losing sixty pounds? I had to
Speaker 3: I said, if I'm gonna live, yeah, I gotta. I
Speaker 3: gotta get it together. I waited in the other day
Speaker 3: two fifteen. I went from two fifteen relation to seventy five.
Speaker 2: You look to seen.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh yeah, man, I had to get
Speaker 3: that shit off me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you look good?
Speaker 1: Have I had to steroid era fifty one stood as
Speaker 1: the number, and then in ninety six you just get
Speaker 1: Brady Anderson his fifty which was crazy and then Sousa
Speaker 1: Maguire's show comes about just sitting here watching these guys
Speaker 1: kind of do what they do, knowing how you went
Speaker 1: about it and did your work. What is the thought
Speaker 1: process you're going through.
Speaker 3: I really didn't care. But the thing they they're the
Speaker 3: ones that have to deal with themselves. I don't huh.
Speaker 3: I mean, you did what you did, You're gonna have
Speaker 3: to deal with yourself. And now you know they're taking
Speaker 3: on that responsibility because all of them, you know, have
Speaker 3: come to the realization that they know what they did.
Speaker 3: I can't I can't help them, and I can't hurt
Speaker 3: them because I wasn't in it right. So I did
Speaker 3: what I did, and I just tell him, hey, look
Speaker 3: at her man. You know you gotta take responsibility for
Speaker 3: what you did. It's not me or it's not anybody
Speaker 3: else that can take responsibility. But I think you know
Speaker 3: one thing, you know, I always say about Jose, which
Speaker 3: I played with Jose since rookie ball, and Jose always
Speaker 3: said what he did, he wouldn't hide nothing.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know when he came out with.
Speaker 3: His book and told told everybody what was going on,
Speaker 3: everybody was mad. But again, how you gonna get mad.
Speaker 3: You know what you was doing? True, you know what
Speaker 3: you're doing. So again, matter of fact, Mark McGuire went
Speaker 3: to school that Damien right down the street from me.
Speaker 3: I been knowing Mark his high school. So I seen
Speaker 3: Mark McGuire. You's skinny right when he got to Saint
Speaker 3: Louis like, goddamn, that's your gantor I mean, come on, man,
Speaker 3: I mean, what are we doing here, folks? And and
Speaker 3: and then we're gonna keep it real. And you know,
Speaker 3: Roger Merris is a man that put in work to
Speaker 3: get what he got to and then we just blow
Speaker 3: by Roger like he ain't did nothing. Those are the
Speaker 3: things that I don't know, man, Certain things in the
Speaker 3: game of baseball, Hank Aaron, Babe, Ruth, Lou Garritt. Those
Speaker 3: things are supposed to be enshrined in our game. They
Speaker 3: never supposed to be just demolished, and we're demolished.
Speaker 4: How much is that play into your why like your
Speaker 4: wife of not going that route, cause I mean, you
Speaker 4: had to be around it, you had to be exposed
Speaker 4: to it at some point.
Speaker 3: Well, the first time I got exposed to it when
Speaker 3: I seen them little scoundterls hitting that shit up there
Speaker 3: where I was hitting it. I'm like, God, damn, what
Speaker 3: they doing right? And that's when you know. I had
Speaker 3: one of my teammates and I ain't gonna mess his
Speaker 3: name came to me one time and he was crying.
Speaker 3: I took my damn glass. I said, man, what's wrong
Speaker 3: with you? Man? Grown ass?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you? He said, Man, I went home
Speaker 3: this winter and I took steroids. Man, and it's messing
Speaker 3: with me. M you know, it's messing with my mentor's
Speaker 3: messing with me. I'm angry. I go home, I'm drinking
Speaker 3: like a fish. It just and that's when I knew
Speaker 3: baseball was in trouble because I knew a lot of
Speaker 3: guys and I talked to him about who he got
Speaker 3: involved with to do what he was doing. So I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: we got a problem here, and you can't me personally.
Speaker 3: I was at the point of my career where I'm
Speaker 3: doing what I do. I don't need that shit, so
Speaker 3: we're just gonna keep it moving, right. But when I
Speaker 3: see my teammate going through what he was going through,
Speaker 3: I was like, there's a problem. And he wanted to
Speaker 3: go in and talk to skip Sparky, and I kind
Speaker 3: of like, oh, wait a minute, let's think about this
Speaker 3: before you do that. Because Skip was the coolest man
Speaker 3: in the world. I had some teammates that were owned
Speaker 3: some stuff and Skip never told and I had to
Speaker 3: be the one to go tell Skip that they were
Speaker 3: sick and they couldn't make it to the game, knowing
Speaker 3: that there was some shit, right, And I did that
Speaker 3: because I love him, and Skip looked at me like
Speaker 3: I was fucking crazy because he knew, but that was me.
Speaker 3: I was that Yeah, I mean I had to number one.
Speaker 3: My man was already on two strikes, right, so I
Speaker 3: had to protect him because I didn't want so he
Speaker 3: didn't get to the ballpark for about a week, and
Speaker 3: I still had to stay with that same story.
Speaker 2: Skippy.
Speaker 3: He got the fluid, he throwing up from both ends.
Speaker 3: He's sick, he got fever. He don't want to come
Speaker 3: around the guys getting nobody sick, and he's still looking
Speaker 3: at me at you like I'm fucking crazy. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I was able to get
Speaker 3: us through it and my other team man, I just
Speaker 3: didn't I didn't look at that time. It wasn't illegal
Speaker 3: or whatever. They were saying. I didn't know if it
Speaker 3: was legal or not, but it wasn't something that we
Speaker 3: banned out of the game, right, So I just told him, look, man,
Speaker 3: let's try to go to a therapist, get your head right,
Speaker 3: and it's just let's make it through this year. Once
Speaker 3: we make it through this year, you know, stop a
Speaker 3: ship and get yourself back together and here we go again.
Speaker 3: So you know, I man, I just think, man that
Speaker 3: you know who you're cheating, and you know if you
Speaker 3: ain't cheating, you gotta you gotta deal with yourself.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to cheat. I just didn't have to.
Speaker 3: My son didn't have to cheat. You didn't have to,
Speaker 3: big ass, strong one, that's probably the strongest dude I
Speaker 3: seen in a long time. And I tell you, I
Speaker 3: still slapped the ship out of him. He mine, he
Speaker 3: mine forever. He ain't never, he ain't never gonna be
Speaker 3: too big. Me slapt shit out.
Speaker 4: Of How early did you know he was gonna be
Speaker 4: From the jump.
Speaker 3: That boy was walking around in Toronto with a diaper,
Speaker 3: swinging a little woofotball bat that he just like this scandal.
Speaker 3: I got at home right now, same thing. I told him,
Speaker 3: you're gonna brunk this one at home. He gonna bust
Speaker 3: his mama's windows. It's coming. He's swinging, fucking he got
Speaker 3: my bats. He ten years old, he got thirty four,
Speaker 3: thirty five.
Speaker 2: He in the house swinging.
Speaker 3: I tell you're gonna break your mama's sliding glass door
Speaker 3: and then she gonna whoop your ass and then I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have to patch you up. I'm just telling you.
Speaker 2: He don't.
Speaker 3: He don't. He don't believe that being greasy. I'm telling
Speaker 3: you this cat is crazy. He's a baseball junkie at
Speaker 3: at ten years old, same thing, Prince baseball junkie.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we've heard the stories of you know,
Speaker 1: twelve year old twelve year old Prince hitting down the
Speaker 1: stadium and excuse me, out out of the park in
Speaker 1: batting practice. I coached my kids. I just said, I
Speaker 1: just came back from Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Coaching my kids.
Speaker 1: What kind of joy do you get seeing your son,
Speaker 1: first of all, early succeed and kind of just some
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but just the longevity and what he
Speaker 1: was able to accomplish during his career.
Speaker 3: The year that he really I mean that I really
Speaker 3: felt that he was a bad boy. His Mam Mistakes
Speaker 3: was pregnant with my daughter, Cessling, and he went on
Speaker 3: every road trip with me and he hit at every ballpark.
Speaker 3: What age is this, He's about eight nine years old,
Speaker 3: and so he went on every trip. I mean from
Speaker 3: West Coast. I was flying. I wasn't flying with the
Speaker 3: team because Sparky didn't have family on team playing. I
Speaker 3: didn't care. Me and him, Me and him everywhere everywhere,
Speaker 3: and he was just raking and man Larry Hern and
Speaker 3: hitting coach. He take Prince out. And then when Tito
Speaker 3: came and Buddy Bell's group came, shit, they really let
Speaker 3: him go. That's when he started going up everybody park
Speaker 3: went to, he went up top. It wasn't like he
Speaker 3: just in Detroit. Everywhere we went, he go up top.
Speaker 3: And at that point, man at twelve thirteen years old, man,
Speaker 3: I mean that shit ain't normal. And he always had
Speaker 3: a good eye. He could run for a big boy too.
Speaker 3: He had a couple inside the park home runs. So
Speaker 3: he was and like I said, Ricky, if you look
Speaker 3: at Ricky Williams and Princefielder, they look exactly alike.
Speaker 4: The legs thick the bottom and you say, y'all family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every day, all day, me and Ricky. Ricky was
Speaker 3: a little baby at my grandma house back in the day.
Speaker 3: He used to run around snotty nose, crying and carrying on.
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, here he is played, you know,
Speaker 3: getting drafted baseball. Like damn, look at Ricky.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my my, my, my daddy and his grandma
Speaker 3: brother sister.
Speaker 1: Only father and son duter both hit fifty home runs
Speaker 1: and both finished with three hundred and nineteen.
Speaker 3: Now, man, that's crazy. I don't know if thats gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Let's left or let's David Ortiz's son do something. He
Speaker 3: I hear he's a pretty good player, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't the fifty. The fifty is gonna be the one.
Speaker 3: Now he gonna have to go something to catch his
Speaker 3: daddy in home runs. But you know, all these boys,
Speaker 3: even David Ortiz, I mean he was when he was
Speaker 3: when Minnesota he got released. You know, he got released
Speaker 3: and went to Boston and made made some of it.
Speaker 3: So you know, let me tell you that Mitchell Report
Speaker 3: kind of got everybody come jacked up. I remember one time,
Speaker 3: and this is just keeping it real. My boy Bagwell.
Speaker 3: I love me some Jeff Bagwell. But I had a kid,
Speaker 3: Kayleb's crab who was going to spring training with San
Speaker 3: Diego and he ended up making the team. So for
Speaker 3: him making the team because he worked out with me.
Speaker 3: So a friend and I flew out to San Diego
Speaker 3: to watch his opening day and there was this guy
Speaker 3: out on the outfield and he started running towards me
Speaker 3: and he came to say hello. I didn't even know
Speaker 3: who the hell it was at first, and then when
Speaker 3: he got close to me, it was back. He was
Speaker 3: so skinny, his uniform was bagging. What the hell. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of guys that were like that. Pudge same
Speaker 3: way in Detroit when he went to Detroit. Man, I
Speaker 3: didn't know who he was. I now, but the Mitchell
Speaker 3: Report put some folks on blasts, and I think everybody
Speaker 3: kind of changed up at that point and tried to
Speaker 3: get this self back in order.
Speaker 2: But everybody did.
Speaker 1: Your relationship with Prince and your family hads, it's up
Speaker 1: and down in your older years. What would be one
Speaker 1: message you would tell yourself that you didn't know at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: I think right now, as I'm sitting there, listen, I
Speaker 3: tell folks, I was time they ask me about the relationship.
Speaker 3: I pray for my son every day. I love the
Speaker 3: kid to death, always gonna love it. But as he's
Speaker 3: understanding going through what he's going through now with one
Speaker 3: of his sons, you gotta break that curse. You gotta
Speaker 3: figure it out. You gotta be able to say, hey man,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, come on, let's get together. Listen, Hey, you
Speaker 3: know I almost wasn't here. Then what you're gonna do
Speaker 3: if something happened, I mean, we ain't gonna have an
Speaker 3: opportunity to fix it. So I say all the time,
Speaker 3: I can't be concerned with what happened twenty five years ago.
Speaker 3: It's now. I'm happy. I love my life, I love
Speaker 3: where I'm at, and I want him to get there.
Speaker 3: He's not there, he's not happy. He's gonna get happy
Speaker 3: at some point. But my son and I, I tell
Speaker 3: it all the time, we had such a great relationship.
Speaker 3: It's a damn shame that we don't have that same relationship.
Speaker 2: It's a shame.
Speaker 3: And the reason why it's a shame is because I say,
Speaker 3: when I left home and me and his mother were
Speaker 3: going through what we were going through, she kind of
Speaker 3: gave him an opportunity to be the man of the house,
Speaker 3: in which I think was and kind of put him
Speaker 3: in the middle. You can't do that all the time.
Speaker 3: My attorney said, don't get your kids involved, don't get
Speaker 3: your kids invove, don't get you give me. Well, I
Speaker 3: was taking a beating and she was just laying it
Speaker 3: on him. You know, your daddy did this, your dad,
Speaker 3: And I think that kind of buckle thing to where
Speaker 3: he thought he had to take care of his mama,
Speaker 3: which I understand because I did the same thing with
Speaker 3: my father. At least I got a chance to tell
Speaker 3: my father, hey, man, you know that's grown folk business.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't have been in the middle of that, you know.
Speaker 3: And I just think my son, like I said, I
Speaker 3: love my son to death, man, but the respect game
Speaker 3: is just so important to me. I'm a respect guy,
Speaker 3: even when my daddy was acting crazy, even because my
Speaker 3: daddy was a rolling stone. Oh that man was a
Speaker 3: rolling stone. I met my brother when I was forty
Speaker 3: years old. He was a rolling stone. But again, that's
Speaker 3: my daddy and I had to give him the respect
Speaker 3: that he deserved because he brought me in this world right,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times. I think in black families, man,
Speaker 3: for some reason, when shit hits the fam between mama
Speaker 3: and daddy, we just can't keep our kids separate. And
Speaker 3: that happens in so many families. You look around now
Speaker 3: and how many fathers and sons got beef or ain't
Speaker 3: getting along or something.
Speaker 2: It happens all the time.
Speaker 3: I just don't understand it because right now I'm living
Speaker 3: my best life. I swore to God, I'm having so
Speaker 3: much damn fun just being at home, looking at my
Speaker 3: my I got seven grandkids. I can't be worried about
Speaker 3: little crazy shit. I'm trying to live. And I made
Speaker 3: myself live because I could have been up out of here.
Speaker 3: I made myself live and I had that backing to
Speaker 3: make me live. But man, I'm not nowhere sorrowy at nobody.
Speaker 3: If you sorrow at me, I'm sorry. But I'm living
Speaker 3: my best life.
Speaker 4: And it ain't nothing like the just the just the
Speaker 4: power of conversation where everybody, everybody got their own things
Speaker 4: that go on, but the power conversation, the power of
Speaker 4: you know, you got to squashing things and let it go,
Speaker 4: making something happen, let it go.
Speaker 3: What what what is the problem if you really think
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: What is it holding on?
Speaker 1: Because holding on to the past and the grudges is
Speaker 1: a heavy It's heavy. And I had assimilates just you
Speaker 1: briefly talking about you. I mean I met my brother
Speaker 1: forty two there you go, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And me and my dad didn't get along until my
Speaker 1: mom died. It was almost like my mom passing opened
Speaker 1: up the doors for me and my dad to have,
Speaker 1: you know, a fatherless some relationship at twenty seven, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So to me, it was never
Speaker 1: too late to kind of mend that bridge. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're praying that.
Speaker 3: I look at it, man, I love God. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's mine, he's mine.
Speaker 2: I did that.
Speaker 4: You ain't understanding, you know, Matt, just to be fair,
Speaker 4: like just to you know, because you know, it's always
Speaker 4: two sides there and like you know, and it takes
Speaker 4: to the tango and it's alute man street. So I
Speaker 4: just want to make sure we're.
Speaker 2: Ye know, we're being fair.
Speaker 3: No, every you know, it's all fair. It's all good man.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I love the kid to death. I
Speaker 3: mean what he was at my mother's agies birthday party.
Speaker 3: We was there kicking it together. So at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, he's got a lot going on in
Speaker 3: his life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I kind of got my life together now, but he's
Speaker 3: going through it on his end.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, you.
Speaker 3: Gotta break the courage. Man. You got a beautiful young
Speaker 3: son that's a stud. Haven is a stud. And the
Speaker 3: communication level is not there. And I was like, man,
Speaker 3: we gotta get over this. Something gotta change. And it's
Speaker 3: the mom and daddy thing, you know. It's just I
Speaker 3: don't know what it is about the African American family,
Speaker 3: but they can't keep their kids separated from a grown
Speaker 3: folk business. Grown folk business need to be grown folk business.
Speaker 3: Kids don't need to be in that. And that's happened
Speaker 3: so many times, so many times because us as young men,
Speaker 3: we see our mother cry it's a rap. I'm going
Speaker 3: on my mama's well now that I'm a grown ass
Speaker 3: man ship watch y'all know.
Speaker 2: Okay, it takes two yeah, more power you and your son.
Speaker 2: Oh he can't, he can't. He can't fuck with you, man.
Speaker 3: He told me one time, mat Dad, you see the
Speaker 3: ball out hit in Colorado? That was a bos said man,
Speaker 3: I least stadiums, man, you hit a bomb.
Speaker 2: What's your furthest shot. I mean, was it in the
Speaker 2: game or in a batting practice.
Speaker 3: It was in Milwaukee. He was out of the stadium. I'm
Speaker 3: the only player ever to hit it out of Milwaukee
Speaker 3: County Stadium. Hit it in the parking lot.
Speaker 4: Not the one out of Tiger Stadium, parking lot off
Speaker 4: of Dave Stewart.
Speaker 3: Well, I hit that one good, but the one well,
Speaker 3: the one I hit off play second in Milwaukee. I
Speaker 3: smoked him.
Speaker 2: I hit it all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was five they said five twenty, but I
Speaker 3: don't know how they hit it. I hit it in
Speaker 3: some man's truck. He took it home.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hit it in the parking lot.
Speaker 2: He broke my window, but I got the ball.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got it.
Speaker 2: Quick hitters. First thing to come to mind. Let us know.
Speaker 2: Favorite ballpark to play in Detroit, worst ballpark to play
Speaker 2: in Oakland?
Speaker 4: All right, bench, Claren Brall, what teammates are you taking Withie?
Speaker 3: You had a lot of them, Rob Deer, three of them,
Speaker 3: Mickey Tellton and Tony Phillips, TP taking chie that little
Speaker 3: reason to fight anybody, I tell you TP real quick
Speaker 3: with Erickson was in Minnesota and he knocked TP down
Speaker 3: the night before. Yeah, so the next morning I come
Speaker 3: in the clubhouse. He said, Dad, I'm going to get him.
Speaker 3: I said, you want to get who said, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: get that motherfucker. He knocked me down. You know he's
Speaker 3: spitting all over the damn place. I'm gonna get that motherfucker.
Speaker 3: He's talking of that, I said, tom Man. So we
Speaker 3: taking bad practice. They come out for BP. He go
Speaker 3: in the middle of they circle and toe up with
Speaker 3: the dude. I'm like, we got a damn brawl.
Speaker 2: Going on from the game.
Speaker 3: Yes, Tony Phillips was unbelievable. He gonna he ain't scared
Speaker 3: nobody that mentality. Yeah, I ain't scared nobody. All right,
Speaker 3: let's go.
Speaker 2: Hardest thrower you ever faced.
Speaker 3: I probably say me facing one guy. Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: give you a couple. I'm gonna give you Roger Clemens
Speaker 3: and Nola Ryan and I used to tell Sparky every
Speaker 3: day I was gonna get Roger Clems. I ain't got
Speaker 3: him yet, but let me tell you somebody yet.
Speaker 5: And I want to face him again because you saw
Speaker 5: he just threw it.
Speaker 4: That happen.
Speaker 3: Listen, I got him. He used to wear my ass out.
Speaker 3: But I tell him, I tell him Att all the time. Okay,
Speaker 3: I gonna wear me out, But the rest of your
Speaker 3: motherfucker's gonna pay for this ship. I tell them, Boston
Speaker 3: Red Sox, I.
Speaker 1: Mean the way you ran this most glaving and uh.
Speaker 3: I just you know I didn't. I didn't really give
Speaker 3: a ship. I gotta work. I love you to death,
Speaker 3: but I gotta work. And that was the only guy.
Speaker 3: Roger Clemens was the only guy that never gave in.
Speaker 2: Matt.
Speaker 3: I used to get I used to get these guys
Speaker 3: in such holes. They had to give me in. They
Speaker 3: had to come on with it. And he would never
Speaker 3: do it. If I was sitting too old, I'm looking
Speaker 3: for a fastball, he threw me a forkball. If I'm
Speaker 3: sitting three to one, he'd come slider. He never gave in,
Speaker 3: so he but but to think about him, Matt, he
Speaker 3: can throw everything for a strike, right, And then you
Speaker 3: face no to Ryan, this mother out there grunting throwing
Speaker 3: nine million, And then I tell you one more, got Jr.
Speaker 3: I was a spring training who Richard, Oh my god, Richard, this.
Speaker 4: Old school dude. The picture recipes and look and look
Speaker 4: ahead it and look at it and kissing me.
Speaker 3: Their mound was like the Dodgers mound and he already
Speaker 3: six eight. Oh my god, I was an eighteen year
Speaker 3: old kid in spring trainer and I ain't supposed to
Speaker 3: be facing Jr. And this big old suckerd looking down
Speaker 3: here doing this right here, and he thought me three,
Speaker 3: he wasted no time. Three boom boom boom, get your
Speaker 3: ass out of here. Yes, And I was so scared.
Speaker 3: I ain't never be scared. I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: looking at these people that I'm facing on TV when
Speaker 3: I'm a kid, I'm I'm I'm just out of high school.
Speaker 2: And I'm looking at j R.
Speaker 3: Nolan because you know, no one was pitching Anaheim when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, and he was doing one hundred,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, damn, I'm facing these guys.
Speaker 4: Hey, blessing dream coming. I was blessing all those guys'
Speaker 4: smartest picture.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, Roger, I'm gonna have to get Roger. You
Speaker 3: know why I get Rochester respect. I'm gonna tell you why.
Speaker 3: When in ninety four we had a we were in
Speaker 3: Arizona and we we had a meeting with the owners,
Speaker 3: and uh, we had some we had some tussles, but
Speaker 3: Lennydister came there with his lawyer and uh read this
Speaker 3: letter in front of all the players with the owners there.
Speaker 3: He read the letter to the players that blah blah
Speaker 3: blah were losing money, and I he reached the letter,
Speaker 3: and I got to give Roger Clemens the most respect
Speaker 3: in the world because I couldn't stand him. Couldn't stand Roger.
Speaker 3: And the reason I couldn't stand him, I couldn't get
Speaker 3: a fucking hit good. But I saw good. But Roger
Speaker 3: grabbed a fucking letter from Lenary Dykson and said, now
Speaker 3: you tell me how you really feel. What Now, Now
Speaker 3: it's on because now the players went like this.
Speaker 2: We became a.
Speaker 3: Union at that point because we had a lot of
Speaker 3: guys chirping about the money, that this we're losing money
Speaker 3: while we on And then the owners trucked around and
Speaker 3: tried to use the scabs in spring training and it
Speaker 3: was a rap. We got what we wanted and that's
Speaker 3: why they making the money they making right now today.
Speaker 2: Nastiest single pitch you ever saw from who.
Speaker 3: I gotta go with the same guy that damn Roger Clemins,
Speaker 3: and I had nightmares about that. Damn park ball. I
Speaker 3: was having fucking nightmares.
Speaker 2: Sparks.
Speaker 3: You say I'm gonna get your day off there, I said, no, you,
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna get his ass today. It ain't happened yet.
Speaker 3: That's something just wore my ass out, he he and he.
Speaker 4: Used to say it all we gotta look up the
Speaker 4: numbers and you verse Roger.
Speaker 3: Oh, he wore my ass out. But he said it
Speaker 3: that I was scared of that motherfucker. But I never
Speaker 3: was scared of you. And he never give in. I
Speaker 3: ain't never gonna give in to him because I can't.
Speaker 3: I faced the guy. The same thing Bob Gibson told me.
Speaker 3: He said, I used to knock down Willie mats all
Speaker 3: the time every game because I wasn't gonna let Willie
Speaker 3: beat me. I was gonna face the next guy. Same
Speaker 3: thing with Rogers. He never gave in.
Speaker 4: I was over there to cut got the numbers two
Speaker 4: for fifty, two for fifty.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, was that old for fifty?
Speaker 3: Is that old?
Speaker 2: Five? No? No?
Speaker 3: Is that is that point five zero? That's bad?
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 3: I told you I was having nightmares off that motherfucker.
Speaker 3: Nightmare every time. I said that about two singles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: two singles, yeah, yeah, how many twenty?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I used to wear my ass out. He throw that
Speaker 3: motherfucker in my eyes. Man, I'm gonna hit that motherfucker.
Speaker 3: Ain't hit it yet. He used to wear my ass out.
Speaker 3: But I tell you what, the rest of his fucking teammates,
Speaker 3: they should be pissed off at him, because I will
Speaker 3: wear that ass out. I'm gonna take my beating from
Speaker 3: Roger Clinton. But the rest of you get Yeah, the
Speaker 3: rest of y'all gonna get it.
Speaker 2: That's funny ship. That's up.
Speaker 4: Best baseball city, food.
Speaker 3: Baseball city. I go to Toronto, Man, Toronto, you got
Speaker 3: this melting pot. You can get anything you want on
Speaker 3: and off the field. Watch out now, I've told you
Speaker 3: I changed baby baby dog off the field and made
Speaker 3: him a mouse, house house mouse.
Speaker 2: That's right, good job. One guest you would like to
Speaker 2: see on all the smoke dugout.
Speaker 3: Man, I'm gonna tell you what. That man Max is
Speaker 3: a motherfucker. I love that man. I watched that every
Speaker 3: time he's on. He's crazy as hell. Uh. But the
Speaker 3: guy I probably would want you have been the hurt.
Speaker 3: I think her would be a good one because yeah,
Speaker 3: he was one of them young young soldiers that came
Speaker 3: into the game. You know, after I was getting down
Speaker 3: and how big as he is? He said, six six
Speaker 3: seven about three hundred, No, he played, he played two sixty.
Speaker 3: He's a Monstrossory right now. He's monstrouss. And you know,
Speaker 3: as you get older, your body start to tell you
Speaker 3: that you might have needed to sit your ass down
Speaker 3: a couple of days because he doesne have back surgery
Speaker 3: and this and that. Man, and we all go through it. Man,
Speaker 3: every morning I wake up, I gotta shake this motherfucker off.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just it ain't going away. Man. It
Speaker 3: just ship hurts every day. I mean your fingers, I
Speaker 3: mean nothing straight. I mean, you know, in best of
Speaker 3: y'all basketball, I mean y'all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, as we get older, man, we just gotta
Speaker 3: we just gotta we gotta make it, man, just gotta
Speaker 3: make it keep moving.
Speaker 2: For our babies. Yeah. Well see, man, we appreciate your time. Man.
Speaker 2: I had a great time. This is crazy.
Speaker 3: I got a chance to get some ship off my chest. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I good about myself now I can go
Speaker 3: talk ship to Frank.
Speaker 2: There you go, man, that so Phiel, that's a wrap back.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much thanks guys,