After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 4

Hey Mel, Bri here. Gotta work from home today because the whole family caught a nasty- Daddy! Hey, Mikey!

If you're gonna 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 gonna get you that budget. Just as soon as- Mikey!

Popcorn bowl! Press 1 to use Instacart and get your family's sick day essentials delivered in as fast as 30 minutes. Press 2 to keep working.

Do not press 2. Just use Instacart, Brian. For the past 20 years, you've enjoyed the refreshing tropical lime flavor of Mountain Dew Baja Blast. So in celebration of this milestone, we're bringing Baja Blast in stores nationwide. And for a limited time with every purchase of Baja Blast, you can collect coins for a chance to get Baja Gear or a Taco Bell deal.

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Void where prohibited. When something happens to your car, you might say, No! My car! But what you really need to say is something that can actually help. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And just like that, State Farm is there to help you file your claim right on the State Farm mobile app. So just remember, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois. I always felt like it was kind of mean to wake people up with such music. Now there are people out there that may choose to wake up to this raucous tune on their own, but man, that'd be jarring. If that was what was coming through my phone or my radio, we had this discussion last week about clock radios.

If that's what was coming through, then I kind of feel like it would be jarring. But maybe like the people who take cold showers, that's how you like to get up. Or are you the kind of person that plunges into a pool without ever getting your feet wet or then getting up to your knees or you get in the ocean just by running and diving through the waves.

That's not me. I am a big old fraidy cat when it comes to that. I don't know why because I love the water and I specifically love the ocean even more than pools. And yet for some reason, the cold water, maybe it's because I grew up in New England and the ocean's always cold. It's just degrees of cold. It's never warm. And so jumping into a pool that's, I don't know, 85 degrees is one thing, but even so I still get these. That's cold.

Right? My mom actually won't go in their pool unless the temps are in the low 90s. That doesn't even sound refreshing. Not a pool anymore.

So whether you're ripping off the band-aid, jumping into a cold pool or waking up with rock music blaring, I admire you. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio on this February 27th, 2024. Producer Jay is celebrating a birthday. Well, his birthday technically isn't until much later on today.

In fact, almost, gosh, more than 12 hours from now, 17 hours from now. But still, it's good to celebrate his birthday. We should play happy birthday because I'm not going to sing happy birthday. I can't on this particular day criticize how he attacked his birthday brunch at the Bellagio because it was his birthday so he was allowed really to attack it any way he wanted. But Bob and I both thought, oh no, starting with pizza and pancakes, bad idea.

It was an interesting choice. And he slowed down by dish number three or by plate number three. You left because you had to catch a flight. Bob and I went strong through four plates and then even had room for dessert.

I mean, I would have powered through and kept going if I had the time. I'm jealous that I didn't have the more time. You got the dessert plate and you left most of it there. You ate a donut and then you had a couple nibbles of cookie and that was pretty much it. I had a whole cheesecake. Oh, the cheesecake piece was like teeny tiny.

It was like the size of a Lego. And I had the couple, the bites of the macaroons. A mini donut. Yeah, you nibbled at the, one of them you didn't even touch.

The green macaroon you didn't even touch. Yeah. Well, I guess that was pistachio macaroons.

Right. I didn't even, I didn't grab that one initially. I grabbed the vanilla and the woman who was there was like, you need to try the pistachio.

I was like, okay, I didn't want to be rude. His whole dessert plate was full. He really slowed down. Now I will give him credit for this. He picked the best item first. It's just that you eat pancakes right off the top and your stomach is full.

It's a rookie mistake. I hear that. Plus pizza. You eat pizza every week. That one, I didn't go up there for the pizza. I went up there for the brunch and I got all the brunch things I needed.

As I was turning to come back, I just caught, they just put out this fresh pie. So I was, Oh, I got to try a piece of that. And yeah.

Huh? All right. Pizza and pancakes. Pizza and pancakes. I mean, we went all the way to Vegas for a brunch at the Bellagio and Jay starts out with pizza and pancakes.

It's pretty on brand for me actually. Right. But you're in Vegas.

You need to do something different. Birthday brunch. I mean, don't worry. It was cheap. It was only like 20 bucks.

The short rib was fantastic. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence and producer Jay. Happy birthday to producer Jay.

You can send your birthday greetings to our show, Twitter, After Hours, CBS, and also our Facebook page. Will from Niagara explains Dion Duncan's phrase like this. He meant the Jets were a bunch of cupcakes.

All right. I buy that. He just wanted to put a little emphasis behind it from cupcakes to biatch boy. That's that's a good, I mean, he doubled down later in the conversation with Vlad TV. Dion Dawkins talks about the almost fight they got into or would have gotten into if Clemens wasn't such a biatch. So he, he really, he said to him, you really are a biatch. I'm adding the B part because I think it's funnier that way. So thank you for the explanation, Will. Jay was un, he was unequipped or unwilling to explain the term.

My whole point in asking was just, huh, it's a huge insult for a male, but not so much for a female, I guess, or it's more acceptable to say that to a female. But you all know how I feel about it. I just want to make sure I expressed myself on this Tuesday morning.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio, on Twitter, whether it's our show, Twitter or mine, A Law Radio, and then on our Facebook page. We're trying to solve the problem of court storming. I don't know that we made any progress. It really isn't one where I think we're going to come up with a solution. I think the schools are unlikely to ban it.

Or if they do ban it, they're unlikely to make the penalty stiff enough that students really will abide by it. I would believe there are even some athletes who would tell you it's worth it just because it's such a scene. It's a fracas.

It's crazy. But if you have a huge upset or a huge win on your own court, your own field, and there are athletes who would tell you they actually prefer to have the fans come out there and jump around with them. Now, here's the downside. If you wait until a coach, a player or an official gets seriously hurt, well, then it's too late.

You're kind of playing the odds, right? Because the number of court stormings that have happened over the past, I don't know how many decades, the vast majority of them, nothing happens. They take place without incident except for there might be some damage to the property, right? So we've seen goalposts come down, get carried away. Every now and then you'll get a hoop that comes down. In some cases, they actually lower the hoops, although it's hard to do quickly. But if you're talking about unruly fans who have determined that they want to be part of this tradition of court storming, I don't know how much you can do to stop it. The idea would be why you're just going to have to protect the people that need to be protected, an escort to get out of the arena or off of the field.

It definitely is a tradition as old as sports, but it only takes one serious injury for it to become a lot more dire. The NCAA leaves it up to conferences. Not every conference has a policy, but now it's in the spotlight because of an injury to a Duke basketball player. So we're trying to solve it, but I honestly don't think there's a whole lot that can be done unless you are going to take the drastic measure of either, I actually like this suggestion from a caller earlier, putting students in the upper deck. Now when I was at Syracuse, my student tickets for basketball were in the upper deck. And there was always a chance you could upgrade or you could win the lottery and you could sit right off the court. But for the most part, Syracuse sold a lot of those tickets at a higher rate and sold them, and those weren't season tickets, at least not for students, but sold them to people who could pay top dollar. So if you wanted student tickets and you wanted to be at every game, you had to sit in the upper deck. But it was okay, we were surrounded by peers and it was raucous, but we weren't storming the court from the upper deck.

So I didn't ever have that option. So that's an idea, except that a lot of schools, they would tell you it creates a better home court advantage if the students are closer to the court. For those of you who have ever been to a game at Oklahoma State, this particular atmosphere will always stick with me. I covered games at Gallagher-Iber Arena for years and one of the reasons it was such a great home court advantage is because the students, and not just students, but the students and the rest of the fans were right there. I mean, they were inches off the court and the arena and the stands were built up, not back, which meant that the cacophony of sound would cascade down onto the court from up above. And I was there when there were court stormings as a member of the media, not as a fan, not as someone who paid for a ticket, but the media would be sitting there right on the court and a lot of colleagues would get up and leave just in case, and also to cover post-game press conferences.

But I remember we were kind of warned and you had to be careful because fans would come pouring out from the stands onto the court. I don't think fans, students care whether or not the school gets fined. I'm not even sure they would care if there was extra security because if you're a security guard or an usher in the face of this mob that's bum-rushing you or bum-rushing down onto the court, I don't know what one person does.

I mean, you could go drastic measures, but honestly, I don't think schools want to ban it. They just want to try to protect the people that are vulnerable, which is the athletes, the teams, the officials as well. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. There was no rushing the court. There's no storming the court by the Pistons, despite how upset they were over a missed call in the final few seconds of a game at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. Everybody rising. Here's Brunson up top. Can't give him much space. He'll fire.

Eleven to twenty-five in the night. There he goes. He'll fire.

No good. Rebound. Grimes chases it down to the corner.

It saves it to Fontecchio, and then he turns it over. DiVincenzo, and then a steal by Azar Thompson, and they tackle him and take it away. Are you kidding me? Underneath the basket, there's a foul on the bucket. That is an unbelievable bad call by the officials.

112-111 New York. I mean, that was a foul at mid-court on Thompson. Thompson was mugged over there on the sideline. That is ridiculous. Now the Knicks can take a two-point lead with 2.8 seconds to go.

Second one on the way. No, but that's okay for them, and Hart got it in the corner, and that'll do it. I'll tell you right now, Monty Williams is going to give it to these officials, as the New York Knicks are going to win it. Monty Williams is livid with these officials, and I think he has every right to do it. Suyash Mehta getting the wrath.

113-111, the New York Knicks hang on and win this game. They may have gotten away with something. The absolute worst call of the season. No call. And enough's enough. We've done it the right way. We've called the league. We've sent in clips. We're sick of hearing the same stuff over and over again. We had a chance to win the game, and the guy dove into a star's legs and there was a no call.

That's an abomination. You cannot miss that in an NBA game. Period. Monty Williams does a very short post-game press conference in New York, but he gets right to the point.

We'll get more from him coming up. I certainly understand the frustration. The call was blatantly missed. It should have been a loose ball foul, and in fact it was so blatant that it wasn't even midnight Eastern time when the crew chief of this particular officiating crew came out and admitted that the call was missed. So here's what happened, and it was not only dramatic, but it was pretty crazy.

It was really hectic. Both teams had a chance to secure the basketball multiple times and couldn't do it. So Jaylen Brunson misses a three, and Detroit believes they've secured the rebound, but as they're trying to save it from going, well they're trying to pass it back into the court of play, right?

So an outlet pass if you will, but an ill-advised outlet pass. The ball is stolen by the Knicks. The Knicks then try to reset, right? So they're trailing by a point, and then the Knicks throw the ball away. Dante DiVincenzo throws an ill-advised pass that gets picked off by the Pistons. The Pistons then bobble it away. There's, you know, there's a bunch of hands in there, and as they're heading up court, it looks like Thompson has got a line on the basketball. No, he doesn't have the basketball, which is why it would have been a loose ball foul, but he's at least in position to grab it. He gets to it first, and then DiVincenzo takes him out. I mean, he does pile drive him.

Okay, it wasn't that dressed. It wasn't WWE, but he does take him out. He plows into him, and they both go flying, and the ball then ends up in the hands of Jalen Brunson again, who finds Josh Hart on the low block, and Hart makes the layup and gets fouled. At that point then, the Pistons are trailing by one, so it's kind of this pinball effect, or just a ball going everywhere, and ultimately the Pistons had the chance, but couldn't corral the basketball. I understand why Williams is upset, and it certainly should have been a foul called, and when you're a team that's stuck on eight wins, well, these things, they tend to make you even more upset, right?

So they tend to, it tends to take very little to light your fire. I'm tired of talking about it. I'm tired of our guys asking me, what more can we do, coach? That situation is exhibit A to what we've been dealing with all season long, and enough's enough.

You cannot dive into a guy's legs in a big time game like that, and there be a no call. It's ridiculous, and we're tired of it. We just want a fair game called, period, and I got nothing else to say. We want a fair game, and that was not fair.

I'm done. Monty Williams gets up and exits the press room, and that will be something you hear all day on Tuesday. It sucks for the Pistons. I honestly don't have a whole lot of sympathy though. I get that they're frustrated, and the call should have been made, but maybe don't leave it up to those final seconds, and then don't bobble away the ball twice when you have an opportunity to secure it. I know that's not a popular opinion right now though, ever. It's never popular to not blame the referees.

I've learned that in my 25 plus years doing this job. All right, on Twitter, ALawRadio coming up. We're waiting for some big dominoes to drop in the baseball free agent market. The commissioner has only got five more years to fix it. Our friend David Sampson will join us, longtime Marlins president.

We can pick his brain about the start. 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. For the past 20 years, you've enjoyed the refreshing tropical lime flavor of Mountain Dew Baja Blast. So in celebration of this milestone, we're bringing Baja Blast in stores nationwide. And for a limited time with every purchase of Baja Blast, you can collect coins for a chance to get Baja gear or a Taco Bell deal. 2024 is the year of Baja Blast in stores now. No purchase necessary.

Open to US residents 18 plus subject to official rules at Baja blast.com and 6 1524 void were prohibited. When something happens to your car, you might say no. But what you really need to say is something that can actually help like a good neighbor State Farm is there. Just like that State Farm is there to help you file your claim right on the State Farm mobile app.

So just remember, like a good neighbor State Farm is their State Farm Bloomington, Illinois spring training. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence here on CBS Sports Radio. You are listening to the after hours podcast. I'm too young to remember the Beatles. But from everything I've heard, it's sort of like the Beatles. And, you know, I've never dealt with a generational talent, a world household name.

And so Shohei's really just changed the landscape of even the Dodgers in spring training. This is after hours with Amy Lawrence. I love that David Dave Roberts, excuse me, points out that he's not old enough to remember the Beatles.

Me neither. I just want to point that out. But that the buzz in the circus around Shohei Ohtani is like what he's heard about the Beatles or that or what you used to see in the old tape recordings and how people used to lose their minds. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Good morning to you. We are pleased to welcome longtime Marlins president and now longtime baseball analyst and award winning podcast host David Sampson to the show. Happy belated birthday to you, David.

Oh, thank you very much. You missed it only by five hours and twenty four minutes. Not bad. Did you do anything fun? You know, it's the work week. So I prepared a show.

I watched the movie. It was just another Monday. I think at the age as the as the years move on, you sort of stick to your routine and try to ignore the fact that all of a sudden you caught up to Lawrence Taylor. Well, happy birthday to you. I think it's hard to survive a year on this planet. So we should celebrate the birthdays. It's not easy to keep going. So good for you. All right. So it's a work week.

We'll dive right in. What's the delay with all of the free agents out there that are still available, not including Cody Bellinger any longer? I think this could be the year that finally Scott Boras has overplayed his hand and he has valued his players.

He's got the guys at the top of the market with Montgomery and Snell and Chapman. And he had Bellinger total and Bellinger until the Cubs sort of blinked a little bit and gave Bellinger 80 million over three with opt outs after each year. What Boris does is he tells his players he's going to get a certain amount of money and then he waits and he waits and he waits. And then either the player blinks or Boris decides, all right, let's do the Korea deal, which is the short pillow deal like you did with Minnesota two years ago with an opt out and then try again the next year.

And that worked for Korea because he got 200 million the next year after the first time he went through free agency. And the hope is that Bellinger has a good year again for Chicago and then can get a longer term deal that's better than the 80 over three. But it's an interesting standoff between owners and Boris and it's going longer into spring training than I think MLB or anybody is happy with.

Why? Why does it take away from spring training or why would baseball want to put a deadline on free agency? Well, just think about the excitement. I tried to get a deadline in free agency when I was in the game for 18 years. We tried every year with the union, every collective bargaining agreement, because think of the excitement. If you could have a deadline sometime in December, you'd have a frenzy of signings. Then you'd have teams with the ability to take all of January and February prior to spring training and sell that player, sell season tickets, sell excitement. The players' families would know where they're going to be.

They could look at school systems and look at spring training homes and regular season homes. There's just so many upsides to it of a deadline of getting players done. The downside, of course, is that it could have a quashing impact on salaries. I understand why the union would say that. But at the end of the day, having players signed is good for the game and good for players.

What's happening now is not good for anyone. So if you sign a player, let's say Jordan Montgomery, to a long-term $200 million deal, which is not going to happen, you want to be able to have him in camp on time. You want to be able to have him getting set up to be your opening day starter. And believe it or not, the funny thing in baseball that we do is make a big deal of announcing who our number one starter is. But there are 30 teams right now who know who their number one starter is because you start lining up your number one starter day one of spring training camp.

And you do it purposefully with how, when they're throwing, how many pitches they're throwing. And if you bring in a big time starter mid-March, it's very unlikely that that player is ready, truly ready to start the season on time. And you don't want to risk injury if you have a long-term commitment to a player, you don't rush it.

So it just pretty much screws everything up. But I, but I absolutely understand why players are holding out. And I also understand why teams are not meeting the asking price for these players. So this is a really high priced game of chicken with Scott Boris. It's very funny to say that because every free agent signing is a game of chicken, whether it's mid-level free agents, whether it's minor league free agents or the biggest names on the board. And the reason why it's all the same game is players always overvalue themselves. And teams are always trying, like your radio station, like your employer, like every employer, they're trying to get the best talent for the least money.

That's what every business does. And so that is, that's what you see in baseball too. David Sampson, longtime Marlins president and has the Nothing Personal podcast, which has just won a couple of awards. Congratulations to him.

We're always glad to have him here after hours on CBS Sports Radio. What is the real feeling or what is the real opinion of Scott Boris behind closed doors in front offices? It's extremely negative.

I think is the nicest way I could put it. And I think it's negative with other agents as well toward him. And I think it's based a little bit on jealousy, but it's also based on just, you know, poofery is what I call it. When you go to the winter meetings or the GM meetings, there's only one agent who quote unquote holds court, who has an entire press conference set up just for himself, who is really such a self PR machine. But remember, Scott Boris is nothing without owners agreeing to deals for his players. And when his players get deals that they want, then they love Scott Boris. But there are a lot of players he has that just sort of fall by the wayside because he over asks. And so I always blamed myself, never Scott, for bad deals that I did with him, because we have to say yes, while we would overpay a player, because he would convince our owner that this player was the one piece missing for a World Series, or any other marketing ridiculousness that he would do on behalf of his clients, were the ones on the team side without us, nothing happens. And so we always bail him out and make him look right. And this year, it looks like it's not happening. And that's a fascinating change that the entire industry is watching, including all the other agents, where they look and say, wow, if teams don't bail out Boris, then maybe players won't be poached by Boris as much and they won't want to go to Boris as much because they won't think that going to him will all of a sudden get them this more money that in theory, their own agent can't get them, which of course isn't true. Current agents, we never said, oh, we'll give more money because it's Boris clients. But yet, we often did.

It was a very strange phenomenon. And it looks like it may be changing. And that's why I'm watching so intently what happens with Chapman and with Montgomery and with snow. I've always wondered this. So I need your insider intel. Are clients of Boris allowed to overrule him? Or when you sign with him? Does does he get final say because sometimes it feels like players actually would maybe take a little less or they would like to get in camp. They'd like to get the deal done. But they're waiting on their agent. Yeah, I've never seen anything like what happens before us. And he spends a lot of time publicly denying that he that it's the players who make the final decisions.

But I've been around him for 18 years. It's just not the case. I can't tell you the number of players who told me Yeah, I won't. I can't do that deal. My agent will not allow me to do that deal. And I would say to the player, but it's your life. It's your career. It's your money.

The biggest example is someone like a Marcelo Zunno or a Jose Fernandez, who then passed away without having any long term deal. They basically said to our front office, we're sorry, thank you for that offer, but we're going to pass. And when we'd ask, you know, why this look at the value we're giving you, we get a reason of our agent does not believe that you are valuing me at where I should be valued. And my answer always was that does not interest me what you just said.

What do you and your family think about what we are offering? And so one of the rules that Scott Boras players have is you're going to listen to me. And that's the rule. And I'm going to take care of you. And you're going to make more money with me than with anyone else. I promise.

And the problem is, those promises don't always come true. After hours here on CBS Sports Radio, David Sampson is with us. And we love that he gets up early and that he always brings it even though it's super early. By the way, Jay's birthday is today.

So you guys were so close to being birthday twins. It has nothing to do with baseball. But so Commissioner, the Commissioner Rob Manfred has announced that he will be retiring in a few years when his contract is done. What does he need to get accomplished between now and then? Oh, my God, that's such a funny question, because it's he talked about stepping away when for the first time, I have my tell you, when I got the alert, my eyes and brain only saw MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stepping down. Oh, no.

It's my brain just sort of stopped. And then I realized it said in 2029 and I said, oh, I get it. 2029 is a long time from now. There's going to be so many changes of owners by then. The TV deals will be very different. Right now, we're going year to year with these regional sports networks trying to figure out what the local media landscape is going to be. And then even more importantly, there's a new labor deal that has to be negotiated prior to 2029. So there's a lot of ground to cover. And I would only say that I will believe it when I see it. And what I mean by that is that when the CEO like a Bob Iger gives you a timing for him stepping down from Disney, often the timeline is not stuck to because things just happen.

Things just come up. Rob has been a terrific commissioner and I was there when he was elected and I was very much in favor of him being elected. He's made changes to the game that have been significant. There's been an increase in overall industry revenue.

Valuations are going up. So it is not doom and gloom in Major League Baseball. It is certainly a time of change because of the media, the unsettling nature of local media in a sport that really is far more local than the other sports. In other words, if I talked to you about local media deals in the NFL, you'd laugh and say there are none and you'd be right. And in baseball, the majority of your broadcast revenue is local. So this change in the media landscape has impacted baseball tremendously.

And it's just a fascinating story to watch over the next several years. How do you like the move to streaming for so many sports broadcasts? It's like asking people who love typewriters, how do you like to move to computers?

The answer is there's some people who are really stubborn and kept using typewriters until they ran out of liquid paper and they realized, well, wait a minute, there may be a better way. So the thing about streaming is that it doesn't matter what I think of streaming. It only matters that the audience and the world is now a streaming world and it's going to become more streaming, not less.

In the NFL, you had one playoff game last year. Now it's Amazon who paid 150 million for one fully streaming playoff next year. If you think that that is not the beginning of a trend, then you're just not paying attention. It is absolutely going to keep happening.

More and more things will be behind paywalls because that is the name of the game. It is getting people behind the paywall of a streaming service and more and more people have quote unquote cut the cords or they never had cords to start with. So if you look at my kids who are 28, 25 and 20 between them, they've had zero cords since they've become pain adults. The people who are my age, I had cords until three years ago and then I had none. If you look at someone who is 80, they've had cords for 50 years and or whatever cord started and will never change. But they're going to die.

I'm sorry to say. So that's a horrible thing to talk about at five in the morning. But think about generations passing. So the youngest generation where baseball is really thinking about young people playing baseball, being engaged with baseball to them, streaming is the only thing they know.

And so they're going to then become the 30 year olds and the 40 year olds and the 50 year olds. And so eventually everyone's going to be streaming and it won't even be an article when there's a playoff game behind a streaming paywall. No one will even mention that there's a streaming game on Peacock.

It will not be anything that is conversation worthy. But we're in that area now where it's starting. And I would just prepare everyone that we're in the first inning of streaming, not any deeper into the game than that. Before I let you go, I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to make a comparison between Shohei Ohtani-Buzz and Taylor Swift-Buzz. And I don't know if Shohei's fans have a nickname, but just somehow trying to say that the two things are comparable. Am I completely crazy? Yes.

I think that you're underselling the craziness of the Swifties and the purchasing power of the Swifties. And all you have to do is see how the NFL associated with her. I didn't see any other player girlfriends getting five to 10 shots of themselves during the Super Bowl.

There was one girlfriend, one player girlfriend. And I would say this about Ohtani. It is really exciting that he's going to the Dodgers only because he's never played in October. And it's better for baseball to have Ohtani playing in October.

Agreed. However, there is zero correlation between signing a really good DH and winning the World Series. And you can have all the Beatlemania you want, but the Dodgers added a DH. They needed pitching.

That's what they did. And people can say that he's a number one pitcher. He may be again, but this year he won't pitch at all.

All the excitement. He's starting the spring training game today. MLB Network is picking up the game.

Everyone has been following this and can't wait to see it. I love watching Ohtani play, but you know from baseball it's not like you put a super team together and that means they win the World Series. It's not like basketball in that way. So I think it's premature to say the Dodgers are going to win it. And the Diamondbacks in the same division are not scared of the Dodgers because they know what they were able to do last year. And in any playoff series hitters can get cold. Ohtani can go one for 14 in a playoff series or he can go eight for 14 and your team can lose because your pitching stinks. So there's a lot of excitement coming for this season. But the best news of that, of the off season for me is that the guarantee, and I say this almost surely the guarantee that Ohtani wins a playoff game is a hundred percent. And that's exciting because he's a two-time MVP who has never even played in a playoff game.

Yeah, or like Mike Trout who we haven't seen in a decade. All right, you can find David Sampson on Twitter at DavidPsampson, S-A-M-S-O-N, the award-winning Nothing Personal daily podcast and also on CBS Sports HQ, longtime Marlins president, our favorite early bird. Thank you so much for a couple of minutes always. I appreciate it. Have a great day. I like that he is someone who takes us behind the scenes and behind closed doors in Major League Baseball. I've never heard anyone else give me the lowdown on dealing with Scott Boris like he just did. Also I may not drop the Shohei Swifty comparison. I may not.

I may try. You can shout me down. You are listening to the OK. Picture this. It's Friday afternoon.

When a thought hits you. I can spend another weekend doing the same old whatever, or I can hop into my all-new Hyundai Santa Fe and hit the road with available H-TRAC all-wheel drive and three-row seating. My whole family can head deep into the wild. Conquer the weekend in the all-new Hyundai Santa Fe. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai. There's joy in every journey. 2024 Santa Fe available early 2024. It's that time of year. Cash the ticket.

Jim Costa with Mike Valenny. We shift the focus from football to college hoops. Play in that system that's not a system but sure plays like a system leading up to the tournament. We're looking for that value with the daily dimes. We look for the gross lines. Getting us ready for the tournament where we're going to break down all the matchups and have an eye on some future plays too.

This time of the year, baby. Search Cash the Ticket on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. After Hours Podcast. Number 72, Michael Clements.

Michael Clements. Yeah. Yeah. Bitch boy. Bitch boy.

You know, I'm gonna just keep it a buck. I hate them. All of them, bro. They are awesome. Like, when it comes to sports, right? There's people that play the sport because they love a sport and then there's people that play the sport just to try to be cool. I feel like they play the sport to try to be cool. Like, those are a bunch of dudes that just want to take pictures on Instagram. Like, that's whack.

Like, I play this because I'll die by it. This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Dion Dawkins does not like Michael Clements or the Jets. That's courtesy of Vlad TV, something I'd never heard of. I'd also not quite sure I'd ever heard the phrase biatch boy before or at the very least, I'd never heard it used in such a manner on Vlad TV. And I tried to ask producer Jay to define it for me, but he didn't want to. I do know that when you really want to insult a fellow professional athlete, you use the B word. I guess you don't have to double down and use the second B word, but yeah. Alpha male athletes do not take kindly to being called that. I think Draymond's probably used that a couple times in his career.

Segway! It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Yeah, Dion Dawkins is not having it. I just kind of wonder how that's going to play. I'm really interested to hear the reaction, but that's for another day.

You're not going to have my number. Draymond Green, he's got his own podcast and he likes to talk. I've said before, if I could host a podcast with one other athlete or host a show with a co-host, it would be Draymond from the sports world. He reminded me of Micah Parsons as he's starting to talk about MVPs on his podcast. And he thinks Jason Tatum is not getting enough attention.

JT will not be taken serious for the MVP until he win a championship. And it just hasn't been that way for everybody else. I must say it was not that way for Joker. It's not that way for Giannis. It's not that way for Joel. I mean, golly, that is brutal. Young fella, I don't know how to go post mood on you like that, but they should acknowledge it because those are the facts. Is this some narrative that I'm not familiar with that Jason Tatum is an MVP unless they win a championship?

I not heard that. This kind of reminds me of Micah Parsons even more so because they lay something out there that's opinion and they call it fact. Remember Micah point blank period. And then the sound effects laugh now and cry later.

I miss Micah's podcast. Point blank period. See what I mean? Like they lay it out there, it's opinion, but they describe it as though it's a fact. Because those are the facts.

I mean, maybe I could teach you a thing or two about hosting a podcast. Also, he says the Warriors who've won, let's see, 10 of 13, they just lost the other night of course, but 10 of 13 and they're sitting in 10th place in the West. He believes they're exactly where they're supposed to be. This is that time of year where the competitors want to play. Like you want to be out there. You know, it's after the All-Star break, you get that win and you know it's time to gear up for the playoffs and this is what we're going for and playing for. So this is a fun time of year and I think you're going to see guys locked in all around the league just knowing like what's ahead. It's go time, baby. It's go time.

Facts. Wouldn't that be fun? Could you imagine? I don't think I'd get a word in edgewise, but it would be so great to have Draymond co-host a show.

Can we work on that please? Yes. Can you put out a call? A simple phone call?

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State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois. Okay, picture this. It's Friday afternoon when a thought hits you. I can spend another weekend doing the same old whatever, or I can hop into my all-new Hyundai Santa Fe and hit the road. With available H-Track all-wheel drive and three-row seating, my whole family can head deep into the wild. Conquer the weekend in the all-new Hyundai Santa Fe. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai, there's joy in every journey. 2024 Santa Fe, available early 2024.