American Association of Professional Baseball Commissioner Joshua Schaub, talking broadcasting with Noah Eagle

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You need Indeed. Welcome into The WinklerVerse. It's The Bart Winkler Show. It is All Star Week. We are having a good time. And it's not The Bart Winkler Show.

It's Into The WinklerVerse, which I also said. But I'm recording this section during a commercial break of The Bart Winkler Show, which you can catch on the Infinity Sports Network each and every night. We're doing listener appreciation week. We're doing first sports memory. And I can't really think of what mine was. I was at a Brewers caravan in Fond du Lac at the Holiday Inn.

I choked on a piece of cheese. Paul Molyneux was there. So I remember that. I was at Wrigley Field against the Mets with my grandpa. But I remember like getting off a bus and sitting on the first baseline, but I don't know when that was. I tried to ask my parents.

They don't know. I was at a Brewer game with 20 Japanese wrestlers, like in an exchange program, youth exchange program. They had a great time. That was against the Orioles. I don't know what year that was, though.

I can't think of these years. I was searching like all day online. I spent most of my Monday searching online for when the actual dates of my memories were and also doom scrolling. I'm getting very sucked into politics.

I'm not present in my real life. There's just a lot going on. There is just a lot going on.

It's hard and all this stuff is here and it's like, my God. All right. On today's episode, I have two things for you.

One is attack it on. Noah Eagle joined me on the Bart Winkler Show. I got to play that here, right? But the main portion of the show is a conversation I had with Josh Schaub, and he is the commissioner of the league that the Milkmen play in and the Lake Country Dockhounds play in, the American Association of Professional Baseball. So I've talked to him before at 1250. We were able to have a nice catch up conversation just about the league, some of the challenges. I told him that I hate the pitch clock, and he basically shut down my argument there. He did a real good job doing it. So my conversation with Josh Schaub is the bulk of today's episode here on the All-Star Week. And then I did talk to Noah Eagle, which was pretty cool. And I want you to hear it.

So I'm going to hashtag attack it on. But remember, you can hear the real stuff, the real good stuff. Like and subscribe to the Bart Winkler Show. But catching up with Joshua Schaub from the American Association of Professional Baseball. Joshua Schaub is joining us. He is the commissioner of the American Association of Professional Baseball. We are very familiar with some teams in this league, whether it is the Milwaukee Milkmen, which I do remember that was there was a lot of excitement when they first came.

And I think that excitement has not only stayed but gotten stronger in our area. Also, the Lake Country Dockhounds have come along. They make up what is a 12 team league, I believe at this point. And talking with the commissioner of that league right now.

Good to talk to you again. League going strong. I think we were just discussing when the last time we spoke was. And it might have been during the pandemic when your league was still in its infancy, but also trying to power through. I think a lot of the conversation was, how are you going to pull it off? I think I hung up the phone with you and off air said, oh, that league's screwed.

No, I'm just kidding. Well, you pulled it off and four years later, I think it's it's really found its footing a lot of different things. So in your run as this commissioner, what has just been like that? Obviously, that's got to be the toughest challenge. But what has been the maybe most rewarding part of overseeing this league as you've been doing so now?

I think just in general. So I've been the commissioner since March of 2019. So I was first met with three days on the job. Milwaukee Stadium not being open on time.

So it's like three days in. They're like, hey, we need a second site like Oakland going to Sacramento or somewhere. The A's like, how are we going to logistically do this? And then the pandemic hit. Obviously, the next spring is I'm like launching into our strategy of how we're going to grow this league.

So, yeah, that that would say that that being the same challenge is this like biggest like reward is getting through that pandemic season, which really has been a whipsaw for us. Because we were the only things growing at the time that people could watch live sports in person. We were the only professional league to pull it off. So I think that's been kind of a catapult for us going forward. I think just in general, the progress we've made as a league in five years. In fact, an article just came out in Sports Business Journal today about our national television deals. And if you look back to 2019, I took over and this is not to besmirch my predecessor, who's a legend in the baseball industry. But our games were being broadcast on an obscure platform in Canada. You know, like there were no games now in five years and much credit to the teams were on national television. So that ascendancy has been awesome to watch.

Very rewarding. And it shows us a great appetite for MLB partner league baseball outside of Major League Baseball, that there's an appetite for more baseball. So it speaks to the baseball industry as a whole. Yeah, I talk a lot about this with Major League Baseball, you know, and things that they could improve on.

I think they do a bad job of the schedule. I mean, during there's some holidays every team should be playing when you're thinking baseball. And so maybe if there's not a game in the area from Major League, maybe then they see the eyeballs there. Or if it's a bunch of other leagues, like there's leagues all over this country. There's a bunch of different partner leagues. The Northwoods League with the college amateurs we're familiar with around here, too. I think that one thing that I always say in this discussion is because, you know, baseball has been talked as a regional sport.

I push back on that because it's not. It's like it's a very national sport. I think what happens at the top level with Major League Baseball is people get so sucked into their one team that, sure, in Major League Baseball, it's hard to care about the other twenty nineteen. There's going to be people watching the All-Star game this week. And they don't know a lot of these players because you just don't see them because you're so invested with your team.

But I think that you look around the country and there are a lot of different pockets. We'll call this a Midwestern pocket, pocket of baseball that, yeah, you can assemble a league and you can put teams out. You can say, hey, you know, if you're in Milwaukee and you like the Brewers, well, there's also the milkmen. Or if you don't want to get into Milwaukee, you know, some days there's the Dockhounds, like there's all these different leagues. And I think you guys take advantage of there is an appetite for baseball is what I'm saying, despite people pretending like it's not what it used to be.

No. And part of what you just described is the nature of our game that we play every day. So there's so much content. It's hard to keep up with all the content. Your team's on it every day. So you don't have an opportunity to breathe and even watch the Fox Sports Sunday night game to watch the big stars.

It's very difficult to consume all the content. That being said, what you just described is two different products. You have Major League Baseball, which is clearly the best players in the world. We never contend that our players are better than what they have.

But what we have is a product that's local that you can visit in person at an affordable price and still have access to heroes and make no doubt about it. Our players are still phenomenal athletes. They're players that 68 percent of our players have made it to double A or above.

We had opening day this year, 25 players that had Major League Baseball service time. So to see those players live, they still feel like big leaguers. But the fact is, the big leaguers play on a grander stage, which makes them feel grander.

But you still have phenomenal athletes playing in our league. And the bigger thing is you have access to them. So the autograph signings being closer to them, the home runs are just as far. In fact, I give this all the time. If you go to show up our ballpark at five o'clock and you're watching BP, you wouldn't notice the difference between the two products.

It's just when the lights are on a bigger stage, it feels a lot different. But there's a lot of great things about our product that MLB can't offer either. That's the reality. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search match with Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast.

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That's Indeed.com slash Blue Wire. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Yeah, and I think of that more, you know, being a dad, got a kid who's going to turn five soon. And I'm not like I've always said, like, if he doesn't like sports, that's fine. But I'm also I'm also like going to I'm putting the game out in front of him and I'm going, you know, to baseball games and just in trying to go, you know, to games, I want something for him because he's you know, these are still formative years. So I don't know what he's going to remember, but I want something that if he goes for, you know, half of the game or if he goes for the whole game, I want him close. I want him to be able to see what baseball looks like at a professional level.

And I think that this is another great league to do that. But then, you know, I'm taking the dad route. But also, like, just in talking to people, the last time I was at a milkman game, there's people that, you know, don't have kids that just like going consistently. Like they like our team, but we don't want to what we want to be there. We want to be there every day and still have it be affordable. So I would, you know, think that, yes, the kid angle, the family angle, that is a tremendous angle that you guys would use.

But I don't want to also just say, like, you know, it's not Disney Junior. This is real baseball. Good for fans of any age. Yeah, I'd say what you described, the access is different to the process of going to American Family Field, finding parking, walking all the way in and like getting a concession stand, 20 minute walk to find whatever. Like just the access is simpler, more efficient, and you don't spend so much that you have to like feel bad about leaving if you have to leave. Not that I encourage that, but, you know, just the lift to a family. I do. As a dad, I do. If you've got to leave, you've got to leave. I have to share this anecdote I saw online the other day. They said, I came into my own as a dad and believed I was a good dad when my child described a dinner without main course as a bullpen dinner.

So they had like all the sides. That's such a good tweet. He blew up. I saw that tweet right away because I know JR, but that's one of those tweets you're like, oh, that's good. That's good. And you know that's going to get pick up steam. I didn't realize, you know, yeah, I'm glad that tweet got reference. That is a good tweet. So not to digress too far, but baseball is baseball, whether it's Major League Baseball, American Association, but our product is a little more efficient and better suited maybe for certain families that can't go to a Major League Baseball game multiple times a year.

But you want to go to a professional baseball game multiple times a year. That's us. That's where we're at.

The 5, 10 game, 15 game packs. That's our sweet spot. So where is your Josh Schaub joining us? We're talking baseball. Commissioner of the American Association of Professional Baseball. You can check out, you know, in Wisconsin, there's Lake Country. There is the Milwaukee Milkmen. One thing that I talk about with baseball a lot is it seems like, okay, baseball is chess where everything else is checkers. Every other team sport, there's a goal here or a basket here or an end zone here. It's like, you know, you go down the field, you go down the field, you score, you can pick up defense, whatever. Baseball is different. Obviously, you can't score on defense. The field is different.

There's no time. You know, now, you know, at the pro level, adding pitch clocks and stuff. I feel like baseball is trying to almost make itself and I'm talking at the professional level. It's MLB level. It's almost trying to conform into like the other sports where I just want baseball. Baseball to me is there's 162 of these days. You guys, how long? Hundred games.

Hundred games. That I think is part of it. It's part of it. It's every day.

I know I have a game to watch every day. It's the ebbs and flows. It's a battle of attrition. I don't want to I don't want that part to be taken away. But it just seems like it is the strategy. Let me address that.

Let me let me just address that. The pitch clock. So we have pitch clocks, too.

We adopted pitch clocks. We have the data from 2010. Our league started in 2006. 2010, we have the data game times, right? And game times were 238 in 2010 and went up to 315 in 2022. So we know all the way back in the 70s with Major League Baseball, the games were 243, 238.

All we're doing is returning the game to what it once was versus changing the game, putting it in a box. So the game you grew up loving was about 238, 240, and it had a pace. Right? It had a pace, which is why we love it. Every 12 seconds, I know there's action. In fact, I saw this at bat between Johnny Bench and Vita Blue. And I've never seen such rapid action between hitter and pitcher. Johnny Bench's foot never left the box.

Vita Blue got the ball, took the signal, go. And it was like this like consistent eight pitch at bat. And that's what we loved.

We got away from what we loved. And so Major League Baseball, Commissioner Manfred, who, you know, there's a lot of critics. I know being commissioner is not easy, but he's just returning the game to what we once loved. But he's forcing it. Right.

He's forcing it back into the box of how it was played. And I agree with it. We implemented pitch clocks in 2023. It was almost seamless. College Baseball's had pitch clocks for even longer. So the reality is this has been going on for a while in the baseball industry and the players seamlessly transitioned to it. I think fans have come to really enjoy it.

And the added benefit is it's good for TV. I mean, that is the reality. Oh, I like I just. So I understand, because then the counterargument is, OK, if it's 245. And let's say I'm screaming that I want a 315 game. Well, what do I want 30 minutes more of is what you would ask me. And I would say. My answer would be, well, I just wanted to.

And you would say what you just said. But then also the 30 minutes more of what I would want. Yeah. Is nothing.

It's 30 minutes more of. You know, wrist. Yeah.

Legs. Now, in the playoffs, I don't mind a little more drama and tension, but I do think that that that point that you make is like. It was it didn't have to be in the past because it didn't have to be. And then as people got more like that, I don't even know if it's a strategic thing.

It just it is. I mean, it's for both hitters and pitchers, strategic. So pitchers, it's rest right in between pitches and exertion and agents started do the math and teams are doing the math. And the longer you take in between pitches, the better performance you're going to have. And for hitters, just time to think and digest, because there has been no unencumbered at bats for hitters since kids now play, you know, travel baseball, whatnot. Every at bat is encumbered. What do I mean by that is we've drilled into their head. They analyze the hell out of every pitch, every at bat. We're talking about every at bat and every pitch. How would you do that?

Why did you do that? Was your foot at a 30 degree angle on your hands back? And my background prior to become a commissioner was I was a scout for the Brewers, associate scout on the Harvard King Junior. So I was old school baseball. Right. And so you told the hitter what to do before their bat.

And I wanted them just react. But what has happened is now we're breaking down film and we're breaking down film during the game in between every at bat. We're breaking down with the pitcher through you. It's like so hitters wanted to slow down the world because it was just too much to consume for them.

And this game just grew on. And fans like they want consistent action. That's what we're providing back to the pitch clocks. Yeah, that's ultimately like, again, I mean, I'm adding 30 minutes of nothing. I guess I don't like that it got to a point where it had to be a change. But, you know, if it has to be a change, it has to be a change. Now, you guys do work with the MLB as one of these partner leagues.

What is that like me? What what? Yeah. What kind of benefits do you get?

What kind of benefits might they get? Because, you know, ultimately you see it with the USFL or the UFL now. It makes sense if everybody's kind of thinking about the same thing. Yeah.

Unless like, you know, live golf version. But if that's not the case, like I think the partner leagues can only be beneficial for everybody. Yeah, I'll walk you through history a little bit. So former Commissioner Sealeg saw the independent leagues as we were once known as competition. Right. So we're in major league markets and we're stealing tickets from the Brewers, the Cubs, the White Sox. We're in Kansas City.

The Monarchs are stealing tickets from the Royals. And Commissioner Manfred, we came out in 2016, saw the world differently. And that is we need really a one baseball model where we're actually not competing against each other. We're competing against other sports.

We're invading our time in the summer. We're competing against electronics and video games or anything else. So how do we work together to grow the game of baseball? So really, our relationship is centered around marketing. So they provide us marketing assets.

The logo means a lot to us. And then just in general, their access to best practices, technology, winner meetings. We sit with all the affiliated teams and talk about vendors. We talk about promotions.

We talk about all kinds of marketing activations. In addition to that, umpires, right? We know in this country that we have a problem with officials, referees losing that side of all of our sports. How can we work together to build the umpire programs of both leagues and borrow from each other?

Our umpires can graduate to MLB and umpires that are stagnant there can come over to us and keep getting games. So they're developing this pool. Then there's the player side. The player side used to be, let's call it haphazard between all the partner leagues where we all had a different model. And in one league, major league teams were negotiating with the individual teams. In our model, they were negotiating with the league. And then the player would be transferred over kind of like soccer. You know, where players are moving from league to league. It's a uniform model now with like a waiver wire. So our players enter essentially the system for Major League Baseball. They place a claim on the player. So that all became uniform, which is best for everybody.

Players, agents, Major League teams. It wasn't like trying to figure out every year what the new rules are for each league. It's like, here's the protocols.

Here's what's going to happen. Predictable for players. Predictable for us. It's been a great system. So every year I meet with Major League Baseball at least twice in person. We have more frequent calls. Commissioner Manfred and I have met before. It's in general, the MLB partner leagues are for the growth of baseball as an industry.

And that's how we'd see it. How is it with you know, because again, there's all these leagues. There's a lot of baseball being played. There's a lot of people that want to keep playing baseball.

Yeah. With umpires. I always say and like there's a lot of umpires that we get to know over time in Major League Baseball.

Is it because there's not a crop to replace them? I mean, I feel like it's harder and harder to find maybe somebody that would want to. And then you've got to develop them and get them in there. How is it finding and developing umpires, especially now when they're critiqued more than ever and everyone wants to replace them with the robots? Their job is getting harder and harder every year in terms of like the access fans have to their job performance. Imagine you and I like sharing our data and our metrics of our job to the world.

And then you have the online platforms, which we encourage them not to look at, but they do. And just when you see the critics of Major League umpires and the followers, we have that in the American Association, too. You know, our fans know who our umpires are. Many of our umpires have been around forever as well. And by forever, I mean, you know, five, 10, 12, 13 years that we have the same crew chiefs moving from city to city in a smaller league.

So they know who those umpires are as well. It is becoming more difficult to replace them and keep them around. I mean, their rate of burnout is increasing faster and faster. And just I guess it's more of a conversation around general civility that people have with other people in our society. But it's more intense for umpires because no one holds back anymore.

I mean, so it is becoming more difficult. We need to do a better job basically of curating them and making sure that they're OK every day going to work, just like you and I go to work. You know, how are things?

How are you doing? And what can we do to support you as opposed to just being a punching bag? Where are you guys with the with like the balls and strikes? Do we?

Yeah, so we have Trackman. We are a big believer in old school baseball in the American Association. So we mentioned the pitch clocks, but we don't have any of their adopted rules that Major League Baseball has done. We believe in giving you the game you grew up loving as close to that model as possible, which is why I talked about pitch clocks didn't change our game or return to what it was. We don't have bigger bases. We don't have a ban on shift. We do have some pick off rules because partially players want to play under the rules that they'll play with back in Major League Baseball or the rules from which they came. So that's one reason. Yeah, I forgot the shift was I actually forgot the shift was banned. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So wow. You know, we are the game you grew up loving. We haven't as far as balls and strikes go. We have Trackman system like Major League Baseball now as Hawkeye and minor league system still has Trackman. We monitor the performance of our umpires. Is the challenge system in our future? I don't think anytime soon, to be honest, but we do use technology to grade out umpires and really look at things. But that's about as far as we've gone and as far as we'll go in the near future.

Well, one of the things, too, with challenges, whether it's that system, it's also there needs to be a good video component. And you guys have been making strides in terms of how people can access these games. I mentioned it's easy to go to a game, but not too long ago, I was just I don't know, might have been a Saturday night or whatever.

I'm looking at what is on and I see that the Dockhounds are on my twenty four here. And I didn't realize that there was some sort of partnership. But that is great, you know, because if you get people in and they become fans, they're going to want to see the team that they can't see on the road, but also the games they can't make at home.

So where are you guys? I know that the TV kind of presence is expanding as kind of as we talk here. Well, Bart, thanks for teeing me up. So a baseball that TV is our platform where fans can access all of our games on demand if they want. That's a baseball on TV. Plus, we are the first professional league to actually allow any fans brought to access any live game for free, no matter where they're located.

No blackouts. Right. So you can be sitting in Milwaukee and watch Milwaukee game for free. You can be in Iowa and not see you don't get blocked half the league.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we we have that access. Additionally to that, you mentioned the local broadcast with my twenty four in the Dockhouse. We have many of those same local broadcasts throughout our league. In addition to that, we have national broadcasts. We just announced yesterday through Sports Business Journal, a deal with Fubo Sports Network to broadcast games with them. Those are national games, access to one hundred fifty five million devices in the world to watch American Association Baseball. We also broadcast it with Unbeat, which is an emerging channel similar to football sports. And then we have deals with Gray Sports Media, who owns one hundred nineteen television affiliates from the country to broadcast in Des Moines, Iowa.

Mankato Topeka, Wichita, Arizona Statewide Network, Georgia, Nevada. So we've got an expansive reach now like we've had. And I think before we came on air, it's it's you know, could I have ever dreamed a league that five years ago could barely get out a game on the Internet is now on national distribution? No, but it shows the appetite of professional baseball where it's hard to access other leagues sometimes. Here we sit trying to give our games out for free.

Right. Come watch baseball, because that's what we want. We want to grow the eyes around the American Association of what we do. So we're giving fans what they want. So that was a good stride, you know, five years ago to five years now as a commissioner. I mean, you got to always be looking ahead. What are we at? Twelve teams right now. What are we looking for in terms of growing the game? Maybe it's not team wise. Maybe it's just, you know, different things. But what are like what are the like if you have long term goals?

What's on your whiteboard? Yeah. Twenty four teams by 2030 is kind of what we've circled. That's partially teams, maybe jumping leagues. It's also actually replicate replicating Ballpark Commons. So Ballpark Commons is now like the blueprint other cities are looking at to what they want. So they don't just want to issue general obligation bonds to build stadiums like that doesn't work.

We know that doesn't work. What we want to do is create entertainment districts. So we've announced public projects in Waco, Texas, Jersey Village, Texas, which is a Houston suburb, Clarksville, Tennessee, and Blaine, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, three billion dollars worth of development, centered around American Association stadiums and paid for by the incremental taxes that are generated by the private development around the stadium. So what that's done is unlocked secondary and tertiary markets actually build these stadiums not on the backs of taxpayers, but on the backs of developers taking the risk.

There's some risk by the city, but it's all how they hedge it. So that's really our future is building not only stadiums, but entertainment districts like Ballpark Commons throughout the country. In addition to that, we've started last year playing baseball Champions League's first international tournament for teams. So our champion played the champion of Mexico's Major League, Colombia's Major League, and Cuba's Major League, and we won. So our team went down and beat all those countries champions, club champions. Now that's expanding to add two more teams this year.

It's also starting in Europe, starting in Asia. And then 2026, we all come together to play a world championship of professional teams. And then maybe in the future, that's cycled up to play MLB in spring training or something along those lines.

So that is really our path is it's building these entertainment districts, finding markets that have the population, but maybe couldn't pull off a stadium on general obligation bonds and then moving internationally, not unlike other high level professional leagues. So as a commissioner, how often do you get to just like watch a baseball game without worrying about kind of like hitters, right? Is it an unencumbered game watching or is it like, you know, encumbered?

Very rarely. Very rarely like do I get to go and like sit in the stands and like not think about, you know, I watch a game a little differently because I look at it as a product. You know, how is this presented to fans? How, you know, how do our players present to fans?

What technologies can we integrate? That's always really critical. Now, Brewers games. I'm a Brewers fan.

I live in Wisconsin, grew up in Wisconsin. I can sit down and watch that game. That's also like an education, too, about like what's our next step because I watch what they do and I watch what other sports do.

So it's just I don't know if I ever have an unencumbered really game watching experience. One team that I don't I see this. So there's this guy I used to do a lot of radio with in Sioux Falls, John Gaskins. And he's an entertainment guy for the Canary. Harry Canary is like, yeah, mantra. Yeah, but I saw him I saw him the other day.

He was Ron Burgundy. But there's like that. That is important. I think is the baseball product needs to be good.

But then when there's not the baseball. Like that product also needs to be good. And obviously I see John's killing it in that department. You know, the milkmen, I think, have bovine. Yeah. As their mascot. So that that has to be like treated almost as equal to the game day experience. And Dockhounds have Louie. So, you know, the experience you get at milkmen and Dockhounds games is phenomenal.

Like the family experience, the cheering, the interactions. In fact, they just did this promotion. Lake Country said they gave away three cruises, seven day cruises, I think, at their game. They've done it three times a season.

The place just went berserk. So it's like baseball's the lion's show of the circus. And then there's all the other acts that are happening at the circus around it. I think that's that's how I like to describe our leagues.

But I will note, too. Major League Baseball, the highest level people probably forget, but they didn't used to have Star Wars night and all these other promotional nights. I end up taking my kid whenever we go.

It's like it's not. Well, we did the Sesame Street day once for the Brewers. That was planned.

Yeah. And we got an Elmo bobblehead that he thought was soft, so he broke it. But then we went to randomly a Star Wars night and then another night. And then I say, you know, maybe we'll go to another game.

He goes, oh, what night is it going to be? I go, yeah, it's not not every night. There's not not every night.

Yoda is not walking around every night, dude. Yeah, but that's not an MLB level. Right. And they've adopted that. So, yeah, they have the lion's show and everything else. Everyone's playing the same game, trying to get groups that are non traditional baseball fans into our stadiums.

Because everyone else is pulling on them, too. But I will just end this segment by saying the milkman, the dockhouse. It's such a phenomenal job of entertaining our fans. So if you're not a baseball fan, trust me, there's plenty more for you to do at our games where it's the kids own bovine, the mascots, the entertainment on field, the funny interludes like there's plenty to do at our games, including great food. Yeah, the food and drink specials are usually pretty decent. Yeah. So if we can get out to those games, I'm not sure Major League Baseball's figured out the all you can drink section yet. So we still got that on them for sure. So, yeah. Yeah.

They have not. If they give you $800 to show up and have an all you can drink at Major League Baseball. You can drink. You can't have a mortgage that month.

Your mortgage is the all you can drink ticket. Yeah. Well, dude, good to catch up with you. Thank you for having me. You know what's happening in the expansion, the TV, all that stuff.

And it only seems like it's going to get bigger. Appreciate it. Look forward. Thank you to everyone. Check it out.

A baseball TV to watch games for free and then go check out milkman or dockhouse. All right. We'll see you. Thanks again. Thank you.

Take care. But and guess what? He is a fellow UW lacrosse man as well. Look at us.

Look at UW lacrosse. Got a commissioner. Got me. Got Grant. Got Brian Goudekinst. Got Joe Gao. Not a graduate, but we count them.

We count them. Podcast brought to you by Happy Place. Happy Place and promo code is Bart.

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It was the citrus flavor. And he had a he had a good time. So, you know, watching the kiddos. It was a hot day. Got a little inflatable pool out.

Why not? Why not have a nice beverage or two no matter what it is that you drink? So I got to get some more of those because I came in clutch. This guy just randomly randomly goes, I wish I had a T.H.C.

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You can get obviously the gummies, tinctures, balm, dog treats. You know, I think that's important. A lot of these storms, since it storms every godforsaken night around here now.

A lot of pets don't like that. So maybe that would help them out during the thunderstorms. Maybe that would help you out. Maybe that will help me out. These storms are what is the deal?

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They're in Muskego. I don't do this to fill time. I'm very happy with the interview that I did with Joshua Schaub. And that is, that's the podcast. That's, hey, I did this interview.

Here you go. I'll get that up on the Dan Cheney YouTube stream, too, if that's more your thing. But since we're here, I talked to Noah Eagle. It was a pretty good conversation. He is going to be calling the USA men and women in the Olympics, basketball and the medal rounds, which we assume the US will be in, in both. But got to talk to him, talk to him about his process, talk to him about which sports he thinks is easy to do, hard to do, some thoughts on the team. So I'd not chatted with him before. I thought it was, you know, I thought it went well.

And I want to share that with you. And if you want to hear any other else of the show, Tim, post, you can check out the Bart Winkler show on the Odyssey app, which is also available on stations throughout the state. KFIZ, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, my old station. I'm getting back on there.

I'm getting back on there. They're dropping some show they have at night to put Bart Winkler back on the airwaves. So as pumped as I am to be on the score, as pumped as I am to be on WEEI for like an hour on Fridays, as pumped as I am to be on 97.3 in San Diego, as pumped as I am to be on 92.9 in Atlanta, as pumped as I am to be on 1250 to be back on the FIZ, that rules. You'll hear conversations like this with Noah Eagle hashtag tack it on.

And we will catch up with you again later this week as we are once again into the Winkler-verse. Play action for Stroud. Good protection. Loads it up. Fires downfield. Excellent touch.

Perfectly delivered. Touchdown Dalton Schultz. Stroud strikes again for 37 yards. This is the Bart Winkler show.

CJ Stroud to Dalton Schultz. There's a couple of reasons we're playing that. One, it's just good to hear football highlights at any time of the year. The main reason being that's Noah Eagle on the call who is joining us here. I'm Bart Winkler. This is the Bart Winkler show. He will be on the call for the Olympics covering both the USA men's team, the USA women's team for basketball, and then the medal rounds as well.

The Olympics coming up later this month in Paris. Noah, thanks for a couple of minutes. I think, you know, when we play like a highlight, that's one of the things that are interesting about your job is you're in the moment, you're calling the game, the two-hour window, the three-hour window, but then do you ever think that, oh, this is something that I'm saying now that could be used for perpetuity and until the end of time? How much can you think like this is something I'm saying, but who knows when I'll hear it again and I will hear it again?

Yeah, I mean, when I wake up in the morning and I go, oh, I have to use the bathroom, I get very worried, very concerned that somehow I'm being recorded and someone's going to use me saying, I have to use the bathroom, which I'm realizing as I say now is up for grabs. But no, the one thing that I was always taught is when you're doing the job and any job really in broadcasting, you've got to know that they live on. You know, everything you could say lives on forever. And so you've got to say things with a purpose knowing that exactly what you just said.

It is absolutely usable from that point on. So whether it is an appearance, whether it is doing a podcast, whether it is on television, radio, it doesn't matter. It always has life somewhere. And so you do have to keep that in the back of your mind at all times. And there's nothing and I want to, you know, get into the Olympic part of it. That's such a cool honor and such a cool thing you'll be doing. I'm fascinated about a lot of the stuff from the broadcast side because, you know, doing a radio show is one thing. Doing broadcasting play by play, there's similarities, but there's also, I mean, it's a lot different. And I think to what you mentioned with the, you know, living on forever, you could be calling an Olympic gold medal final as you will. And you could be calling maybe like two teams playing in high school or whatever. But like you create moments there that sure, oh, LeBron James, game-winning three, that's going to live forever and be in a big scale. But also you could have like somebody's first soccer goal, somebody's first lacrosse goal, an important thing in a tennis match. You just never know like who is going to hold so dearly what you say and really it's their moment, but you're such a part of it as well. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we get into this for. You know, we clearly couldn't play at a high level and so this is the closest that we can get to the sport and still feel involved. And on top of that, you know, when you go into this and certainly when you get into play by play, the goal is to be a part of memorable moments. I think any of the the all time great voices in sports, they're part of memorable moments. You remember Al Michaels saying, do you believe in miracles?

Yes. You remember Mike Breen double bang on Steph Curry the first time he ever unleashed it. You remember Joe Buck and the Minneapolis Miracle. You know, you remember the moment. So that's the goal. That's the kind of hope when you get into it is you just get to be a part of one of those magical, just a moment in time, really in the sports sphere. And so the hope is that that can continue.

And look, you just give yourself as many chances as possible. I've been fortunate to do some really awesome events already. And I know that this Olympic assignment is just going to be the next notch in that belt, which is really exciting.

Yeah. So you got the Olympics coming up. You'll be calling the USA men's team, the USA women's team, the medal rounds as well.

I'm not sure. And even in calling big events, you know, big games, the weekly Big Ten games, Clippers games, Nets games, football games, Nickelodeon games, any of it. Like the collection of talent on a singular team for both the men's and women's side for the USA.

I mean, I don't know how you could ever get into a place where you call anyone that's as good individually and collectively as these two teams that you're going to call. Yeah. I mean, I did get to see, you know, the West Virginia football team up close and personal last year. They were they were loaded on both sides of the of the ball. No, what a stray for West Virginia.

I love it. No, they were great. And Neil Brown actually did a fantastic job last year getting the ball eligibility. But all that being said, you're correct. It's hard to find what we're going to see. And it's not just the fact that it's an uber talented roster.

We've seen that before. I think what stands out is the all time great names of the sport, you know, all time legends of the sport that we're going to see. Certainly on the men's side with LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant.

I mean, those are guys who the names are etched in the history of basketball. And on the women's side, obviously, Diana Tarazzi leads that charge and is one of the greatest players to ever pick up the ball. But I think Asia Wilson is clearly heading towards that status herself. Brianna Stort has already proven herself as one of the game's really best for now many years. And I think the hope is a lot of these younger players can follow suit. And we've seen Sabrina Ionescu with some big moments. I think we've seen obviously Kelsey Plumb and Jackie Young improve.

But that's a very balanced roster, not to mention the great storyline and full circle moment for Brittany Griner. So I just to have names like that on the court and then the overall collection of talent, it's really going to be something special to watch. And I think that's what makes the Olympics so awesome, certainly in the basketball sphere is you don't get this anywhere else. You get the All-Star game. Yeah, but you know, the All-Star game is more of an entertainment fun. Like this is a real competition where these guys and these women have to come together and they have to perform at the highest level.

And that's what we're going to see. The men's side is fascinating, you know, as they've been playing and try to figure out like what the best alignment and rotation for them is going to be. But to see these guys and it's, you know, maybe as good as the dream team.

That can be a conversation that can be talked about from 1992, of course. But I think to see these guys, they're pretty established. They're a little more on the veteran side, but also there is a really eagerness and they're very excited. I was reading something about LeBron James where he's been talking to Steph and KD for a couple of years. How excited and eager they were going to be to play this summer.

And I think that's one thing that you'll be able to see is not only are they going to be playing for their country and to try to replicate some of the success that America's had in these things. But also this is an opportunity where, you know, Steph played with KD a little bit, whatever. But LeBron and Steph, that's not happening. LeBron and a lot of these guys, that aren't happening. To your point, this is their chance to play at the highest level and see what it would look like if they were able to do that for an extended period of time.

And that's what obviously makes these moments so special every four years to get potentially collections like this. And we haven't quite had it really since 2012 at this extreme level with the names. Because you go back to that one and say, all right, they had LeBron James, they had Kobe Bryant, they had Kevin Durant, they had James Harden, they had Russell Westbrook. Young talent combined with the historical figures of the game, this feels similar to that where you now bring in the next generation with Anthony Edwards, with Jason Tatum, with Bam Adebayo and Tyrese Halliburton.

Bridge it with guys like Anthony Davis and Joel Embiid. And then you add in the fact that you have these legends of the game and Steph and LeBron and KD. And what's interesting to me is Kevin Durant has been very open, as has Anthony Davis, about how amazing it was for them in 2012 to play with Kobe Bryant. It was the guy that they idolized growing up, the guy that they looked at as, OK, if I can be him, I will be a success. And now it's been the same thing. Anthony Edwards has stepped up to the plate and he said, well, Kevin Durant was the guy that I wanted to be.

When I went outside and dreamed of who I was going to be when I grew up, that was the dude. And now it's almost this passing of the torch where KD got to get it from Kobe. He takes it and passes it on to the next generation of who potentially could become the face of the league one day. So that's what I always find special about these moments.

And so to get a chance to see it up close and personal, I think it's going to be just a different level, which will be really cool. Bart Winkler show on the Infinity Sports Network. Noah Eagle is here. He's going to be the play by play voice for Team USA men's and women's in the basketball. And they say it five on five basketball because there is a three on three, which you did previously. Do you get like I mean, you're going to be in Paris. It's going to be the Olympics. There's a lot going on.

But also the basketball schedule is like there's a lot of games that it takes up basically the entire run of the Olympics. Are we getting any downtime? Can you even think about that right now?

Or what's the situation there? I'd say my downtime will be limited. I would say that my croissant intake will also be high.

So it'll be a bad combination of potentially not burning a lot of calories walking around the city and consuming many, many more calories on top of that. You know, I was fortunate that I got to do the French Open this year and I had three off days during that two week stretch. So on those three days, I really did explore Paris and felt like I got to see it. Felt like I got to do this course, these type things.

So I'm not necessarily itching and saying I have to do this on this trip. I'm going to be focused on making sure that we do a great job broadcasting these games and just bring the best viewing experience back to the States. See, this is what you got to get in the broadcasting for. You get to a good enough level. You're getting two work trips to Paris, two work trips to France in one summer.

My goodness. Basketball, I think, is a fun sport to do play-by-play for. Again, at the minor high school and collegiate levels, you know, I think I've been able to do a little bit of it. I always found that basketball, I thought, was the most, for me, natural.

Football was harder than I thought it would be. Baseball, you got to fill some downtime. Hockey, I don't know how people do hockey.

That is like if you're a foot doctor and a heart doctor, like you're both doctors, but you're doing completely different things. What is your range in terms of what you enjoy the most or maybe what came easiest to you, what you still feel like there's things that you're learning on with all the different sports that you have dabbled in throughout your career? Bart, it's interesting that you bring that up because I always looked at it as kind of what you said, where basketball was what I grew up around. So naturally, you know, I played it the longest. I was around it as a kid. It just spoke to me and it was simple to me to understand the game and to pick things up as I was broadcasting and all of that. Football was similar. You know, I was around it a ton, almost as much as basketball.

So picking that up and the nuances of the game, I felt comfortable with it pretty quickly. And the same could be said for tennis. And those are the three sports that I do the most often.

But I did a ton of sports in college. I tried essentially everything, but I always felt the same about hockey where I'm like, I just can't quite wrap my head around the fact that you can recognize the shift changes. You can recognize the penalty so quickly. You can recognize seeing even just the puck moving around like I couldn't couldn't register in my head. And when you talk to hockey guys, they say the same thing about basketball.

And it just made me realize whatever you were comfortable growing up around is what you're going to naturally gravitate towards. So for me, that was basketball first and foremost. But I know that if I had someone came to me and said, you have to do a hockey game or you have to do, you know, baseball or whatever it might be, it would just take a lot more effort to prepare for the games. It would take a lot more effort to learn the game really from the ground up than it would when I have to step in and do a basketball game. So it might take a lot of effort to learn the teams, learn the players. It would be an additional step of truly learning and immersing myself in the sport. And so that's that's really the fascinating part I think about play by play is there are some people who are just naturally born into certain avenues and they follow those avenues. And for me, football, basketball, tennis have always come the most naturally and I've had the most opportunities within them. But I'm looking forward to continuing to branch out. I always enjoy a challenge and I hope that with each year of my career, there is a new challenge that comes my way because I try to conquer them all as best I can really. How hard is it, last one, Noah Eagle here joining us, how hard is it to keep like a schedule and a routine?

I mean, obviously, a couple of different trips to France this summer. Once the football season and basketball season come, even, you know, basketball is on a bunch of different nights. I think I have talked to Kevin Harlan once that during the football season, he tries to like block off Tuesdays where it's like one day he doesn't do anything.

No, no prepping, no boards, no, no watching games, no anything. Are you able to try to like emulate that or try to find a schedule where you can at least not always be feeling like you're plugged in or with all the different things that you do end up juggling throughout the years that you don't have time for that yet? Yeah, I think that I'm still, at least I consider myself fairly early in my career, you know, I'm kind of entering the sixth year of my professional world. And so with each year, it gets a little bit easier in time management and you kind of figure out where you can shave some of that off and maybe where you've been spending too much redundant time that you can eliminate from really your overall workflow of the week. But I think I'm still at a point where I'm trying to find that more than I am really set in my complete routine. And you know what, each year changes, you know, the amount of games changes for at least for me at this point, it's fluctuated with each year. And so I think I've had to adjust on the fly. But you get into a routine really as the season goes. And to your point, you know, once I leave for the Olympics here, I'll be kind of going all the way through basketball season.

So I think once you're in it, there is something to be said about being locked in and just kind of putting your head down and letting it rip. But with that being said, I'm sure that with each passing year, it gets a little bit easier to manage all that time and just experience. I mean, that's that's no different than when you're in school and, you know, when you're in first, second, third, fourth grade, it might take you a long time to study for certain tests or maybe early in a year. It takes you a long time for a certain subject.

But maybe by the end of that year, you figured out a better system. You've gotten more efficient. I kind of look at it the same way for for how I prepare for the games. Well, it's great stuff.

I'm always just fascinating. However, you know, different people approach a job that I think, you know, we see you once, twice, three times a week. But there is a lot more I kind of kind of like under that iceberg that you see, like there's a lot more underneath that is happening to prepare for this kind of stuff. And it's paying off here with this Olympics gig that's really great. And again, another trip to another trip to France. Not a bad gig. Noah Eagle, thank you so much. Have a great work trip. And I hope to talk to you again down the road. Thanks so far. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.