Muse

Hey, I've learned a lesson here, but I hope you all have, too, about the vitality of shared experience. We will all remember this moment for the rest of our lives. It was dramatic. It was visual. It was stupid. It was stupid, but it was also theater. TBTL!

Oh, yes, indeed, everyone. It's about that time again. The TBTL Summer Games are back, and you have arrived at the first episode. My name is Luke Burbank. I'll be doing some of the hosting, some of the game playing, along with my friend in the long time, in fact, longest running co-bro of the show, Andrew Walsh, who's right over there. Hello, welcome to the Summer Games.

Not that it's a competition, I should say. I mean, is there a certain amount of pride for being the longest running co-bro of any podcast? Sure. But, you know, I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not trying to make everything a competition in my life. I just want to make that clear right here at the start of the summer.

But I also do want to be just in the interest of full transparency. I need to let the listeners know I have bet a lot of money on these summer games at DraftKings.

Okay. Interesting. That is good to know. And I heard there was some big deal with ESPN gambling. Can I ask you a question? We need to get into the summer games. I'm very excited. And you know how much I love the summer games and the quizzes, and all of these are from listeners again. And they're really, really great, today's especially. You were already guffawing before the show when you saw what was on the show sheet for today. So we'll get to that in a second. But in all seriousness, Luke, as a person who enjoys the gambling apps for the sports betting, and you talked about this on a somewhat recent Hey Dummies video, you're in Washington State now, So you can't use those gambling apps as much as you did. But, you know, you said that it's not it's not a problem gambling situation for you because you can place fun little bets that just help you kind of get into the games a little bit more. I think a lot of people treat it that way. But as this thing, I feel like I blinked and gambling on sports went from the seedy underground to the most mainstream of capitalist pursuits in this country. I feel like over the past two years, the entire industry has changed. The sporting industry has changed and is now built around casual gambling. Are we going to be in trouble? That's my question. What are we doing? If ESPN is getting into the gambling app business, but ESPN is also where most people get their sports information, aren't we sort of – what would Stu Gott say on the Dan Lebitard show? We're a collision course Collision course

I mean just quickly I'll just I have about a tight 30 seconds on this I mean the answer is yes I do think it's a bad idea And even as a person who likes it I mean I feel like The big story was that the Supreme Court Some number of years ago The US Supreme Court sided with the state of New Jersey And what the state of New Jersey was saying was It's not fair that the state of Nevada is the only place where you can legally sports bet because the state of New Jersey, they've got Atlantic City, they were like, we would like to also have the opportunity. The Supreme Court said, yeah, that's a good point. It shouldn't just be one state in the United States of America. So once that happened, that was the important moment. It basically said, any state that wants to can have legal sports betting, and then you just had this sort of, you know, all of this potential money out there that the states were going to get that these apps were going to get what's happened basically with espn is they have rented their name out to something called pen gaming pen gaming is just they're the people that figured out how to get the licensing to do gambling to do sports betting they were aligned with barstool yes exactly it wasn't going well and so they're paying espn 150 million dollars a year to just call it espn sports betting it's like a brand deal basically but the idea that espn will now be that vertically integrated where i will both get all my information about all of the games and the athletes and also they're the ones at least on paper offering me the opportunity to wager on those people it feels even for me andrew a little too vertically integrated yeah it does now

while we're here and this is a strange way to start the summer games and we are talking about games we are talking about games and gaming on topic it's the summer gaming um don't threaten me with a good time, Andrew. What do you think about, and this is again sort of ripped from the headlines over the course of the past, I'm going to say six months or a year, but we're seeing more and more cases of athletes, both student athletes at the collegiate level, and I believe professional athletes in the NFL getting dinged and punished for, you know, getting caught gambling. on their own sport that's always been like a rule you don't gamble on your own sport right and so it's up to the institutions that these players play for how they want to handle that but um do you see that as a big issue let's say you're let's start with like the nfl version of this you're uh let's just say you're even a defensive player like a lineman or something in the nfl and you're betting on football games that you're not even involved with is that a problem do we need these i mean it just sort of seems like they can't put the toothpaste back in the tube with this thing it's just like they're they're now punishing people like crazy but it's not like it's just sort of like they've created this atmosphere they being just the sports

industrial complex i don't know how they would police this part of it but i don't even think it should be illegal to bet on your own stuff as long as you're betting on yourself to win as long as you yeah if betting on yourself to lose would be a real problem that seems that's that's troublesome but like pete rose is banned for life from the hall of fame right for sports betting but as far as i understand there's no evidence he ever bet um you know against himself yeah because that's the issue is if you know if there's money to be made and i guess this is probably why why they have the rules because they're like well sure it's all well and good if people just want to bet on their own success and they're like i feel so it's like a boxer betting on themselves to win a fight like i feel so confident about winning this fight that i'm going to actually put my own money behind my own self yeah the problem i guess with that is it might be very hard to regulate what the bets that people were making would be and if you get into the thing where it's like now this boxer bets on the other guy to win and by the way boxing is a unique example because i feel like depending on the sport there's varying degrees of how much you could really mess with the sport like i think probably football would be like the hardest one to mess with depending on your position because it's such a team game it's such a team game it just be very hard for for one unless they're the quarterback um or something and now we're getting real sporty with it but like i i do find the whole thing a bit unseemly which is just weird because i also really i do enjoy gambling and i enjoy sports but there's something about the fact that it's just gone i think it was overly puritanical before and i think it's now become overly permissive i feel like there should have been i thought it was okay when you had to go again when you had to go down to like a sports book in las vegas or atlantic city or really any local casino i think make it a thing where if you want to go down and put a bet down on the team uh and you go down to your local casino or whatever go for it but this idea that it's like there will at some point just be an some kind of implant in my eye and i will just and i will look at espn and it will read a qr code which will allow me to put a questionable bet down on sean haggerty hitting uh getting a double on his first at-bat in a game against Kansas City tonight.

Now let me ask you this, and I want you to pay very close attention to what I'm doing here, Luke, because I don't want to miss this opportunity. Would you say that it's hard to kind of mess up a betting line in the sports of, let's say, baseball or professional wrestling?

Oh, Andrew, you've asked a really interesting question. Are you saying there are possible similarities between those two sports, Similarities that have not been explored thus far in the major media landscape?

Or at least as far as maybe some of the main players in these sports are concerned. I'm just throwing stuff out there.

How would you tie those two disparate-seeming sports together, Andrew, here on day one of TBTL Summer Gaming?

Well, now that's interesting because this is tough. You're kind of putting me on the spot here. But if you think about it, you have some real characters in both of these sports, right? Like let's just say Ricky Henderson. You're talking about Ricky Henderson. on the show yeah he's a character and he played for the oakland athletics if i have that right in the 1980s often referred to himself in the third person yep um now it's hard to compare baseball players to wrestlers but i believe there's also a man named macho man randy savage yes sure and he referred to himself in the third person a lot too like what if somebody and i'm just throwing this out here i do not know but what if somebody named let's say mike okay as a listener to a podcast and writes this in i made a silly quiz for you guys it's based on a who said it sort of quiz with quotes from either ricky henderson or macho man randy savage wait are

you telling me that that's that's the summer game we actually have we might as well it sort of fits

in and you don't believe in a god what we're talking and you don't believe in a ricky henderson

wow okay i'll play it i'll bite so i'll take a cup of coffee in the big time cup of coffee in

the big time i know you can't play drops today but don't worry i've come with a full slate of

imitations i want to make sure that any of the listeners who think that we are are kicking back and taking it easy by recording these summer games we have been on the line for conservatively an hour and a half already today trying to get this half hour of content recorded this is very true

we have run into almost every technical issue you can pop

possibly imagine this has been the least we'll be so much better served to just on this day you're hearing this to have just dialed up our computers and talked into our microphones and done a regular episode of tbtl this has been a major loss leader in terms of time it is just so you know having

said that let's stay positive because this is this and i have not explored this quiz much i think it makes the most sense for me to give you this quiz luke and it is true listener mike sent this in And this is really funny. So listener Mike again says, you know, this is a who said it quiz. You're going to get a quote from Ricky Henderson or a quote from Macho Man Randy Savage. But this is what I really like here. Mike says, one important note. Macho Man and Ricky both like to refer to themselves in the third person, which would ruin the quiz. So I've changed all the names in the quotes to John Sklaroff.

Oh, my God. But are we sure that John Sklaroff didn't actually design this just to try to get his Q rating up, TBTL employee numero uno?

Potentially. I do not know for sure that this isn't actually John who made this and is writing in under the nom of the plume.

Using Mike as a straw man, which is exactly what they used to have to do for a lot of betting things back before it was more widely legal. Like, let's say you're somebody who had been incarcerated or you're somebody who was banned from Vegas for betting. You get a you get a proxy. You get like a mic to come in and write up a whole quiz that inserted your name, John Sklaroff, multiple times into the program.

Did they call them mics? They should have. They should have forced. I believe they did. I wish I had some fancy music or fanfare to kick this off. But in all of the technical scramblings that we did at the beginning of the show, I did not prepare any kind of audio spackle for this, Luke. My apologies. But having said that, are you ready to embark on this quiz with me now? I am so ready, Andrew. Let's do this. Okay, thank you, Mike. Luke Burbank is so ready to do this. John Sklaroff is so ready to do this, Andrew. Here it is. The Who Said It quiz, Ricky Henderson or Macho Man Randy Savage. First quote is this. Let me tell you now, a man of my position can afford to look ridiculous at any time. Wow.

That's a toughie. Let's see.

a man because was ricky henderson also like a really flashy dresser off the diamond or or off

the field not that i remember okay um but also i i have a hard time imagining the macho man randy savage describing himself as looking ridiculous ah he wouldn't be self-aware yeah this applies to actually this applies to both of the people in this quiz i can't imagine either of them is it possible it legitimately just was john sklaroff that this was actually john sklaroff

can you picture john sklaroff going around saying a man of what was it a man of my position can afford to look ridiculous at any time actually yeah yeah he's got he's got a lot of bluster

i think i'm going to guess that that was uh i'm gonna guess that that was macho man i think that

was macho man well thank goodness because i don't have a buzzer ready but i do have a bell in front I mean, that was Macho Man possibly riffing on the line from The Godfather. Oh, I don't even know. I don't even know what that line from The Godfather would be. Do you?

But then later did he go on to say, on the day of my daughter's wedding, the beautiful Miss Elizabeth will be in my corner and also Virgil, my butler. Yes, that is actually the full quote.

That was on me for not actually reading the full quote here. If it seems like I'm a little distracted, Because I just remembered that we used to play this song called Sports from Tim and Eric. Do you remember that? And I thought I had like an 80-minute loop of that somewhere. And I'm looking for it. I'm not finding it. That's why I was distracted there. But not so distracted as to give you a well-earned point on question number one.

Thank you very much. This is good. I'm off to a hot start. All right. What's the next quote? Question number two. And just to remind you. Randy Macho Man or Ricky Henderson?

There are eight of these, by the way. I might have said 10 before. I was lying. Mike was not, you got to pay after eight. And so he said, we'll just take the free trial. Here's your quote number two. John Sklaroff don't like it when John Sklaroff can't find John Sklaroff's limo.

Oh, wow. That sounds like Ricky. Okay. That's got Ricky Henderson written all over it.

Indeedily do. Keep getting them right. And I never have to find my buzzer.

But I feel like I'm up to the task because as long as I get them right, then you don't have to go and find that pesky buzzer. You've got to save me from myself here on this thing. Happy to do it. I wonder what the context was. I wonder what was going on when Ricky Henderson wasn't able to find Ricky Henderson's limo that had him so mad.

Ricky Henderson don't like it when Ricky Henderson can't find Ricky Henderson's limo. That is a lot of third person in one short.

sentence right i wonder what the latest on old ricky henderson is like if he's you know what like what he's up to uh let's see here uh if he's if he's doing well if he's coaching somewhere if he's uh you know like he's 64 years old uh he's been married to pamela palmer since 1983 again famously uh i believe anyway the person i was standing in front of when i was shit talking ricky henderson once in the line to get into the kingdom at the will call um let's see he's 64 like i said born in chicago illinois there's a picture of him um being honored at the oakland coliseum in 2009 he looks very happy i wonder if maybe the deal with ricky henderson he was just very competitive and maybe if you got him off the field he was you know he looks as he's being honored at this oakland ace thing he's not scowling he's not yelling at lou brock that He's the greatest now. He seems like he's a very happy, warm individual. You know what we're talking about here, Luke? What? We're talking about sports. Theme music.

I thought it started with that yelling sports. Summer games.

Collision course. Say it. Say it. Is this getting us pulled from Spotify?

When are they going to yell sports? Okay, I'll keep that behind.

Here it comes. Ready?

Nope. Not now. It's going to be as soon as I'm not ready for it. Would I have edited out the only part of the song that makes it relevant? That sounds like something I would do. Do it. Do it.

Worth it. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to be very honest with you, Andrew. If we would have stepped on the one relevant part of that song, I would have, in all seriousness, suggested to you that we just come back and start doing regular shows tomorrow. Literally, it would have been a first. It would have been such a bad introduction to the summer games that we just had to cancel the summer games.

It's been a lot. We're pre-recording these, of course, as we often do, or as we always do for the summer games. And we are recording this on what I believe is probably the hottest day of the year so far for our region. and i am sweating here in my in my wood paneled studio and again we really did spend was it a full hour just trying to get our equipment going and don't this is not on you

my i was having technical times up here so this was i mean yeah whatever it was all i mean it's nobody's every time i had to go outside and by the way i don't have i don't have air conditioning inside but when i had to go from the this house up to what's going to be the tbtl studio just to try to get this other computer i would be so drenched in sweat from that journey of like 25 steps outside it is like hot it is it is brutal out here so yeah we're we're i just want to tell everyone it's it will get better i promise we will find it we're gonna be like the the seattle mariners the 2023 seattle mariners off to a slow start but once we once we hit our stride uh this is going to be a really fun a couple of weeks okay although i i do feel like i'm doing pretty well on the game so far. You're doing great. I'm two for two. Lay another one on me, please. By the way, I just would like to remind people that we are talking. We'll wait for it. No, just joking. Okay, so question number three. This is the quote. I don't care about them. It's John Sklaroff time. Now, I cannot play the buzzer if you get this wrong because I'm playing this music, so you have to get it right. Or you have to tell me it was right. Or I can just tell you it's right. Yeah. You can just pee on my leg can tell me it's raining sure let's see here rum one more time please for the quote i don't care about them it's john sklaroff time gosh this is a great game mike because i i'm gonna guess macho man but i just could really see it going either way i need to get this right because if i play the buzzer sound it's got to come from my mouth oh nobody likes nobody wants to hear that you sticking with it are you trying to guide me no i'm i'm gonna are you kidding i'm like a espn announcer i would never try to change the outcome of any sporting event even if it helped my company and its gambling franchise all right so was it randy pop off aka the macho man it was ricky i'm sorry why did you that was the worst helping of all time i had it correct oh you did i thought you said no you said macho man the first time originally i said ricky henderson oh you did I could have sworn you said macho man I could have sworn I did too I don't know I'm all over the place today Hey Luke do me a favor here we'll cut all this out Hey Luke just say Ricky 3, 2, 1 Actually I know this one Andrew That's gotta be Ricky Henderson You are so good at this game today Even as we swelter in our studios You are killing it It was Ricky and there's a little context here

So again I want to go back to the quote, as Mike put it here. I don't care about them. It's Ricky time is now the amended quote. And that was Ricky who said that when, after being traded to the Yankees, a reporter asked – oh, also nice end of that song – a reporter asked how it would feel to play on the same field as Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. And he said, I don't care about them. It's Ricky time.

I love it. I'm also reading on – I don't know if Ricky Henderson wrote his own Wikipedia page or someone else but i do feel like it was someone that was very pro ricky henderson um there let

me see if i can get back to this the irony was what if he wrote his own but it was the only time he used first person and you had an entire wikipedia page in first person by ricky henderson

uh he was further known he was one of the most dominant and innovative players of all time he was further known for his unquenchable passion for playing baseball and a buoyant eccentric and quotable personality that both perplexed and entertained fans.

That sounds like a press release.

That feels like a thing that Ricky Henderson instructed someone to write. It doesn't not sound like that. All right. Well, I guess if we're sticking with the lie, I'm three for three.

It's the small lie. We call it the small lie. Thank you. Quote number four. To the people that are coming against John Sklaroff, for whatever reason, greed, reputation, yeah, I've got the reputation, and sometimes people want to cut me down.

that's not gonna happen not without a fight i really wish this was ricky henderson just like that would even by hendersonian qualities that would be like just a crazy thing for him to say but i'm fight and also like the haters that are coming after him for his like like that's just so many layers of intrigue for a baseball player i am guessing it's macho man you could not be more

All right, it is Macho Man. That's from a promo that he cut with Mean Gene. Of course, we're talking about Mean Gene quite a bit on the show.

Have you seen the SNL? Probably not, because I know you don't watch a ton of that, but it was when The Rock, who himself obviously was a wrestler for a long time, The Rock was the host of Saturday Night Live, and they're shooting those kinds of promos, which they would shoot a whole bunch of them in a row.

Oh, that's interesting. That's fun, yeah. Oh, no, just the SNL ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a sketch, though.

So the sketch on SNL is The Rock is, I forget what his wrestler name is, but it's like, and then Bobby Moynihan, one of the other cast members, is playing a guy called the Junkyard, it's not the Junkyard Dogs, that was a real wrestler, but it's somebody like that, it's like Junkyard John or something, and he's got like a bone, he's got like a necklace with a bone on it, and of course, the whole funny part is that they don't really hate each other, they're actors, and so before they shake hands, hey, it's so great to work with you i've been really looking forward to it and i think the bobby moynihan character says all right man well we're gonna do these promos just let me have it you know what it's fine don't worry about it and so of course it starts and um tarum killum is the like mean gene okerland type guy and he's like coming up saturday night at the whatever you know it's these two guys against each other and then he like hands the mic to bobby moynihan who goes like the junkyard dog is gonna bay at the moon and feast on your bones or whatever and then the rock just goes this guy has herpes bad and the doctor said the worst he's ever seen and they're like there and cut and and the rock's like i really nailed that one and bob was like wow that was personal man and i assume it goes on getting more and more it just builds and it's like turns out that bobby moynihan's character has a daughter that he didn't know about who wants nothing to do with him because because the rocks wrestler has hired a private investigator to find out the deepest darkest most personal things about bobby boy that's a pretty funny sketch i thought it was

going to go in a more well i guess because i assumed it was going to go in this direction maybe this is too obvious i thought the other person was just going to take things really personally and like get really upset by it and be very like what i would be like in that situation which is very fragile and vulnerable. Do you want another quote here? I do. Do you want it with some sports music? Yes, I do. Okay. Now, everybody's kind of shocked and amazed that John Sklaroff's got your head in a daze, and I'm about to start a new rap craze. Wow. Okay, I did not realize that this was a rhyming sentence. Can I do that again? Please. Okay. Now, everybody's kind of shocked and amazed that John Sklaroff's got your head in a daze, and I'm about to start a new rap craze. I don't know the answer to this one, but I have a guess.

Okay, I am guessing it's Ricky Henderson. The reason would be because I'm wondering, did... No, I'm taking that back. I think it's Macho Man. For a minute, I was going to say, did Macho Man's career overlap with rap? But of course, it overlapped with rap. In fact, we're recently celebrating what's kind of...

kind of considered to be the 50th anniversary of the sort of founding of hip hop, if you will. So that would include Macho Man Savage. I am going to guess that it was Macho Man Savage.

What's your guess? I now know, but I was also guessing that this was going to be like a rap song done by Macho Man Randy Savage. And I will tell you that I believe we are both right about this, but we need to stop the music here and we need to do this right. This is called Are You Ready? The letter R, the letter U No spaces between Ready by Macho Man This sounds awful I don't know how much of this I can take I wasn't expecting it to be this sort of metal rap I thought it was going to be like really cheesy 80s crap. Yeah, exactly.

I thought it was going to be like the Super Bowl shuffle. Yeah, this is terrible. The problem is it's from 2003 off of the album Be a Man, Andrew, by Randy Savage. You know, another thing that we talked about a few weeks ago on the show, or maybe a few months ago, actually, is the fact that Randy Macho Man Savage was a baseball player who got a cup of coffee in the big time.

Oh, that's right. That's why the whole damn thing came up.

Exactly. So this is very consistent and coherent as a quiz because Randy Macho Man Savage, I think his name was like Randy Popoff, and he was a really good baseball player. And I forget the team, but he got to the major league and I think played in a handful of games. And only when his baseball career eventually kind of didn't work out, that's when he got into bodybuilding and into wrestling.

Cup of coffee in the big time.

Right, and I love him saying that because, as I said when this came up previously, that's a kind of niche or slightly esoteric thing to say, cup of coffee in the big time, but it's because he was a baseball player because his whole thing was trying to get a cup of coffee in the big time, and then he ports it over, if you will, to his wrestling career.

I'm going to give you maybe one more of these, I think. One more. Make it a good one. Number six. I'm just going—let's see here. Okay. All right, that's a good sign. Okay, you know what? I'll skip. I'm not going to go in order. I'll go to number eight, because I'm scared of making the buzzer sound with my mouth. So I'm going to go with number eight. As are we all. John Sklaroff was a great bass dealer, but today I am the greatest.

I laughed so hard my clock, my stopwatch fell off the windowsill here. If I understand it correctly, you have more, though, so you're fine. Oh, and it reset itself. The battery fell out. It's now at zero, meaning we've done zero minutes of the first episode of the Summer Games. That, my friend, I would I would I would feel very confident saying that was one Richard Henderson. I don't know if his name is really Richard. Nobody's named Ricky, right? Like no one's born.

I don't know. I mean, now people I mean, traditionally not, but maybe. But I'm sorry to say. Nope. I just want to play the buzzer sound. Of course you are right. That was Ricky, apparently famously saying that.

By the way, I believe he was just born Ricky. Ricky Nelson Henley Henderson.

There you go. People are naming their kids Ricky. Ricky famously said that in a speech in front of Lou Brock after breaking a stolen bass record. So in this case, I believe that John Sklaroff is filling in not for Ricky, but for Lou. So probably the original quote was, Lou was the great bass dealer, but today I am the greatest.

and even as a kid again this just came up recently so i don't need to um repeat myself even more than usual but i even as a kid i remember seeing that speech and going like dude read the room yes you just came up on the show didn't yes yes yeah because i just remember because you know i was i was very into like the idea of base stealing because the mariners had a guy named harold reynolds and when the mariners were just terrible they never won any games but he would often lead the american league in base stealing um and so that made me excited as a mariners fan because there was like one thing that somebody on the team was doing more than anyone else and i forget what he had one year this is a story harold reynolds tells he won the american league stolen base whatever thing and then let's say he had 50 stolen bases or something he got a call this is his story he got a call from ricky henderson he picks up the phone and all that the person on the other line said it was 50 stolen bases ricky would have had 100 and then hangs up and it was just ricky henderson calling harold reynolds to just roast him 50 stolen bases ricky would have had 100 hang

up hey luke you know what we're talking about here what are we talking about thanking some donors

my goodness andrew like the swallows returning to capistrano We're summer gaming. We're thanking daily donors again. It's all happening. It is all happening. Everything is coming together just the way it should. These are some of the wonderful, generous folks who are making TBTL possible. Now, more than ever, because, you know, this was, of course, the first year that we've gone out independent since our time at APM. And, you know, I've been saying every year these are the people that make TBTL possible. But this year, it's even more the case that folks like Joseph Tholl of Rockville, Maryland, and Gail Kenny of New York City, New York. And also, my pal Stacey Sledge up there in Bellingham, Washington. Stacey of the Whatcom Talk media empire and of the Juliana Hatfield.

Oh, Stacey. Oh, Stacey. That's our friend Stacey Sledge. No, no, I know, Stacey. I'm just remembering that I never Stacey sent us the kindest email like months ago when we were still just announcing that we were going independent, offering her her like social media services and and just media services, generally speaking. And I've been meaning to write back saying I do need a media representative because I'm about to go to war with Luke and the press. And I forgot. I've never returned that email. I'm so sorry. Thank you so much, Stacey, for the offer. We'll be in touch.

Stacey, your first job as our unpaid media correspondent is to respond to your own email.

Yeah, I'm such a dingus. Sorry, Stacey. Thank you.

Also, Brie Kempa is in Lone Tree, Colorado. I wonder how many trees they have. That's TBD. Thank you, Brie. Also, thanks to Allison Wall in Shoreline, Washington. One of my favorite places to play pull tabs with Andrew. I was there recently. Yes, indeed. And then it's Maggie Ainsley in Swarthmore. Hey, thank you for the basketball. Yes. That's a good basketball, too, by the way. Maggie didn't cheap out on that. Nice.

Thank you.

No matter what, it would have been fine. But I was thinking it was going to be one of those just like, you know, the kind of rubber number that you had in grade school? They don't trust kids with any quality sporting equipment, so they'll give you that. It's just completely rubber, and it's a circle. Well, you know, basketballs are, I guess, a sphere. But the one that you've got, it's got some nice grooves in it that can help you create some backspin, Andrew. You want that backspin? That's going to cause that ball to really find its home when you shoot a shot, even if the shot isn't perfect.

I'm going to ask you a question now, and we will return tomorrow with no sports talk because I realize a lot of this has been about sports today. But I was watching, was it something on Instagram? No. You know what it is? i've been sort of watching slash re-watching the beginning of that hbo show winning time about the um la lakers the what did you call that era famous showtime lakers oh that's right yeah actually that's the name of the show did i just say magic time i think the name of the show you

said winning time i think it's called winning time oh it is winning time it's about the showtime

lakers whatever it is yeah it's the um is it an adam mckay project i believe i believe and it's

as we've pointed out many times it's allegedly the the project that tore his relationship with Will Ferrell apart, if that's true.

It bums me out. But anyway, the show is really good, at least for me as somebody who doesn't. I don't know how – as somebody who followed that era so closely, Luke, and also admittedly sometimes takes these things very literally, I don't know if it would be for you. Because it's literally like an Adam McKay thing where people will look to the camera and almost literally wink. You know, like they will talk to us and break the fourth wall. I think it's a really charming thing. But I watched a couple of episodes last night and they both began with one of those HBO commercial options of saying, hey, we're going to present this to you without commercial breaks, but you have to watch a full two minute commercial ahead of time. And it was this sort of cheeky, fake 80s sports show where they were asking trivia questions about sports. And one of them was how many pebbles are on an official NBA basketball? basketball and my question for you is is pebbles the name of the of the little grippy i mean you

call them pebbles the grip of a basketball well pebbling with leather is a terminology like the pebbling of the leather it would be like it's not the lines right it would just be the little kind of divot the very very subtle divots uh-huh in a in a like an nba official nba basketball um yeah It's got little kind of all very, very subtle little dimples that I believe are called pebbles. It's the pebbling of the basketball.

Interesting. I'd never heard it called pebbles before. So for me, just even hearing the question of that trivia question was informative.

Do you remember what the answer was?

Do I sound like a man who's confident that he remembered what the answer was? Could it have been 40,000? I can't remember. Are you looking it up now?

I'm just looking up what is pebbling in basketball. The contact. of the ball with a surface like say concrete a surface what give me a break this is whoever wrote

this is very very wrong they're loud word uh 35 000 pebbles what did i say did i say 40 000

uh i don't know but you're but yeah the internet is agreeing with you 35 000 although some people are calling it dots um i'm just i'm just annoyed at whoever somebody on oh well look at this andrew this is the first we just got we just got april fooled during the summer games what happened so people ask what is pebbling in basketball so i googled that like what does pebbling mean related to basketball and then it says the contact of the ball with a surface like say concrete a surface ripe with friction friendly pebbles creates a more rugged terrain on your ball the more pebbled your leather the better the traction the better the traction the easier the ball is to handle and then this is this entry was put on the internet april 1st 2015 do you think they were april fooling that that's because i don't think pebbling is pebbling is something that is on purpose and is part of the basketball structure it's not something

that happens because you dribble it on some pebbles well what um what website is this why like that's not funny enough to be of maybe that's the whole problem with the quote-unquote holiday I think it's This is a mental floss it looks like You're looking at right

Well no because that's what is the purpose of Dots on a basketball that's mental floss But the thing above it Which is some other category of the internet That I don't really understand is this Google's response It doesn't link me To I did I mention that the summer games Are going to get better going forward

Because that quote you just Read is also one oh it's in the mental It's in the last graph of the mental

article yeah yeah yeah yeah okay well then i don't know i mean do you think that margaret hoffman was trying to spoof us or margaret hoffman really just just absolutely shooting from the hip

on pebbling i think that this is maybe what pebbling versus pebbles is because it's the very last graph that mentions what you were quoting and you are right this from april april 1st 2015 but the entire article uh talks about um it well it sets up the idea that you do need friction that's uh why early basketballs um weren't frictiony enough that's where the dots come in and that's where then the writer starts talking about the dots on the basketball pebbles and then apparently says this thing at the end that uh the contact of the ball with the surface like concrete creates a more rugged terrain the more pebbled your leather the better the traction

so that that flies with everything yeah yeah well i think the thing that i read literally mentions pebbles the contact of the ball the surface like say concrete a surface ripe with friction friendly pebbles yes create some more rugged terrain on your ball like yeah the idea that the pebbles on the ground would be part of the conversation that's where i thought we were getting april

spoof i see no i think because i think the writer is saying the combination of the of the terrain

and the the frictioned surface which is all of which is to say to maggie thank you for giving andrew the basketball he may never use it but we've now had a thoroughly interesting conversation about pebbling so it was a win for everyone and we thank you and salute you maggie you know we're talking about here luke the end of the show i always think you're gonna say practice the famous alan iverson line but oh i didn't even know about that until uh until the tbtl i'm speaking of all right that's gonna do it for day one of the tbtl summer games we're gonna be back here tomorrow with another summer game for you i swear to god we're gonna get this together oh my god it's gonna be so good it's going to be incredible i'm going to talk to you not even about summer games but about my dream salad that i'm planning on making after tomorrow's show so do not and it's it's a salad that i think represents also a certain amount of me giving up from a culinary standpoint

so that'll be the lead into tomorrow's summer game no i am scared at how good tomorrow's show

is going to be all right thanks for listening everyone thanks for letting us have a little time to rest and relax here as the summer is kind of winding down. We will see you tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.