After Hours with Amy Lawrence Hour 4

A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing, one retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll.

The Ring of Comfort, coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. Your fever is high and the pressure to log in at work is too, but when you finally decide to take care of you, there's Instacart. Just because that one perfect coworker of yours is attending all meetings, camera on while she's sneezing, coughing, and aching doesn't mean you have to do the same. Take it from us. Trying to stay on top of things will only get you further behind.

Instead, get everything from tissues and teas to cough suppressants and comforting soups delivered through Instacart in as fast as 30 minutes. If anyone needs anything, they can just redirect their questions to that one perfect coworker of yours. You're listening to After Hours with Amy Lawrence. If you don't want to debate sports radio, why are you calling the show? If you just want someone to agree with you, call your mom or hang out with your group of friends who are all Cowboys fans. People get mad at me when I hang up on a caller after he's been on the air for four minutes. I let you guys rant and rave, but honestly, if you're calling up to have someone agree with you and not point out the other side, why do a sports radio show? Of course, I'm going to challenge you when you call.

So if you consider that to be rude, challenging someone in their argument and asking them to think a little deeper and dig a little further down, then please don't call the show. This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Good morning to you. It's a Tuesday now, Tuesday, February 20th. Oh my gosh, January and a good portion of February are in a blur, some kind of blurred memories too. Even as I was going through the Super Bowl and watching the mic'd up version with my husband on Monday evening, we really enjoyed it. We laughed.

We actually went back and replayed a couple of minutes because they were funny and we wanted to make sure we heard them correctly. It was good stuff. And the featured guys, to see their reactions and to hear their comments all the way through as the game was a defensive struggle at the beginning and then as it got much more dramatic toward the end, plus the overtime, it was really neat because not only are you field level for the majority of the game, but you also get to hear and ride the roller coaster of emotions with them and their commentary. So I enjoyed it. I think it's worth it whether you're getting the YouTube version or you're getting the actual version from CW. It's inside the NFL, NFL Films, Super Bowl mic'd up and I know they're replaying it.

I guess there are two versions out there, but yeah, I actually took notes and I laughed at a couple of different things. It's highly entertaining, especially now in the wake of football, before we get to the combine and the next NFL convention, it's coaches, it's general managers, it's the scouting departments, all of them, it's agents. Not sure if you know this, but the agents are required to be there in Indianapolis for at least a couple days. They have to be on hand for agents meetings, right? So this is their, one of their annual meetings. Then it's players, sometimes it's current players who show up there as well. Maybe because their agents are there, the agents have asked them to be there because they have access to different teams.

You just got to be careful who you talk to and how you meet because you don't want to be accused of tampering. But yeah, you got a lot of traffic to Indianapolis and it's the next big thing in the world of the NFL, so it won't be long. In the meantime, it's funny because people are sending me tweets or Facebook posts about how there's nothing going on and I know it's different coming off of the hype and coming off of the intensity of the NFL playoffs, but there is certainly plenty going on. People are still complaining about the NBA All-Star game.

That's happening. We've got the run-up to March Madness, which is now not even a month away, not even a month away. So if you consider conference tournaments to be kind of where it starts, and I do think that that's the beginning of March Madness, the conference tournaments where schools have the chance to play their way in.

If you win the tournament, you get the automatic bid. Now in the Power 5 conferences, or is it Power 4 now without the Pac-12? I guess still Power 5 at this point, but with the Power 5s, sure you're talking about in some cases six, seven, eight teams, even nine that make it, and so it's not quite as dire, but in the one-bid leagues, the mid-major leagues around the country, those conference tournaments are the epitome of March Madness, and they will start really at the beginning of March, first few days of March, and then on into the second week. Selection Sunday is actually St. Patrick's Day. It's March 17th, so you can mark it on your calendar.

I guess wear green. Green is not just the color for St. Patty's Day and the Irish, the look of the Irish, but it's also the color of the money that will be spent on betting March Madness. So yeah, not much of a break from the billions of dollars that were spent in betting the Super Bowl into now what will no doubt be hundreds of millions of dollars spent betting on March Madness. So it's not that large of a gap before we get the next big events, and then before you know it, we're talking Stanley Cup playoffs and NBA. I still don't like the whole play-in tournament.

It's gimmicky. It's not even as cool as the Daytona, not Daytona, sorry, Dayton feature of March Madness where you get the first four type of thing. I don't love that either, but I do think it's proven itself to be valuable because almost every year you have a team that ends up winning a game in the, well they call it the second round, but in the big bracket, the main bracket that comes out of Dayton. So it's not like those teams are shams.

A lot of times they're Power Five teams that were just the last ones in. Anyway, it's coming. March Madness is coming. NBA and NHL playoffs are coming. We are, what, six weeks away from the Masters, so that's on the horizon as well. A little bit more of Tiger Woods once he recovers from the flu.

There's plenty out there. The start of the NFL's new league year and then free agency franchise tags. Actually, I think you can start applying franchise tags as teams before the end of February.

So it may feel quiet and like there's nothing going on, but it won't be long. Exactly one month from today is the start of the Major League Baseball season. So they have an early start this year for the Dodgers and the Padres who are in South Korea. It's funny because, I mean, this is just how my mind works.

It's constantly churning. I've seen a lot of news stories or seen and heard references to how baseball is starting in Korea and my first thought is North or South and I'm like, oh well duh, right? So it just, it only happened one time, but generally you see either North or South Korea, right?

But I guess you can just throw it out there that it's Korea because there's only one option. For baseball to be playing, there's only one option, right? But still, I thought that was odd when I saw it labeled as just the baseball opener in Korea. Anyway, they start on March 20th and it's Dodgers and it's Padres.

We know that Shohei Ohtani will not participate in the Dodgers spring training opener. However, he did take live BP on Monday, it was. Sorry, my days blend together and he's full speed ahead. For Shohei, he's got it down in the sense of the day-to-day. I think that each day he has a plan and part of that is the rehab process. Part of it is today he's going to take live batting practice so to prepare himself for that. I don't know, haven't had the conversation as far as like the expectations.

I think it's just more of kind of each day preparing himself and you know as we start playing games and at some point in time he'll get into games and just to kind of get better each day. Just, it's interesting, so interesting to me to put myself back in that space and say, gosh, August, September, well even before we got to August all the talk in baseball for the first half of the season was less about what was transpiring on the field because the season is so long so people don't really get into the scoreboard watching until much later but certainly post All-Star break and all the conversation around Shohei Ohtani and his future and whether or not the Angels would trade him at the deadline. We get to the deadline, they'd had a mini surge coming out of the All-Star break and so Artie Moreno is the owner of the Angels, chooses not to trade him. Instead they actually make a couple moves to bring in some guys. None of them worked. I mean they famously flamed out, which seems like is pretty typical these days of the moves the Angels make. Anthony Rendon, but it's not just him. It's really their pitching has been a mess and they seem to be taking pieces of spaghetti out of the pot and chucking them against the wall like Italian food.

They're not going to stick and not a lot has stuck. Shohei Ohtani was a major coup for the Angels when they brought him on board. He increased their ticket sales, their impressions online, obviously the viewership around the globe, not to mention the mass influx of media and media attention for the Angels.

But almost as soon as they made those moves at the trade deadline, they fell off the proverbial cliff and just imploded. And then of course the conversations for the first couple weeks following the World Series, what will Ohtani do, all the speculation. He kept it relatively quiet, managed to break the news himself that he was going to the Dodgers and it's weird to now think about the Angels.

And what I say is a far worse fate than being a loser in sports, because at least people are talking about how bad you are, a far worse fate is to be irrelevant. And even with Mike Trout, that's what the Angels feel like to me. I say this every year in spring training, maybe this is the season when Mike Trout finally gets back to the playoffs.

And I get it, it's a team sport, but we need Mike Trout in the playoffs. It is crazy that a guy of his talent has played in three postseason games, none of them wins and not in a decade. He's got multiple MVPs, he's got a massive contract, he's loyal to a fault, he's a good guy. Have you ever heard him talk? He's just, I don't want to say he's average guy because he's not, but he doesn't live a superstar lifestyle, the guy doesn't have a podcast that I know of, he really keeps to himself. He's married, he's got a family, he loves baseball and he loves the Angels as bad as it's been now for a decade.

Now to be honest and to be fair, he's part of that. He's had some bad injuries, some untimely injuries like last season, right? The Angels are surging and then he gets hurt. And I don't want to say it completely derailed them, but it hurt their chances royally. And maybe, just maybe, had they made the playoffs Shohei Ohtani stays there.

But because they don't, he decides he's going to go somewhere else where he's got a better shot at winning. And now it's just Mike Trout with the Angels again. And yet you hear him talk at spring training on Monday and he's not interested in leaving still, even now. For me personally, I'm focused on the season. I'm not worried about what happens or where I'm, do I want to get traded or I'm not going to get traded? I'm not worried about any of that. I'm going out there and playing my game.

I got to, I got to put a full season together and see what happens. I love that he is accountable and that he, in that clip you just kind of hear him reference it, but he's taking responsibility for the fact that he hasn't been healthy. The last couple years he's had some injuries that have hurt the Angels chances royally. And yet this guy, this Mike Trout, who would be attractive for any team out there, now could every team afford him?

No. But there would be maybe not as much interest as there would be for Otani. Only because Otani is just a different type of player with the pitching and the hitting and obviously the global audience that he brings. Not to mention he's been healthy for them.

Well, he had the one season, actually second season, right? This is the second time he's had the elbow surgery, but he's managed to be out there at times even when he's hurt, which I think there's a perception around Mike Trout that he's fragile. Now, Ryan, would you think now in year number 13 that people even believe Trout can sustain health for an entire season? Oh, there's no doubt in my mind he's not going to be healthy this entire year.

It's been, was it five years in a row now? He's missed significant portion of the season. And it seems to happen at the worst possible juncture for the Angels. And so, but along those lines though, Ry, I would say if he became a free agent or if the Angels tried to trade him, there would be suitors. Maybe not every team can afford him. Like the Rays, for instance, the Miami Marlins aren't likely to put in a competent bid, but there's still a major market for him even if he is injured part of the time. Yeah, teams are going to want him, but I don't know if he has the ability to pull multiple top prospects that you could say like a Mookie Betts pulled, you know, that wasn't a really good trade, but he takes too much money for an unreliable plus over 30 year old outfielder who might not be able to play center field anymore. So teams might not want him based off of aging and all that concerns, but he's still a great player. Would you say the same thing about Aaron Judge though? Now, I know he just recently had a mammoth season but missed a good portion of last year right after signing a huge contract. Aaron Judge also, it's just so tough to move these contracts anyway.

They're not moving. Well, Giancarlo Stanton is kind of like the poster boy for that right now, but I would say Mike Trout is not far off that poster. Yeah, Mike Trout's 10 times better than Stanton is now.

It's very true. But they're not gonna move Judge and they're not gonna move Trout right now at least. I'd say maybe a year or two he'd be moved, but his value is too much that you can even risk it. So he can bring in five wins above replacement in half a season and you can't get rid of that. $426.5 million dollars, that contract runs through 2030.

So there are still many more years to go. In fact, the majority of free agent deals in baseball have fewer years on them than what Trout has left on his, right? So it's a huge albatross of a contract. I don't think the Angels want out of it, at least at this point, but the complication, I wouldn't say the complication, wrinkle. The wrinkle is that Trout has a full no trade clause. So he doesn't go unless he wants to go and it's pretty clear from his comments on Monday he's not interested in going anywhere else. And the easy way out is just ask for a trade. You know, there might be a time, maybe, I really haven't thought about this, but you know, when I signed that contract, I'm loyal, you know, I want to win the championship here. And yeah, that's, I mean, that's mainly, I think the overall picture of winning a championship or getting to the playoffs here is bigger satisfaction, bailing out and just taking the easy way out. So I think that's been my mindset, you know, maybe down the road if something's changed, but that's been my mindset ever since the trade speculations, you know, came up.

So that's where I'm at. You know what this reminds me of as I hear him? Damian Lillard a couple years ago, really for the first, gosh, eight, nine years of his career, he's so loyal to Portland. He wanted so desperately to win an NBA championship with the Trailblazers and Mike Trout desperately wants to win with the Angels. He loves the Angels. Again, he's not your typical celebrity or multi-millionaire athlete in that he's pretty content, right, with just living a quiet kind of simple life. And I don't mean in terms of the money he spends, I just mean he doesn't care about being in the spotlight. He just wants to play baseball. He doesn't have a podcast.

He's not out for clicks. I don't even know if he's on Twitter or how much he uses it, if he's on social a lot, but he's so loyal and that's rare in sports and it's great and you would love for the Angels to reward that by putting guys around him. They thought Otani was a piece that would get them closer, except again, last year fell off a map. He got hurt.

Their pitching was awful and they finished 16 games below 500 and completely out of the race after August. Now he's been advocating for them to go out and grab some of these free agents. The money that they theoretically could have spent on Otani, you know, Otani got what, a 700 million dollar contract?

The money they could have spent on Otani and were prepared to spend on Shohei Otani could go to guys like, I don't know, Cody Bellinger. He's available. Jordan Montgomery is a lefty pitcher who's been with Yankees and then Cardinals and shoot, where did he go after? He got traded last year, right?

Where did he go after that? Texas. Oh, Texas, yeah, but he is available now. Again, Matt Chapman's another good hitter who's an infielder who's been around for a while. Blake Snell is available. These are Boris clients and so some teams balk at that, but there are names out there and the Angels have invested money in their bullpen, so they're trying to beef up their bullpen.

Just seems like a like a dam that's got multiple cracks in it and the Angels will plug one hole and then another one will spring. Not to mention, then you have pouty Anthony Rendon, who just kind of ruins it for everyone. If you haven't heard his latest, I remember not long ago he did a podcast in which he was saying baseball needs to shorten its season, which is rich considering that he plays like five games every year because of injuries, and now he's got a microphone in front of his face and he's talking about how, oh well, baseball's not really my top priority. It's not the most important thing to me. Is it still a top priority for you? It's never been a top priority for me. This is a job, so I do this to make a living. My faith, my family come first before this job, so if those things come before it, I'm leaving. Is it a priority?

Oh, it's a priority for sure. This is my job. I'm here, aren't I? Do you want to be here? I don't want to talk to you guys at seven in the morning or whatever time it is, so.

I mean, do you want to like be here playing baseball? I have answered your question, so why do you keep picking at it? Yeah, you technically answered it.

Thank you. So cantankerous, really cantankerous and just not gonna play nice, but the thing is he's one of those guys that capitalized on the Nationals World Series. He got a fat contract in free agency from the Angels and been there four years, hasn't played more than, what is it, 60 games in any of the years, so you want to talk about wasted money, but that's the type of deal that has been blowing up royally in the Angels' face. He missed, I think it was a third of the last year, the end of the season, with the bruise. Yeah, he's not committed. They asked him, so how's your bruise on his shin? And he was like, yeah, it's tough. I can't really walk as he's walking normally into the dugout. Like that was the biggest cover-up of an injury I think I've seen in a while for a person that didn't want to play. And when he says baseball's not my top priority, that does not inspire any type of confidence from his team either. I mean, they're hearing that as well.

I get it. Like I understand your family, your faith, this is how you make your money, but if it's just your job and your money's guaranteed, why would you put yourself on the line the way that your teammates are doing, right? Because baseball contracts are fully guaranteed. So his, what, 250 million dollars, regardless of how many games he plays, is fully guaranteed. So that's the thing.

That's why some fans will say or some teams will say, oh, once they get their money, they don't care anymore. Well, Anthony Rendon is a good example of that. And he actually says so. And he was such a good player. He was.

He was such a good player. Uh, and yeah, so the Angels are back in no man's land where we're talking about them for all the wrong reasons, but I'm still hoping this is the year. Fingers crossed. Mike Trout gets back to the playoffs. It's just a long way off and so much could go wrong and usually does with the Angels. All right, coming up Daytona 500 on Monday, and the winner is not your typical racer.

He's actually, listen to this, self-taught. We'll explain coming up. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. You are listening to the After Hours podcast. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence in the wake of a Monday Daytona 500.

So not quite the same buzz, but still about three quarters full. Lots of fans sticking around for that postponed race. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. This portion of the show brought to you by Wesley Financial. Are you stuck in a timeshare and want out?

Contact Wesley Financial Group now and get a free timeshare exit information kit at WesleyFinancial.com. From Fox Sports, the Daytona 500 ends with William Byron taking the checkered flag and you hear him in Victory Lane mentioning that he used to race on computers. Oh yeah, so we had a chance to catch up with longtime Fox Sports insider Bob Pockrass who was still at the track, by the way, when he joined us earlier in the show because of the late night and I asked him about this. He's a self-taught racer who used to play video games to get to know the sport. Yeah, that's kind of the new age NASCAR driver in some ways and there's some that followed in his footsteps, but he pretty much learned the basics of his craft racing online and I mean very sophisticated online games, but still they're so close as far as just, you know, developing hand-eye coordination and knowing when to when to break that driver that people can learn.

Now obviously you can't get hurt playing a video game, right? So when you crash you can be a little more fearless racing a video game than you can in real life. He realized that this is his passion and, you know, we asked him all the time, did your parents ever say hey get off those video games and he just said yeah maybe a little bit, but I think they saw something that he enjoyed doing and thought eventually they realized that he had a skill at it and so, you know, when he was maybe 12 or so, you know, he starts racing actual race cars and by the time he's 19 he's in the cup series and by the time he's 26 he's a Daytona 500 champion. I mean he's a bit of a wonder, Ken, when you think about how he got his start. He didn't come from one of the established racing families and as you point out at 26 years old he's not just a winner but he's a driver for Hendrick Motorsports.

I mean that's the tradition in NASCAR. People saw that he had a lot of talent early on. He drove for Dale Jr. on some of the short tracks here and I think people saw that he had a lot of potential.

He handled himself very well. He was able to land some sponsorship and move quickly through the ranks and it didn't come easy for him the first few years but it doesn't for a lot of drivers and he has continued to improve and improve and improve. They matched him with crew chief Rudy Pugel who was his crew chief when driving for Kyle Busch in the trucks and so the last three, four years they've been really strong.

He won a series best six races last year but, you know, people finished third for the championship and, you know, maybe people still kind of overlook William Byron and obviously that's a mistake. Already seven seasons at the cup level and he drives for Hendrick which immediately means you have the best of the technology and the personnel and this comes on a memorable day for Hendrick Motorsports. 40 years exactly since his first cup win and I was trying to think about what he means to the sport overall but you're the expert, Bob. What does Rick Hendrick mean to NASCAR? A lot of people call Hendrick Motorsports the New York Yankees so, I mean, I guess he's kind of George Steinbrenner but maybe without some of the drama. So, I mean, what he means to the sport is, I mean, the thing is that Rick Hendrick grew up in Virginia down, you know, down the road from Martinsville Speedway and he has always loved race cars and he started out in power boat racing and he's always loved to race and, you know, successful businessman with a bunch of car dealerships but he just he loves to race and he obviously loves to win. When you talk about the person who brought Jeff Gordon four cup titles, Jimmy Johnson seven cup titles, several other titles with other drivers including Terry Le Boning and Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott.

It's really hard to measure his impact on the sport. Last year was that first Chicago road race, the street race in downtown and they ended up with a ton of rain. Was that a marquee event enough for NASCAR to try to attract even greater attention more people this year if the weather holds out?

Oh, I think absolutely. You know, there's a lot of questions going in and, you know, a lot of questions about whether NASCAR could pull it off. They had never done a street course race in their history and the first practice day, you know, it was just the images were unbelievable and then after the rains ended on that Sunday they were able to squeeze the race in before it got too dark and the drivers put on a heck of a show and I think if it's sunny and you got the concerts go on as scheduled it just can be a great festival and you really got the feeling while you were there that while people seem to maybe be annoyed at the start of the week by the time they saw the cars on the track and saw them go around and just kind of wildness and craziness and the challenge of it to the drivers and just seeing, you know, everybody wishes they could drive through Chicago at, you know, 100 miles per hour, right? And then to see if people actually do it and race, it was just thrilling and the thing that made it so cool for NASCAR is that they just they hadn't done it before and don't do it on street courses. It's just not something that they've done so to see them do something different and in one of the most iconic cities in the U.S. was really neat to see and you're really looking forward to that event.

I just think it'll be, it should be a marquee event if the weather stays okay. NASCAR expanding beyond what traditional fans have known of it and one more example before I let you go, Bob. We know that most drivers have a podcast, their own digital space to communicate with fans, but there's also a Netflix series now that's called NASCAR Full Speed.

Is there a buzz about that? Do you think NASCAR drivers and fans are into this new series? Oh, I think NASCAR drivers and fans are certainly into the new series. I think the question remains is how many new fans will be attracted to NASCAR by the series? How many people who maybe watch it with friends who maybe never been to a race will say, hey, now hey, can I go to a race with you? Or certain drivers seeing more fans, you know, either purchasing their gear and that kind of thing. So I think NASCAR is still kind of waiting to see the impact of having a Netflix series.

Certainly can't hurt. It certainly has energized the fan base that's here already and now the question is just can it grow, how much can it grow the fan base? More of these top storylines for the NASCAR season with Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports. He's got a link on his Twitter because he's on top of it and you can follow him at Bob Pockrass and we're always excited to have him, not always on a Monday after a postponed race at Daytona when he's still at the track and has hours to go before he catches a flight. You are a trooper.

You are certainly one of those guys that works tirelessly, especially this weekend. So we always appreciate a couple of minutes, Bob. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Amy. He does have a great column. For those of you who are NASCAR fans or maybe you want to learn more about it, his column has the top 24 storylines for the 24 season and the rest of that conversation.

We talk about the big one and who was most devastated by that big wreck with eight laps to go and just more about the sport and its season to come, the superstars, the up-and-comers, that type of thing. It's on our podcast and we will have that available for you minutes after the show. You can just go to Google and wherever you get your podcasts and search after hours Amy Lawrence podcast.

On Twitter, ALawRadio did just provide a penny update. Thank you for those of you who are asking and offering sweet words for my wonderful girl who is a trooper. I'll tell you that much.

And then on her Facebook page after hours with Amy Lawrence. Hey, Mel. Bri here. Got to work from home today because the whole family caught a nasty. Hey, Mikey, if you're going to puke, find the popcorn bowl. But my availability is 110%. Coincidentally, so is my fever. Kidding.

Mel, I'm so cold but hot. But I'm going to get you that budget just as soon as... Mikey, popcorn bowl. Press one to use Instacart and get your family sick day essentials delivered in as fast as 30 minutes. Press two to keep working. Do not press two.

Just use Instacart, Brian. A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners up get nothing. One retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter.

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That's Stamps.com code program. You are listening to the After Hours podcast. How many of you who work hours during the daytime will bite the bullet and go to the grocery store after you get off work? Sometimes, whether it's the grocery store or the gym, don't you just want to say screw it and go home?

It's been a long day. You don't feel like waiting any longer than absolutely necessary to put on your comfy clothes. Maybe it's sweatpants. Maybe it's slippers. Producer Jay never wears any other footwear at his house except for slippers. Does not wear shoes, sneakers, doesn't walk around in his socks. Year-round, Producer Jay must have slippers. Little known fact about Producer Jay.

I don't know if that changes your mind about him at all. Anyway, I have this challenge once a week where I leave here. I battle the early morning traffic in Manhattan because our studios are located in Lower Manhattan. So I go up to Midtown. I take the Lincoln Tunnel out of the city under the Hudson River and then I have to have this conversation with myself. All right, I need to go to the store.

I need this, this, this. I have a relatively short list this morning but it's always requiring a bit of a pep talk to myself because what I would rather do is go straight home, have some breakfast, say hello to the hubs and the zoo, and then after a walk with Penny, go to bed, grab my book, read for a couple of minutes. Actually on Monday morning, I'm so tired coming off the weekend just flipping the schedule and stuff that I tried to read the same paragraph four times and just kept falling asleep.

So I usually read fiction to unwind but sometimes I don't even need more than a line or two. Ryan is doing the schedule for the full week and I know it's not for the faint of heart. So have you found a schedule that you're going to keep the rest of the week? Trying to.

Yeah, so what is it? The goal is to get home, fall asleep around 7 30, wake up around one, two, and then go through like the news cycle, see what's happening, and take a nap. That take a nap, yes. Like eight to like 9 15, 9 30. Naps are critical. That's all eastern time of course because we're located in New York City. But yeah, it takes a while to find the schedule that works for you.

So when Jay was first doing After Hours, he's been on it now, actually it'll be three years in August, so about two and a half years, he did the opposite of that. And I know some people who work overnights, they stay up during the daytime and then they don't go to bed until, I don't know, three o'clock in the afternoon, sleep until they have to get up for work. I guess theoretically you could sleep from say three, again this is eastern time, three to eleven, get up, come to work. I can't do that because sports happen in the late afternoon and the evenings. There's news that breaks so I need time to prepare. If I slept, first of all, I would never make it to three o'clock in the afternoon because I'm a mess. By the time the adrenaline wears off and I've had breakfast, as I say, sometimes I can barely keep my eyes open. Sometimes the dog is walking me, not the other way around, right? So by eight o'clock, eight thirty, I'm usually spent.

Anyway, Jay was trying to do it that way. He would stay up until noon, he would stay up until one o'clock, and then he would eat lunch, fall asleep with like lunch in his bed, which is, and he would, he would then, yeah that face, he would then attempt to sleep until seven o'clock, right? Eight o'clock sometimes.

I can't do that. Again, I'd be useless until noon, but also you miss so much, and so he changed the schedule. After about a year or so, I think I was a good influence on him, he added exercise to his routine. Now the man's a fiend, and he also decided he would go to bed early. So he gets home, he watches a little TV, that's his version of reading, I guess, unwinding, and then goes to bed. But yeah, there are people who stay up all day, and then go to bed right before they come to work, but I can't do that.

I don't even think I'd be coherent at like 10 o'clock in the morning. Every now and then, one of our local affiliates will ask me to join their morning show. This happens a bunch in, say, Toronto. I've done Buffalo, certainly done conversations for Baltimore, and the Big Bad Morning Show. Trying to think of some of the others. Miami and just around the country, people will ask me to do their shows.

Wisconsin, which is central time, a couple of different affiliates in Wisconsin like Milwaukee. But the problem is, when they ask me and say it's eight o'clock in the morning eastern time, oh man, there's a chance that I'm gonna get all kinds of loopy and also not be able to form a coherent sentence. So I gotta be careful what I agree to. It's hard. These hours are not easy. Yeah, I feel loopy when I'm uploading the podcasts. I'm like, I'm doing this. So note to self, if there's an issue with the podcast, it's because Ryan was falling asleep at his computer desk. No, it's an adjustment period. It definitely is. Well, welcome to the dark side.

All kinds of implications there. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio, and I just asked Ryan whether or not, because he's in all week, whether or not he would be comfortable sitting in and posing questions for Ask Amy Anything, which comes up on our hump show, so middle show of the work week. I try to warn him, sometimes there could be a hundred questions that come up on our Facebook page, so you have to sift through and find the best ones. Now, the general rules are we very rarely do sports questions unless they happen to be like, oh, your favorite memory as a five-year-old.

I don't have any memories as a five-year-old, but your favorite memory as a kid or your favorite event you've ever attended, but no questions about who's going to win the World Series. Every single week, there's a question about who's going to win the NBA championship, who's going to win the Super Bowl, who's going to, no, none of that. That's not a good use of Ask Amy Anything.

Mostly though, you'll have to be ready, Ryan. Food questions. There are always food questions, because I'm a big foodie, which is why the Bobby Flay interview was so cool.

Food questions, penny questions or pet questions, and then a lot of times there'll be travel questions or bucket list questions, those types of things. So we kind of go for off the beaten path, not sports. And then you get the people who yell at us, stick to sports, sports radio show, la la la. So just be prepared for all of that. It's one segment.

That's true, but you may not survive, and if you don't, then you may not want to come back. So right on the hot seat, coming up on the hump show, which is our middle show of the work week, and I know a lot of you are coming of a holiday weekend, but for us, it is the middle show of the work week. Our phone number 855-212-4227 always, and then on Twitter, a law radio, as well as on our Facebook page. So we're starting to dip our toe into the water when it comes to spring training. Talked about the Astros.

I know you all loved that. Hearing the name Alex Bregman causes some of you to break out in hives. We talked a little bit about the Angels, Post Otani, the Dodgers who now have Otani, but Juan Soto made a major move, and so the Padres, they're hoping to rebound from what was an abysmal failure last season. Remember, they got all the way to the NLCS in 22, and with all the money they spent on their roster for 23, were awful.

They were awful. Really didn't ever scare the Dodgers or anyone else in the National League, and then Juan Soto goes and signs a massive deal with the Yankees, but now he's getting a taste of playing with the Yanks. Now they're not in the Bronx yet, but those pinstripes, man, they carry major implications. It's gonna be electric. It's gonna be fun. There's a lot of Latin community over there, so it's gonna be really, really, really exciting.

It's gonna feel like home, and I'm more than happy to be there. I mean, it's gonna be electric. Now at this point, there's one year left on his deal. Everybody's kind of skirting the idea of an extension or talks.

He says he has no idea at this point. What is fun to talk about is Aaron Judge and Juan Soto being back-to-back in the lineup and how that could finally offer the protection for Aaron, but also just be a fun one-two punch for the Yanks. We know we both know the strike zone pretty well. I think it's gonna be two walks or it's gonna be two gapters, but it's gonna be fun. I think it's gonna be great. Definitely, if I'm hitting in front of him, I'm gonna try to be as much as I can on the basis so he can do his job and he can drop the hammer to the ball.

You drop the hammer to the ball. I like that. It'll be interesting to see those two together and really going back to the Yankees in the playoffs in 22, right? So it would have been after Judge's humongous season, the new AL home run record as well as that walk year where he quote-unquote bet on himself and got the big deal for 23. He was healthy all the way through 22.

They got to the playoffs though and they'd had so many other injuries and just guys that were underperforming that he had no protection in the lineup. So will this be different? Here's the thing about the Yankees. If you are a free agent and you go there and you help them win, they will back up the truck for you and it's intoxicating.

As Juan says, there's a great Latin community in the New York area and they will embrace him and support him and once you feel the buzz of the Bronx and playing for the Yankees, it's hard to leave unless of course you don't like the spotlight when he seems pretty comfortable in the spotlight. All right, it'll be our hump show when we reconvene tonight. Enjoy your day. You can find me on Twitter, ALawRadio or our Facebook page and YouTube channel.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Boom! 4603 for more details. Hyundai, there's joy in every journey.

2024 Santa Fe available early 2024. A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring but the runners-up get nothing, one retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. Um, that's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter but you're on a roll.

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