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- [00:00]
Restaurant Host
Good evening.
- [00:01]
Luke Burbank
Welcome to Anjou.
- [00:02]
Restaurant Host
Have you dined with us before?
- [00:03]
Andrew Walsh
No.
- [00:04]
Luke Burbank
Fabulous.
- [00:05]
Restaurant Host
We do things a little bit differently here. Sparkling water is free, but tap water is $3. All of our appetizers feed six people. They don't come any smaller. Substitutions are fine, but you have to ask in a baby's voice. You are allowed to kiss that signed picture of Toni Collette on the wall, but only if it is your birthday. If you were born on a leap year, you have to leave now. All of our butter is sourced from only the hottest cows. Judged by a jury of their peers. The chickens vote by referendum. We are cash and tip list. But the valet staff do appreciate old copies of Entertainment Weekly. If you have any allergies, please let me know. I'm amazing at keeping secrets. I'll be back in a second to take your orders.
- [00:42]
Andrew Walsh
TBTL.
- [00:48]
Luke Burbank
In this brochure, it says, this tour is crunk. What does that mean?
- [00:53]
Andrew Walsh
The beginning is horrible.
- [00:54]
Luke Burbank
Also the middle.
- [00:55]
Andrew Walsh
So I'll give it a four.
- [00:57]
Luke Burbank
First of all, I'd like to see the chef face to face. These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had. Yeah. Most people think I'm on drugs. Cause I'm always happy. Are you on drugs? No, I'm not. I'm high on life.
- [01:07]
Andrew Walsh
If there's a better use for the Internet, I haven't found it.
- [01:13]
Luke Burbank
Well, all right. Hello, good morning and welcome, everyone to a Monday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. When I eat hot Cheetos, I get crazy. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host.
- [01:25]
Andrew Walsh
I just love hot Cheetos.
- [01:27]
Luke Burbank
Coming to you from the Matrona Hill Studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we're looking at kind of a cloudy day today. Cloud, fog. It's alright, though. We had a beautiful weekend. We've been on a great run of weather, and it's gonna get back to sunny stuff tomorrow. We can deal with one cloudy day here at the Madrona Hill studio that is not going to in any way negatively impact episode 4714 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Cloudy day might be a nice day to stay inside and, like, I don't know, watch a movie. But if you think that the movies you've been seeing on, you know, the streaming platforms and even in the theaters, if you think they look worse than they used to, you are not crazy. To that end, we'd like a moment of your time to talk to you about video interpolation new York Times with a story today about why movies look worse than they used to look. And again, you're not hallucinating on that. It's really happening. I thought this might be a hallucination. The Mariners are winning games again. The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd.
- [02:29]
Andrew Walsh
That's right, baseball's back and they're not.
- [02:31]
Luke Burbank
The TBTL related baseball team that is having success, the Junior Sluggers, AKA the Jalapenos, are doing well as well. Kids and fantasy. Read you the latest update from Coach Ben coming up on the show. But first, we got to say hello to this guy, longest running cobra of the program, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.
- [02:52]
Andrew Walsh
I'd like to grow a pair sometime.
- [02:54]
Luke Burbank
He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.
- [02:57]
Andrew Walsh
Good morning, Luke. If there's any question about whether or not you engage in stolen valor, like to let the listeners know that as we were dialing up, we only spent a couple of minutes kind of chatting today before the show. We didn't do a full unaired TBTL before rolling on the real TBTL like we sometimes do. But I just casually said, oh, yeah, you did that marathon this weekend. I want to hear about that. And you were very quick. I don't even think the words were fully out of my mouth when you said, I did not do the marathon. Becca did the marathon. I was there. I was supporting support crew as I, as I assumed maybe you were handing out orange slices. How did the whole thing go?
- [03:35]
Luke Burbank
Well, I do want to mention that I had a tremendous amount of jealousy of everyone who was participating in the Eugene marathon because, you know, it's obviously a super intense process of training and getting ready for it. And you have to do all this sort of sacrifice. And then the reward is it's, it's probably not even actually running the marathon. The reward is being done with the marathon and kind of hobbling around with oftentimes friends and loved ones kind of giving you hugs and supporting you. And yes, you are, you're not so much eating orange slices. You know what you're eating. I think in the bag they gave you afterwards, you're eating animal like frosted animal cracker cookies.
- [04:15]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, sure.
- [04:16]
Luke Burbank
Anything to get some, like, sugar in your system. And you're just, you kind of, you're sort of dazed and confused, but satisfied. There is just this kind of, it's almost like Mr. Burns in that episode of the Simpsons that was a X Files parody. He's kind of stoned and he's glowing. And he's like, I come in love or whatever. You have strong Mr. Burns energy in that episode after you've run a marathon or a half marathon. And I'm very jealous of that because I've done it a couple of times more half marathons than marathons. But so of course, I was endeavoring, I was making a plan in my mind to train very hard and next year run in the Eugene Marathon. But that's a long way away. I haven't done it. So I wanted to make sure early on that you did not on the show accidentally refer to me as having run the marathon, because I did not do that. Becca did, though, and it was incredible. Incredible. So she was trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And there are so many people that want to run the Boston Marathon that you have to get a specific time based on your age and your gender. And because so many people keep trying to get into the Boston Marathon, they keep making it harder. The race organizers. So the time, I mean, like, for instance, for a person, a guy my age, the time that I would have to do would be so far outside my abilities, like, I will probably. And I'm being, I'm being realistic there. I'm not, I'm not, you know, being humble. I. I don't think it's physically possible for me to qualify for the Boston Marathon. However, last year, when Becca was running the same marathon, she missed the qualifying time by one minute.
- [05:50]
Andrew Walsh
Can I ask you a question?
- [05:52]
Luke Burbank
Sure.
- [05:53]
Andrew Walsh
I find it hard to believe that you think that you couldn't qualify. So when I'm at the gym, I can do like a 15 minute mile on the, on the elliptical. That would get me in, right? If I could prove. If I could send the 14 minute mile. No.
- [06:06]
Luke Burbank
Get into Boston. No.
- [06:07]
Andrew Walsh
Really?
- [06:08]
Luke Burbank
True story.
- [06:09]
Andrew Walsh
I could. You're telling me I couldn't get in? I got that. What? Wait, hold on. I have it set to 10.
- [06:14]
Luke Burbank
Have you read any David Goggins? Because I think if you were able to really lock in, if you're able to follow some of these riser and grinders on the Internet, like David Goggins.
- [06:22]
Andrew Walsh
Does he have Goggins goggles? I've heard about these.
- [06:25]
Luke Burbank
If you were able to really lock in and realize pain is just weakness leaving the body, Andrew, I can't rule it out for you, but I can rule it out for myself.
- [06:32]
Andrew Walsh
I don't.
- [06:33]
Luke Burbank
And I'm okay with that too, by the way. Like, you know, I do. I'm. I run pretty frequently and that's really Something I guess I generally enjoy. Again, I enjoy being done with it, but I enjoy having it as part of my life. And I've been lucky that I'm in a physical body that works pretty well. I can deal with the fact that I'm just not going to be a person who's going to probably. Unless I were to try it when I was 75. Because that's the whole thing each year, not each year, but each kind of section of years that you get older, the time gets easier. So there is a point at which, if you're just able to ambulate anymore, you're probably getting into the Boston Marathon. But I'm still many years away from that particular situation. But what I knew yesterday was it had been living in Becca's head for the last entire year that she had missed the Boston Marathon by one minute. Because last year she wasn't. She also thought she wasn't capable of almost qualifying. So she wasn't running this, the marathon, with the intention of, like, I'm going to try to qualify for this race. She was just running her fastest and she ran really fast and then learned later, oh, phooey, I missed that by a minute. I wish I would have been trying a little bit harder. It doesn't also help that, like, her brother Scott is a phenomenal runner and his wife Tiffany is a phenomenal runner. And they both ran in the Boston
- [07:47]
Andrew Walsh
Marathon this year and rubbed it in her face, I assume, would not stop
- [07:51]
Luke Burbank
talking about their 14 minute miles. Just, I mean, honestly, to the point where we had to make some hard decisions about family holidays. Would we spend time with them or not? And her very good friend Kara, who's again, a fun. Turns out all of her friends are phenomenal runners. Her friend Kara ran the Boston Marathon this year and I believe that was her 11th time running it. So there's a lot of people in her life who are, you know, training for the Boston Marathon, thinking about it, going back there and doing it, and she's sitting around going, phooey. If I would have run one minute faster, I might have been able to do it. Now there's another kind of detail to this story, to the idea of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, which I told you, Andrew, not only are they making the times faster like that you have to run, but even if you hit the qualifying time, you don't get in. You need a buffer amount. So you have to not only run it technically fast enough that you could get in, but then you have to run it faster than that number. So all of the people who ran it. Exactly. The number who aren't going to get in are behind you in line. Does that make sense? It's not a fixed. Yeah, right.
- [08:53]
Andrew Walsh
No, no, you make sense. And I'm actually having a little trouble following.
- [08:58]
Luke Burbank
So, for instance, the time that Becca needed to run the marathon in, in order to qualify for Boston. Okay. 3 hours and 35 minutes. Now, to give you some, some comparison for that, when I ran the Green River Marathon many years ago, when the term eagle soaring first made its way into the TBT Alexicon, I believe I ran that marathon in four hours and like 10 or 15 minutes, I was passed by a guy who was barefoot. I was passed by a guy who was dressed like a monk and his heavy felt robes had absorbed water throughout the race. So it was a guy running effectively in a weight suit.
- [09:34]
Andrew Walsh
Weren't you passed by a turtle on crutches? I remember that.
- [09:37]
Luke Burbank
I wasn't. That hurt. It was Splooge the turtle. I got the last laugh on him.
- [09:41]
Andrew Walsh
Well, he had somewhere to be.
- [09:43]
Luke Burbank
He sure did. He sure did. But yeah, so. So for instance, she, in order to qualify for Boston based on her age and gender, she needed to run a 3 hour and 35 minute marathon. But that would also not actually get her into the race because so many people of her age and gender would run a 3 hour and 35 minute marathon this year that her time would actually, even though it qualified, she would still not get in. You have to get a. What's called a buffer time. She was trying to run it at 3 hours and 30 minutes so that she would actually get in because. So in other words, you're not even
- [10:29]
Andrew Walsh
going to be considered unless you're over a certain line. But. And I don't know what the numbers are, I'm going to make something up here. Let's say there's a chance that 70 people will make it over that line, but only 50 of them. There's only room for 50 of them. So it's going to be the best. So it's going to be like the best of the people that came above that time that you.
- [10:51]
Luke Burbank
You've described it accurately. That's exactly how it is. There's. There's 70 people in 50 spots.
- [10:55]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [10:56]
Luke Burbank
So at a minimum, you have to do it at the time to even be in that group of 70 people. But 20 of them are not going to get in. They're going to go with the fastest 50 times.
- [11:03]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. And it's going to be the fastest. It's not going to Be a lottery or anything. After that, it's just like the fastest. Who make it over that. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
- [11:10]
Luke Burbank
So she. She was, you know, at a. She was really trying to do it in. In 3. 3 hours and 35 minutes, which would have been her fastest marathon time ever, but she was trying to do it in three hours and 30 minutes because that would be buffer time that would be based on she. She asked. I think it was like, chat GPT what carbs she should eat in the week leading up to the race. As a person who doesn't eat a lot of carbohydrates, she eats extremely clean and mostly fruits and vegetables, and was like, this is when, you know, someone is a healthy eater or a clean eater, as they say. She had to turn to the Internet, figure out what carbs. I was like, honey, I got a whole list. I got. I got all kinds of carb ideas for you. She was trying to eat carbs that weren't going to, like, mess with her system because as a person doesn't do that a lot. She didn't want to, like, just eat a. Eat a bunch of stuff that was then going to, you know, make her kind of feel, you know, not great on the run.
- [12:06]
Andrew Walsh
And also because I think about this a lot. You know, they're running these promos. I'm sure you've seen them. I've only sort of half paid attention to them. But during Mariners games, they're playing something called, like, plate at the plate or something, where they're talking to baseball players and I think chefs around the league.
- [12:22]
Luke Burbank
Yeah, I see that in. In, like, heavy rotation, usually muted, while I'm.
- [12:26]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, same deal. I'm not paying tons of attention to them, but one of them is a montage of, like, players in the locker room kind of saying what they eat. You know, somebody's asking them, like, well, what do you eat before the game? Or whatever. And it just got me thinking about that, like, a lot of them are just like, steak. I don't eat anything but steak. Others are like, I eat whatever. I eat a big pasta meal or whatever. And I think about that, like, I know that you want some carbohydrates because you want the energy that you're then going to burn them off, you know, like. And when you're an athlete at that level, it's totally different than what carbohydrates mean to somebody. Like me really is taken care of in the Arby's parking lot for the most part. But anyway, I think about that a lot. I'm Kind of like, yeah, you need that fuel. But also, when does that fuel become like, oh, we have too much. We. We need to. We have too much gas. We have to let some gas out of this plane, otherwise we're riding too low.
- [13:16]
Luke Burbank
I remember being in high school and we were the bass, the Jesus Creek basketball team. We had a big game coming up, and we had heard about carb loading. I think even Maybe our coach, Mr. Collard, had said, you know, make sure you get some carbs and everything. And so we went to the mummy's house and ordered, like, 15 little Caesar's pizzas and ate them and played like, absolute dog shit the next day. And I remember Coach Collard hearing about, like, after we'd lost the game, hearing about. We were like, well, we ate a lot of pizza last night. I was like, what is wrong with you?
- [13:54]
Andrew Walsh
Right, right, exactly.
- [13:56]
Luke Burbank
So you want to avoid that kind of scenario.
- [13:57]
Andrew Walsh
Exactly.
- [13:59]
Luke Burbank
Okay, so. So my job was basically to. To act as chauffeur because we had to get to the race in Eugene very early on Sunday morning so that she could pick up her bib. Her, like, racing bib, the number that they assign you. But she didn't. Becca didn't want to sleep in Eugene at a hotel because, well, frankly, having to share a bed with me and my snoring and whatever would have led to not great sleep. So we went to her childhood home in Salem, Oregon, and we stayed. She slept in her childhood bedroom. I slept in her brother Scott's childhood bedroom.
- [14:34]
Andrew Walsh
Were you jealous? Did she. I'm not gonna sleep with you tonight. But she goes in her childhood bedroom where she has, like, pictures of dolls,
- [14:41]
Luke Burbank
old flames, and notes are scented with. Yeah, Eternity by Calvin Klein from her eighth grade boyfriends. Yeah, it was actually. It was a pretty rough night for me, just in the jealousy department. It was kind of interesting because I've already mentioned that she comes from this family of, like, elite runners. Her dad was. Had a love of running and instilled it in the children. And I'm in her brother's bedroom and literally, like, this is untouched since he was, you know, in 12th grade and moved out to go to college or whatever. And it's just full of, like, racing medals and pictures of Steve Prefontaine. There's, like, eight Steve Prefontaine posters in there. He was a famous American runner and ran at the University of Oregon. He's a legend down there in Eugene and a legend in Becca's family. It was like, I was like, maybe I could run the marathon I don't know. I feel pretty inspired by the decor.
- [15:31]
Andrew Walsh
Do you feel like. You know what? I. Is there a chance that Becca just set this whole thing up just to knock you down a peg, like, running the full marathon? Hey, we're going to put you in the trophy room before you. Before you escort us. I'm not. I hope, by the way, I hope my teasing is no. No. Yeah. I mean, look who you're talking to.
- [15:49]
Luke Burbank
Yes, but. But. So we got up. We had to get up crazy early and then drive down to Eugene, and. And so she'd get this stuff or whatever, and then. And then it's time for her to run the race. And then I'm just kind of, like, hanging out, watching, because they have these really great systems now, you know, on the website, where you can track the person's progress, like, down to the lake, you know, you know, quarter mile, if that. Like. Like, you. You can see them along the route. There's all these. They're called splits, which is basically like, the times that they're running averaging for every mile.
- [16:21]
Andrew Walsh
Can you see it on a map? Like, waiting for a lift?
- [16:24]
Luke Burbank
Yeah, you can see that. You can see it that way. You can see it just as a sort of like a. A string of numbers. There's all these different ways that you can kind of follow somebody who's doing the race. And what I knew is that she was. She was trying to be very, like, hey, we'll just see how it goes. You know, she was. She was like, every. In fact, when we were on Saturday night, we were talking to her other brother Jeff, and his wife Darcy, and she was like, what's your. What's your time that you're going for? And she was like, oh, I don't know. Like, she was trying to be. I think she was trying to even in her own mind, not set up a sort of an expectation that was maybe not gonna happen and then be disappointing or whatever. So she was trying to do this thing called, like, the 10-10-10 kind of rule of running a marathon, which is the first 10 miles you run at a pace that is. Puts you on target for your time, but is not overly fast. Like, you're not. You want to make sure that you're not using up all that gas in the tank early, and then the middle 10 miles. And yes, these are tens of miles. This is how insane running a marathon is. First 10 miles, you run it at a, you know, particular pace. Second 10 miles, you run it a little faster. And then the last 10 kilometers, you just, just gun it. You just run as fast as you can. And the idea is that that way you don't, you don't bonk, as they call. You don't run too fast too early and you're doing great. And then all of a sudden you're getting passed by a guy in bear with bare feet as I was, or getting approached and the guy going, somebody else going, hey, are you the guy that hosts TBTL as you're walking in the 25th mile of the marathon? Which is also a thing that happened to me. Quite embarrassing. So I'm watching her though, and she's going way too fast in the first 10. She was supposed to be running 8 minute fifth, 8 minute 15 second miles at the fastest. It was the fastest she was supposed to be running. She's running like 7 minutes 59 seconds. And I'm like this, I'm sitting in this.
- [18:13]
Andrew Walsh
And she knows this, right? She has a watch or something that is tracking exactly these stats. So she knows it.
- [18:18]
Luke Burbank
She knows this. She has a watch that is very much tracking this. And she is choosing to completely fly in the face of our agreement about her 10-10-10 project. And I'm sitting in this restaurant called not restaurant, but this grocery store called Market of Choice that's near the starting line.
- [18:36]
Andrew Walsh
Such an interesting name.
- [18:38]
Luke Burbank
You would love this place. Actually, I don't know if you would love this place. They've got them in Portland too. It's kind of like it's a, you know, it's a local chain here in Oregon. I don't know how many locations they have, but it's definitely higher end. I was going to say you would love it, but I don't know. I don't know if you love a high end grocery store. If you like more a grocery store of the people.
- [18:56]
Andrew Walsh
I think I'm more of the people. Like, I don't like going into. Well, first of all, you know, I just like my, I like my generic brand. Not generic, but I like the brands, like common American brands or whatever. So I don't like Clorox.
- [19:08]
Luke Burbank
I like Trojan.
- [19:10]
Andrew Walsh
I like, I like my Clorox produce. I love my dairy. Has to be Trojan baked goods. Yes, exactly. Anyway, yeah, no, I do, I, I do. I go to various stores for various things, but I don't really find myself if I'm visiting somebody like I think I might have. I don't. I feel like I'd remember the name Market of Choice because that is a terrible name. But I feel like I was visiting my friends in Portland one time and they took me into a nice grocery store and I think I like, could
- [19:38]
Luke Burbank
have been market of choice.
- [19:39]
Andrew Walsh
It might have been, right? Yeah. Yeah.
- [19:41]
Luke Burbank
So there was one down the street from the. I also got. Oh, my gosh, Andrew. I got the world's best parking spot. I. I was like, maybe I just live here now because, you know, I don't know how many people. It's a huge number of people participate in this marathon and then a even huger number of people bring them to the marathon. Slash, make signs, slash, are in kind of support roles. So we're driving, it's 6am now and they stop giving out the bibs at 6:15am so it's kind of a, you know, it's a critical moment here. And what I'm trying to do is get the closest I can to. I think it's Haworth Field is the name of this field at the University of Oregon where they're giving out the bibs, where the finish line of the race is, etc. And you can see there's this. You know, the stadium itself is sort of tall. It kind of looms over the campus and we're just trying to get close to it, but all the roads are closed at a certain point and there's people in, you know, orange vests. And so I'm just. The goal is to get as close as I can. And we hit upon a closed road where there's no one guarding it and the barriers are not fully blocking the road to the degree that. So you can get a car past them. Somebody has not done an effective job of setting up the closed road barrier there so you could get a Mazda CX5 past it. And my plan is to just drive down to the end of this closed road because at the end of the road is literally the stadium. So I'm going to drive down, I'm going to drop back off, then I'm going to go find parking and then we're going to rendezvous. So I drive down to the end of this road. She jumps out and I look to my left and there's a parking lot because again, we're on the college campus and there's like the. Whatever building. I don't know, we'll call it the physics building or something. And I look and there's just. Cars are parked. I can tell these are all people running the race, right? They all have like 26.2 bumper stickers on their car. They're all driving subarus that have 26.2 on the thing. Yes, we are amongst. We were playing a game driving back yesterday where it was like, oh, those people were doing the marathon. Oh, those people were driving north on i5.
- [21:40]
Andrew Walsh
So I got one of the number stickers. It says two.
- [21:43]
Luke Burbank
Yeah, well, it should have said 26.5 because it turns out the Eugene marathon was long, which happens. Andrew. They measured it slightly incorrectly so that it was 26.5 miles.
- [21:54]
Andrew Walsh
Oh, my God. And when are the services going to be held for the person who made that mistake?
- [22:00]
Luke Burbank
I mean, I, Becca was handling it with aplomb. I was like, that is. That is. That's dirty. Like, first of all, that's effective. That's essentially.
- [22:11]
Andrew Walsh
Does that affect the time of getting into the Boston Marathon for some people?
- [22:15]
Luke Burbank
Absolutely. It's. It's an extra, let's see, three tenths of a mile, which is almost one entire loop around a track. A loop around a running track is a quarter of a mile, right? It's 100 meters. And then you do 400 meters is a mile. Wait, do I have that right? Anyway, it's almost a full loop. A 3/10 of a mile is almost a full extra loop around that track, which is not nothing at all when you're talking about these times. Okay, so back to my parking. I pull into this lot and at the very end of the lot, like far from prying eyes, is one parking spot and I pull in there and like, I'm like, I can't believe this happened. We are. I'm like a two minute walk from the where the start of the race is. So I left the car there. Like, I was like, I'm not moving this. That's why I was on foot. That's why I was walking over to market of choice and et cetera. So I'm watching, I'm sitting in market of choice, I'm eating some scrambled eggs. I told you, I'm a scrambled egg guy now.
- [23:06]
Andrew Walsh
No, you, I love. Did you?
- [23:07]
Luke Burbank
Well, you know, I started going to the Alaska Airlines lounge at the airport before my flights in the morning, when it's a morning flight and I actually get to the airport early for this now, they always have scrambled eggs. I weirdly love those, like chafing dish. You know, you get them at the hotel as well if you're not being yelled at by chapel roan security. That kind of like brick of scrambled eggs that's in the chafing dish. I don't know why I love that.
- [23:32]
Andrew Walsh
Like, I like them because they remind me of being on a trip or something like that. But they're a little dry, though, right?
- [23:39]
Luke Burbank
Totally. They have nothing going for them in the cuisine department, except I've got a weird soft spot for them. I just.
- [23:45]
Restaurant Host
It just.
- [23:47]
Luke Burbank
It pleases me to eat them. So I go in the market of choice, and they're shutting down their breakfast buffet thing or whatever, but they still had a brick of. Nobody else wanted those scrambled eggs except me. So I sawed off a piece of them. And I'm sitting in their little kind of kitchen, whatever you call dining room area, and I'm watching Becca on the phone, and I'm, like, freaking out because I'm like, you're going too fast. You're going too fast. She's, like, running the first 10 faster than 8 minutes and 15. And I'm just like, this is not sustainable. The heat shield is gonna. It's gonna fail on this. And then. So then I'm walking back over to the stadium because my goal was, it's very cool. You get to finish this race in this very hallowed track field. You know, Hayworth Field is one of the most sort of important, beloved track locations. You know, they call. They call Eugene Track Town. You know, the University of Oregon has had this phenomenal. Because they got all this Nike money. I mean, honestly, you wanna talk about stolen valor? This is my feeling on the athletics at the University of Oregon. It's real nice when your daddy buys you everything. They have Phil Knight, the Nike founder, as their patron. And so everything there is, you know, is top notch, including the field. But I wanted to get in. I wanted to be at the finish line. I wanted to film her coming into the stadium and running down this straightaway and then going through the finish line. So I go over to the field, and what I realize is there's already, like, everyone had. Everyone had the same idea as me. There's so many people clustered in this one part of the stadium, which is the finish line. And so what I have to do is wait for someone whose loved one is slightly faster than Becca to finish, and then they get up and move, and then there are seats that are empty. And then I go to the, like, very back row. And then someone else moves, and I go down, like, one row. And I'm just over the course of an hour working my way down to the rail to the absolute, like, sitting there on the. On the sideline. And the whole time I'm watching her on the phone, and I'm just like, please, please do not bonk. Like, now she's at, like, mile 15, and she's running even faster than she's at mile 17. And she's at mile 20. And now she's in her 10k, the final 10k, where she's supposed to just be running her fast. And she is. And these are called reverse splits. This is when, like, you run a race where you run the second half faster than the first half is called a reverse split. And I'm just like. Now I'm just being like, seriously? She's in mile 24, and she's totally on target to qualify. And I'm like, please don't get diarrhea, please, from those carbs you ate from that.
- [26:18]
Andrew Walsh
I thought you talked to yourself.
- [26:19]
Luke Burbank
Oh, too late. Far too late. Already Already had it. Did a real paint job at the market of choice bathroom. I'm just like, please don't have. Like, don't. Please don't twist an ankle because I can see that she's now at the point where, like, this is going to happen for her. As long as there is not some sort of exogenous event. As long as there's not some sort of, like, crazy. I don't know what. You know, again, she trips or someone runs into her or she has some sort of stomach discomfort or whatever they call that.
- [26:48]
Andrew Walsh
The Stouffer steamer, by the way.
- [26:49]
Luke Burbank
Yeah, precisely.
- [26:51]
Andrew Walsh
Loaded on Stouffer's.
- [26:53]
Luke Burbank
So she is. I'm just. I'm watching this, and I'm just like. And I'm getting emotional. Like, I'm. I'm crying because, like, I know how hard she worked for this, and I'm just like. I'm not even running the race, but I'm just looking at these little numbers, and I'm just like. And then I'm like, I'm gonna make the video when she comes, but I'm gonna yell for her. But I gotta not cry when I'm yelling in the video because I don't want that. I don't like that. Committed to history here on tbtl. And I definitely don't want it on the video of her running. So I'm like. I'm sitting there in the stands, and I'm like. I'm, like, hyping myself up to make this. I'm making practice videos. This felt very Andrew of me, actually, because I had a lot of time to kill, by the way. I was sitting in that stadium for, like, two plus hours, and I had. So I'm like. I'm pretend filming other people so that I know kind of like how. How zoomy do I want it to be at this Point, you know, and then how do I pull back? I still, by the way, kind of screwed it up. There's a, there's like a five seconds of the footage where I'm still trying to zoom the camera back and I'm kind of screwing it up in the final thing, but I'm just sitting there and I'm just like, I'm feeling all these emotions. I'm not even the one running, but I just like I, you know, I just understood how much this meant to her. So anyway, she. Not only did she qualify for Boston, not only did she buffer. She ran it in like 3 hours and 27 minutes. Like she, she, she beat like, she beat every possible kind of like, you know, goal that she would have even had for herself. Like, it was incredible. So, yeah, so she. So now I gotta go to Boston next year is the bad part of this story.
- [28:25]
Andrew Walsh
Well, also now she's got a taste for carbs. Good. Welcome aboard, dude.
- [28:32]
Luke Burbank
She sent me home with so many carbs. She sent me home with so many carbs. So it was, it was actually pretty funny because she eats a very, very, again, vegetable and fruit based diet, does not eat a ton of carbs. Bought a bunch of carbs for this thing, ate what I still thought was not very many of them, and then sent me home with like a bunch of. I had English muffin pizza. I'm carb loading for two now. Yeah, I had. She sent me with all this white bread, all this pasta. She sent me home with all of the stuff that she didn't consume in the carb department because now she's back off of that for another year or something. But free carbs for me. So that's pretty, pretty sick.
- [29:11]
Andrew Walsh
When you eat pasta. What am I doing? When you eat pasta.
- [29:16]
Luke Burbank
We gotta start with that tomorrow.
- [29:17]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, I love that. That's my, that's my Fred Armisen. I don't know if any. It probably doesn't sound like it coming out of my mouth, but there's this one drop and we'll play it tomorrow of him talking. He's reading off. He's reading some like diet book and he's learning that carbs might not be the best thing for a middle aged man to over consume from Portlandia.
- [29:35]
Luke Burbank
They're deciding to rule them out. But then he also when you eat pasta. But he. In classic Fred Armisen form in that show, at least with that, those two characters he's coming in with, it's. I believe it's his idea to stop eating pasta.
- [29:49]
Andrew Walsh
No, I think it's hers. Oh, well, you know, I only know this tape. I'm not going to play the whole thing. I just want to play the beginning
- [29:55]
Luke Burbank
when I can hear it twice.
- [29:56]
Andrew Walsh
When you eat pasta. When you eat pasta.
- [30:00]
Luke Burbank
I think that's him. I think that's his spiel where he's basically saying, like, pasta is bad for you and he's saying, we're not eating pasta anymore. But then when Carrie Brownstein's character starts naming different kinds of pasta they're not going to eat. I see he's traumatized by learning that he can't have any of these pastas.
- [30:18]
Andrew Walsh
And she's like. Even though she's throwing them all out in front of him, I believe, basically.
- [30:21]
Luke Burbank
But anyway, yeah. So congrats to Becca for qualifying for the Boston Marathon. It was a very exciting, inspirational Sunday in Eugene. Speaking of inspirational athletic events, Andrew, we got a quick update here from the TBTL Junior Sluggers, our little league baseball team that we are the sponsors of. Coach Ben updating us on the latest. He says, when I last reported your TBTL Junior Sluggers, AKA the Parkside Jalapenos, were one in three struggling to find their groove early in the season. I'm proud to report the groove has been found.
- [30:57]
Andrew Walsh
Did he spell groove? Groove?
- [30:59]
Luke Burbank
No, he spelled it groove. I just.
- [31:01]
Andrew Walsh
I just wasn't sure how deep into the tbt. The lore.
- [31:04]
Luke Burbank
Into the. And by the way, another Fred Armisen.
- [31:07]
Andrew Walsh
Exactly. It's like a group.
- [31:08]
Luke Burbank
It's more of a groove. On Thursday, April 23, we took on the Parkside Canned Corn, a team that undeniably has the best name in Little League. That's the team, Andrew. That is a really, really fast line drive ball into Cal.
- [31:24]
Andrew Walsh
I mean, did you hear the discipline emanating from my side of the microphone when you said, did you hear the non discipline?
- [31:31]
Luke Burbank
It's because I'm. I'm hed up on cor carbs this morning.
- [31:33]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, no, no, go ahead. I was very proud of myself, though.
- [31:36]
Luke Burbank
I can confirm that they are a singular canned corn a la the Miami Heat or Seattle Kraken. Oh, I see. That was a shots fired at like
- [31:46]
Andrew Walsh
not, I believe, not good corn. No, no, no, no. I think it's a singular canned corn. Not the canned corns. Like it's not the Krakens or the Heats.
- [31:56]
Luke Burbank
Gotcha. Thank you for. You're exactly right. Thank you. Yeah, the Kraken were so bad last year. I thought that Coach Ben was taking a shot at the hockey team. I don't care about. And I thought that was weird. You're absolutely right. Singular. The Jalapenos, who are plural, took the field under low, dark clouds. But while the weather was cold, our bats brought the heat. But in a weather that was cold, could a podcast bring the heat?
- [32:18]
Andrew Walsh
I was thinking of that.
- [32:20]
Luke Burbank
We jumped out early with three runs in the first. Amos, Armani, Atlas, Nico, Ollie and Fox all reached base with key RBIs from Zaya and Crosby.
- [32:31]
Andrew Walsh
Nice. All right, good.
- [32:33]
Luke Burbank
Amos got the start and delivered a strong 2 1/3 innings. Coach Ben will get that right some way. 2.2 innings, the canned corn featured a dangerous lineup. Scrappy high opb hitters mixed with a few power bats. Amos navigated it like a seasoned Mariner. Not Brian Wu, but, you know, like a seasoned Mariner who's having a good game. Although, listen, I don't hold that against Brian Wu. We got the W. He's amazing and he's incredible. He's allowed to have. He's allowed to have one bad game every now and again. That was insane. By the way, David came down. I remember my brother David and, oh, that's. His family were staying over and he just came downstairs from taking a shower or from getting his stuff ready as they were. We're all leaving on Saturday morning. And he said, there's something in the jet stream out there. And this is when it was just like 4 to 2.
- [33:22]
Andrew Walsh
It would prove to be. It was long. Bombs away.
- [33:25]
Luke Burbank
It was long Bombs away. You ever do a grand slammer? From there it became a battle of pitching and more impressively. Oh, sorry. In the second, the Jalapenos kept the pressure on, adding three more runs. Victor, Zaya and Armani drew walks and were driven in by singles from Amos and Crosby. From there it became a battle of pitching and more impressively, defense. Amos kept piling up strikeouts and the fielders backed him up with sharp, consistent play. Didn't you? Do you remember, Andrew, that even though the Jalapenos lost recently, Coach Ben said they put together their most complete game?
- [33:57]
Andrew Walsh
Yes, I do remember that.
- [33:58]
Luke Burbank
He was seeing that the. The various sort of facets of the game were coming together for this team, and this appears to be the case. I'm going to claim a little credit here to combat the 7pm Zoomies. I've started handing out gum in the third inning.
- [34:15]
Andrew Walsh
This is interesting. So, gum, Should I do this with Lucy the puppy Give her gum to
- [34:21]
Luke Burbank
kind of work out worth considering. Actually.
- [34:23]
Andrew Walsh
Don't.
- [34:24]
Luke Burbank
The listeners will not like that.
- [34:26]
Andrew Walsh
Beginnings. I'm joking.
- [34:28]
Luke Burbank
Here's the thing. Gum. You Know how it stays in your system for seven years? It stays in her system for seven times. Seven years.
- [34:33]
Andrew Walsh
That's right. 49 years.
- [34:35]
Luke Burbank
She will eventually leave this dog park to the. To go to the great dog park in the sky with gum in her guts. If you give it to her now,
- [34:43]
Andrew Walsh
by the way, I just wanted to. I just want to defend Coach Ben a little bit here. The 2.3 or 2.2. You'd never say 2.3. That is the. That's how you would mark a stat. Okay. Yeah. Like in the stats.
- [34:55]
Luke Burbank
I've just never seen it. I've never seen it written. And so I have only heard baseball announcers go, he went six and a third.
- [35:01]
Andrew Walsh
Sure. And that makes sense.
- [35:02]
Luke Burbank
Or you went six and two thirds. So this is really my lack of ability to read numbers because, yeah, it means the same thing. And I'm sure that that's how it's written. I just. I've never seen it written here. So let's see. I've started handing out gum in the third inning. Just enough sugar to keep the brains engaged. I've also introduced performance incentives. I was worried he was going to write performance enhancers, which early Coach Ben let them get to high school before they start performance incentives. For example, an outfield fly ball catch earns a Gatorade. All right. Does this rise to the level of the New Orleans Saints bounty gate scandal? Let's hope not. Yeah, let's keep this in check, Coach Ben. But I do like that, you know, an outfield fly ball catch at this age, that's. That's tough. That's tough to do. You know what I mean? Like, that's. I remember, like, you know, being about this age and maybe catching my first ball in the outfield and being kind of shocked that it happened. Almost like looking at the ball in my mitt, being like, did that. Did it just actually stay in my mitt? Like, that is not a given at all that you'll be catching balls in the outfield.
- [36:05]
Andrew Walsh
And when's the last time you even did that? You said at that age. It's. I was going to say, when's the last time you did it as an adult? But actually, I might have an answer on that. Only you weren't using a mitt. You were using Goofy Net or something. Because I was there. We were working on Ross and Burbank. You were Burbank. Dave Ross was Ross. I was the producer. And we did a show, a live broadcast from. Was it T Mobile park then? Or whatever it was called. At the time Safeco Field, and you guys were broadcasting, but you were also honored by pre game fun times, Right. Didn't you go out there with, like, literally a fishing net or something to catch?
- [36:43]
Luke Burbank
They gave us a variety of objects. I believe a fishing net was one of them. I think maybe I had my mitt at one point.
- [36:50]
Andrew Walsh
I thought they seriously maybe just took your mid away. I think you.
- [36:53]
Luke Burbank
Maybe they took my mitt away. I think I brought a mitt and they confiscated it.
- [36:56]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, exactly.
- [36:58]
Luke Burbank
What they were doing is they were shooting balls out of the jug machine. Yeah, that thing that's like the two tires that, like, you know, you can use for pitching baseballs. You can also use it, a different version of it for throwing footballs or, you know, doing things like that. This was used to throw, but they weren't real baseballs. They were, like, soft. I think they were worried we would get hurt, and probably rightfully so. So they shot these soft little baseball things up into the air as if it was a, you know, a fly ball and we were catching them. And of course, because I can never just, like, just do something like a normal person, I. I seem to remember running and catching the ball or maybe missing the ball, but then doing a somersault, like diving and doing a somersault. I don't know if I had the ball with me or if I had dropped the ball, but, like, I've always got it. Like, when we played the Harlem Globetrotters, me and Dave. Boy Dave and I had a lot of athletic adventures for. For two guys hosting a talk radio show.
- [37:48]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [37:49]
Luke Burbank
And we played the Globetrotters. And again, I couldn't just, like, when they called my name, I couldn't just run out and high five some people. I ran out and I, like, jumped up and grabbed the net and like, climbed up on the rim. I'm a real, real piece of work out there, honestly. Anyway, back to the. Back to the sluggers. Crosby immediately cashed in. This is on the Gatorade situation. Hauling in a towering fly ball to center, Amos added a highlight of his own. Snagging a line drive and doubling off a runner for a clean double play.
- [38:19]
Andrew Walsh
Whoa.
- [38:21]
Luke Burbank
That is amazing. The only thing harder than catching a fly ball out there in the outfield is catching a line drive and then turning to it second. That's incredible.
- [38:31]
Andrew Walsh
Here's what surprises me. These sluggers, these junior sluggers, they, you know, they've been playing with the team for a while now, right? And they're in, like, an older. They're in an Older division than they were last year and. Yeah, exactly. And so, like, I know I'm being. I'm being serious about this, and you can insert anybody in here. I'm not trying to, like, kind of take the. These particular kids down a notch at all. That's not my role as one of their biggest supporters, financially and emotionally. But it's interesting to, like, incentivize with Gatorade to say, if you catch a towering fly ball, then you get a Gatorade, because these kids already want to catch that ball more than anything. Right. Well, I can see like, a Gatorade, like, if you run an extra lap in practice. If you run an extra lap, then you get it.
- [39:20]
Luke Burbank
I just think it's weird that only certain kids get to hydrate.
- [39:23]
Andrew Walsh
Well, that's the thing, too. I was sort of thinking that you
- [39:26]
Luke Burbank
strike out, you go to the sauna.
- [39:28]
Andrew Walsh
The rest of you, I'm giving you a. A spoonful of cinnamon. But if you catch the fly ball, then you get water.
- [39:35]
Luke Burbank
Or you're allowed to. You're allowed to have water.
- [39:38]
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
- [39:38]
Luke Burbank
You're allowed to have electrolytes. There is we. Again, I haven't gotten eyes on the. I wanted to watch the sluggers on Saturday, but I was actually going to a track meet. Not the thing in Eugene, but Becca's nephew Alexander runs track for his school, Lincoln High School in. In Portland. And we went to the. His track meet in Portland, and so I missed the sluggers. I have not gotten eyes on them. But what I can tell you is last year they were still at the age where occasionally you would get what I call a spinner. You get a kid in the outfield who's just kind of spinning around.
- [40:12]
Andrew Walsh
Okay, all right.
- [40:12]
Luke Burbank
Maybe. Maybe throwing their mitt in the air and seeing how many times they can spin before it comes down, which I like. We may. We may have aged out.
- [40:18]
Andrew Walsh
Incentivize. Can I incentivize that I'm going to
- [40:22]
Luke Burbank
get you a Zero Sugar Powerade if you stop spinning in the outfield?
- [40:27]
Andrew Walsh
24 Hour Fitness next to the old SPK.
- [40:30]
Luke Burbank
That's right. RIP by the way, full on Seattle Times article about SPK going. SPK going.
- [40:35]
Andrew Walsh
Oh, I didn't see the Times today.
- [40:37]
Luke Burbank
Over the weekend. Over the weekend, but. All right, so let's see a clean double play. Strong plays followed all over the field with the jalapenos consistently making the routine and occasionally spectacular look easy. Zaya came in for relief with two outs in the third and was dominant. Four strikeouts over 1.1 innings with no hits or runs allowed. Final score. Game called due to time limit. But we don't care about that, Andrew.
- [41:03]
Andrew Walsh
Okay.
- [41:03]
Luke Burbank
Jalapenos, six. Canned corn, three.
- [41:06]
Andrew Walsh
Nice. Okay, this is very good. So now, I don't know how many games they played this weekend, but at this point in the narrative, we are two and three. Three. Correct. That's right.
- [41:16]
Luke Burbank
That's Atlas and Tommy.
- [41:20]
Andrew Walsh
Now. Congrats, guys.
- [41:21]
Luke Burbank
Yeah. Way to go. Now, longtime TBTL listeners may recall that last year's squad went 2 and 14. I take modest pride in reporting that this year's Jalapenos have already matched that win total.
- [41:34]
Andrew Walsh
Absolutely.
- [41:35]
Luke Burbank
Only a third of the way through the season.
- [41:38]
Andrew Walsh
Don't. Do I care?
- [41:40]
Luke Burbank
Exactly. They're doing the 10-10-10 plan for the Jalapenos. I'm watching it on my phone. Do I dare dream bigger? Could we do the unthinkable and win two games in a row? Can a brokenhearted coach love again? The answer, my friends, is yes. On Saturday morning, the Jalapenos faced the Parkside Pickles. I like that both of these teams, if they're in my fridge, Andrew, they're on the same shelf of the fridge.
- [42:07]
Andrew Walsh
You're talking about the jalapenos or you're.
- [42:09]
Luke Burbank
And the pickles.
- [42:10]
Andrew Walsh
Oh, okay. I thought you're talking about the canned corn. I'm like, that can go in the cupboard. But we have a lot of.
- [42:13]
Luke Burbank
That's a cupboard thing. Yeah, but don't you think the pickles and the jalapenos. Don't you have a shelf of your fridge that's things in jars.
- [42:20]
Andrew Walsh
I can't talk about my. I cannot talk about my refrigerator. It is so triggering for me. It's not my refrigerator. It's.
- [42:26]
Luke Burbank
Oh, right.
- [42:27]
Andrew Walsh
It's a shared refrigerator.
- [42:28]
Luke Burbank
Do you get the downstairs refrigerator when
- [42:30]
Andrew Walsh
the downstairs, downstairs refrigerator is mostly, like, beverages and stuff? And I do have to. I do keep that kind of tidy. But, I mean, again, it's not terrible right now, but, like, any ideas or rules that I have for the refrigerator, like, just. It just doesn't apply. Don't worry about it. If there's not, like, if there's not an open jar of jelly in there, let's call it a good day.
- [42:52]
Luke Burbank
I've got something going on in my fridge that would drive you crazy, which is. There's one of the. One of the glass, you know, shelves. It's the one where I keep. I guess. What do I keep on there? Like, canned beverages. Although, again, I don't do very much in the club soda department, but I'm definitely, as you can tell, got quite a fresco habit going these days.
- [43:12]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [43:12]
Luke Burbank
That shelf, somebody must have spilled something. It's not like there's just basically, like a little film there. What I need to do is pull all the cans out. I need to spray it down, actually pull the shelf out, put it in the sink, let it warm up and get refrigerated.
- [43:27]
Andrew Walsh
That's one of the things I'm always so scared. Scared about breaking because replacing, you know. Yeah, you can probably go to the. To like the. The Fridge Makers website or something and buy. But I think they're really expensive, you know, and they're made of glass. But it is. It takes so much to get yourself to do it.
- [43:45]
Luke Burbank
Yeah.
- [43:45]
Andrew Walsh
Like, for me, that's one of those tasks that I never say, okay, on Saturday, I'm going to clean the fridge. For me, it's one of those things where I see it getting worse and worse, and then finally, like, I'll be in the middle of something, it'll be the worst time possible. And then I'll just be like, you know what? I can't take this anymore. And then you just. Next thing you know, you've just pulled everything out of the refrigerator and you're soaking the drawers or whatever.
- [44:06]
Luke Burbank
I need to do that. And maybe I'll do that before I go out of town this week, but. All right, back to Saturday morning. The Jalapenos facing the Parkside Pickles. What followed was one of the most complete and satisfying games I've ever coached. Some games are chaos. Everything goes right for one team and wrong for the other. I've been on the wrong end of those and will be again. But for one glorious morning, the Jalapenos could do no wrong. Crosby got the start, and after giving up a couple of early hits, locked in striking out five over two innings, the defense stayed sharp, highlighted by a textbook fielder's choice at second between Victor and Atlas.
- [44:43]
Andrew Walsh
Nice. Pretty good, Slappy.
- [44:44]
Luke Burbank
Pretty good. At the plate, the Jalapenos were relentless. Every hitter showed discipline, laying off bad pitches and punishing strikes. I call that a ref. Schneider, Andrew. You know, I've been a long time ref. Schneider.
- [44:55]
Andrew Walsh
Stan, on this show, I feel bad for people. I feel bad for people who talked anything negative about him.
- [45:00]
Luke Burbank
I know. Thank God.
- [45:02]
Andrew Walsh
What would those people be saying today
- [45:04]
Luke Burbank
if they'd be reading you? They'd be reading you a report about how the Jalapenos did. Every hitter showed discipline. The first inning featured walks by Armani, T Bone, Atlas, Ollie and Fox. Doubles by Amos and Zaya and a true triple by Crosby. That's the hardest part of hitting for the cycle, Andrew. I always say that.
- [45:24]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [45:24]
Luke Burbank
We kept rolling in the second with more. Crosby was.
- [45:27]
Andrew Walsh
We know that Crosby was not born on third, right?
- [45:30]
Luke Burbank
No, he was. And he thought he hit a triple. That's tough.
- [45:34]
Andrew Walsh
Let's just check those. Those birth certificates.
- [45:37]
Luke Burbank
We kept it rolling in the second with more walks, a single by Atlas and a ground rule double by Crosby. Wow. Denied a home run. Only by physics. And the fence, that is. It's a pretty.
- [45:49]
Andrew Walsh
I mean, fundamental.
- [45:51]
Luke Burbank
Yeah, exactly.
- [45:52]
Andrew Walsh
A home run, I guess. Yeah.
- [45:53]
Luke Burbank
Again, what I'm hearing is that Crosby is working his way towards the cycles. Got the triple and the double.
- [45:58]
Andrew Walsh
Okay.
- [45:59]
Luke Burbank
After two innings, we led 10 to 1 without recording a single out thanks to the five run per inning rule. So get a load of that. We were basically, you know, scoring so much per inning that we just had to end the inning. We weren't even getting out.
- [46:15]
Andrew Walsh
Wow. So it's like a mercy rule for the inning, but not the game. I don't know if I like the game. Don't know if I like.
- [46:20]
Luke Burbank
You can only do five runs in a. In an inning. It turns out a silver. Let's see.
- [46:26]
Andrew Walsh
How come I've never heard of this rule when we're on the losing side of things? Why is this a new rule that they're introducing when our jalapenos are suddenly clicking?
- [46:35]
Luke Burbank
Because they can't handle our shine.
- [46:37]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, right.
- [46:38]
Luke Burbank
They got to try to bring us down. By the third, the wheels had come off for the pickles. Been there, not fun. We added five more runs on eight walks in one hit. A silver lining of the lopsided score. Valuable reps for our newer players. Victor, for example, got his first experience pitching without the pressure of the game on the line.
- [46:57]
Andrew Walsh
Nice. Nice.
- [46:58]
Luke Burbank
That's final score, Jalapenos 15, Andrew Pickles, 3. Mercy rule after 4. We played an extra inning for reps. Oh, nice. This one was decided early. Hustle pins for Ollie. Victor And Zaya, your TBTL junior sluggers are now three and three. They are back to.500 and heating up this week. Three games in four days. Holding rematches with the Parkside Scorpions and Vipers, plus a showdown with a Hollywood Rose City squad. Are we rolling? Are we dangerous? Are we slightly overconfident? Time will tell, Coach.
- [47:30]
Andrew Walsh
And out. Why is everything. I swear, man, we have the. The.
- [47:34]
Luke Burbank
The.
- [47:35]
Andrew Walsh
The Mariners, the Royals and the TB tail. Junior Sluggers are all like. They're. They're tied together. Karmically, I feel like they struggle at the same time and they put it together at the same time. I'm very sad for all three of these teams.
- [47:48]
Luke Burbank
I mean, it's a good Monday in baseball town for us. It's gonna be now. It's gonna be. It's gonna be complicated next few days because as you pointed out today, Andrew, it's the. What did you call it?
- [47:59]
Andrew Walsh
The Criminals Cup.
- [48:02]
Luke Burbank
It's the Criminals Cup, Right. Which is when we, the Seattle Mariners play the Minnesota Twins.
- [48:08]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [48:08]
Luke Burbank
And sorry, came in a little hot there. I really need like, I need to start playing five seconds of the Replacements
- [48:17]
Andrew Walsh
maybe or some other Minnesota based outfit. Right, right.
- [48:22]
Luke Burbank
But yeah, our team is playing the Twins and we love the Twins and we love the people of the Twin Cities, particularly our friend the Stubot. So. And you know, both teams are still a bit under.500 and. And you know, again, it's like I want the Mariners to win, but I don't want it to ever. I don't want anything to ever make. Our friends the Stubbot, by the way, the writer behind Midwest Excellence, a phenomenal substack that I highly recommend everyone check out. I don't want the Stubbot to ever feel sadness or any of our friends in the Twin Cities. So it's a, it's a, it's a tough few days because somebody is going to be happy and somebody is going to be sad.
- [48:56]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, that is true. But I would prefer to be happy.
- [48:59]
Luke Burbank
Yeah. Stu is saying that it's. It's absolutely raining like cats and dogs out there. He said basically the game will either be canceled or it will be played at 9:30pm local time, which is when he wants to watch his Minnesota T. Wolves.
- [49:12]
Andrew Walsh
And that's. Are we in a playoff situation in basketball now?
- [49:17]
Luke Burbank
Yes. The NBA playoffs are happening and the Wolves.
- [49:21]
Andrew Walsh
You scared me. Timberwolves are NBA, right?
- [49:24]
Luke Burbank
They sure are.
- [49:25]
Andrew Walsh
You scared? I get some basketball and hockey teams confused.
- [49:29]
Luke Burbank
Well, I can see why. The Timberwolves and then the Minnesota Wild, I believe is the hockey team.
- [49:34]
Andrew Walsh
Isn't there another hockey time team that is also the Wolves or something, though not from. Not from Minnesota.
- [49:39]
Luke Burbank
I am so bad with the NHL. I just don't. I don't know much about it, but. But yeah, it's going to be. I'm with you, Stu. We love you. At least Stu has basketball to fall back on.
- [49:50]
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
- [49:51]
Luke Burbank
We don't even have that in Seattle. Well, we don't have an NBA team at the very least, so. And that remains kind of A question mark. So anyway, we'll see how the week goes. But yeah, the Mariners seem to be getting it together like the, they, they, they won a couple of games. Well, particularly the game where they kept the one where David said the jet stream. It's crazy. Yeah, that game was wild game.
- [50:15]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. We just kept going with. No, that's the Minnesota Wild, that hockey
- [50:19]
Luke Burbank
team and the Savannah Bananas. When the Wild play the Savannah Bananas, those games are wild and bananas.
- [50:23]
Andrew Walsh
That's right. And of course, when the Tacoma Bonkers take the field, we know someone who
- [50:30]
Luke Burbank
works for the Tacoma Bonkers. They want us to come down and throw out a pitch.
- [50:33]
Andrew Walsh
They want us to throw out the first bonk. But yeah, I can't remember what you were saying, but I am very proud of our Seattle Mariners. Oh, you were starting to say that game. They were going back and forth and back and forth. Like I think that was the Woo game. Right. I'm kind of getting them all confused. Our, our pitcher who's usually like literally one of the best in the league. In the league, just had herb or flingerb, had an uncharacteristically bad day and he gave up like three runs or something in the first inning or two. And then, but then the Mariners battled back. Not a team known for its offense. And then we just kept going back and forth with the Cardinals just like homer, homer, homer, homer. And I'm sort of like listening to the radio while I'm dealing with kind of puppy stuff and Genevieve and having friends swing by or whatever. And, and so I wasn't following every single stroke of that game, but my God, they were flying out of the yard.
- [51:28]
Luke Burbank
There's something to releasing desire, I think Andrew, because basically we. Beck and I rolled up to the high school track to watch Alexander's meet and it was right when so the Mariners had climbed back I believe to maybe tie it seven to seven and then gave up a two run home run to the St. Louis Cardinals. Louis. And I was like, well, that game's over. I turn can turn my phone off, I can put it in my pocket and I can just go watch this track meet. And it was almost like I was of course not happy they were losing, but I was happy that I could stop emotionally investing in the game. Right. I was just, well that's. We coming back to a 7, 7 tie. That was quite a feat. That was pretty amazing. But you give up a two run home run here and that's. You're probably. The game's probably over. So I did, I put my phone in my pocket, and I went about my day. And then when the track meet was over, as we're walking back to the car, I just opened it up and I've just got all these text messages from my mom, from the criminals. And I was like. I mean, I was shocked, shocked that we. That we managed to come back and win that game. So, you know, I. It's good times in baseball town, that's for sure.
- [52:33]
Andrew Walsh
Absolutely.
- [52:35]
Luke Burbank
We was hoping for some razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle.
- [52:40]
Andrew Walsh
On your mark.
- [52:41]
Luke Burbank
On your mark.
- [52:42]
Andrew Walsh
Get set, get set now. Ready, ready, Go.
- [52:45]
Luke Burbank
Everybody rattle dazzle. All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the folks supporting TBTL with their voluntary donation of dough. This is 100 listener support of what's going on here. And then we're able to use those resources to make this our job and also to sponsor little league teams. And we're very thankful and very grateful for Carolyn Carlin. I was. I was pausing there, Andrew, because I was reading Carolyn's name, and then I was reading Carolyn's pronouncer for her name, and then I was worried I was saying it wrong, but I was saying it right.
- [53:22]
Andrew Walsh
The whole time you were saying it right. I worried about that a little bit, too, because it almost looks like the. The Carolyn gives an explanation of how to say her first name, but then also gives an explanation of how not to say it. And so therefore, the not saying it was a little bit more emphasized than the proper saying. And I meant to change that for you.
- [53:40]
Luke Burbank
In the copy, we can say things are not say things for hours.
- [53:45]
Andrew Walsh
Hey, you know, I was going through some old emails today. I was actually. That's not true. I was searching for an email. I don't know if you ever do this. You're looking for something, but you've had the same email for 20 years or whatever. And so when you search for something, your net will accidentally grab other interesting things. Like just some random email that I had to send, like our bosses at 8pm for some sort of, like a brag rag or something. Like, what are things you're working on? I kind of forgot when we used to do that. And I think one of the things on the list was that we were going to start, like, trying to identify and clip, like, really good moments from tbtl, things that could be highlighted in some way, or we could just use as some sort of, I don't know, just sort of an informal reel when we want to think back about our best Moments. And I'm wondering if me explaining how Carolyn's pronunciation is written on the dazzling donor sheet. I wonder if we should grab that for future generations.
- [54:36]
Luke Burbank
Absolutely. I've been thinking about this lately, Andrew. I was watching some podcaster who's talking about clips online, and basically like, they were thinking, oh, we're putting. I actually meant to. Let's just have our TBTB meeting here, minus John. He'll hear it, though. Somebody was talking about how they were thinking, oh, we're gonna put these clips of the podcast up on the Internet and that will drive people to the show. There will be a link and then people will watch the clip. They'll be, oh, I should go check out that show. And he said, what we're realizing is the clips are the content.
- [55:09]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, exactly.
- [55:10]
Luke Burbank
The clips are the show. The one minute of, of somebody saying something interesting or whatever, that's the show. That's how people now experience and consume this stuff. And I don't think I have thought about it that way because I'm very, you know, I'm from another generation. And I just think of it as like, oh, the promo or the, the clip we put up on Instagram is a way to get more people to come and, and listen to the show and subscribe to the show or whatever. But no, it's. That's the show to some people, so
- [55:37]
Andrew Walsh
we better start delivering whether you're. Again, flag all of this as just great content. But, like, the problem is if you have a traditional model, like financial model for a podcast, they're saying, well, we need to use the clips to drag, to draw people or drag people to the actual dragging show, because the show is where you have your advertisers and like, you can't monetize the clips or you can, can, but it's more, even more difficult. And I guess the same would be true with our model, too, to bring it back to the dazzling donors. Like we don't have, you know, if we have a little clip like you talking about boots with the fur or whatever that was that went kind of viral on TikTok a couple of years ago. You know, the only, the only, like, really kind of measurable good thing to come out of that would be if we translated any of that to actual, you know, listeners to tbtl, as opposed to people who just saw it once and kept moving. Because otherwise, you know, I mean, we asked people to listen to the show and then donate. Nobody's going to donate for that clip. Who has never heard, are you doing your 11:11 thing.
- [56:41]
Luke Burbank
No, it's not that time.
- [56:43]
Andrew Walsh
I'm just.
- [56:43]
Luke Burbank
I'm just staring into the void while you're talking.
- [56:45]
Andrew Walsh
Okay. Yeah, it's great.
- [56:47]
Luke Burbank
But yeah, you know, you're absolutely right. Like we, for us, I don't think the clips can be the content because we need. Well, it can be, I guess, but we also then need to somehow get those people to either donate or. You know what I mean, like, it's not enough for. It's not enough for us to just have people watching, you know, our clips going viral. If none of those people are being converted into potential TBT donors, like Carolyn Carlin, not Caroline Carolyn, who's in Edina, Minnesota. Am I saying that right?
- [57:16]
Andrew Walsh
I struggle even in this day. That's what I need to pronounce on that. Even though we've discussed it a million times. But I think you got it. I'll co sign it for now.
- [57:25]
Luke Burbank
Hey, friendos. I'm so grateful for the biz boys, all three of them, and the joy they bring to our lives. It's amazing how important all of my real and parasocial 10 friends have become in my life. A special shout out to the Minnesotans, the Crafty Tens, and the book club Tens. My plug this year is for the newsletter. Hey, speaking of a lot of Stubbot, a lot of Stu bot in the show this week, or today rather. My plug this year is for the newsletter put out by our fellow 10, Steve the Stubbot Newman. By the time this is red, it may be behind a paywall, but he's promised one a week will remain free. I think he's been doing that on Friday, right? Or at least he was at some point. Remain free to entice you in. He started the newsletter to monetize his amazing wit after his position at Surly got eliminated. Do you think that's why he was drinking Rainier the other day?
- [58:15]
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
- [58:15]
Luke Burbank
Was he clapping back?
- [58:17]
Andrew Walsh
He was.
- [58:18]
Luke Burbank
I. My guess would be that he's on a. He's on great terms.
- [58:20]
Andrew Walsh
He's on great terms with them. It was actually kind of a. It was a complicated piece of legislation that actually impacted Surly's bottom line that ended up leading to like, I think layoffs at other local breweries as well. Not just. I think it didn't that involve. Surly is an amazing place to work and he has no hard feelings. If I understand it correctly, CBD or something wasn't that. Or actually, I believe it wasn't just cbd. I think it was like something about THC that Actually, like, kind of was attached to the CBD bill and then they repealed it. And like, I don't know enough about it. I'm not, I'm not just trying to yach yada yada over because I don't want to get into the details. I can't get into the details. I've exhausted my knowledge.
- [59:00]
Luke Burbank
Here's the takeaway. Stu is writing this great newsletter, Midwest Excellence, and Carolyn would like to recommend it. She says I'm thoroughly enjoying my daily dose of snark. You can find it at Midwest Excellence Ghost IO I know that's the link because I posted about it the other day, Andrew, on Instagram. And that's the link. Stu, can we invest in what is Ghost IO? Have you ever seen. Is that what substacks do? Is that how substacks do or how newsletters do?
- [59:35]
Andrew Walsh
I'm not sure. My guess is he's not using substack. This is probably a different newsletter thing and maybe it's called Ghost. In fact, maybe that's where the substack was. I really don't know. My assumption was that he does not want people who are afraid of ghosts reading the newsletter because he does a lot of ghost related content and he felt like. Like if I put Ghost in there, nobody's gonna click on this. Who's afraid of Ghost? He doesn't want to scare anybody. That's not why he's doing it.
- [59:59]
Luke Burbank
Even though I've told him I ain't afraid of no ghost.
- [60:01]
Andrew Walsh
Well, you're okay then. You're good. That's why you subscribe newsletter.
- [60:06]
Luke Burbank
What I'm trying. Here's what I'm trying to find out. I'm trying to find out the SEO on this. Yes, here's the thing. You can just Google Midwest Excellence Newsletter.
- [60:15]
Andrew Walsh
Okay, good.
- [60:15]
Luke Burbank
If you. If you're not able to keep track of Midwest Excellence Ghost IO, just Google Midwest Excellence Newsletter and you will land in the right place.
- [60:26]
Andrew Walsh
Do you want an explanation though? You are right.
- [60:28]
Luke Burbank
Yeah.
- [60:28]
Andrew Walsh
Or. Or I am. I can't remember which one of us said it and it was only 10 seconds ago. So good for me. It looks like I just typed in Ghost newsletter hosting. And yes, there is something called Ghost, the best open source blog and newsletter platform. Now I'm promoting something that I'm not supposed to be promoting, but at least it explains why we have Ghost in the URL.
- [60:48]
Luke Burbank
That's right. Everybody go over to Midwest Excellence and subscribe and support our friend the Stubot, who's been a friend and colleague for all these Years. He's the best. And, Caroline. Thank you, Carolyn.
- [61:00]
Andrew Walsh
Golly, we were so close.
- [61:02]
Luke Burbank
I looked. I did. I did exactly what I was trying not to do, Andrew. Which is I looked at the way to not pronounce.
- [61:07]
Andrew Walsh
Carolyn. Yeah, yeah.
- [61:08]
Luke Burbank
And then I said it wrong. That's on me. I mean, it's a little bit on Carolyn as well. So let's just, you know, let's try to bring even more Midwest excellence next year. Carolyn, you're not. You're not here for the.
- [61:22]
Andrew Walsh
Making fun of the dazzling donors who have donated a dazzling amount of money to make the show possible.
- [61:28]
Luke Burbank
Carolyn, thank you. We love you. We appreciate you. You're the absolute best. Write the pronouncer however you want, please. Maestro, on your mark. On your mark.
- [61:36]
Andrew Walsh
Get set, get set now. Ready, ready, Go. Everybody ready?
- [61:42]
Luke Burbank
Hey, it's Carolyn McManus who's in Seattle, Washington.
- [61:47]
Andrew Walsh
Karen McManus.
- [61:49]
Luke Burbank
That's right. I say Carolyn.
- [61:50]
Andrew Walsh
I think you did. I wanted to.
- [61:52]
Luke Burbank
Caroline McManus.
- [61:54]
Andrew Walsh
I purposely didn't say you're wrong or something. I just said it so that if I did say it right, I was re. Emphasizing it.
- [62:00]
Luke Burbank
No, I think I literally.
- [62:01]
Andrew Walsh
Karen McManus.
- [62:02]
Luke Burbank
Karen in three, two, one. Karen McManus in Seattle, Washington. Karen, I'm so sorry, but thank you for the support all these years. We've been saying Karen's name for a long time, even correctly sometimes. Karen says TBTL has been entertaining me for so long. You all feel like part of my family. You have kept me going through some of life's biggest curveballs. Cancer, Covid, and the loss of some dear friends, and now this absurd presidency. Thank you so much for what you do. It truly is so important. Best, Karen. Yeah, I was. We had a lot of time. Becca and I had a lot of time to talk on the drive down to Eugene. And I was saying, like, the amount of my brain that unfortunately is taken up with thinking about the person who's currently in the White House, just, you know, it's. Unfortunately, he's one of the. Probably the first three things I think about in the morning. I don't want that to be the case. And to think about a time when that won't be the case, because that really will come, that will happen eventually, is so, like, I just look so forward to that. Look so forward to not having to. I mean, and there's things I could do to not give him so much real estate in my mind, and maybe I need to do that as well. But just like, yeah, it's a lot as they say Karen. And I'm glad that listening to TBT slightly gets your mind off of that and other things that are not great to think about. And yeah, we so appreciate you. Thank you for all you've done for the show. We couldn't do this without you.
- [63:42]
Andrew Walsh
Hello and welcome to Top Story.
- [63:45]
Luke Burbank
We were going to talk about movies, but actually let's not do that today because we're getting a little long in the tooth anyway, let's talk Andrew, about my first ever foray into legitimately using a large language model this weekend. And it absolutely delivering it was so helpful and it was exact, it was, it was. So what was happening was I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on Saturday heading into Portland to go to this track meet while I was also listening to the Mariners, while I was also being mad at the Mariners because they were, you know, at that time, I guess they had given up more runs. You know, they were losing to the St. Louis Cardinals. As we've already talked about. They eventually won the game. But what I was trying to figure out was how mad should I be at Cal Raleigh and also how mad should I be at the Mariners bullpen. Cal Raleigh had I think hit into a double play when it, at that moment of the game it seemed to me like hitting that double play and getting the clearing the bases of runners was like going to maybe mean that we don't win the game. So I'm kind of spiraling. I'm having an overly strong emotional reaction, but I'm in the car so I can't really look things. What I want to look up is, is Cal Raleigh playing so much worse this year than he was at the same time last year? That's what I wanted to know like is like or did he get off to a slow start last year and we just forget that because he ended up playing so well throughout the rest of the season. Was trying to realize how mad or trying to understand how mad I should be at him. So I asked my phone, I asked Siri, which Siri is not. That's, I mean that's apple. So I know you don't really mess with that anyway. But that's not really AI, is it? I guess it's something else or is it considered.
- [65:24]
Andrew Walsh
I don't know because before everybody was talking about AI so much when I said and by the way, I got to be careful because I think I got some notes. I did trigger people's devices by saying the actual well, sorry about that if I started your oh, that's a good point. For me, because mine is integrated with Google for the, for years now. I would be able to just say okay machine. I'm not saying the actual thing, but okay machine. And then I would ask a question, right?
- [65:50]
Luke Burbank
Yeah.
- [65:51]
Andrew Walsh
But then it would give me results from the web. So I didn't take that to be AI. I took that to be sort of a speech to text input and then, you know, delivering out something that they found online. Now AI is getting a lot of its information from crawling around the Internet. So I don't know where the one begins and the other ends.
- [66:11]
Luke Burbank
Right. So I didn't either. I thought, well, maybe Siri can do this. So I asked. Oh, sorry. I asked the machine. I don't know if me stopping now really helps after naming it three times, but I asked the machine on my phone while I was sitting in traffic, like can you compare Cal Raleigh's stats this year to the same point last year? And it gave me a completely non useful answer. It just started. I mean I, I don't even know if it was giving me his stats from any. It was something that didn't help at all.
- [66:40]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [66:41]
Luke Burbank
And I thought this might be where basically an Internet search that's like voice to Internet search, which is what that machine is, might really, this experience might be really improved by actually using some kind of an AI agent. And so right there, safely while we were stopped, I downloaded Gemini to my phone.
- [67:01]
Andrew Walsh
That one is the Google one, right?
- [67:04]
Luke Burbank
Yes. And sorry for saying it.
- [67:05]
Andrew Walsh
No, I don't think that one gets. I don't know if you're joking. I don't. I think you can. No, I name it for me when I'm. The reason I'm not saying the one is if you say okay and then the brand I'm thinking of, that is like the wake up thing. It sounds like we're in Westworld. That's what wakes. That's what wakes them up.
- [67:21]
Luke Burbank
It doesn't look like anything to me.
- [67:23]
Andrew Walsh
Right, Exactly. I don't, I think you could just say Gemini. I don't think people are going around using that to wake up their devices. Although I guess, I don't know, you might know more than I do on that.
- [67:31]
Luke Burbank
I downloaded Gemini and I was immediately regretful because it is in the Google universe and that means it wanted me to log in with my like Gmail and you know how all the problems that I have, generally speaking with my various Gmail accounts. But anyway, I got in there and then I just hit the, you know, little microphone deal and I just asked it. I Said, hey, can you compare Cal Raleigh's stats as of current day in 2026 versus the same period last year? And it gave me the most thorough. First of all, it talked to me, which is not that impossible to believe, but I didn't even realize. I thought it was going to just give me a, you know, like it was going to write it out for me. The phone just started talking to me,
- [68:10]
Andrew Walsh
talk to me, which I just really needed in that, honestly, somebody to reach.
- [68:14]
Luke Burbank
I'm very lonely. I'm very lonely. The phone just started talking to me and it just started explaining exactly what I was trying to understand, which was how Cal Raleigh's performance up to this point this season compares to last year. And the answer is he has not hit nearly as many home runs for average. He's relatively close. You know, he wasn't hitting for a huge average last year, but he had many more home runs. He had 10. Well, I think. What does he have this year? How many home runs? Six.
- [68:43]
Andrew Walsh
The last I heard that. I think I caught the end of the game yesterday in the car. I think I heard somebody say he had six so far.
- [68:48]
Luke Burbank
He hit one yesterday.
- [68:49]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, and I think that was a sixth. I think I'm not looking it up.
- [68:53]
Luke Burbank
So as of yesterday or as of Saturday, he was at like 5. And he had, the previous year he had hit 10 home runs. He was leading like the American League and maybe major leagues in home run number of home runs in the month of April. So he was off to a pretty hot, hot start. But again, it was, it, it understood exactly what I was trying to figure out. And, and this is where like, to try to find stats as of a certain day, you know what I mean? Like, as of April 25th of 2026, how does he compare to as of April 25th of 2025? Like, I don't even really know how to fully Internet search that in a way that's useful without just going through some, like, statistics, long statistical thing where I'm going and finding that as of that date, it knew exactly what I was asking. And then of course, because the Mariner's bullpen continued to give up runs, I asked it, hey, how is the Mariners bullpen this year as of right now compared to last year as of the same period of time? And that's where it said, well, actually, the Mariners bullpen is kind of confusing because on paper they look pretty good this year, but actually they've given up some really critical runs at certain times. And it was breaking it down the way your Friend who knows baseball would break it down. Like it was saying if you just look at the raw stats, if you just look at the like batting average, you know, or whatever like that the other teams are getting. If you look at some of the top line stats, it looks pretty similar to last year, but the numbers don't really tell the story because of these reasons and that reasons. And I was like, oh my God, don't praise the machine. This is doing exactly what I was wanting it to do. And this is vastly superior to just searching the Internet for this information for
- [70:35]
Andrew Walsh
me and take what I'm about to say in good faith because you know, I know I go on some pretty anti AI rants from time to time, but like this is the kind of usage that I think we can all agree on. I mean aside from the environmental impact, which I know a lot of people can't just like kind of toss out the window. But I'll toss it out the window now for a moment. Like this is as far as like a technology is concerned. Like I have no beef with this. Like, like gathering, synthesizing and offering intelligent data, questions and answers. It's like, well that's great. Who could have a problem with that Again, you know, putting aside all, maybe some of the other things that go along with whatever.
- [71:14]
Luke Burbank
Tim kirkjin.
- [71:15]
Andrew Walsh
But, but, yeah, right, but, but my question for you is how much do you trust those answers? Because have we double checked them? Because, no, I didn't, because I did my whole thing with like, hey, and it was baseball again. I was like, oh, this is the, it was last year after my baseball fantasy draft. I was like, I asked the machine, which was chatgpt and you know, I typed in like, hey, how'd I do? Give me a grade. And I told it what kind of a league I was in, what the rules were and how I drafted. And they gave me this whole answer and there was some player. Actually, you know what, maybe, maybe it was football, I can't remember, but it was like, oh, this player is injured. No, no, it was, it was a starting pitcher. It was a starting pitcher, whoever it was. And they're like, well this player is injured. So that's a curious take by you. Walsh, it calls me Walsh. And I was like, no, no, I was like, I double checked before I drafted. And I kept saying. And then everybody was like, oh yeah, but that's because you know the answers that ChatGPT is getting now, keep in mind this is last year and a different product than you are using. And I think time is moving. You know, I think time is changing the functionality of these things. I think they're. They're increasing their ability to probably read what's going on right now. But I am a little bit worried about it saying, oh, and by the way, on paper, it looks like that. That sounds to me like it maybe just scraped that from one particular news source or blog. I don't know. And I'm not trying to poop all over this.
- [72:37]
Luke Burbank
I'm just saying, no, no, no.
- [72:37]
Andrew Walsh
I want it to be. I actually want it to be right. You know what I mean? But. Because here's what I have, I keep on thinking about. You were saying a few. A while back, we were only like, two weeks in the baseball season. You were talking about the ABS challenges for folks who don't follow this. Just like now. Now it's not just umpires who are calling balls and strikes. If a player thinks that a ball was called a strike or vice versa, they can challenge it. And if you're right, you don't lose one of your challenges. You can continue to challenge things. And I'm just deeply, deeply curious now that we're, what, a month plus into the season? I want to know the stats on that. And I haven't found any good, simple source that says this is the number of challenges. These are the ones that were. The umps were right. You know, what percentage were upheld, what percentage were overturned. How does it break down when they're called defensively versus offensively, whether you got the bat in your hand or if you're the catcher? Like, I have a lot of questions, and it sort of seems like this would be. This should be a huge story about right now in this season, with the first year that this is available. There's so much to find interesting about these numbers, but I can't. I can't find that. So if. If Gemini were able to break that down, I would love that.
- [73:52]
Luke Burbank
But that's a good point. Can you believe it? And this is, you know, I mean, this is a sort of. I don't know, me being a bit gullible, I guess. I just took what the phone was telling me as I was sitting in traffic in battleground Washington. I just took it to be gospel truth. And you're absolutely right. These things hallucinate. These things say, too bad they're late is a birthday card. They say stuff that's like, you know, in fact. In fact, if it was, you know, if I was. If I had tuned into a podcast or whatever, read an article on a blog, that was written by a human. And they were saying, you know, if it was Matt Calkins writing in the Seattle Times, and he said, well, the bullpen looks good or looks pretty okay on paper, but actually they're doing badly in these departments or whatever. I would probably say, well, does he know what he's talking about? Like, I would be, you know, if getting this information from a human, I would be suspicious of it. But because my phone said it to me and it was from. Again, it's not the Internet. I know it's a large language model, I guess, referring to the Internet or referring to data.
- [74:52]
Andrew Walsh
It's getting the data from somewhere. Right.
- [74:54]
Luke Burbank
But, like, because it came from the machine, I just said, like, oh, well, the machine knows what it's talking about. But this is one of the cases where the machine sometimes doesn't know what it's talking about. So that's also. That's an important thing for me to. For me to also remember, because I literally had this thought, you know, after it. It answered those two questions for me. I thought, well, this is where I'm going for everything now, because that's also how my brain works. I'm like, oh, I had a good experience with this. This is new. Luke is just using this all the time now. I have not used it since those two questions, so maybe I'm not going to use it all the time. But I got to really bear in mind and remember that also these things are wrong a lot. So I've got to be careful about that.
- [75:31]
Andrew Walsh
And I'm not saying that as a hater. Like, again, like, just to be very, very clear, like, I would love it, too. And I don't want to say the word again. I got one time without lisping or stumbling, but to Carolyn. Carolyn, Carolyn.
- [75:44]
Luke Burbank
Karen and Carolyn. Karen and Carolyn.
- [75:46]
Andrew Walsh
So anyway, I. I hope it. I. I hope that's exactly how these tools seem.
- [75:51]
Luke Burbank
Like you were raining on my parade. That was actually. That's actually a good reminder. You know me, there's nothing that I love more than loud. Being loud wrong. And loudly trumpeting something that is incorrect but in no way diminishes my sense of conviction around the topic. And this is a whole new world where I could be getting a lot of bad intel and then repeating it and then. And then being loud wrong. So that's good for me to remember.
- [76:16]
Andrew Walsh
Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man. It's not from a female.
- [76:25]
Luke Burbank
All right, let's do an email. Or a v. Mail before we head on out. In fact, I've got one that I would love to read. I've only seen the subject line. It's from listener Ethan. And we were. How did we get on the topic of night courts the other day or night court?
- [76:41]
Andrew Walsh
Let's see. Well, we were definitely talking about the TV show Night Court. We're talking about bailiffs. I think this had to do with the fact. And by the way, listeners. Oh yeah, this is still hanging over my head. I am supposedly this Wednesday, I'm sort of flagged for jury duty, or at least maybe jury duty selection. And I got one confusing email from the court last week saying, like, if you don't hear anything from a judge or a bailiff, just continue on your day. If you get to the end, if you get to 4:30pm on the date of your supposed jury dirty and you haven't heard from anybody, then it was just the most confusing email. When will I hear from somebody? Can I go to work on Wednesday or not? And also I have another gig on Thursday I'm supposed to do. And I'm so confused about how this is all gonna work. But so far I have heard nothing from judge or a bailiff. And that is the important thing.
- [77:32]
Luke Burbank
That's what it was. It was because they literally said like, the bailiff might reach out to you, which is. I didn't know that fell under the bailiffly duties. You know, I thought that they were just there to wisecrack. Then we got on the subject of night court. And then when I was trying to look up night court as a concept, I kept just getting the TV show Night Court. And then we were wondering if that was still even a thing. And Ethan says, I was a public defender in New York City and Night Court definitely still exists.
- [78:00]
Andrew Walsh
You look like a dream catcher came to life. Sorry, I don't have it without the dream catcher part.
- [78:06]
Luke Burbank
Honestly, it's better this way. It's an entirely new piece of art. Newly arrived people were arraigned either during a day shift from a 9am to 4pm or a night shift from 5pm to 1am that was seven days a week, 365 days a year. God, Christmas Eve in Night Court.
- [78:26]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, there must be episodes in Night Court about the holidays, right? There must be.
- [78:32]
Luke Burbank
Golly, that would. That just sounds like that's not probably where I'd be wanting to spend my Christmas Eve. The legend has it. This is from Ethan's email. Legend has that back in the day, there were. There was A third shift in Manhattan known as the lobster shift. That was gone by the time I started in 2021 though. Signed Ethan. So in other words, that would be like a 1am to 6am shift or something. That's, See, I mean that's great to have as much, much court going on as possible because if you're somebody who gets in, in legal trouble and it's, let's say it's, you know, four in the afternoon, let's say that you're a parent and you got to take care of your kids and you get pulled over for speeding and you, your license is suspended and they got to take you in. And now you go in at 4 o' clock and there's the court is done for the day and now you've got to stay overnight in jail and you've got to wait until the next morning, probably 10 or 11am them to see a judge so that a judge can say, all right, I'm releasing you and you got to come back to court in a few weeks for this. Now what happens to your kids or whatever or what happens to your job? You know, like the idea that, and I'm talking about petty stuff here, not like if you were doing something violent in that case we should probably ask some questions about the safety of the public, but just the idea that like a kind of a dumb petty thing doesn't necessarily mean you got to stay the whole overnight in jail. That seems like a better system.
- [79:49]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, absolutely. And I wonder why. I mean, New York makes sense. They must have a very, very busy court system. But you would think other cities would have it as well. Of course. Like you yesterday or. I'm sorry, last week when we were talking about it, I was Googling too, but I was just typing in the words night court, not like New York night court. So let me just see what happens when I type in Seattle night court. Because maybe I could get jury duty on a night court living.
- [80:12]
Luke Burbank
That would be awesome. Now that I would. Weirdly, I don't want to be in night court like as a defendant, but I would love to be a juror in night court. That seems like that'd be a fun, sexy court to be.
- [80:23]
Andrew Walsh
Here's an op ed headline from. Oh my goodness. This was just written up like a couple of weeks ago in the Urbanist Op ed night court could help Seattle deliver timely justice. Seattle's courts face a simple challenge. More cases than available courtroom hours. So it looks like somebody is making the argument for opening up night court in Seattle. If I'm reading this quickly, correctly, and
- [80:45]
Luke Burbank
it sounds like, based on kind of what I was saying, which is like, let's not keep.
- [80:49]
Andrew Walsh
Keep people.
- [80:49]
Luke Burbank
Again, nonviolent defendants. Let's not keep them in jail unduly because there isn't a way to process them. Let's try to get them processed and back, you know, dealing with whatever they're dealing with as quickly as possible.
- [81:02]
Andrew Walsh
This is actually interesting. So this is a. This is a pretty. Well, I mean, I don't even care if things are well written. It's well formatted and God, do I love formatting. There's a subheading here. A proven model. Manhattan's night court. Seattle would not be the first city to explore expanded. Expanded court hours. In 1907, New York City introduced one of the nation's earliest night courts in Manhattan, originally to address a practical issue. Individuals arrested after normal business hours were forced to remain in custody overnight simply because courts were closed. The results were immediate. Within the first year of operation, Manhattan's night court processed more than 46,000 arraignments in a year. Wow. Representing roughly a quarter of the borough's total arraignments at that time. Then it goes on to say why night court works well and how it could be a practical step for Seattle. This is actually really interesting. Wow.
- [81:48]
Luke Burbank
Yeah.
- [81:48]
Andrew Walsh
God, I hate it when we actually stumble on something kind of wise on this show. That is not what we're.
- [81:55]
Luke Burbank
Well, it's all thanks to listener Ethan.
- [81:57]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, that is true. Well, and a little bit of Bull and a little bit of. Do we remember the other. We had all the bailiffs.
- [82:07]
Luke Burbank
Well, Marsha Warfield. I don't remember Marsha Warfield's character's name. Roz, I think Roz. Roz.
- [82:12]
Andrew Walsh
Roz, Right, right. Exactly. And then.
- [82:14]
Luke Burbank
And then wasn't there a third one too?
- [82:15]
Andrew Walsh
I think a Selma. Selma was.
- [82:18]
Luke Burbank
I don't know. I don't know if I remember.
- [82:19]
Andrew Walsh
I think she was the first. I think Roz or Bull replaced her in later seasons. I believe. I believe it was like sort of a. On Cheers, sort of a Coach Woody situation.
- [82:30]
Luke Burbank
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I recognize Selma. Selma Diamond.
- [82:33]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
- [82:33]
Luke Burbank
Played by the gravel voiced, chain smoking bailiff, Selma Hacker.
- [82:38]
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. I was gonna say you would recognize her voice immediately. Immediately. So.
- [82:42]
Luke Burbank
So I love that they decided to go with her. Her real name was Selma and they named the character Selma.
- [82:49]
Andrew Walsh
And it fits, right? You're like, yeah, well, let's. She's. She definitely plays a Selma, I would say.
- [82:56]
Luke Burbank
Yeah. All right, well, thanks, Ethan. Appreciate that. All right. Well, let's go ahead and wrap things on up for today. I know you've got dogs to dad, live wires to record and I think we're going to watch later.
- [83:10]
Andrew Walsh
I think we're going to go to the hardware store again today. I actually have a bunch of stuff on the list and she enjoyed it last time, so it's time to put her in the cart and drive her around.
- [83:19]
Luke Burbank
Feel free to send pics.
- [83:20]
Andrew Walsh
I will. Or video. I honestly, I'm trying not to overwhelm people with pictures of the.
- [83:25]
Luke Burbank
I'm not. I've told you this before. It's not overwhelming to me. It fills me with joy. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. That's going to do it for today's episode. But we will be right back here tomorrow with more Americans imaginary radio. So come on by for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. Go Jalapenos as well. And please remember, no mountain too tall.
- [83:45]
Andrew Walsh
And good luck to all. Power out.