Speaker 1: Kubbooms.
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now in
Speaker 2: the air.
Speaker 1: Everyway you have stumbled onto the Fifth Hour with Ben
Speaker 1: Mahler and Danny G Radio because four hours a night
Speaker 1: are not enough. Eight days a week, well, not this week,
Speaker 1: eight days a week. I'll explain why coming up momentarily.
Speaker 1: But Danny G Radio not with me this weekend. My
Speaker 1: man Danny G doing some of the production work on
Speaker 1: this podcast, but he is away from the microphones right
Speaker 1: now as he is Daddy Gee Radio. Daddy Congratulations to
Speaker 1: Danny and his wife on the birth of their son
Speaker 1: last weekend. The child was born on Saturday. And rather
Speaker 1: than me tell you secondhand information, We're gonna wait till
Speaker 1: Danny gets back and he'll give us all the blow
Speaker 1: by blow details on the birth of his son. We're
Speaker 1: very excited for Danny Mozeltov to him and his wife there.
Speaker 1: So congratulations. But we are back in the audio dojo
Speaker 1: on this Friday. You're probably wondering where I have been.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, Maybe you're happy. I haven't been behind the
Speaker 1: microphones the last couple of days, so I cannot explain
Speaker 1: what has happened. I did spend the week on the
Speaker 1: East Coast, and there's something bubbling up, something percolating that
Speaker 1: I am not allowed to discuss. But hopefully soon I'll
Speaker 1: be able to tell you what this trip was all about.
Speaker 1: Some exciting things coming very soon that I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about, but I can't tell you about now.
Speaker 1: It's not for public consumption, so stay tuned. It's a cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: And today this is someone I wanted to get on
Speaker 1: the fifth hour for a while. I've wanted to chat
Speaker 1: with this guy. Haven't tracked him down because I haven't
Speaker 1: put the effort in. Bad job by me, But we
Speaker 1: have uncovered the man, the myth, the legend, one of
Speaker 1: the great personalities in sports media over the years. Here
Speaker 1: his name is TJ. Simers, a longtime sports columnist at
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times. He's worked at a bunch of
Speaker 1: different newspapers over the years, but he was at the
Speaker 1: LA Times for a generation, most famously as the Page
Speaker 1: two columnist. You probably saw him on ESPN back in
Speaker 1: the day. He was a panelist on the show Around
Speaker 1: the Horn in the early days of that show. If
Speaker 1: you're in Los Angeles. He hosted a radio program with
Speaker 1: his daughter, a morning drive radio show for a number
Speaker 1: of years. So's done a little bit of this, a
Speaker 1: little bit of that. But one of my favorite columnists,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sucking up to them because, unlike so many,
Speaker 1: especially in the Los Angeles media, that are lap dogs
Speaker 1: for the teams and the players, TJ was an attack
Speaker 1: dog and I loved it, and it caused him a
Speaker 1: lot of heartache. We'll get into that, I'm sure, but
Speaker 1: before we get in to that part of the story,
Speaker 1: we must delve into the lawsuit. For the last number
Speaker 1: of years, I have seen headlines. You've probably seen these
Speaker 1: things too if you pay attention to the sports media world.
Speaker 1: And there were these headlines that TJ. Seimer's had won
Speaker 1: a lawsuit against the La Times for multiple millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: So that was the big headline, TJ Simers wins. So
Speaker 1: then a few months later, a judge or someone in
Speaker 1: the court system. I assume a judge would say, well, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't actually get to keep the money, and then
Speaker 1: they'd go back and they'd have an other trial, and
Speaker 1: then TJ would win again, and he'd win a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and then the same thing would happen. So
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to win a court case multiple times,
Speaker 1: but TJ was able to do it. So let's start
Speaker 1: with that. TJ. Can you walk us through what happened
Speaker 1: with this long legal battle that you had you and
Speaker 1: your legal team there, TJ against one of the major
Speaker 1: institutions of American media, the La Times. Walk me through
Speaker 1: what it's been like for you.
Speaker 3: Spent ten years of my life in a courtroom and
Speaker 3: won the first trial one seven million. Then the judge said,
Speaker 3: you know, let me think about this. Yeah you won,
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to give you the money. We're
Speaker 3: going to go to appeals and see what happened. Went
Speaker 3: to appeals, and the appeals people said, yeah, you won,
Speaker 3: but let's do another trial to figure out how much
Speaker 3: money they should pay you. So we did. We did
Speaker 3: another trial and we won fifteen million, and the judge
Speaker 3: said on the very last day he said, you know,
Speaker 3: instead of giving you the money, I think we're going
Speaker 3: to do another trial and this, as you can tell,
Speaker 3: I'm just having lots of fun with this. And we
Speaker 3: went to a third trial. We won over a million
Speaker 3: dollars and they paid off and the time, when I
Speaker 3: say the Times paid off by that point, all in Capital,
Speaker 3: which owns all these other newspapers register and you know,
Speaker 3: just bought They just bought a paper. Well, San Diego Union,
Speaker 3: which everybody thinks means they're going to put them out
Speaker 3: of business. Well, they paid us over a million. They
Speaker 3: still owe us over three million in court costs, which
Speaker 3: I get half, but we're still waiting on that to
Speaker 3: be adjudicated further. So it was a mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And why did it take so long? What did
Speaker 1: did did the law? Did your lawyers explain that it
Speaker 1: seems like you won a couple of times? That should
Speaker 1: be it? Why did they keep going back?
Speaker 3: The legal system is a lot like the way the
Speaker 3: Clippers were won or run. It's just mind body, it's
Speaker 3: not a good system that we have. I still can't
Speaker 3: tell you why we won, and effectively felt like at
Speaker 3: times we lost. I never was fired by the other times,
Speaker 3: I just quit because I didn't like the leadership there
Speaker 3: and what they were doing. So when we went to court,
Speaker 3: it was very simple. Every time the jury agreed with me,
Speaker 3: and every time the judge decided to have his own mind,
Speaker 3: he would tell the jury, you people are the most
Speaker 3: important people in the whole world. You give us your
Speaker 3: time and your dedication, and then they would make their
Speaker 3: judgment and he would go against them. So it's a
Speaker 3: really screwed up world out there, and I feel badly.
Speaker 3: I supposedly had the best lawyers in the world out there,
Speaker 3: and so did the other side. What happens to these
Speaker 3: poor people who get the worst lawyers. Yeah, it's just ugly.
Speaker 3: And seeing them sit around the hallways in the courthouse.
Speaker 3: It was in La Superior Court. I just felt so
Speaker 3: badly for some of these people. We felt we were
Speaker 3: getting screwed, and I can only imagine how badly they
Speaker 3: take it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you obviously had a great case. You ended
Speaker 1: up winning. You beat a major media company three times, right.
Speaker 3: Three times?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know how hard that is TJ to do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the odds of that.
Speaker 3: I know it's hard. The odds of winning probably are
Speaker 3: not great, but that's how you know. They never the
Speaker 3: Times never proved a single thing where they had suggested
Speaker 3: that I had done wrong earlier on. It was it
Speaker 3: was just it was a case of two editors who
Speaker 3: had their own agenda. They were later fired by the
Speaker 3: La Times. But that didn't do me any good, just
Speaker 3: a you know, a bad taste in my mouth in
Speaker 3: the career.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you, you had been there for a generation.
Speaker 1: I mean, you were a rock of the La Times,
Speaker 1: as so many of the guys were teaj It's got
Speaker 1: to be odd. I mean you look at all the
Speaker 1: people you work with there, and good newspaper people who
Speaker 1: are no longer newspaper people because the business is just
Speaker 1: upside down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the business is all about dying right now. I
Speaker 3: mean the people at the La Times are trying to
Speaker 3: kill the newspaper because it serves them better. They don't
Speaker 3: have to pay for printing presses, which they're going to
Speaker 3: have to go to Riverside starting in February to print
Speaker 3: the paper. They don't have to pay for paper, they
Speaker 3: don't have to pay for delivery. It's much better for
Speaker 3: them if they can do a newspaper online and train
Speaker 3: everybody to do online and then train the advertisers to
Speaker 3: pay for it. So people in my profession of my
Speaker 3: age right now, they're disappearing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been crazy the last ten years or so,
Speaker 1: it's been nuts. But as far as you as a columnist, teacher,
Speaker 1: I always love your approach to writing the page two
Speaker 1: column at the Times because you are what I call
Speaker 1: a rarity. You are the white whale in LA media
Speaker 1: as far as the newspaper guys, because most of the
Speaker 1: columnists did not really I don't know that you attacked,
Speaker 1: but compared to everyone else, you were an absolute pit bull.
Speaker 1: Why do you think TJ that we we did not
Speaker 1: get more of your style of writing as a columnist
Speaker 1: in LA because a lot of the guys are kind
Speaker 1: of cheerleaders and they're not you know, they don't they're
Speaker 1: not as critical as you ended up when you were
Speaker 1: doing that column all those years. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that is?
Speaker 3: Man? It's dangerous out there. You know in those days
Speaker 3: are online site the very top ad was from the Angels,
Speaker 3: so here I would be writing a story about Angriarty
Speaker 3: and Angry Arty is paying money to advertise across the
Speaker 3: top of our sports page on the online you're you're
Speaker 3: messing with powerbrokers. You know, the Dodgers have been cozy
Speaker 3: with the power brokers in town. It's you know, look
Speaker 3: at the Lakers are owned by in part by Patrick
Speaker 3: Suon Jong, who's the publisher of The Times. You you,
Speaker 3: if you get tough with people in la in sports,
Speaker 3: you're going to pay the price. They have a thing
Speaker 3: now where every day the writers are measured but by
Speaker 3: what they call conversions. So let's say Dylan or plashke
Speaker 3: rights their job is to get new subscribers within an
Speaker 3: hour after their column has posted online or within an
Speaker 3: hour after their column has been read by somebody. They
Speaker 3: are even if they pay a dollar for subscription. That
Speaker 3: makes plash g or Dylan look good. For the writers
Speaker 3: who don't get conversions, it's like getting the merits and
Speaker 3: being the first to be nervous about being laid off.
Speaker 3: So then you start to ask the question, well, if
Speaker 3: Clash he writes only about the Dodgers and USC and
Speaker 3: is he doing it to panders of the editors so
Speaker 3: he gets conversions, or is he doing it because he's
Speaker 3: a legit columnist and that's what moves him. Right now,
Speaker 3: it's tough decisions that everybody has to make to survive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's crazy. I have some great TJ stories.
Speaker 1: I want to buy you from the past. TJ. So
Speaker 1: the first one of the first interviews I did with you,
Speaker 1: first time I chatted with you, you were, I believe, the
Speaker 1: NFL columnist, if I remember correctly at the times? Is
Speaker 1: that correct? Did you cover?
Speaker 3: That's correct? Is correct?
Speaker 1: So this is probably in the nineties. I was doing
Speaker 1: the Ben and Dave Show, the local show, and we
Speaker 1: had you on and you did not like the questions
Speaker 1: we asked. TJ. I remember you. You were so an.
Speaker 3: You've got Ben, Ben, You've gotten better. You have a
Speaker 3: little practice doing this, so I appreciate the fact that
Speaker 3: you ung in there.
Speaker 1: Ahead I did, I did, But it was it was
Speaker 1: hilarious because we had you on. I think you were
Speaker 1: covering a Charger game or something because there were no
Speaker 1: teams in l au were the NFL columnist. But at
Speaker 1: that time the Rams had left and the Raiders had left.
Speaker 3: Why is there a little laughter in your voice when
Speaker 3: you say there were no teams in LA and you
Speaker 3: were the NFL column.
Speaker 1: It's great, I mean, but we had you on and
Speaker 1: you got really annoyed. I forget exactly. I don't even
Speaker 1: remember what we asked you, but you hung up on
Speaker 1: us TJ, right in the middle of the interview. It
Speaker 1: was to this day, I still fondly remember how annoyed
Speaker 1: you were. I'm sure it was Dave. It wasn't me,
Speaker 1: but whatever happened, I mean you you hung up, but
Speaker 1: it was great. One of the other stories I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention was when you first took over page two.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 1: I was out with the Dodgers quite a bit in
Speaker 1: those days, and I believe Davey Johnson I think was
Speaker 1: the manager at the time, but there was there was
Speaker 1: a revolt TJ. And I remember because before every game,
Speaker 1: the manager will come out and speak to the writers
Speaker 1: in the dugout. I don't know if they still do
Speaker 1: that anymore, but they'd go down. Davy would come down
Speaker 1: and speak to the writers, and I remember, like the
Speaker 1: beat writers were so upset with you because of what
Speaker 1: you were writing about the dog for.
Speaker 3: My own paper, from my own paper.
Speaker 1: Exactly, they would they would like boycott. They did. They
Speaker 1: boycott the manager's interview because you were there and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk to Davy. If I remember correctly, because you
Speaker 1: were they were that upset with you. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's not the accurate story. The accurate story
Speaker 3: is that Davy was so upset with me that he
Speaker 3: said he would never talk to me as long as
Speaker 3: he was a manager of the Dodgers.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he was gonna do he was.
Speaker 3: Gonna interview with the other writers somewhere else or one
Speaker 3: by one so he didn't have to talk to me.
Speaker 3: As I wrote the next day, I hope I can
Speaker 3: wait the two weeks before Davy Johnson's fired. And of
Speaker 3: course he was, and the Dodgers wouldn't let him pull
Speaker 3: his uh vision about not talking to me as long
Speaker 3: as I was there, because when they had a scheduled interview,
Speaker 3: I would show up and the other writers didn't let me,
Speaker 3: turning off the manager and ending their interview sessions. They
Speaker 3: certainly weren't pleased with that, which shows you what thunderheads
Speaker 3: they were. They're in the newspaper business. They have to do.
Speaker 3: They need access. They need to get to a manager.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't just run and hide because the
Speaker 3: manager is mad at one of the writers and so forth.
Speaker 3: You need to hang together. Well, they didn't hang together,
Speaker 3: and most of them are out of the business right now.
Speaker 3: It's a tough business out there. If you're going to
Speaker 3: ask Davy Johnson why his recent decision made the Dodgers
Speaker 3: lose all their body language of the writers would lean
Speaker 3: towards Davy, you know, like, well, we're not with this guy. Well, hey,
Speaker 3: someone's got to ask him the question. Everybody is such
Speaker 3: a happy, go lucky jeez. That must have been a
Speaker 3: tough ball to catch in right field. All I would
Speaker 3: say is then they issue you a glove. Haven't you
Speaker 3: learned how to catch the ball? That's what we're there for.
Speaker 3: We're there to represent the guy who's laying on the
Speaker 3: couch going what the hell is wrong with my team?
Speaker 3: That's our job. Yeah, and right now it's tough to do.
Speaker 1: I agree with And I want to run this by
Speaker 1: a TJ. Because years ago, when MLB started their websites,
Speaker 1: and that was like the first team that ran their
Speaker 1: own site, had hired their own writers. I had a
Speaker 1: guy tell me that this is the future that we
Speaker 1: you know, we're you know, it's gonna take a while,
Speaker 1: but eventually the fans are gonna love. They're only gonna
Speaker 1: want this kind of coverage. You know, that's filtered through
Speaker 1: the teams, and here we are. It's been about a
Speaker 1: generation since that started, and the teams all run their
Speaker 1: own websites. We're at that point. I was raised where
Speaker 1: I love the kind of criticism and critique that you
Speaker 1: bring TJ. But it seems like the younger generation have
Speaker 1: accepted the kool aid, Like, do you think that'll ever
Speaker 1: go back?
Speaker 3: No? No, I think that's where we are. I mean,
Speaker 3: you can blame a lot of it on ESPN and
Speaker 3: look at who they hire to be their the voices
Speaker 3: of reason, you know what are some of Pablo Torres
Speaker 3: and and it is real something or other. A lot
Speaker 3: of young guys who've never spent time in a locker
Speaker 3: room and they're telling you, the viewer, what to think
Speaker 3: about sports when they having me met the guy. That's
Speaker 3: what I always felt as a newspaper people, even as
Speaker 3: a columnist, I was out there every day. I wanted
Speaker 3: to know what Kevin Brown was like personally, you know,
Speaker 3: I wanted to know what Jeff Kent was like personally.
Speaker 3: You can't do that now in many respects because they'll
Speaker 3: try and lock you out of the clubhouse. I mean,
Speaker 3: the first day I was on the job of the Dodgers,
Speaker 3: Kevin Brown ordered that I leave the clubhouse and asked
Speaker 3: Derek Hall to make sure that no Times reporters could
Speaker 3: come into the clubhouse. And Derek Hall told him, we
Speaker 3: can't do that, And Derek Hall then had a problem
Speaker 3: with Kevin Brown. Derek Hall went on to be the
Speaker 3: president of the Diamondbacks, and of course Kevin Brown went
Speaker 3: home to pull a gun out his next door neighbor
Speaker 3: for throwing leaves in his yard. But it's it's tough
Speaker 3: to be out there right now. You don't get as
Speaker 3: much access. If the team tells a writer, you know,
Speaker 3: someone is not available. Oh okay, thank you, maybe we
Speaker 3: can talk tomorrow. What are you talking about? My job
Speaker 3: today is they go get that sun a bench and
Speaker 3: talk to them. Yeah, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's changed so much. And that was always
Speaker 1: the thing, as you said, you know, if you were
Speaker 1: the if you were criticizing somebody, you had to go.
Speaker 1: You had to be out in the locker room. You
Speaker 1: had to be available if they wanted to confront you
Speaker 1: or they had an issue with you. And you're right
Speaker 1: today it's much different now speak I'm made sure.
Speaker 3: I made sure I was available every day after I
Speaker 3: wrote a tough story so that some of the athlete
Speaker 3: can say to me, you know, I thought that story sucked.
Speaker 3: I A'm fine with that. I'm fine to vi as
Speaker 3: the contrary opinion. I might write another column on them
Speaker 3: next day and Hammerton even more. But you know that's
Speaker 3: that was the way business this whole. As I was
Speaker 3: explaining this conversion business at the LA Times, They've discovered
Speaker 3: if you write slopping nice stuff about a team, they'll
Speaker 3: get conversions. People don't want to feel good about the
Speaker 3: Dodgers or feel good about USC here, so they don't
Speaker 3: necessarily agree with somebody like myself writing negative stuff unless
Speaker 3: the team is really bad. Now, I did write good
Speaker 3: things about people, and what people don't realize is I
Speaker 3: was closer to most of the owners in town, general managers,
Speaker 3: even managers players, you know, the Manny Ramimbers of the world.
Speaker 3: We'd only talk to me at times. Kobe and I
Speaker 3: had a relationship where I could go out in the
Speaker 3: court before a game and I would tell them, you know,
Speaker 3: you're the worst three point shooter I've ever seen in
Speaker 3: my life. Let me bring my daughter out here and
Speaker 3: let her teach you how to shoot three pointers. That
Speaker 3: night he set the NBA record for most threes. If
Speaker 3: you go at athletes face to face, that's something they understand.
Speaker 3: Every day they spend confronting the guy who's trying to
Speaker 3: stop them, so they understand a reporter coming and trying
Speaker 3: to get information from them who's at least straight. We
Speaker 3: have too many people in the in the in the
Speaker 3: business who walk up to it, like, let's say, in
Speaker 3: the in those days, a Kobe would say, oh, you're
Speaker 3: the best, you're the best, and and an act dumb
Speaker 3: light when they ask a to tough question, and upstairs,
Speaker 3: maybe in the media room, they'd be telling that that's
Speaker 3: the worst thing. The guy can't do this, the god
Speaker 3: can't do that. He never say it to his face.
Speaker 3: I was called Doug Flutie, the Mission Bay Shrimp. That
Speaker 3: was true. He was by Mission Bay and San Diego
Speaker 3: and he was a.
Speaker 1: Shrim and the whole athlete. Nobody believed in me. It's
Speaker 1: hard to do that these days, other than social media,
Speaker 1: because the media is pretty much in the tank. And
Speaker 1: I there's one guy I had. There was an interaction
Speaker 1: you had, I happened to be in the Laker locker room.
Speaker 1: This is when Dwight Howard was on the team before.
Speaker 1: This is the first you loved him. And I'm glad
Speaker 1: you brought that because I want to bring this up
Speaker 1: because you He was all upset that that day because
Speaker 1: of something Stephen A or Skip Bayless had said on ESPN,
Speaker 1: and he was really upset and you were a p
Speaker 1: analyst on around them, so he he was all upset.
Speaker 1: You tried to explain to him. I'm paraphrasing your TJ,
Speaker 1: but you tried to explain to him. Listen, there's not
Speaker 1: that many people that watched that show, it's okay. And
Speaker 1: he was having none of it. Do you remember that day?
Speaker 1: He was He was really kind of annoyed by the
Speaker 1: whole situation. You tried to tell him, it's okay, it's
Speaker 1: not that big a thing, and Dwight was having none
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: I remember days when everybody was annoyed with me, So
Speaker 3: they get mixed up. To say that Dwight Howard was
Speaker 3: annoyed with me one day is a little bit part
Speaker 3: betch because it was pretty much every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, he see, but that day you were very
Speaker 1: level headed. You like explained to him, listen, it's a
Speaker 1: TV show. There's not that many people watching, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't get the greatest ratings or whatever. And he
Speaker 1: was like so he could not get over the fact
Speaker 1: they had criticized.
Speaker 3: Well, no athlete understands criticism. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: how many athletes have come to me and said, I
Speaker 3: thought you were my friend. Well no, I mean I
Speaker 3: mentioned Kobe's name again. But when he had the incident
Speaker 3: with the young lady in Colorado and everybody was taking sides,
Speaker 3: was it sexual assault? What was it? I never said
Speaker 3: a word in print because I wasn't there. I don't know.
Speaker 3: And one of the very hyph falutant writers at the
Speaker 3: only time said to me, how come you're not defending Kobe.
Speaker 3: You're his friend. Hey, I stand in front of his locker.
Speaker 3: I don't go to lunch with them, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to dinner with him and don't go to breakfast. We
Speaker 3: don't double date. I may know somebody better. I knew
Speaker 3: Kobe probably as well as anybody in town, because at
Speaker 3: certain times there we were talking more than most media
Speaker 3: people and the player, and I did that with a
Speaker 3: lot of athletes. But we're not friends. We're associates at best.
Speaker 3: And that's hard for an athlete to understand because they're
Speaker 3: not used to criticism. Remember a guy comes up, he's
Speaker 3: into minors, he maybe gets signed for college or goes
Speaker 3: straight to the NFL. They've all been stroked and puffed up,
Speaker 3: and we're the first guys to come along and say,
Speaker 3: you know, you're not so hot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't like get it. And the other TJ
Speaker 1: story I want to run by you is every time
Speaker 1: I go to an Angels game, I as a member
Speaker 1: of the media, and I walk to the pearly gates
Speaker 1: right near the foulpole there where the press box is.
Speaker 1: I think of you, TJ. Because in my head I
Speaker 1: don't even know if this is true or not that
Speaker 1: Arti Marino got so upset with you and your criticism
Speaker 1: that he punished the entire media by putting the press box.
Speaker 1: There's just like makeshift press box which is right near
Speaker 1: the right field foul pole. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: tribute to you, TJ. Is that a fair take on
Speaker 1: that or no?
Speaker 3: I believe it's a fair take. Me and I argue
Speaker 3: about this still to this day. Artie and I had
Speaker 3: a fabulous relationship. We drank beers up beyond center field
Speaker 3: underneath the stadium there. You know, he brought his daughter
Speaker 3: on our radio show and everything. But then I wrote
Speaker 3: one column criticizing is could already be the problem? And
Speaker 3: that was it stop talking to me. And when he
Speaker 3: would see me, he would come out of his owner's box,
Speaker 3: which was you had to pass the owner's box to
Speaker 3: get to the press box, and Alreadie would use the
Speaker 3: fouls language, calling me names, and I'd always yell back
Speaker 3: at him, Wow, you're so classy, Artie. I saw him
Speaker 3: at the Marriott with his sidekick. What is it? I
Speaker 3: keep I'm taking a cal Perry, but that's not the name.
Speaker 1: No, but I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And he was nice to me and already
Speaker 3: walked by, and you know, wow, it just Artie is
Speaker 3: the most sensitive, uh big time guy that I I
Speaker 3: think I've almost ever dealt with. And I think he
Speaker 3: had a military background. Boy oh boy. I mean if
Speaker 3: you you were the enemy and looked at him wrong,
Speaker 3: God help you. He just uh to this moment, he's
Speaker 3: just he's stupid, is what he is. If you're in
Speaker 3: Anaheim and you're trying to sell your team, and that
Speaker 3: was what it was all about. Billboard guy, you know,
Speaker 3: chief baseball Caps cheap beer marketing. You got to sell
Speaker 3: yourself and he hasn't done that. That's why I'm anxious
Speaker 3: to see how the Otani thing pans out. I commend
Speaker 3: him for keeping Otani at this point because I've never understood.
Speaker 3: I know, plash people the other time is writing you
Speaker 3: gotta trade him? Who the hell are you? You're not
Speaker 3: a baseball owner. You don't have any money in the stake.
Speaker 3: Already is telling the fans, I'm going to try and
Speaker 3: win it. We haven't won it in so many years?
Speaker 3: What is baseball about? Every year? Trying to win it?
Speaker 3: And you get that close that the Angels are, why
Speaker 3: would you purposely hurt yourself? And well, prospects you can
Speaker 3: get prospects for the future. How often do prospects not
Speaker 3: pan out?
Speaker 1: Hardly?
Speaker 3: So that's what that's what to me, but should be
Speaker 3: talked about in sports set of everybody you know, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, you know, build for the future.
Speaker 1: Whose future exactly? And another thing TJ about the I
Speaker 1: love that you brought the prospects thing up because this
Speaker 1: drives me nuts. I do the show during the week,
Speaker 1: and I got people calling up and saying, Oh, you're
Speaker 1: trade this guy, that guy, just get prospects in return.
Speaker 1: And as you pointed out, and there's a great quote
Speaker 1: I stole from Dusty Baker, he said, a prospect is
Speaker 1: a suspect until proven otherwise.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, But we are in.
Speaker 1: An era where it's like, no, no, you're just build
Speaker 1: for the future. Tank. It's it's disgusting. It's the fantasy
Speaker 1: sports element. And these people TJ many of them believe
Speaker 1: every minor league player is going to turn out to
Speaker 1: be the next show Hey o Tani or Mike Trout.
Speaker 1: They are convinced of it. There is this this neurosis
Speaker 1: among many fans, and it didn't used to be like that.
Speaker 1: It's gotten really bad over the last twenty years or so. Great.
Speaker 3: That's a great point, by the way, I never thought
Speaker 3: of that, the fantasy aspect of it, but that's a
Speaker 3: great point right now. The first of all, people are
Speaker 3: too wrapped up into their sports teams in many cases,
Speaker 3: and most of the people you deal with in your background,
Speaker 3: a lot of them are just work you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: your audience is going to be over the top on
Speaker 3: and they know stats, and they know this and that,
Speaker 3: and you know, in the third inning of the nights
Speaker 3: when the do comes out, they know all these stats
Speaker 3: and the crazy stuff instead of just enjoying the sport
Speaker 3: and making level headed decisions. Oh, Tani may be the
Speaker 3: best baseball player of our lifetime. Why what hold on
Speaker 3: over five more minutes? That's all hold on to them.
Speaker 3: I mean, how many chances do you get to have
Speaker 3: the baseball best baseball player in your lifetime in your
Speaker 3: own home area. So I commend already and at least
Speaker 3: trying to do that. I want to see if he
Speaker 3: makes a run for him. And I mean no one
Speaker 3: in the world believes that already can and sign it
Speaker 3: TONI including me, But I'd like to to see him try,
Speaker 3: because that's what my owner should do if I'm following
Speaker 3: a baseball team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've heard that he thinks that from people
Speaker 1: I know out there. He thinks he's actually gonna be
Speaker 1: able to keep him because he likes playing there.
Speaker 3: And I'll oh, don't start telling me, Ben what you've heard.
Speaker 3: You know who you're talking to, unless you're talking to Artie.
Speaker 3: I don't know, y, no, no, no, I don't throw
Speaker 3: that out there. Now you're trying to play I've learned
Speaker 3: the word. You're trying to play troll. Troll everybody.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just telling you that's right.
Speaker 3: Your atrol, your troll.
Speaker 1: Just admit it. Ben, I'm a big trull. But the
Speaker 1: one thing about Antani that I think is going to
Speaker 1: be the wave of the future because for a long
Speaker 1: time baseball teams would not allow guys to pitch and hit.
Speaker 1: It was very rare. You can only do one, you
Speaker 1: can't do both. They weren't just talent well, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: even give him the chance. Like I saw Dave Winfield
Speaker 1: say he could have done it back in the seventies
Speaker 1: with the the padres or whatever when he was coming
Speaker 1: out of college. But because of Otani, and there's you
Speaker 1: see these guys in college. You watched the College World Series.
Speaker 1: There's guys that are this year for LSU. You saw
Speaker 1: a guy that was a great pitcher could hit the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I believe that Otani's gonna have a Tiger
Speaker 1: Woods like effect TJ that we're gonna see guys in
Speaker 1: the future be given the opportunity. They probably won't be
Speaker 1: as good as Otani, but to be given the opportunity
Speaker 1: to do both. Do you buy that or do you
Speaker 1: not buy that?
Speaker 3: Well, they're not going to be given that opportunity at
Speaker 3: the major league level until after they've done it for
Speaker 3: some time at another level. So that's one of the
Speaker 3: built in problems. Otani was in a rare case because
Speaker 3: he basically was almost implying that that was part of
Speaker 3: his deal to come to the Angels. How many people
Speaker 3: get that kind of leverage, you know, Japanese player every
Speaker 3: once in a while coming over here, but by and large,
Speaker 3: they got so much control over you and your property
Speaker 3: to them that unless you can prove it at another level,
Speaker 3: and you've got to work your way up. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I got you. I think I think it will. I'll
Speaker 1: I think it will happen. There'll be some guys get
Speaker 1: an opportunity. You did a radio show for a while,
Speaker 1: They're TJ back in the day with your daughter, a
Speaker 1: very popular show in LA and I love when you
Speaker 1: did that because you were always like the newspaper guy
Speaker 1: and all that and came a broadcaster. Did you inlight that?
Speaker 1: Was it hard? Was it easy? Was it a layup
Speaker 1: line or was it difficult for you.
Speaker 3: It was very, very difficult because we were on from
Speaker 3: six to nine. We had no six to nine in
Speaker 3: the morning, so I'd be covering a Dodger game or
Speaker 3: Laker game the night before and wouldn't get home until
Speaker 3: after midnight. That's probably what made me so old. I
Speaker 3: did it with my daughter, who had absolutely no experience.
Speaker 3: But the Cimer's philosophy was take a risk in life.
Speaker 3: So she quit her accounting job and did the radio.
Speaker 3: But I told her on the air and off the air,
Speaker 3: I didn't think she worked as hard ad as you
Speaker 3: needed to do to be good in LA So that
Speaker 3: ruffled our relationship for a little while. I had Fred
Speaker 3: Rogan was on with us, and Fred it was a
Speaker 3: tough guy to deal with. As he would tell you,
Speaker 3: I was a tough guy to deal with. We didn't
Speaker 3: always hit it off so and we just needed more experience.
Speaker 3: We needed you around. Then. We needed somebody who's done
Speaker 3: this in their entire life, who understand. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to call up different people and ask him to come
Speaker 3: on the show, and you're supposed to have producers for that.
Speaker 3: I actually enjoyed My daughter and I did a Saturday
Speaker 3: show or Sunday Sunday Morning show. We would have Jerry
Speaker 3: Buss and Jeanie Buss on together. We had John Wooden
Speaker 3: and his daughter nan on together. That's when I had
Speaker 3: Arti Marino and his daughter on the air together. That
Speaker 3: was more fun, more relaxed, and I would do interviews
Speaker 3: for sometimes forty minutes instead of the typical radio stuff.
Speaker 3: But it was a lifetime experience, but I wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 3: sign up to do it again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you mentioned John wood and you became good
Speaker 1: friends with Coach Well, I.
Speaker 3: Did one of the one of the lovely, unbelievable things
Speaker 3: that happened in my life. I mean, he was just
Speaker 3: and he liked it. Because I was here reverend with him.
Speaker 3: I would only call him the names that he hated.
Speaker 3: You know, he hated the Wizard of Westwards. So when
Speaker 3: we did a show at an Okaia Theater, I started
Speaker 3: off by saying, we've got the Wizard of Westward. Did
Speaker 3: I told you not to say that? And he was serious,
Speaker 3: he was mad. So I said, okay, we'll call you
Speaker 3: Saint John. And he hated being revered like that, just
Speaker 3: hated it. He people would literally come to him and
Speaker 3: Genia flect when they named the post office after him
Speaker 3: in Tarzana. I was with him before the event started
Speaker 3: and I said, give me a break here. Now, you
Speaker 3: tell me you never took a drink your whole life.
Speaker 3: And he said nope, ever, and then all goes well.
Speaker 3: One I went to a fraternity party and I said, well,
Speaker 3: that was during prohibition. You broke the law. And then
Speaker 3: any name but Federal post Office after you a fallin.
Speaker 3: And he loved that. He loved that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: He even admitted that he gambled once on a horse
Speaker 3: race and the horse was named Gary, Indiana, and he won.
Speaker 3: The horse was like twenty five to one and he
Speaker 3: won the bet. He liked talking about things that made
Speaker 3: him normal. That's why they did this. If you let
Speaker 3: me just ran for one minute here, Ben, I we did,
Speaker 3: you know, shows at the Nokia Theater when I was
Speaker 3: called Nicky. I don't know what it's now, but we
Speaker 3: did Jerry Weston's our Dinner Speaker, and we had John
Speaker 3: Wooden and Ben Scully on stage together and me it
Speaker 3: was live TV. I didn't wouldn't put anything in my ear.
Speaker 3: I told him, I'll go to commercial when I feel
Speaker 3: like it. My family was worried that the headline next
Speaker 3: day day was going to read cybers kills Wooden or
Speaker 3: killed Scully because they keel over and they were unbelievable.
Speaker 3: The only reason they agreed to do the show was
Speaker 3: if I promised to be irreverend towards them. So I
Speaker 3: was the irreverend towards them. And the next day I
Speaker 3: got killed in email for people because I wasn't handling
Speaker 3: them with reverence and respect. It just frightened me. You know,
Speaker 3: we did this great thing. We raised a million dollars
Speaker 3: for Mattel's Children Hospital at u C l A and
Speaker 3: City of Hope and the Children's Hospital in LA. And
Speaker 3: Scully did not want any tape of that show safe.
Speaker 3: He wanted he wanted made me promise I would not
Speaker 3: take the show. The show ended and he came to
Speaker 3: me right away and he said, we got to get
Speaker 3: a tape of that. That was so much fun, that
Speaker 3: was so great. Scully had the time of his life.
Speaker 3: And he had seen wood And earlier in the week
Speaker 3: who looked like he was. He was sitting in a
Speaker 3: wheelchair at a coliseum event, and he said to me,
Speaker 3: how are we going to do this? You know, in
Speaker 3: his nice way of saying that I had no experience.
Speaker 3: He thought he was going to have to carry the
Speaker 3: whole show. We got there and we brought a kid
Speaker 3: up on stage who had cancer in his leg and
Speaker 3: wouldn't absolutely lit up. He got tried to get out
Speaker 3: of the wheelchair down at his knees to teach the
Speaker 3: kid how to put his shoes and socks on like
Speaker 3: he did as basketball players. He was having a moment
Speaker 3: where he was just pure enjoyment, and to me, it
Speaker 3: was the greatest thing I can ever say about Scully.
Speaker 3: Scully noticed it and took a step back. It's now
Speaker 3: the John Wooden Show, and he didn't need the spotlight,
Speaker 3: and he deferred to as many times as he could
Speaker 3: because he couldn't see what was happening with what and
Speaker 3: he wheeled Wooden out to the center of the stage.
Speaker 3: At the end of the show. It was just it
Speaker 3: was just great stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you were friends with both those guys. And
Speaker 1: I knew Vin a little bit from the Dodger stuff
Speaker 1: that I had done, and he was he was. I
Speaker 1: remember one time I asked Vin, I thought when I
Speaker 1: did Dodger talk. At first, I thought, well, Vin's probably
Speaker 1: listening on the way home from you know.
Speaker 3: He listened to show tunes exactly.
Speaker 1: That's what he told me. I was so devastated. It's
Speaker 1: like I asked him one time, I said, hey, what
Speaker 1: do you listen to? You listen to It was very cool.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, listen. Yeah, he listens to the show
Speaker 1: tunes on the way the way home. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. And the lesson I guess of that story, TJ,
Speaker 1: is you treated those guys just like you treat everyone else.
Speaker 1: You didn't kiss up, you didn't genue flect, and they
Speaker 1: they loved it. They wanted more, right.
Speaker 3: That was the key they did. They lived And you know,
Speaker 3: with Scully, I made sure that I went to the
Speaker 3: bathroom in Dodger Stadium before every game because Scully went.
Speaker 3: So we would stand in the arnals next to each
Speaker 3: other and I would get a story from Scully. He
Speaker 3: told a Rocky Bridges story that just had me laughing
Speaker 3: so hard that I was afraid that I pissed on
Speaker 3: scully shoes, And you know, I looked down to make
Speaker 3: sure that I hadn't caused a problem. But that's why
Speaker 3: I went to the bathroom before every game, because I
Speaker 3: would run into Scully and no one else would be
Speaker 3: in there, so be just the two of us had
Speaker 3: chance to talk. He was so good, and then you know,
Speaker 3: we did another show. We did one on Kofax and
Speaker 3: Torri at the Nokia Theater and I had never known Kofax.
Speaker 3: I had a four hour breakfast with him the day before.
Speaker 3: It was my first meeting, and he said, do you
Speaker 3: ask me any question you want and I'll give you
Speaker 3: an answer. I'm so tired of all these people saying
Speaker 3: things about me. Let's come clean with everything. Oh okay, fine.
Speaker 3: Asked the first four questions that I got a yes, no,
Speaker 3: or maybe out of them. He froze the great sandy
Speaker 3: Kofax pros so I said, the hell with this. I said,
Speaker 3: you know what they tell me you were a great picture.
Speaker 3: Henry Aaron owned you, for God's sakes, get three seventy
Speaker 3: eight off you. He could do anything he wanted. And
Speaker 3: that opened it up. Kofax started to tell stories, beginning
Speaker 3: one about Aaron that made him just so human. It was.
Speaker 3: It was another just fantastic moment that you could see
Speaker 3: behind the persana, what really cool guy he is.
Speaker 1: That's great. Uh you I've taken a lot of your time.
Speaker 1: You write a you're doing a blog now. Actually a
Speaker 1: guy who we both know, Jay Christiansen, who used to
Speaker 1: work at the La Times. Yeah, great guy, he's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine. I love Jay. He sent me your column.
Speaker 1: That's how I found you. You're you're doing a blog, right,
Speaker 1: You're a couple times a week, I guess, I think.
Speaker 3: Uh, he just did one a few minutes ago, and um,
Speaker 3: so excited to read in the La Times tomorrow how
Speaker 3: the women's soccer team did not not a word there
Speaker 3: today and you know you got to do everything by
Speaker 3: a three pm deadline or you don't make it in
Speaker 3: the La Times and the effort to kill the paper. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I'm poking fun at the Times again.
Speaker 1: No, but I love it. And so how can people
Speaker 1: find out? I'll put it in the description here, But
Speaker 1: how can people? We'll find a TJ they want to
Speaker 1: read because you you're doing the same stuff you've always done.
Speaker 1: It's just just on your own platform there, So how
Speaker 1: can they?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's TJ Page two, TJ t A g E.
Speaker 3: The number two dot blog Okay, and you just go
Speaker 3: to that, you just call that up and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I usually put hope fun at the La Times. And
Speaker 3: by the way, I'm not angry at the La Times.
Speaker 3: I mean they've ruined so many great journalists career because
Speaker 3: of just what's happening in newspapers. And I did my
Speaker 3: ordeal in courtroom. I would love to work for the
Speaker 3: La Times. I even volunteered to Patrick soon Jung to
Speaker 3: work for free to of course, you need to have
Speaker 3: to donate two hundred thousand dollars the Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA,
Speaker 3: but I made that offer. I love newspapers still. I
Speaker 3: just wish I could find one in the morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's see, that's the problem to you. If
Speaker 1: they Times hired you again, people might actually read it,
Speaker 1: and then that would be a problem.
Speaker 3: I don't know if i'd get conversions. Man, you know
Speaker 3: you touch and go to see if I could get
Speaker 3: any conversions.
Speaker 1: I got you. Well, I've loved talking to TJ. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And
Speaker 1: I do read your column when I check it out
Speaker 1: as often as they can.
Speaker 3: Don't go, don't do it. Don't it's so good for
Speaker 3: about twenty minutes, and now I get starting to blow
Speaker 3: smoke again. No, I tell you do that with your
Speaker 3: guests on because you you know, you're just that's your
Speaker 3: nice you know, host of mentality. That's what it is.
Speaker 3: I said, I'll hang up and you'll probably you know.
Speaker 1: I'll kill you. No, no, yeah, I know that. I
Speaker 1: seriously I wish you're one of the.
Speaker 3: Best at doing that. And that's good. That's that's high
Speaker 3: praise is coming for me.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. No, no, I always
Speaker 1: tell I said, listen, I want more people I love.
Speaker 1: I'm not sucking up to you. I've told I've told
Speaker 1: you in the past.
Speaker 3: You are to don't don't hang up on you again.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, I have a great day. Thank you, TJ.
Speaker 3: Take care.