This is The Drive with Josh Graham Podcast. Tune into The Drive weekday afternoons 3-7 on Sports Hub Triad. It turns out Wednesday night NASCAR can work after all. And even though Mother Nature deprived us of the final 20 laps in Darlington, we really didn't need them.
That's because the last 20 minutes provided us everything we needed and some. It gave us real conflict that we all could appreciate. NASCAR purist or just casual fan. And if you were one of those new NASCAR viewers who was just watching because there was nothing else on, Gosh, doesn't it seem like Darlington was the perfect track to bring in novice NASCAR viewers?
People who were just interested to watch anything related to sports. You knew you were going to get a lot of caution flags. You knew there were going to be some wrecks.
There was going to be a lot of drafting. And that's exactly what we saw. And it led to Kyle Busch, of all people, clipping Chase Elliott to send us into the race's end at the very top of the leaderboard.
And the perfect thing happened. You had Elliott give the single middle finger, the single bird that I think anybody who was in his position, anybody who's been screwed over at work by somebody you can't stand by the office villain can relate to. The form of it was very good to Robert.
I mean, did you notice this? The form of the bird, very stoic posture. He just stood in place and made sure to follow the car with the single bird.
I thought it was very well executed by Chase Elliott. You know, I'm a stickler for form on on flicking the bird. I appreciate the power also that came out when he... Do you like single bird versus double bird? I think it really depends on the situation. If somebody warrants a double bird, that's like cutting you off, but also clipping the front of your car. What's your favorite kind of middle finger?
Because for me, I love it when you're acting like it's like a pulley, like a bridge, when you're just rolling it out. I guess if I had to... Or the buy one, get one free line. Hey, here's one, buy one, get one. I like the Joe Dirt where he's like, is this one on? Is this one on? Check, check, check. And they don't like no feedback. And then you give them the bird or it's like, hey, I got you something at Target. It's real nice.
This one was on sale. Robert Walsh is the producer of the show. Aaron Gabriel is in studio as well. We're going to be sharing with Darren Vaught in studio in a little over 10 minutes.
Your thoughts are welcome on the show at Sports of Giant 336-777-1600. It had to be Kyle Busch. This only works if it's Kyle Busch. I don't know if Chase Elliott's flipping off any other driver.
If they do the same thing, you give them the benefit of the doubt. Oh man, he's just trying to get back in line so they don't draft right past him. Got it. If it's any other driver other than Busch, you don't have the single bird from Elliott. Maybe Keselowski.
Maybe. Let's hear what Kyle Busch had to say after the race in terms of his justification. Oh, there's no question. I know I made a mistake and just misjudged the gap. When we were racing there with the 11 and the 9 had a run on him, I knew he was there.
I knew I needed to get in line as quick as I could. In doing so, I watched him and his momentum that was going by me. Then I tried to look up in the mirror and see where Harvick was to get in. I just misjudged it. I made a mistake and clipped the 9 there and spun him into the wall.
I hate it for him and his guys. I got too many friends over there on that team to do anything like that on purpose. I've raced Chase since he was a kid and never had any issues with him whatsoever.
So it was just a bad mistake on my part and I'll just have to deal with it later on. It's important to note that all of this happened in a 20-minute stretch. The wreck happened, then just some general strangeness. Like you had Vermin running on the track. I think it was, I don't know what kind of Fox it was, but it was a Fox.
Great product placement for FS1. Having an actual Fox run out onto the track. Robert, you're somebody who's always titillated by animal involvement on the racetrack. Or just in any sports arena. We saw it with the cat at Giant Stadium a few years ago.
Giant Stadium, it was filled full of people. Which I found strange because Scaredy Cat is not just an expression. It comes from something. Why do you think this Fox felt comfortable enough to run out onto the track amid these blaring loud race cars that are surrounding it?
I'm going to assume that since there was a lack of people in the area, kind of like the fact that you can see Mount Everest now from sites that you've never been able to see it before. This Fox was able to peruse these grounds without being disturbed before. So he walks out here and there's a NASCAR race going on.
He's like, hey, what the hell, man? This is where I catch all my field mice and whatnot. And I think it was a red Fox, to be specific. It looked like a red Fox.
So it's important to note all this is happening in a 20 minute stretch. You have the wreck, you have the single bird, then there's a Fox that runs out onto the track. Then you have the post race interviews and they were all perfect. As Kyle Busch was giving that explanation you heard about a minute ago, he had a mask on with a bunch of license plates on it. One of those license plates read, forgive me.
Let's hear more from Kyle Busch. This is the part where it got spicy. How did he leave it? They're upset. They're mad. I'm not just going to fix it and we're going to have to go ice cream tomorrow. So obviously they're going to have to dwell on it and the repercussions of it, I'm sure I'm going to have later on down the road.
When the bleep did we get ice cream? This is the most surprising part. Usually in sports, people say they own things and then you ask them about it and they say, nah, I'm moving on.
It's a great trick that you can do in PR. I'm owning what I did that was wrong. This happened with Ray Rice I remember. Ray Rice said, I'm completely owning my actions. Okay, what are you owning?
What did you do? Nah, Sal Palantonio, I'm just moving on. I'm just moving past it now.
Well, are you really owning it if you're not really talking about it? Kyle Busch is the last person I expect to completely own the fact that he made a mistake. He did it afterwards.
And this is just less than a minute. This interview happened less than a minute after you got Alan Gustafson from Chase Elliott's team chewing out on live television. Kyle Busch, like an F-bomb dropped.
The broadcaster had to apologize for it before the interview even began. Then they went to the winner, Denny Hamlin, and he's like the guy saying, I'm just going to cruise along here, another top five finish, and you can deal with all the drama. No drama, I'm just going to go win this race, and I'm going to put on a mask that has my smiling face on it.
It was just perfect. NASCAR, they knocked it out of the park. And I know a lot of people who are listening right now watch this race.
And it's not just because there was nothing else on. We understand how big NASCAR is around here. Like when you look at Sunday's ratings, you look at the return of NASCAR, the number one market in the country is the one we currently reside. A 9.5 media rating. I'm still waiting to see what last night's ratings were for the Toyota 500, but a 9.5 number for Sunday.
Second biggest market would be Charlotte with a 9.1. Sunday's race nationally got over 6 million viewers. You know what else got 6 million viewers? What's that?
The Last Dance documentary, Michael Jordan. That was the average viewership for each episode. Will Tom Brady be able to top it? No, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, that was very quick for you to be decisive. We haven't even seen all the details of this thing yet, Coach K, but we will see this doc in 2021. It was announced a few hours ago that ESPN's going to partner with Tom Brady's production company, the same way Michael Jordan's production company partnered with Netflix and ESPN to get this last project done for A Man in the Arena, a nine-part documentary series on Tom's nine Super Bowl appearances, and I think I'm already out on this.
I think I'm already out for a couple of reasons. It's just way too soon. Like, Tom, if you do it correctly, he might be the perfect NFL player to do a 10-part series on because the Patriots, they are incredibly polarizing. There were scandals involved with that team. The coaching staff, Belichick and Spygate, Tom Brady and Deflategate, you have a quarterback who's dating one of the most beautiful women in the world.
There are a lot of things that are interesting with New England that would bring people to watch this project. I just feel like it's too soon. It's too fresh.
Like, you need time to pass. The Jordan doc was so successful, I think in part, because a full generation of people heard about how great Michael was and never watched him play. Enough time passed where it became nostalgic for many, and then for some, it became something that they were just interested to see. Okay, what is this guy all about that I've been hearing about and never had a chance to watch play? Also, Tom's active. So in what way do you believe Tom is going to be nearly as candid as Michael was during the entire last dance?
What made the last dance work was that Michael gave you the reactions on the iPad, that Michael was willing to still go after Isaiah Thomas and call him a bleephole. Tom's not going to do that because he might actually have to play these players in 2021. He might have to go after some of the people he might have to speak about in this series. So I think, much like Tom's entire career, it's going to be vanilla, what he says. The same person who directed that boring series a few years ago, Tom vs. Time, that ran on Facebook, I think, is the one that is slated to direct this nine-part series. So I'm just going to go ahead and say hard pass, not because of the subject, but because of the timing, because of the production behind it. I just don't think we're going to get to Flakgate, I don't think we're going to get Spygate, I don't know if Bill Belichick is going to do much cooperation with this.
So I don't know what kind of documentary you're really going to get. As the sports world continues to navigate the challenges presented here by the coronavirus pandemic, there are pro leagues that I think face more stakes than others. In fact, there's one pro sports league I think that faces the highest stakes of all. I'll tell you who that is when we begin sharing with Darren Vaught next.
We are sharing with Darren Vaught who joins us live in studio. And since you're here, I wanted to talk to you about Major League Baseball and what they're facing right now. Because I think the stakes are higher for Major League Baseball than any other pro sports league because most of the sports leagues at least got most of their seasons in. When you think about the NHL and the NBA, college basketball too, if the NBA and NHL aren't able to figure it out, I don't think it really hurts those sports significantly. If Major League Baseball can't figure it out and it's because of financial reasons, they can't get the labor dispute straight, I really believe Major League Baseball is in a position that far exceeds the severity of the 94 strike, which took years to have baseball bounce back from. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa hitting all those home runs in the late 90s, resurging things a bit.
I don't know if baseball will be able to recover from that. But before we explore all of that, Darren, it's just good to have you in here. Yeah, I'm looking at real live people for the first time in a radio studio, no less.
It's good. Although, what's on your face? You're looking awfully scraggly. We've been doing these videos before shows and now I'm regretting doing all of them because they live forever. I've got Joe Ovies in Raleigh picking holes saying, you need to shave.
And then other radio people, I don't know how many people even care. But my hair, it's longer than it's ever been. Robert's known me for a long time, as has Darren. And it's just rough. And I acknowledge that. And the funny thing is, I was planning to shave tomorrow night. Tomorrow night was the night I was going to shave and nobody else has picked at me until now in a significant way.
How has it not come your way until today? Because I guess it's just the videos. I've seen the videos and thought, you know what, I need to razz him a little bit. You think the videos are bad? You should see the bloopers. Well, I'm seeing him in person, Robert.
It's far worse than the videos. There are a lot of bloopers. Usually, I'm a one-take guy. One-take Tommy. That's how you know it's a good one. Usually, I'm a one-take Tommy, but sometimes it's two or three takes.
And when I mess up, I'm usually cursing. It's my favorite. I'm going to make, once it's my last day or Josh's last day on this job, I will make a super cut of all the bloopers. Oh, put that out now.
I enjoy my job. Shifting thanks to baseball, we do have our Nickelbacks. Oh, no, wait. Our Imagine Dragons for the New York Yankees. We're pulling out one of the heavy hitters, the New York Yankees in 10 minutes. But I'm serious. We asked Bob Ryan about it yesterday.
And Bob, he said, I don't even want to welcome that scenario. If it doesn't happen, if there's no season, it sounds hyperbolic to say baseball's not going to recover from this. But how long will the stench be there? Not just the stench of everything that happened with the Astros and potentially a title that was tainted in 2018, but the stench of, during a pandemic that has had 38 million Americans losing their jobs, you couldn't figure out a labor dispute when the average athlete makes, I think, around a half million dollars at least?
How long does that stench remain? I mean, I guess it depends. But baseball's issue here is that they want to get to a place where they can worry about one crisis at a time, right? I mean, I have friends who work at nonprofits, and it's rained a lot here in North Carolina. So amidst this, I don't know, global pandemic, which is a crisis in and of itself, of course, there are areas that are flooding, so they've got to take care of that. Oh, yeah, we had signals.
We had signals that were off the air for a portion yesterday because we have so many signals across the Triad. So, yeah, when it rains, that's always something that we have to worry about. So it's a good example you bring up. Yeah, so Major League Baseball, prior to this, was dealing with, okay, what are we going to do with minor league affiliates? Because it's a system that, in certain ways, is definitely not working toward the kind of model that we want.
So we've taken on that as a project, as something to figure out in the coming years. There obviously was going to be potentially a labor dispute no matter what. Without this pandemic, as comes with every collective bargaining agreement, with no games, you're not getting TV money because that's the majority. I mean, other Major League Sports make a lot of money via TV dollars. The percentage is not as great for any of the other leagues as it is for Major League Baseball. Because there's so much programming, and it's premium programming, because there's not a lot of other sports competing with it. Each team playing 162 games, and then, oh, yeah, one of the biggest scandals in the history of the sport, is just hit your radar prior to COVID-19, halting everything, and they just can't get a break.
It's been a landslide. Are people still going to throw at the Astros if there are games? Well, if there are games, it's highly discouraged that you fight. So I don't know if you want to avoid that.
That's a great point. How do you socially distance and fight? Like, Aaron, you are a huge fan of the roughhouse. Like, you love rat beefs. You love a beef more than anybody I know. I love a good fight.
What idea do you have for potentially fighting while social distancing? Well, myself, personally, I have very long arms. So I could jab you from here. Six feet? They're not six and a half feet, dude.
Not quite that much, but enough where I'm satisfied. Yeah, but you're bringing up a number of things. It is an issue. We're Minor League Baseball trying to address that, and it seems like they're going to try and trim the fat like they proposed doing two years ago, and now it's becoming more of a reality.
That doesn't hurt the Grasshoppers. It doesn't hurt the Winston-Salem Dash, but it will hurt the team in Burlington. It will hurt some other teams here in the state of North Carolina as well. It kind of has me thinking about what's going on with the NCAA right now.
They're dealing with so much with COVID-19 that they kind of yesterday just put the instant eligibility, the one-time waiver on the back burner, see if they can implement it by January, so that way it's something available to athletes by the 2021-2022 season. We do have Darren in studio, so I feel like, Robert, we need to make the most of it. Let's try to knock out as many bits that we do with Darren and only with Darren over the next hour.
Bits everywhere. We do have the movie game. We got Throwback Thursday Baseball.
It's going to be the Imagine Dragons of the Yankees in 10 minutes. Bethany Bratcher, one of my favorite authors locally in the state, going to join us in a little over 20 minutes as well. But what's the first one you want to do here with Darren?
I know we have a number of things that rhyme with his name. What's the first one we're doing? I was thinking about comparing with Darren, if that was okay with you. Oh, yeah, let's do that. All right, I was looking forward to a good stare, but that's okay. I'm going to have a lot of human contact.
We can definitely stare later. For those who don't know, comparing with Darren is Robert coming up with things that are definitely related to each other and asking Darren to compare them. And we're going to start off pretty easy here for you, Darren.
I know you might be a little out of practice, so I wanted to set you up a T-ball here to use a reference you like there. I don't know if you like that or not. I know you like baseball. I'm like your stepdad.
I'm like, don't you like this, son? Can we hang out? I would like you to compare baseball and apple pie. Baseball and apple pie. I've had neither for several months. That's a good start.
3.14. They're both at this point, when you think about the issues with Major League Baseball, we were just discussing, and then the lattice on top of an apple pie, they're both complex in nature and very layered. Yes, Aaron. I thought it was going to take the easy miracle route. Like, American is apple pie, America's pastime. No, that's like a little too kitschy. On a related note, how is baseball not mentioned at all in Don McLean's American Pie? That's a good point. All right, let's get to the next thing.
It's getting a little harder here. I would like you to compare one of your heroes, Ichiro Suzuki, to Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Who's Aragorn? Aragorn was the archer, right? Orlando Bloom? No, Aragorn was the lead guy. He was a ranger. I'm very disappointed in all of you nerds for not knowing Lord of the Rings or anything. Legolas is who I was thinking of.
Strider. I was thinking of Legolas. I was going to use Ichiro's arm from right field is as deadly and accurate as Legolas' shot. I mean, he does shoot a bow, so that can still work. Does Aragorn shoot a pretty accurate bow? That's what Robert said.
He would don't. He killed the head urukai in the first movie. Anyway, I'll step off the nerd stuff. All right, well, I'm going to use that and just like Ichiro killed every picture he ever faced, because he's the goat. Not bad. I've got two more.
One here, I don't know how the hell you're going to do this. Rapid fire, give me two. I would like you to compare Julio Franco and Edward Norton.
Oh, man, that might be the best one we've gotten. Staying power for each of them. Julio Franco, I don't have the man crush on Franco that I do Edward Norton, but staying power.
Franco played until he was damn near 50. I think I'd probably, if I'm not the one being asked to compare things. No, go ahead. I welcome your comparing. Please do.
The way the chick that killed Sirius Black in Harry Potter described Edward Norton in Fight Club in bed has me thinking about Julio Franco and his large bat as a way to compare those two things. Wait, wait, wait. I think I've got one more. I think I've got one more there. Anybody seen Death to Smoochie?
Of course. Do we know this program? That's right, Purple Dinosaur. Purple Dinosaur.
Okay, actually I have seen this one. Edward Norton plays the guitar in a dinosaur costume. Or he's a rhino, he's a rhino, sorry. And so he is like a children's television show character, but he gets wrapped up in the mafia. I don't remember specifically if he uses a bat.
But he just might. A baseball bat is used somewhere to clobber someone, Julio Franco. We've got to get to this last one very quickly, and knowing Robert, it's going to be a damn gem. Well, I don't know about a damn gem, but I would like you to compare the Astro's trash can to Michael's secret stuff from Space Jam. I think upon first sight, we all wondered, well, what's inside? In each case, what's in there? Wait, who's wondering what's inside the trash can? What's in the can? I've never wondered what was in the trash can.
I bet there's a brick in the bottom of it. Is it just me? No. It's not just you.
All right. What's in A-Rod's syringe and what's in Michael's secret sauce? Like when someone gets caught doing something bad systemically over a long period of time, what's in their trash? You can tell a lot about somebody that way. Oh, like skeletons in their closet? I don't like that.
Yeah, sort of, sort of. We're going to be getting nostalgic listing off throwback New York Yankees next on The Drive. Ding, ding, boys.
School's in session. Let's go, man. Back to The Drive with Josh Graham on Sports Hub Triad. One of my favorite games to play with Darren Vaught is our throwback Thursday baseball segment, and we're pulling out one of the big guns this week. It is our Imagine Dragons of the New York Yankees segment. We're looking for Imagine Dragons. Send them in on Twitter at Sports Hub Triad.
336-777-1600 as well if you would like to contribute one that way. Let's go ahead and play the game. We discovered who the Nickelbacks of Major League Baseball were. Doug Mikavich, Marcus Giles, Johnny Estrada. He might be a top five Nickelback of Major League Baseball. Now we're looking for the players who embodied the last decade of baseball. No, not the best players.
This is the Imagine Dragons of 2010's baseball. All right, shoot us average, memorable New York Yankees of the last decade. Here are the guys that are too good. Mashihiro Tanaka, too good. Luis Severino, too good. Mark Teixeira, too good. Robinson Cano, too good. That Derek Jeter guy's kind of borderline, but I think he's too good.
C.C. Sabathia, too good. Andy Pettit, too good. I'll even throw in Russell Martin and deal in Betancis, too good.
I agree on Betancis. Martin is fine to me because he's not even predominantly a Yankee. He was a Dodger for the majority of his. And he was an All-Star when he was with the Yankees, too. Yeah. So it was a short stretch, and when he was there, he was an All-Star. Anybody else you care to add to the list?
Disqualified player. No, I mean, I think that's it. You said Mo Rivera, right?
Yeah. Oh, Mo Rivera. I did not say Mo Rivera. It does belong.
I assumed that you did. I mean, you know, unanimous Hall of Famer. Yeah, the core four. Probably too good. Core four, too good.
All right. I'll start things off with a pitcher. Let's do Hiroki Kuroda. Hiroki Kuroda is the game.
That's what we want. I think at one time on one of those bad mid-2010s Yankee teams, like average Yankee teams, he might have been the number one starter for the Yankees at one point. Hiroki Kuroda. At least like a top end of the rotation somewhere. He was like their two or three for maybe a couple of years running right there. I have a lot in the outfield, don't you?
Oh, man. I've got two that I think perfectly embody this game. Not a lot to choose from, but for whatever reason, I think there are some guys who are right in the sweet spot to be Imagine Dragons. I'll go with my first, and I think you're probably, speaking of outfielders, going to go with the next one. First up, Nick Swisher is perfect. I had him as a borderline, but he's so well known because he was in a How I Met Your Mother episode, which I'd argue to be one of the best How I Met Your Mother episodes, where they keep on saying, what could possibly go wrong? And when you say that, things get worse. And in that case, the girl that Barney was trying to pick up, I believe, then had Nick Swisher begin talking to her.
I wish I had more to offer on How I Met Your Mother. But Swisher, one of those guys, a good player, a pretty good player, but was way more popular than he was good. So he perfectly fits into this. I'm going to throw two outfielders at you. Brett Gardner. Yes. And I'm going to hit you with Jacoby Ellsberry, which might hurt your feelings. No. No. I know you love Ellsberry.
I do. But like, career 260 hitter, especially, especially as a New York Yankee, way bigger name than he was good. Both are 260 with the Yankees. The rest I have here, I got three pitchers in a third baseman. Okay. I've got three pitchers that I think have to get in. Okay.
I'm going to start with Phil Hughes. Yep. That's one of the three pitchers I had there. And partially, like his Twitter presence makes him more popular than he was good. And I think that's at the crux of this game. This one's tough that I'm getting on Twitter. I'll let you be the judge.
Ryan tweets in Java Chamberlain. Yeah. He was one of the three I just mentioned. 100%.
100%. I didn't have him written down, but that's a really good one. How about Michael Pineda? Yeah, that's a name you're not going to forget, Michael Pineda. We weren't three for three, but I also have, in a very short stretch, one of the best set up men of all time.
But that's only maybe because he was pitching in front of the best closer of all time. David Robertson. No.
Imagine draft. No. Too good. No. David Robertson's too good.
Give me the numbers and we can debate that. But David Robertson's too good to be on this list. Robert knows. What about a guy that Robertson was throwing to his mitt for a lot of that? Francisco Cerveli.
That's really good. Francisco Cerveli. That's a name I've forgotten about. How do we feel about former Tar Heel Adam Warren? Too obscure? Former Tar Heel. Former New Bern River Rat in the Coastal Plain League before they relocated to the Moorhead City Marlins.
Because it's local. And Warren's there. Yeah. I have one more here on my list. One more we need to get to.
Two actually. Let's go third baseman Chase Hedley. Yeah. Yeah. And pitcher Ivan Nova.
Ivan Nova was on my short list remaining too. Yeah. Okay. Give me one more if you have it. I've got one more pitcher to throw in your direction.
Alright. Give me one more Imagine Dragon for the New York Yankees. Sergio Mitre. That's so obscure. Yeah it is.
Sergio Mitre? My parting shot. Oh. That's just terrible. It didn't deserve that Robert. Problem is Robert doesn't know who any of these people are.
No clue. You guys could be listing off exotic zookeepers for all I know and I would have no idea. Do you know any exotic zookeepers other than Joe Exotic or Doc Antle?
Bill Murray in Osmosis Jones was an exotic zookeeper. So obscure. No no no no.
Come on. So obscure. So also Imagine Dragons of zookeepers?
So obscure. That's more a Nickelback. Osmosis Jones. How about Osmosis Jones as a Nickelback of animated movies? Like 100 percent. That's a great movie.
So that is the Imagine Dragons for the New York Yankees. We've got we've already done Compare Him with Darren and Robert did you did you want to do Stare Him with Darren? What's your favorite one Darren that we've done? Well I told Robert. He did not see that coming. It's funny.
Robert set him up he set him up during the break he just says hey do you want to do Stare Him with Darren during this break and he gave me a wink I'm like oh no I know it's coming and Darren walked into it by saying you know what we should do Blair him with Darren Roberts like oh no we're saving that for later we're saving that one for much later yeah Blair him with Darren making its glorious return to the show. I did not see that coming. All right that was a little predictable. Yeah. But good stuff. It's already over.
We're not going to get we're not going to do this anymore. So Bethany Bratcher she's going to join us in just a few minutes. She has this new book out on the big rock tournament and I've been to this before Eastern North Carolina. It's actually a really interesting event if you haven't been there. There are a lot of interesting stories told there Darren I know you've been there before. I have. Now in all seriousness you have been there though.
I have. It's a bummer that I did play by. My finger slipped. I'm sorry.
This is great. My finger slipped. So eons ago I did some some play by play for the Moorhead City Marlins of the Coastal Plain League a summer collegiate wood bat league. And it's right there.
The big rock blue marlin fishing tournament. And I was wowed by it. So you know the tweet maybe it was last week that it went viral because everybody was sharing there. It was it was like mundane brush brush buys with celebrities. It was like you know all I once saw Bruce Willis on an elevator.
He said hello or whatever. So it was the celebrity you ran it. Here's one for me. And there's a marina in Moorhead City or on Atlantic Beach rather that the Burtons of NASCAR Jeff and Wade. Oh I thought you were going to say I thought you were going to say vote there. I thought you were going to say Tim Burton not the Burton.
Oh no no no. So to be clear you ran it to the Burtons. I ran it. I honored. I'm honoring the process of blaring. But it is funny like I accidentally stepped on the side of someone's shoe and looked up and saw that it was Jeff Burton. And I was just like oh hey my bad. He's like you're good brother. And we we walked walked our separate ways. But I did I did almost I nearly called him Ward. And I've always wondered like what would he have done had I done that.
I don't know the answer to that. But that is an interesting story. And Robert you're incredibly rude. I'm sure no one in the audience enjoyed what you did to Darren there during our blaring I did with Darren segment coming up why I'm done reading restart proposals.
And also as I mentioned Bethany Bratcher one of my favorite local authors going to drop by. You're on the drive with Josh Graham we're reuniting a high point broadcast duo for our movie game. It's the return of the movie game Brian Geisinger going to be here in just a second. Darren Vaught he's in studio with us as we're sharing with Darren.
Before we get to the movie game tell me don't you have Jeff Frank Core on your USA baseball podcast. Yes very popular former Atlanta Braves. He's a nickelback. I know that guy. Now the television analyst for the Braves and 100 percent a nickelback of Major League Baseball and of the Atlanta Braves.
That episode dropped yesterday. And I guess it's Jeff and I were on the phone for nearly an hour. He's a two time USA baseball alum rep rep represented the 18 you team and then was on the very first World Baseball Classic Team USA at 22 years old.
So he was easily the youngest guy there. Cool stories from that. And I think that's a great way you recap this career and all that.
But to me it's just Nickelback Atlanta Brave Jeff Frank Core. I said what I said. All you heard was Chad Kroger. Let's have fun. It's time for the movie game.
I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. It's time for some kind of movie game. All right all right all right.
With Josh Graham and Darren Vaught. Show me the money. All right. Robert will explain the rules in a second.
The contestants Darren Vaught myself and ACC sports dot com's Brian Geisinger. Welcome in Brian. Hey guys. How's it going? Excellent man.
Good to hear from you BG. Yep. Yep.
I just want to say real quickly guys do you feel like Jeff Frank Core being a fan of Nickelback. It's a false flag to distract from his career 720 O.P.S. You think that's a thing actually. Let me let me mark it down. This segment plummeted after his first four years in this segment has lasted to actually Brian was talking for 18 seconds before he brought in Sabre metrics into the segment. It took 18 seconds and we figured it out.
I didn't think we'd get there with baseball but his basketball analytics and his breakdowns for the ACC are as good as you're going to find at ACC sports dot com. Robert freshen us up on the rules here. This is the movie game.
I'm glad you guys can play with today. If you didn't know I hate this music but I love this game. It's based off Rotten Tomatoes rating score. It's going off audience score.
There's a theme to these movies. You guys are going to try to get as close to the audience Rotten Tomatoes score as you possibly can. This is a golf style lowest point wins kind of deal. So if you guys get on the head that is minus 10 points off your score and there is no changing Brian since you.
I cannot see you. I want no cheating. OK. Gotcha. I don't trust you at all. Anyway he's as good as any person in these two rooms that we can. I'm looking at Darren he's using he's doing this digitally. He's writing his scores down because you don't want to base the score off the other people.
That's kind of what we're shooting against here. All right. So I have a theme for these movies since Darlington happened. We had a race last night. This deals with races and starting us off fast and the furious Tokyo drift.
Usually I have some movie clips to play for you guys but I was extra lazy today so you don't have to sit through that races huh races fast which area which in the chronology that's the second furious is this is the third. It's yeah it's the second one. Most people say it's the worst one.
It's my favorite. I hate all the other ones besides this way too fast too furious is the second one right. Yeah. Is it number three. I think this can't.
Who cares. It is fast and the furious Tokyo drift. I'm not this is not debating classical movies. This is trying to get the rotten tomatoes. I think I've seen this one. I just wanted to make sure we got a little bad way in ours and explosion.
They're in Tokyo in Japan got it the song when you come to Tokyo when you see me that song plays in this. So if you don't know it I hate it for you. All right. I think I got my score written down with my starting yes.
We're going to go Josh Darren Bryan in that order right. I'm going to go low fast and furious could not be oh shoot it's the audience score I'm changing my score on the fly here. I'm going to get off anybody down once it's written down 37 37 was written down.
I don't know. I have 37 written down Darren what you got here. I went just a touch higher 47 47 what you got Brian. Oh God some haters someone I'm competing with some haters of great America here I'm going I'm going 67. That's almost what I changed my score to. It's still not almost what I changed it to because I forget it's audience score not critic score what is it. And you guys are all rolling sevens out here but Tokyo Drift comes in at sixty nine.
Nice nice nice. Right now Brian is in the lead but we're going to our second movie. I don't know if you guys have seen this it's from 1967 and it inspired the movie rat race. It's it's a mad mad mad mad world. Hold on for formats for mad and it included such a sterling actors as Dick Shawn Mickey Rooney Buddy Hatchet Sid Caesar Spencer Tracy I mean a lot of big actors but heavy hitters have you seen this movie I have seen this movie. I've never heard of this movie. I can read you a synopsis really quickly if you'd like the film starring Spencer Tracy is an all star cast is about a madcap pursuit of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers.
Thank you that really helped. Everybody ready to go. I'm going to put down a second score down here. Eighty three percent. I feel like all movies get scored high. I'm going to go eighty three percent if it inspired rat race I'm for it. I don't know that it is pop popular knowledge that it inspired rat race or that's that's even one hundred percent true I can't confirm is my point.
And if the Internet existed back then I have no doubt that it would have received higher scores. So I'm going to go pretty middle of the road here 56 what you got Brian since my spreadsheets not working and I have to do math. All right. I'm a bigger fan of probably the mad real world in general but yeah I'll go ahead and just go for a score here I'll go with the I'll go high I'm bullish I'll say 70.
All right. What was that number. Seventy.
Seven zero. There you go Robert. Yeah.
Mad real world. That is a totally different thing. Way different. Yeah. What's different. Yeah.
Talk Lysol got to kind of watch out for Lysol. That's right. World the story. I think.
What's the score. Somebody hit it on the nose. Who was it. And it was Josh.
Yeah. Mad mad mad world comes in at eighty three. We back and Josh's cat or a column in this spreadsheet I'm doing the game off of is not working. But after doing the math Josh you were at thirty two and since you hit it on the nose that's minus ten and so your score is at twenty two. I'm sorry to give that out of place. Josh is in second place.
Brian is currently in first with fifteen points. Wow. And Darren you are bringing up the end with forty nine. But just like you this thing has a beautiful caboose and we're going to see how this turns out.
All right. Last movie. And since this is about races your final movie is American History X. I thought it was going to be Malcolm X. I thought it was going to be. I saw this joke coming from a mile away. I thought it was going to be the color purple.
I didn't know where it was common during this. So I was like what's the craziest movie about race I could think of. America.
What are we doing here. American History X. Yeah. Edward Norton. Yes.
Love him. Yeah. There's a striking resemblance to Julio Franco. No. Jose can say that.
What did I say. Who was the guy. Julio Franco. Yeah.
I don't think he is so clueless. Julio Franco. I don't think I know who that where that comparison comes from. All right. American History X transition. I'm going to go eighty seven percent. Darren what you got.
I'm swinging for the fences. Ninety seven. Ninety seven.
And Brian. Um give me eighty two eighty two if it's lower than eighty two I think BG wins this thing. What's the score. The movie comes in at ninety six Oh Darren one away I got to do a little quick math here. We're going to have a golden movie for those who don't know it's all going to be decided right here. Robert's doing math on hand.
He went to East Carolina University. This is really going to be a struggle. Brian Geisinger Darren Vaught myself golden movie but now let's figure out the margins here. Darren is coming in. He's not far behind with 50 points.
Josh is still in second with thirty one and Brian is in first with twenty nine. There's a two point separation between first and second place and we're going to a final wow golden movie. All right.
Exciting. Got a chance. Your final movie is Secretariat.
OK all right hold on quickly quickly a rules clarification. In order for me to win it's not based just on this fourth movie score. I still have to have a score in total which means you need to take a massive swing against what you're going to pick probably Secretariat the greatest horse of all time. I know they did that race a few weeks ago like digitally Secretariat just really strong.
So this is tough because I actually thought this was a really good movie but sports movies it's really hit and miss with how it's reviewed by both audiences and critics score. So where to go with Secretariat. All right.
I got my score written down. Should I start. I've actually never seen this movie. If everybody is ready. Brian are you ready. Yeah. Yeah. OK. So for the win I'm going seventy nine percent what you got there and even 50 and Brian. All right. Fifty eight.
Wow. Picked a nice round number. We're going to have a winner here 21 point differentiation between me and Brian. Well you're obviously slowly for Robert to do the math clearly between the two because Roberts having to figure out who just won this game.
Actually I have zero math here but you're also not going to have a mathematical standing after this. I'm just going to give you places but Secretariat comes in at seventy six. So by his jubilacious screams of joy you cannot tell your winner is Josh Graham. We back. We back. And that is all your time unfortunately here on the movie game. We'll see you next time.
Yeah. And first is Josh. Thank you.
And second is Brian and in third Darren. I had a great time today guys enjoy your places with all that math. Your life became a little bit more and oh no I had so much anxiety going in there. B.G. thanks for coming on with us man I hope you had fun as much fun as we did. For sure. Talk to y'all soon.
All right. He's on Twitter at B.Geist underscore bird and he's also doing great work at ACC sports.com. Before we let Darren go we need to appreciate the fact he's in studio with us today. Let's do some staring at Darren.
I haven't been stared at by a real life human in a really really long time. This is the only thing I could really see was the cuticles on his fingers. But wow. Whoa. Those are very very well taken care of. You see those cuticles Darren? You still been getting manicures? Nah man.
It looks like they're home. Phase one. Phase one didn't allow it. What phase would enable me to come over to your house and enjoy a nice bruschetta with you or something because you are looking stunning today. Maybe a nice balsamic reduction over it.
I didn't say that. Maybe with some brussel sprouts. That's where a balsamic reduction goes. What's your shirt say? I'm trying to read your shirt. My shirt? Yeah.
It's like three girls on your shirt. Yeah. It's a comic.
You know what? Fascinating. Oh. I want to do, since Darren's here, I want to do a really good tease.
Like in the radio business, I'm trying to impress other people in radio in teasing such an important part of what we do. So I want to set things up, what we're about to do, as good as I possibly can on the way out. As well. Darren, thank you so much for being here, by the way. It was so much fun having you. We need to do this again sometime soon. 100%. So that's Darren Vaught. He's on Twitter at Darren Vaught.
Listen to Jeff Rancore and Darren on the USA Baseball covering the bases podcast. Let's do the tease, a big tease for what's coming up. A tease in the radio world is something to whet your appetite. And the ingredients in shampoo that can make a boy develop breasts.
Something to make you come back for more. Could your house be making you fat? Not everyone is affluent in the language of the tease. Could frequent hiccups be a sign of cancer?
It's somewhat of a lost art. What are the odds some say a popular drug could turn you into a compulsive gambler? But Josh Graham is a big old tease. You naughty, naughty, you're teasing me, you naughty, naughty. Josh Graham is a bigger tease than your date on prom night. This next segment is big, so big, it's huge, it's huge, it's out of this world. He's out of this world, breaking news, breaking news, breaking news. Josh, what is coming up? NASCAR.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-05-15 18:02:30 / 2023-05-15 18:23:10 / 21