Episode 44 (Frank Tursi's Book, Baseball Evolution, Frank's Journalism Career)

In this episode of the Hot Ashes Podcast, Lee and TK sit down with Frank Tursi—four‑time published author, longtime journalist, and former Swansboro commissioner—to talk about his new book Tar Heel Boys of Summer, a deep dive into North Carolina’s Major League Baseball history.

Frank shares how the book began as a COVID project and grew into a comprehensive look at the 501 North Carolinians who made the majors, including often-overlooked Negro League players. He tells rich stories about legends like Catfish Hunter, Buck Leonard, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Tom Alston, weaving in themes of free agency, money, race, alcohol, and how baseball mirrored American society across the 20th century.

We also get into Frank’s decades in journalism—covering cops, sports, and the environment—how working on deadline kills “writer’s block,” and how those skills carried into his environmental work and time as a local elected official.

Grab a cigar, pour a drink, and settle in for a conversation that’s as much about America and North Carolina as it is about baseball.

Get Frank’s book “Tar Heel Boys of Summer” here: https://a.co/d/03KuJ9Tx 

#HotAshesPodcast #FrankTursi #TarHeelBoysOfSummer #BaseballHistory #NorthCarolinaBaseball #NegroLeagues #MLBHistory #CatfishHunter #BuckLeonard #MickeyMantle #BabeRuth #SportsHistory #CigarPodcast #CigarLoungeTalk #NorthCarolina #Journalism #LongformStorytelling #BaseballBooks #PodcastEpisode

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Welcome back to the Hot Ashes Podcast. I'm Lee TK, baby. We got a good one for you today. We have a super famous person with us today.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

I'm excited about this one.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

It's gonna be good. So we're gonna do what we always do. We're gonna walk around the t- walk around the table. We're gonna go around the table. Talk about what we're smoking and what we're drinking. And I will start. I am smoking. Hey, Georges. It's not the box press torpedo. It's uh it's the same tobacco, but he's out of the torpedoes for like for like three weeks. So I'm very upset about that. Are you gonna be okay? No, I'm not. I am drinking delicious water because it's early. So I'm not gonna get to beer until a little bit later. TK smoking drinking.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

TK is over here smoking uh banless Georgia Select. The from the you know from the deep bottom of the box. From yeah, Nicaragua, yeah. Yeah. So, and I'm also enjoying, which I've been doing the past couple episodes, been hitting up some cold brew coffee from right across the street. Yeah, that's been your drink.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Oh, and welcome back.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

We did one with with we'll have to get to your uh camp and thing. Yeah, we'll talk about that later. I'm battered and tattered from that still. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. All right, who we got on microphone three?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:41

It's Mr. Frank Turcy.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

I was gonna give a whole big long Let me let me just say, I'm only famous here at the cigar shop and anywhere else. Yeah, but that's a good place to be famous. Yes, I guess it is, yes. Thank you for joining us. Well, I'm I'm happy to be here. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

So, Frank, what are you smoking?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

One of George's, whatever this one's called.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

That one's called the Rise and Grind. It used to be the mice trip.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

It may be the best smoke in the house, but for the price, yes. Very good smoke. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

And I see you're drinking water. And I'm drinking water. That's 12 o'clock. H2O. I guess it's 12 o'clock. All right, microphone four. We got Chris.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Chris Rabossi drinking it, uh smoking one of George's uh box presses, and uh water is for the week. So I'm drinking uh Silver Carpenter A C I P A non-alcoholic.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

You've been with the Silver Carpenter for a while. That's been your brand.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

A big fan of the Silver Carpenter. Yeah. Food line special.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Nice, good. I've tried, well, I've I've tasted the non-alcoholic because I'm not drinking during the week. Right. Only on the weekends, but these guys are like, here you want one of these non-alcoholics? No, it's gross. I don't want the I want the buzz with the taste.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

I'm gonna drink beer.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Without further ado, I don't want to, we're gonna just jump right into this. We'll start off with this book. So Frank is a published author, four-time published author, if I'm not uh mistaken. This book is, and we've talked about it on the show before, it's the Tar Heel Boys of Summer. And it's about North Carolina's Major League Baseball players. We're gonna be looking in that one right there, but uh we'll we could put a picture up on it. So, Frank, uh, first of all, what made you want to write this giant book?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

I'm a baseball fan, and you know, it's really the only sport that I've ever cared about. And um, and I and you know, I spent you know, 30 years as a journalist, most of that in North Carolina, and during that time I interviewed several of the players that are in the book. Um, and then COVID hit, and uh, you know, that one winter uh we were locked down. So really this the book started as a way to spend time meaningfully during COVID. Um and and so I started the research, and and it's it's all North Carolinians, including the Negro leaguers, that they're harder to find than the white players, but at least 50 in North Carolina played in the Negro leagues. And so it's all all all North Carolinians who made it into the major leagues, and as of the 24 season, that was 501.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

501, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So I've I've profiled 34. Um there are little sketches of all 501, and then it's a baseball book, so the back is full of statistics. If you want to know who is the home run hitter, leads home run hitting in North Carolina, you can find it. So it was published in April. So it really was a way to just spend the time meaningfully um during COVID.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Do any of them uh do you hang on to any of them? You have like a favorite one that you did?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

I don't have a favorite, but there are there are some very good stories in there. And um, and uh you know the Jim Hunter, which everyone knows is Catfish Hunter Um is in the Hall of Fame, one of the seven North Carolinians in the Hall of Fame. And I interviewed him when he was elected into the hall in the late 80s, 87, 88. Spent two days with him in Hertford. And he really is just a genuinely was. He died, but he generally was a nice guy. Yeah, and and I think in the book, you know, I termed him the the nicest farmer to ever pitch a perfect game. Um everyone called him Jimmy in Perquimans County. He wasn't known as catfish. That was a name that his owner gave him because he thought it was clever for a boy from the south who liked to hunt and fish to be called catfish. And that's what he's known as. But but back home he's always been Jimmy. And um he was a genuinely nice guy, and he was also the your younger baseball fans don't understand the way it used to be when Hunter played. Um there was no free agency. Uh when you sign with the team, there was a in the standard contract, it was called the Reserve Clause, and you were bound to that team for the rest of your playing career. Damn. Wow. And so the contracts were annual. You had no negoti couldn't negotiate with other teams, so you had no bargaining power.

SPEAKER_05 6:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

So you ended up whatever you know the owner wanted to give you. Now, it's not to say they weren't well paid for their time. They were, but not at the astronomical levels that we see now. And it was Hunter who started that. Okay. Um there was a clause in his contract when he was with the the the uh Kansas City team uh that later went to Oakland and won three World Series. Um, but he was half of his contract was supposed to go into annuity. Well, his owner didn't do that. Hunter sued, won, and was declared a free agent. And he made $100,000 in 1974. What back then was it? 1974 was good months. Once he was declared a free agent, he had he was a Cy Young Award winner, the leader of this team that won three World Series. Yeah, the price went up $100,000 a day. And so he ends up signing for $3.2 million over four years, which was at the time astronomical. Yeah, right. You know, and he told me he couldn't imagine just a million dollars to play baseball. He he just couldn't imagine it.

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Um it's like trying to think about how big the universe is, like you're not real.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

And you we don't, you know, nowadays that he would be a picture of his quality today, you would start talking at 20 million a year. That's what that's what you're talking at. And but at the time, but he he was he was he was just humble throughout the whole process, and uh but he changed baseball. He helped change baseball. So that's one of my favorite stories in the book. And there are a lot of others. I mean, there really are some really good good players. Most people have never heard of.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Yeah, I always see like the uh the signs on the road where it's like home of there's some Robinson guy, I can't remember his name. It's uh it's either on the way to Raleigh or I can't remember. Jim Robinson?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Let me ask you a question about Jim Hunter, though. When he became a free agent at this at that point in his career, was he still like peak level performer or was it later?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

He won twenty he signed with the Yankees, played for his final four years with the Yankees. In his first year, he won 20 games. Okay. But the Yankees abused him. I mean, he pitched 300 innings a year. Damn. Jeez. Um and by the time his second, by the time third year of his contract, he was pretty much but he was the winning pitcher on the World Series, the last World Series uh game the Yankees won.

SPEAKER_05 8:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

So he was on the mound. Uh he was a money, what what's what was known as a money pitcher. That if you had to win a game, you your life depended on He's the guy. He's the guy you wanted on the mound. Damn, that's cool. And so that you know, but he was always very humble about it. And he was a farmer, and he did that when he retired. He became a farmer, he contracted Lou Gehrick's disease and died. Damn. Uh but yeah, he's he's truly one of the great, you know, the royalty of baseball.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Wasn't Lou Gehrig a Yankee? Wasn't he a Yankee?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Uh that's so crazy, man. Was there any common thread amongst the players that said, like, hey, this is what makes North Carolina so special?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

And I think, you know, if you look at those profiles collectively, now these are players who these are players who came up in the early to mid-20th century.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Um, so North Carolina was a rural state. Sure. Um, textiles and tobacco were the industries in the state. Um, these guys all came from farms, they came from mill towns, every text, most of the large tech, or all the large technologies. Super humble means had villages. You know, they were mill villages where the where the employees lived. They had their own baseball teams. Those industrial leagues, many of these players came up to those industrial leagues, were very competitive. Um the good the good teams would hire players with no show jobs at the mill. All they had to do was play baseball, but they got paid for for a mill job. Um, so all that comes up in the book, and it paints a picture of a North Carolina that's that's now gone.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Um that's very different. Um, and that wasn't that long ago, you know, 50 years ago. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I think there are there are those common threads that that uh that's now different. You know, you look at the modern players, it's it's all different. Free agency changed everything.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah. I mean, and and you said it before, like the the astronomical numbers that you hear of now. Yeah. And you know, the record gets broken all the time. It's like this person's made how many hundreds of millions.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Most most of the players in the book had to have jobs in the window.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Right. They worked, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Sold cars.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

And they're playing, they play major league baseball.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yes, and you know, the good ones, like a lot of them car salesmen for obvious reasons. The reputation, you know, you know, you got Ian Slaughter selling cars for you. Yeah, you're gonna go go to the beauty dealership and go. Right. You want to buy a car from that guy. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So they were salesmen, clothes salesmen, you know, of some sort to play on their reputations. But yeah, they all had jobs.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

That's so crazy how different it is now because you couldn't even imagine seeing uh and then you know the Negro leagues they they played at a time when the society was separated, baseball was certainly separated, blacks couldn't play in the white major leagues. So a whole league, professional league, developed in the 20s and 30s of some very good ball players uh who could have played in the white major leagues.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

One easily probably been superstars. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

There's a guy when when I went to in in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina in the early nineties, they had a Buck Leonard day. Uh Leonard was made in his nineties, and this was just a day to honor a native son. Buck Leonard was they called him the Black Lou Garrick. That's how good he was.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Um played on the Homestead Greys, which won nine consecutive championships. Wow. Um batted ahead of Josh Gibson, who was probably the best catcher to ever play. They were called the Thunder Twins. I mean, this guy was a a talent star.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Um who heard of him? I mean, you know, whites didn't go to the games.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Uh photographers from white newspapers didn't go take pictures, so it was very difficult. And if you look in the book, the section on the Negro Leaguers, there are only two pictures.

SPEAKER_04 12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

And it's not because I could just lack of coverage, no exposure. Yeah, they they just they didn't exist, they didn't, they didn't survive the digital age. Right. And so they're not available in repositories. Well, you can Lou Garrett. Yeah, a million pictures you can choose. Right. But Buck Leonard, who was somewhat of the equivalent, you know, they're a handful of pictures, and it's later in life when he became a celebrity.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Right, right, yeah. It's not like while he was playing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

So it yeah, it's uh, but you know, another one of my favorites, you know, and he came from a train yard in Rocky Mount. We even stalled in breaks. Yeah. Lost his job in the Depression. The only other talent he had was playing baseball. Yeah. So he he migrated up to the north and started playing for, you know, black team, professional teams, and h got on to the Greys, which was one of the great franchises in sports history.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah. Well, so that league just kind of dissolved when they joined.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, once once Jackie Robinson broke the culberry in the 1940, there was no reason. You know, now the talented players were playing where the money was. Because there was never any money in the black major leagues. Right. So, yeah, by by the late 50s, the Negro Leagues dissolved. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Damn, that's pretty cool. Now, uh when you so one of the things I remember you talking about and was the incorporating pictures. How difficult was that, like incorporating pictures in the book?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Well, I mean, you know, it it it it really becomes a price because the book the more pictures you have, the more expensive it is to print the book. Yeah. So the publisher had a price point. Yeah. So I you know, I was bound by economics here. Yeah. So I knew how many pictures, and plus I had to pay for most of them. Right. Uh there are only a handful that came from public repositories that the copyright issues were settled. Um, so yeah, so it became uh an issue of money as to just how many pictures you can print. But it it wasn't difficult to find pictures. Um I looked for unusual pictures. Because you can, you know, the one of our Hall of Fame is Enough Slaughter, played for the St. Louis Cardinals for many years and and then was let go by the Cardinals. And there's a very faint poignant pic story in his life where how crushed he was, that the team he had played his entire career for, one World Series, was an MVP, let him go, traded him. Yeah. And and there's a great scene where he he told he told about it that he was crying in the locker room when he was getting his uniform out of the locker room. Well, I found the picture. So uh yeah, he's he's on he's taking his uniform out of the locker for the last time. Oh man, that's gnarly. Dressed in street clothes, but I so I tried to find pictures that fit the story. Yeah. And because I knew I was going to be limited to how many I could run, so I said, let's run something. We gotta get the good ones. Yeah, that people haven't seen before, that's somewhat unusual.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

So yeah. So now you uh and and I don't know if we've talked about it yet, your former career was as a journalist, and you've interviewed quite a few people. Yeah. So that well, who's the most famous baseball player?

SPEAKER_03 15:33

I had one more question before we go like into the interviews. Uh so you're talking about writing the book during COVID, but been essentially writing for most of your adult life. Is that a true correct statement? Yeah. So you said it came to fruition during COVID, but is this kind of style of book or this kind of topic, is that something that you always knew that you wanted to write about? Yeah, well, you know, and then you finally had the chance during COVID? That's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah, when I was interviewing, you know, Bug Buck Leonard and um uh Hunter and others, uh You knew it could become a compilation of some sort. Ernie Shore was the sheriff of Forsyth County, where I worked for 25 years. One day in 1917, Ernie comes off the bench to relieve Babe Ruth. They're playing for the Red Sox in 1917. Ruth was not yet the slugger that would change the game, but he was a very good left-handed pitcher. He started a double-headed with Washington, and Ernie wasn't scheduled, Ernie played for the Red Sox, wasn't scheduled to pitch that day, and he was really looking for a long after idle afternoon of doing nothing on a Sunday. Well, babe in the first inning walks the first batter, gets in an argument with the home plate umpire, a guy named Brick Owens. Now, Brick started Umpire when he was 14 years old professionally on the streets of Moldwater, was got in numerous altercations with fans and players. One person in the fan threw a brick at him, hit him in the head, knocked him out. He cleaned the wound and said play ball. And so from that he got his nickname, Brick Owens, which he always said was better than a lot of the other names that people called him. So Brick was behind the plate and he wasn't gonna take any shit from, no matter what how talented this kid was. So Babe charges him, the catcher stops him.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

You're out of here.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

It takes two cops to drag Babe off the field. Well, the manager calls Ernie and says, You're up. Just try to get out of the inning. So the first batter who walked tried to steal second, the catcher threw him out. And Ernie proceeds to retire the next 26 batters. Wow. And is credited with a no-hitter. Uh he and Babe. He and Babe are credited with a co-no-hitter. And he was the sheriff of Fersythe County, who I talked to dozens of times and can talk tell stories about Babe Ruth. He roomed with Babe Ruth. So from all that, this book starts to form in my head. Yeah. And then COVID hits and say, well, hell, that's a good thing. Now what else am I doing? Yeah. You know, and I have to say, I did that all from Swansboro. Uh, ten years ago it wasn't possible. Just was not possible. To get the kinds of quotes and background and context for these stories, I would have had to gone to libraries all over the state, numerous states, and it just wouldn't have been financially for a book that's not going to make me a millionaire. It just wasn't going to be possible. But the internet makes that all possible. And I don't know what the Mormons' original idea of what ancestry was, but for 200 bucks a year, I have access to give me a name, give me a birth date, give me a town where the person was either born or spent a lot of time of his life, and as quick as an uh an uh instant internet connection, I have the framework of a life. Death certificate, birth certificate, military discharge papers, citations, employment records. Every it's right there. And then from that framework, I can go into newspapers, which Ancestry, again, I got access to millions of pages of newspapers going back to the 1870s. So if I know a date in which Ernie Shore pitched, I can go to the Baltim Boston papers and get reporting from that day with quotes and and and then story fills out.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

But yeah, ten years ago it would have been impossible. So yeah, the internet has also changed things as far as as a research tool, it's it can be invaluable. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Okay, now I didn't mean to cut you off, but I wanted to ask that before.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Well, I noticed your shirt and I know whose shirt it is because I asked you before the show. So who is the most famous baseball player you've ever met?

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Well, I I when I give talks about this, I always ask, I I I say you get a prize. If anyone in the audience can this outfit here, if you're a baseball fan, particularly of some long and tooth, this should set uh neurons in your brain going off saying something's not right. There's something wrong with this picture. And only once in the was someone was someone able to get it. This this is a Brooklyn Dodger. For you younger fans, the Dodgers you know that are now in Los Angeles started in Brooklyn. And my father was a great Brooklyn Dodger fan, and and the Dodger fans were known for their passion and and and so my father was an Italian immigrant. I'm also convinced it introduced him to America.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

He had a hot dog for the first time at Fen at Ebbettes Field.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Um, he learned the language through the language of baseball. And and so it helped acclimate him to his new country. And it's not he wasn't alone. A lot of Italian Americans of that generation were deep baseball fans, New York baseball fans for the same reason. But so I I wear the hat in honor of him. And this, of course, is a Yankee uh traveling jersey. You can see the seven. Um, it's Mickey Mannel's jersey, or you know, facsimile of his jersey. Um and Mannell, a kid born on the Brooklyn streets in the 1950s. Mickey Mannell was the man. Oh, yeah, yeah. He was the dude. And you know, we never we wouldn't put it, think it was sacrilegious to put a baseball card in a spokesy bicycle. No way. And even if you had triplicates, you would never trade it. You know, he he was the man. Um, so my father, bless his heart, a Brooklyn Dodger fan, you could not be a Yankee fan. You couldn't, it's it was impossible. But the the Dodgers left town at the end of the 57 season, and I come up in 1960. I'm 10 years old, and I'm a Yankee. Fan. And I I think to my father's greatest regret in life was that his only son became a Yankee fan. But I had no choice. The Dodgers, the Dodgers left, the Giants left. The Yankees were the only team in town. When I'm getting old enough to form fan, you know. So I became a Yankee fan. Bless his heart. My father always took me to the games. And they were day games. Gritting his teeth the whole time. Rooting for the other team. He was. He was rooting and very vocal about it, but rooting for the other team. So I used to, these were day games. They started at two o'clock. They were over by four. It took an hour and a half, two hours to play the baseball game. And they were over by four. And that was because they didn't change pictures. The starting pitcher ended the game, so there wasn't all this changing because that's what takes up the time. But anyway, we we I used to beg the old man to stick, let's stick around after a game. So when the players come out at a clubhouse, and you could see the clubhouse door on River Avenue, when the players come out of the clubhouse, we can see him and I go get autographs. So we're at a bar across from Yankee State. I'm having a hot dog, he's having a beer. It's like six o'clock, six thirty, and I see the clubhouse door open.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Here they come.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Here they come. So I go dashing across the street. And there were probably 10 or 12 other kids. Yeah. Same thing. So there's not a kids at the clubhouse door. Yogi Berra comes out and signs order grass.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Roger Maris comes out and signs the order grass. Whitey Ford comes out to sign the order grass. That was all nice. But we wanted to make. Here comes Mann. Literally pushed kids away. Okay? Got into his Cadillac in the players' parking lot and zoomed down the street. No way. I said, what the fuck? Fast forward 60, 25 years. Mannel's retired. He's working for the Bally Corporation, which at the time, he and Willie Mays were working for this corporation, which owned the casinos in Atlantic City. The I think it was Bowie Kune, whoever the commissioner was at the time, gave Mannel and Mays an ultimatum. Get out of that gambling, or with I'm throwing you out of baseball. So we it was he gave them a deadline, two or three weeks, and it was during this period, this two or three week deadline, that Bally had a golf tournament for its it was just a promotional golf tournament at Tanglewood, which was a PGA course outside of Winston-Salem. Mann would be there, of course, as you know. He's the the guy, the celeb so I I I was a sports writer at the time, and so I got ten minutes. They gave me ten minutes with Mickey Mantle at seven o'clock in the morning. It's pouring. I get there at seven o'clock, and it is pouring rain. Mann gets there a little later than that. The bar's closed, but he gets a coarse light from the bar. I introduced myself, and it rained the rest of the day. It poured. So they canceled the tournament. So my ten minutes turned into several hours. That's a little bit of a man. So I told him this story from 1960. He said, Oh man, maybe I struck out three times that day. I said, Mick, I didn't give a fuck. You moved your battle. You struck out four times. I didn't care. So I was wearing an old Yankees hat that I got as a kid. It didn't even fit on my head anymore. It was just sitting on the crown. Sitting on the crown. And when Mannell saw it, he said, Damn, who gave you that hat? Miller Huggins, who was a Yankee manager in the 1930s. So I had this hat on my head and I tell him this story. He says, God damn it, give me that hat. And he grabbed the hat and he signed the bill. And I have a picture of him wearing the hat and me with my arm around him.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Oh, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

To authenticate the the uh the autograph. So yeah, that that's my Mickey Mantle story.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

But he and you grew up idolizing the guy and then you got to interview him.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

He was he was also a genuinely nice guy. Yeah. Um he had issues with alcohol. Uh yeah. He did. Um, and it it killed him. But but uh you know, in his famous, you know, told kids, don't be like me. Um I don't know if you all remember that. He was a week or so from being from that.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

No, wasn't that movie 61 about him?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yes, yeah, uh he and Roger Maris. Yeah. But yeah, he got on national television.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Was he just having like a full circle closure of life? Like, hey, do not go down this road?

SPEAKER_00 26:41

He alcoholic alcohol had ruined his liver. He somehow qualified for a liver transplant, I suspect, because he was making mad also and got a liver transplant, but didn't last long after that. And uh, you know, for him to get up there on National Telling he was old, and I mean you can tell he he was a sick man. You know, tell kids don't be like me. Damn. And uh the message to kids like me who wanted to be like was very poignant and very powerful.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

So he he was he was also a nice guy who and he handled his fame pretty well. Um many do not, and it's not only in sports, but many people don't you know don't handle I've interviewed very thousands of people. Um but he he handled his fame very well.

SPEAKER_04 27:32

You guys hear that? What is that? I don't know what that is. Is it coming outside? No, it's in our ears.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Yeah, it's one of our either mics or headphones or something. Yeah, you're doing something. You hear that? Yeah, yeah, I guess TK messed with something. Yeah, yeah, you should have. Uh so then that was that was not the most famous person though that you interviewed as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

It's probably well it it was the to me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, like your hero. It was the most important person to me. That's weird. Just because of the personal when I was a kid. Yeah, those those attachments, but um but you know, you you know, I yeah, I've interviewed governors, I I've interviewed senators, but you know, it's it was just part of the job. I mean, it wasn't uh um I'll I'll I'll tell you I was just starting, I was a kid. Uh I got my it was my second newspaper job. We were in Key Bus Gang, Florida. I was a cop reporter. Um, and um we were my wife and I went to pizza one Friday night. You know, I knew a lot of the sheriffs and the local police officers, so one of the sheriffs came up to me and said, uh, you need to check on a disturbance that we answered last night at uh at Sanesta Beach, one of their cottages. It was a big hotel on the island called Senate. Cubiscane is a little island off in Biscayne Bay off of Miami. Um and the police had answered a call at one of the houses that you check that out, the cop told me. So I did. Turned out it was Warren Beatty. Oh, cool. It was right after that movie Shampoo came out, and he had the the the indication seemed to be there was some he was beating somebody up, which but I I was I was working, I used to freelance for the Inquirer.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Oh no way.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Yeah, I did. And I'm not I'm not I I mean I did mostly medical stories, um, and they were they paid very well. Yeah. Um they set a tabloid? Yeah. Yeah, they they paid very I did that for about a year, but and and and no story as I wrote it ever appeared in Inquirer as I wrote it. So rewrote everything, but they and they didn't even give you byline. It was Malcolm Balfour, who was my editor, who I I sense has passed on, but but they were all from Australia. What but they paid very well. And if you're a kid struggling along, yeah, you know, getting a hundred dollars a story, uh that that's pretty good. Right, right. So the story ran in the inquiry, yeah, about the suspicion of Warren Beatty. But I interviewed Warren Beatty. And he was he was very nice. Yeah. Everybody's nice. Yeah, he was very nice. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Golly, that's cool. So going back to like the the baseball players and interviewing them and stuff, was uh uh like regular alcohol use, was that like a pretty normalized thing amongst the board?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

That that that that will be an that's also a theme that runs throughout the book is how alcoholism affected the careers of a number of players. Right. Um But it was the standard almost, right? These were day games, yeah. So they were over by four or five o'clock. Time to hit the bar. Yeah, these were kids in their twenties with nothing to do. They they usually didn't have their if they were married, their wives didn't travel with them. Right. Um, so yeah, they got into alcohol and women and and no, it wasn't uncommon. Yeah, right. Um, but it it it bore it really bore bore down on them in their careers because you see a lot of deterioration of careers um that would not have as quickly as it did if not for the alcohol. And and it left some of them truly destitute. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Well, it's funny how you you look at the physique and stuff of a ball player in the twenties and then the physique of like right now, right? Like they're bench pressing cars and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Yeah, and they didn't they didn't have the training facilities or or any of that. Um, you know, and uh yeah, they did train. I mean, yeah, yeah, but it was they threw a a wake ball around or yeah, but like do you look at Babe Ruth. Well, actually, you know, that's that's that's a misconception because actually, Babe, the pictures we see of Babe are late in his career. Oh, okay. But that's when photography and particularly videography developed. So we see a babe in his late 30s, mid to late 30s, he's gained weight. But you look at a babe in 19 from 1917 to early 20s, he was he was fast. I mean, he was never sleek, yeah, but he was well built.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

But super athletic, though.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

And super athletic. He was he was a fine outfielder, he was a great defensive outfielder, had a great arm. Yeah, was as I said, was the best left-handed pitcher in baseball when he was pitching in the in the teens. Um, so he was an athlete. And you know, I think that's lost, and particularly a lot of younger players, and I always chuckle when I see these comparisons of Shoho Itani and Babe Ruth. It's not it really isn't even close. Yeah, right, right, right. Um, but you know, they they don't conceive of because they see the Ruth they see is this fat old man who could smoking a cigar.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Smoking a cigar could hit home runs. But the pitches weren't as good back then, which of course is baloney, but you know, that's the concept. Yeah, and but no, babe was Babe was a hell of an athlete. Yeah, he was a base dealer. Um he was rash sometimes, um, because he just didn't know.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

At what time in his career did he do the famous call in the home run? Was that like later in the career?

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, you know, when he he he the the Red Sox traded him to the Yankees in 1920, and then he became Isn't that where the curse of the Yes, that that was the band curse of the great Bambino. Yeah. Um and uh and when he got to the Yankees, everyone realized only you playing him f once every four days as a pitcher was you you you you were wasting his talent. So they they turned him into an outfielder, and then he became hit 50. He had more home runs than teams were hitting. Um and yeah, became and changed baseball. I mean he just literally, and he was a perfect, he was a perfect example of 1920s America. The excesses because yeah, when he before he got married, he was the womanizer. Um, you know, I th one of his roommates once famously said, I didn't I had a room with the babe, I roomed with his suitcases. And you know, he he was because he was never there, he was never there, you know. So he he he there's there's you know he got sick in Asheville, um, and it's called the Great Belly Ache curved round the world. They were on spring training and they were working their way back to New York and they played the team at Asheville, the minor league team. And babe got what the Yankees said was a bellyache by eating too many hot dogs and was hospitalized. Now, there's always been speculation that there was something else he was in and uh some venereal disease is is is suspect. Um but yeah, he was a womanizer and all that, but then he got married and he he did settle down, and he he was the first player to have an off-season trainer. Um and so yeah, he trained in the off-season, he had a farm someplace in New England or upstate New York, and he would you know haul wood. That was his you know, that was his exercise. But you know, he no, it it's it's really does him a disservice to just think of him as a fat old guy who can hit home runs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:15

It is crazy like how that is what the you know what people would see him like now, like somebody my age, I'm 35. You can see pictures of babe roof, and you're like, that dude can't even run to first base.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Well, you know, it's it's very instructive. One of the things I did, you know, I was read these old newspapers. And so I was reading papers in the 1920s, and that allows you to put people in the context of their times. Yeah. And where Babe Ruth fit in the culture of the 1920s, there there wasn't a sports, there wasn't an athlete like Babe. Jack Dempsey came close, and he was the heavyweight champion of the world, but yeah, Dempsey wasn't the flamboyant guy that Babe was. Um he was heavyweight champion of the world. He didn't have to be. Yeah, no talking necessary. And and so, you know, it it it's to put put these figures in their times, yeah, to realize what they really meant to culture, to America. And Babe meant a great deal. I mean, you know, there's a great story told in the fighting in on in the Pacific during World War II, that the Japanese would yell across lines, fuck Babe Ruth. Not fuck Franklin Roosevelt, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

But Babe Ruth. Because they know that that means something to people.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

What does that mean? Babe Ruth. Yeah, so so yeah, yeah. And and it's too bad that young baseball fans don't understand that and they start making comparisons. Yeah, because it really is silly comparison. That's why they need to read your book. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

I had you I had you muted because the your mic is what's making that noise. Oh, it was? Okay. That's why people need to read your book? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Yeah, even if you're not a base, and my my wife loves so many, she's not a baseball fan. Yeah. Uh, but because they are stories about people in a time in North Carolina that is essentially gone.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

So that's what I think is cool about it, is that it is, you know, North Carolina stuff, in it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

And they they just happen to be baseball players, you know. But you know, they're they're just most of them just regular guys, farm boys, you know, grew tobacco, and you know, did what men of that time in North Carolina did.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Yeah, but it's like nowadays if you're in the major leagues, you're driving a Lamborghini. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Yeah, no. Well, I guess the only thing that's left is the minor leagues or like the Jacksonville Ospreys or something like that that would maybe be remotely similar to that.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Even that's all changed. Um, you know, back in I think 40 in the in the during the war years, there were 40 some odd minor league teams in North Carolina. There are now 10. I was gonna say like um and so they were ducks, too. You know, back then, your your minor leagues rated all the way from D to double A, and D was a little bit better than college ball. And double A would be what triple A is today. But there were all these levels, and you can make a living playing by not even being on the show. No, you know, you didn't have to play Major League Baseball. But if you were willing to travel, you know, to different teams all over the country and and play, you know, six months a year, yeah, you can make a living. And there are many players who have 20-year minor league careers.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

But that's crazy because that's like got to be a grind to do that.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

You know, they're in the book because they made it into the majors, and it could have only been for an inning. Oh, yeah, true. True. That bad. But they made it into the majors, but they spent their entire careers in the majors.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Yeah, you don't think about that because I mean that's professional ball, too.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

And that's all gone. You can't do that anymore. You just can't. It's it's the the teams have so much invested in these guys that either you're a major league prospect or you're not. All right. And if you're not, they're gonna let you go. There's too much at risk, and they got too much money involved. Yeah, they're just not. It's it's all different now.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

I took him for Bull Durham. Yes. I was gonna say what really kind of painted a picture for me because I didn't grow up playing baseball, and so I don't know a lot about it, but what painted a crazy picture about baseball for me, as far as the business aspect of it, was moneyball. Yes, that's that was insane. That's a very good portrayal. It is insane, it's savage almost.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

You understand that is that is even 20 years old now. Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Yeah, it's an older movie now. Yeah, Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill. And even when it came out, it was about a previous time yet, even still. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

What I baseball now has, and I and it's very hard for me to watch a game. And I'm I don't I can't say I'm really a Yankee fan anymore. Because I I I learned that to invest a lot of emotion into something as they're not all of it. Crassly, crashly profitable uh as a major league sports franchise is pretty silly, really. And so, yeah, I have this old allegiance to the Yankees from childhood, but I don't watch the games. I don't know, and and and if they get to the World Series, yeah, I'll reform. Yeah. But so I've changed as well. And it's and it's because I think baseball is no longer the sport that attracted me as a kid, and it's now become it's very formula. Uh lineup serve, you know, it's it's Casey Stengel would would never make it in in managing a baseball team today. There's no just no way. Yeah. Um, so a lot of the color of the game is gone. Now you got these millionaires playing for billionaires. It's business, dude. And and so, yeah, it's it's yeah, yeah, I'll still be a baseball fan, and I enjoy the the the the magic of the game and the theater of the game, the emotion of the game. Nothing prettier than me than a round-the-horn double play. Yeah, everything has to work perfectly. Sure, yeah. Uh, and so yeah, that that'll always be with me, but the fan aspect is pretty much gone.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

It gets like diluted by money on a certain level because eventually it's like, hey, we're just doing this for dollar signs and not because I loved playing on the dirt field when I was 12 years old type deal.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

To give you an idea, when I was uh 12 or 13 years old, I worked for my uncle at a drugstore in Kings Highway, and I had to work in the afternoons just to help close up. So I had the days free. And as I said, these were day games. So that season I spent three or four days a week at Yankee Stadium. Now, my parents never knew they would never allow a 13-year-old to get on the subway to go up to the Bronx. But I'm at work, and and the games were over, and I had enough time. My my uncle's drugstore is right beneath the L of the subway, and I had enough time to get to the drugstore by four o'clock. Um so five bucks, I would take five bucks. I'd get car fare, the subway cost 25 cents each way. I could buy a reserve seat in Yankee Stadium, old Yankee Stadium, for $2.50. And I'd be one of four or five thousand. I mean, that's that's all the place would be virtually empty. It's two o'clock on a Wednesday. Right. The place would be virtually empty. Um, you wait to the third or fourth inning, you go down to the usher. They had ushers with these furry little mitts that would wipe the seat off for you. You go down to the usher, give him 50 cents, and he'd put you down the box seat.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Down behind third base. So you'd get a hot dog and a Coke, and I'd come home with change. Five bucks. Five bucks. Oh, dude. Five bucks today, may buy a bottle of water. So it has become to take a family of four to a ball team. Oh, yeah. It's a thousand bucks. Yeah, it's like a tricky. Yeah, it's a and it it's apparently sustainable because the teams are making money.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

But but I just, I mean, it's yeah, you gotta really be a hardcore fan to want to go pay that much money.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

And that's how much it's changed. Yeah. And when you have 20, 25 million dollars invested in a pitcher, you're gonna protect the hell out of them. That's one guy, one guy. Any little ache, anything, yeah. You know, he goes, he's on the DL. And and so uh so they're very protective of players now, and they should be. They got a lot of money invested in them. Um but it was all, you know, so it's changed, and there's no more, you know, sliding hard into second base with your cleats up or or barreling into the catcher to the score the winning run. You know, that stuff doesn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_03 43:27

Do you think that it could go backwards?

SPEAKER_00 43:30

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03 43:30

Yeah. No, once they make rules, man, they're not gonna that's what I'm saying. I'm just you know, food for the hot.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I don't think a lot of these players would be fit very well in the rough and tumble where it used to be. Ow. When Bob Gibson, very famous, Bob Gibson, very famous pitcher in his uh story about one of the players in the book. Bob Gibson was thinking we were called much in the 60s and 70s.

SPEAKER_04 43:58

Uh come on, guy. Anyway, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

But he was mean. I mean he was he was an angry man. Um and when he was on the pitching line, he could be dangerous.

SPEAKER_05 44:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

It was well known around the league that you did not, in the National League, dig in. You didn't you didn't take your back foot if you were right behind and dig in because the next pitch would be at your be a trip. Really? That was like a sign of disrespect for someone. That was a sign of disrespect. So one of the players in the book, Rookie Year, he goes up first at bat against Gibson and he digs in, and everybody in the Dodger dugout, Giants, the Giants said, no. And next pitch hits him, breaks, breaks his collarbone. Oh my gosh. And he's out for six weeks of his rookie season. That'll show you. Uh because of Bob Gibson. So Bob Gibson couldn't exist today. Yeah, there's no way Bob Gibson could pitch today. Um, so all that's changed, and maybe for the better, but I'd say it sort of left me behind. So that's okay. A lot of things have left me behind.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

So well, they could still fight in hockey. Yeah, they can. But I'm not a hockey fan. I know. Well, I I like the fighting though in the hockey games. You know, baseball they used to charge the mound, and they both teams would be going at it.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

And they still do that on occasion. And baseball fights are never. They're not, yeah, they're always for show. They're pushing and shoving and cussing at each other, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

Kicking dirt on each other's feet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

Yeah, that's why I keep going back to the minor leagues. Yeah, because if you go on minor league games, still like like Jacksonville Osprey says college league. And it was great. That was old school baseball. They're still hungry that at that time. I mean, there's barely any bleachers there. You're sitting on lawn chairs on the perimeter. I mean, it just has the feel of wow, this is what old school traveling baseball felt like.

SPEAKER_03 46:02

They care still, they're trying to make it still.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Uh there is a minor league team that's become pretty fun to watch, the Savannah Bananas. Yes. It's like the Harlem Globetrotters. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

And you know, there's and and there's a David Barnhill's profiled in the book, was a good pitcher in the Negro League from Greenville. Um, and he pitched before he became played for the New York Black Giants. He pitched for a team called the Ethiopian clowns. And they dress up in clown costumes, handy faces, do this pantomime, um, and then play a game of baseball, but still would get down to the yeah. So um this was in the 1930s, and it raw it it rubbed the raw nerve with a lot of black fans because you you were turning good ball players into the audio, audio actually. And there was a movement then in the 30s that they integrated into the media league. And the people who supported that thought this is another fulfilling the stereotype. So it was very unpopular with the professionals in the in the league of but it was wildly profitable. Um and the Ethiopian clowns lasted into the 60s well after most black teams had disappeared. Um because it was a form of entertainment that attracted white audiences and thus they made money. So I'm not surprised that you have this modern version now.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

Yeah. And there's people that say this is zero integrity of the game, they don't like it. There's people that are like, this is not baseball.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Now now it it doesn't have that racial thing. The racial now it's just the game that's gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

This dude caught he was out in the outfield, he did a backflip and caught it and freaking landed. Entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

Entertainment value.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

I find I personally find nothing wrong with it. Yeah, if they played around here, I'd if there's a time and a place.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

That's what I mean. Harlem Globetrotters, you know that they're not a real team. It's like just you go for the introduction, yeah, being goofy. It's the fun and yeah. It is fun. I never get another coffee.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

But that you know, there is there is this history back to the Ethiopian clowns that that that was significant in its time.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

So yeah, this is what makes your book so great because it's not just about baseball, it's about our history too, and how it inter intertwines with things. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

That's why I like that it's North Carolina because I've lived in North Carolina longer now than I've lived in Virginia.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

So I consider myself a North Carolinian um from Virginia Beach, but I've lived here longer and I'm yeah, and and there's another thing to think to note that the book, the players in that book, came up at a time when baseball truly was America's game. Yeah, it was America's game. There was no rival. Um and uh it was played everywhere, every school the all. Yeah, people listen to it on the radio. It would go great lengths. My my father-in-law, who lived in North in uh North Carolina, used to listen to the St. Louis Cardinals. And you'd have to get them late at night, uh maybe here to 60 and on or something. So, yeah, but but it it it permeated every facet of American life. So the story of baseball is really about the story of America. Yeah, it is an American sport, it didn't develop from cricket and other things, it was on the streets of New York and transport.

SPEAKER_02 49:42

Yeah, because it was like stick ball first, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:44

With the railroads, as the as the railroads extended across the country, you you can you can plot the baseball along the railroads, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

The stadium in Fanville is at the intersection of two rail lines. You go to a game there, and they're active rail lines with uh you know engines going on both sides, and that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

The gold rush in California baseball developed within less than a year of the of the strike, there was a baseball team in San Francisco. And that was because the m they got on these trains in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and went to the West Coast, and baseball went with them.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

It's so crazy how baseball used to be the most popular sport in America, and now it's like barely watched, you know. I mean, it's uh not I don't have the statistics, but whereas it you know, the majority of people watched it back then or listened to it and you know knew something about it. Whereas now it's like follow baseball.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

And you had uh Babe Ruth leagues, there were there were these youth leagues. Yeah, uh the American Legion was very popular in North Carolina and and produced and produced some serious baseball players. Um there were several colleges in North Carolina, Guildford College, um one of them that that were known as baseball incubators because they had coaches who had connections to someone in the major leagues coming back in Philadelphia or someone so this pipeline develops between the school and the team, and so these little schools end up transporting a dozen baseball pump in our town. Yeah, so you know again, all that is gone. But but it was part of what North Carolina was, and and I think yeah, I I've tried very hard to try to appeal it's a baseball book, so there's gonna be jargon in there. If you're not a baseball fan, I don't explain it. You're gonna have to you're gonna have to get a dictionary, get someone to explain it to you. But if you can get past that, it it's a story about North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

Yeah, and it is stories because like each when you do when you talked about it, because I started when I started reading it, I was like, oh, it's actually like stories of these people, you know. And uh, and I don't know, I've heard a couple of the names, like, and you've talked about them already, like catfish hunter. But like if you don't know anything about these people and you just you know, you don't it's not the whole chapter on this one guy, it's like a blurb or something, and it's enough to be like, damn, you think about how it was back then. This dude's working at you know the the mill and also playing and also playing baseball in the you know in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

One of the guys' profile in the book is a guy named Tom Alston, who's from Greensboro, North Carolina, and he's the flat first black North Carolinian to play in the major leagues. He was um he was a big star in the Pacific Coast League in California. And he got signed by the Cardinals. Augie Bush had just bought the team. Um and Bush sold beer, and he wanted to sell beer to everyone. And uh St. Louis was pretty much a very southern town in a lot of respects. It was segregated, the baseball park was segregated, and the team didn't have any black players. And Augie said, well, we gotta go find black players. So he started the team on this integration. So so they so they signed this kid Alston. Um they have a big to-do at the hotel in Hollywood, and caviar and bush beer is being served. Nice. And what a combo. And Alston later said he he and the waiters were the only black guys in the room. Um but it turned out, you know, it most hitters have weaknesses, and Major League pitchers are gonna find those weaknesses. And Alston's was he couldn't hit a high fastball. And so he got fed a lot of those a steady diet of so he never succeeded, and is one of those guys who became a bad alcoholic, probably as a result. He spent the latter part of his life in and out of mental institutions.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Really? Yeah, and he was he was Joe Garrigiola, from from my name, he was an old baseball catcher who became an announcer, and he he had a program that helped down and out old major leaders. Uh, okay. Because you know, Austin didn't get a pension, he didn't get anything, he didn't last long enough. So he finally helped uh Austin get out of get out of a he's living in a substandard apartment, and yeah, so he then he got prostate cancer and died, but but Joe sort of rescued him at the end. But it's a very sad story, and it's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:31

And imagine how many other people could have used that that kind of help, though.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

And it really because he couldn't hit an inside fastball.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

That sucks.

SPEAKER_03 54:38

Yeah, if he And you would think that would be what you trained to do it because for some hitters, that's like don't throw them a high fastball because it's going out of the park.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

So yeah, so it's one of the sta it's one of the standard stories you do.

SPEAKER_03 54:52

Yeah, that sucks, man. So the cool thing, and that like I want to ask you about like your research and writing the book and just like the whole pretty much uh your journalism career about studying North Carolina and athletes from North Carolina is I talk about this with my friends all the time that when we grew up playing sports together, I grew up playing three sports my entire life until I was 25, and there's something very special to me about specifically southeastern North Carolina. There is so much athletic talent that comes from this area, it's insane in all sports, not just baseball. There's something in the water here, something about North Carolina that produces great athletes. Is that would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 55:31

Uh yeah, but I don't have having never spent a lot of time in other states doing a bias, because I'm from here. I don't really have a way to make quantify that. Yeah, I can't quantify it in any way, but yeah, certainly.

SPEAKER_03 55:45

Um I'm just kind of piggybacking on your statement of like the baseball incubator schools, the small schools, that you you find these hidden gems of athletes that come from nowhere, Bill.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

Right, right. But but again, there was there was a method there. I mean, it just didn't happen. Right. Uh if if you were in the 1920s, if if you were a high school baseball player with real talent, you're gonna be said, well, maybe you should transfer when you go to college. Maybe guilty.

SPEAKER_03 56:14

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

Because everyone knew that was the easiest pipeline for the major leads. And it was because the coach by name Holt had developed that pipeline for 20 years. It's the way. And so, yeah, so it there was a method there, it just didn't happen. Sure. It it was developed. Um, but yeah, that it and they were if you look at where these players came from, they they came from all over the place. Sure. Um, but you know, certainly the metropolitan areas, because metropolitan areas, have the highest number, but if you broke it down per capita, I mean it's little mill towns um in in near Charlotte that produced four baseball players. Place had a population of 300. Right. So it's that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

Yeah. It's it's it's just interesting to think about that. Like, you know, the people that you you just turn a rock over, and then there's an all-star baseball player here that, you know, where was he from? Where'd you come from?

SPEAKER_02 57:11

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we had uh I had an NFL player come out of my high school, uh, Plaxico Burris. Oh, snap knowing it too. Uh he shot himself in the leg at a nightclub because he had a gun in his pants.

unknown 57:23

Stupid.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

Cheddar Bob. I didn't know him, but he was a senior and I was a freshman. But uh I'm sorry, it's loud vehicle day today here in Swansboro.

SPEAKER_03 57:35

Cummings diesel over there, so like, dude, we don't want to hear this.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

You know, like I don't think it's that truck, I think it's the one behind it.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

We just do like a little intermission real quick until that subsides.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

I want to go slap this person. I want to go back to the case. Can you see we're trying to do a freaking podcast over here?

SPEAKER_03 57:52

Have some Hey, I'm walking here.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

I'm walking here. Uh yeah, that that's a sad freaking thing, man. The dude didn't couldn't hit a inside.

SPEAKER_03 58:01

So when you were saying like about the fastball thing, is that like it planted a seed in his head that he just couldn't get over that hump and it drove him to drinking and stuff?

SPEAKER_00 58:10

He was he was a pioneer. He was the first. And there weren't at the time that many, though he was the first black player on the Cardinals, there there were still weren't that many black players in the Major League. So there was a lot of pressure on him to succeed. Oh yeah. And because alcohol was so readily available in the clubhouse after a game or drink three or four beers, um that that then became a crush. And and then it it had serious effects on life.

SPEAKER_03 58:40

And that's crazy how much like uh psychology does come into sports, especially when it's your life, like and that's your that is what you do and what you're good at, and if you encounter this obstacle that you can't get over, right? It's crazy what a seed it can plant in your head, especially if that if that's your identity.

SPEAKER_00 58:56

I am a baseball player, and plus, you know, often face the racism that you know black players in most cases don't face today. Um you know, St. Louis wasn't a real welcoming town. Sure. But the players weren't very welcoming. Uh in fact, they had to so we'd have a roommate, they they have to bring up a a minor league black pitcher. So have a roommate just so we'd have a roommate.

SPEAKER_04 59:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 59:24

Um and and it you know, so so when you're working in that kind of environment, knowing you're the first, um having the competitive zeal to want to succeed, and then you can't. Yeah. In his case, of course, he couldn't hit major league inside fastball.

SPEAKER_04 59:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Um, and then got exploited for it. Right. Every time he was at the fleet. I mean, and and and so, yeah, he it didn't amount to much.

SPEAKER_03 59:52

Thing that's crazy to think, though.

SPEAKER_00 59:54

And you know, he had nothing else to no other real skill to to fall back on. So yeah, his his life sort of deteriorated.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:04

I mean, it's yeah, I don't know. It's it when you add the added pressure of the stress of the times and what you're going through as a player, you know, dealing with that adversity on top of the other right.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

I mean, you look at uh you look at all the people that have overcome racism and all the talent that came out of that, and then you hear this and you think all the talent we lost because we've never been spoken on ever that we don't even know about. Yeah, yeah. And hopefully we're moving in the right direction now with it, but yeah. That's an awesome book. I can't wait to read it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

I think uh and and in a competitive situation, in a professional sports situation, racism is not only morally wrong, it's it's stupid. It is and and the famous example is the Yankee scout who signed Mickey Mantle, had an opportunity to also sign Willie Mays. So the Yankees could have had an infield of Boole May straight up and Roger Malls. Um, but he was told by Yankee management that no, they had enough black players, they had to sign one, Elston Howard. What a miss that is. And so that agent to his dying day always said that you know, racism is not all morally wrong. It's it's stupid. And in this case, I mean it it cost the Yankees dearly. Um and so possibly a legacy. And and so thankfully those days are gone, but it was guys like Austin who were the pioneers in that who faced the brunt. Those things change slowly. And uh it it it it it it it certainly added to his stress. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:55

I can't, I mean, I it's no way to even imagine it, you know, because dealing with one thing and then a whole societal issue outside of the sport.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

Yeah. So, you know, the book, the book, I mean I tried, I try in the book to point out those kinds of trends that were happening, which in many cases was societal, not only just because baseball reflected uh society it it was in. And so I hope that comes out in the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:22

So now where the book's available on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:25

Yeah, it's it's available at about anywhere. Amazon, Google, um some bookstores, and that's a matter of the economics of the book publishing that I don't really want to get into, but um, but you could you would be able to order it at a bookstore. Some might carry it, but most I think you're gonna have to order it. But you can get it from the publisher, McFarland.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:45

And we'll have a link in the description as well, because I ordered this one, and I'm gonna get you to sign this one before we go. Um and I ordered this one on Amazon, so it's super easy to do. Check it out. Tar Hill Boys of Summer. We'll have a description in the in the uh now. This is your fourth published book, correct?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

What are your other ones about?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:02

There are local histories in a book on Winston Salem, which is still the definitive history of the city. A book on R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and it was the leader in the decades-long effort to hide the health effects of cigarettes. Oh man. Um, yeah, they they're books like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:22

Damn. That's cool. Did you ever smoke cigarettes?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:24

I did. Yeah. I quit when my daughter was born, and she's now 40 in her forties or so.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

Yeah, I quit in 2008. Yeah, it's cigars are way better anyway. Cigarettes are gross. My mom quit when she got pregnant. Oh, she smoked again. Oh, yeah. No, mine, mine off and on over the years, quit. Smoke, quit, smoke.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

I have a family that like at Thanksgiving, it's like when everybody gets done eating, there is a migration to outside after they eat to oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:58

Well, see, mine is always mine cigars now, so I do the same thing, but it's cigars now. So you so then you had a I was gonna talk about writing because I'm trying to uh try my hand at it too, but you had an entire career. Did you ever get burnt out because you have to just you were talking about the other day, like writer's block, being like nobody gets writer's block. There's no such thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

Yeah, you know, in the newspaper business, there's no such thing. I mean, you really can't. I mean, uh, you got a story that's due, five o'clock, six o'clock, you know. It's it's part of the process here. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:29

Um it doesn't stop.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

You know, again, I'm I'm going back to a time that doesn't exist anymore in newspapers. But but um I mean, what came out, the newspaper that came out that day was the mass effort of hundreds of people. Right. Um for any anywhere from, you know, I was at the one end, a reporter, all the way down to the guy who put the put the papers in the truck and drove the truck to the delivery point. Um, so you're just part of the cog. Yeah. And you can't, you got an assignment that you got due at six o'clock. You can't go to your editor at five o'clock and say, you know, the Muse wasn't with me. Oh man, I'm just not feeling inspired. Maybe tomorrow. I don't feel good. Now they'll find something to put in a hole that you just created. Um, but uh there won't be much patience for that. Right. Um I don't I don't think you'd get away with it one time. You certainly wouldn't get away with it two times. So you'd be fine something else to do. So we used to say, you know, the writers block for amateurs, you know, you you gotta produce I like that though. You you you become when you work on the deadlines, the clock is the master, yeah, and you just you know that maybe today's not your best stuff. Right. You know, maybe if you did this tomorrow it would be better, but you don't have that, you don't have the luxury. So you do what you do knowing it's ephemeral, you know, it's in the newspaper, it's gone the next day, so you know you you gotta know that. chance. So uh no you didn't you know you just couldn't. You know you weren't you weren't Hemingway. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:06

But you didn't feel like No yeah but you didn't feel like you were you you know you got burnout or anything like that. Did you do other kind of writing when you were back when you were a journalist?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Oh yeah I mean it was common in newspapers to do because that was part of the training process. So every young reporter if they were in the news side of the not writing features or something or sports um you'd be a cop reporter um because that was a very quick way to weed out people who really weren't suited for this. Because you would you would you would quickly know the underside of life in whatever town you were in. Yeah. And some people can handle that and some people can't and if you can't handle it you're probably not going to make a good journalist. So you were that dude with the little press pass up in your hat that ran towards the your cop reporting you tried to make be as inconspicuous as you can and it was you you try to develop relationships with mine cops.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:09

Yeah so that way you can get close I can get access.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Yeah. So um yeah there was this one instance in Miami where um what a place to be doing that. Miami had a very famous cop reporter Edna Buchanan and she was a crusty when I knew her she was in her 50s she was a crusty broad and and she wouldn't mind that description um she was a crusty broad and she loved this stuff. I mean she really loved covering murders and rapes and I mean she did. And she had souvenirs that after the trial was done there'd be the cut the set of handcuffs.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:45

Oh my Jesus yeah she if she wasn't a writer she'd have been a serial killer.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:50

You know Edna Edna Edna you know obviously they had more than one cop reporter but if it was a major crime that happened anywhere in three counties Edna was going to be the one but so I was this secondary cop reporter. So it was one night and get a get here on the we all had police scanners and you hear on the scanner that they would dispatch to a mobile home park south of town. So I get there and there's yellow tape all around the place and it's a mobile home and the cops everywhere. And I you know again because I knew one of the cops he let me by the window he let me in the crime scene but he led me to the window where I could see into the bedroom where a guy came home caught his wife in bed and decided to settle everything with a shotgun. Damn damn so he killed he he killed the wife and her lover. Oh my God and so I peek into the bed in the in the room and the bed's a bloody mess but I noticed on the ceiling the woman was blonde headed and there was strands of blonde hair stuck to the ceiling. Wow blowing in the air conditioning waving holy shit dude so I included that detail in the story never thinking thought that the copy desk would get a chuckle and edit it out and that's what I did. Oh they printed it I give the copy editor a chuckle so I put this detail in the store and it goes through well the phone the next day I ruined your breakfast why did I have to but I'm not I'm actually proud of doing that. It puts you in that room right yeah and I didn't describe the goal you'll remember this article I you know I mentioned nothing about the guts on the headboard or none of that just this one and yeah but it it it blew people away in Miami so pun intended too soon yeah too soon blew people away ooh choice of words yeah I would have thought but but uh but you do you know then you then you graduated I was a sports writer and and I might I ended up but those but that you so you're talking about that that was what you did for work did you on the side though did you do any for yourself writing I did freelance writing yeah because you do that now you do substance I don't try to sell stuff anymore but um yeah but you know it when I ended my my last job in newspaper journalism was you know I was environmental reporter in North Carolina I was the senior I'd done it for 15 years um and I was doing long form journalism you know stuff that would take months to do oh wow like that series on RJ Reynolds that took eight or nine months um that we published in the paper and then later in a book but um that it became clear to me in the early tw 2000s that that that part of the the business was quickly disappearing because it was expensive. I didn't have to re you know I wasn't filing a story every day now.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:50

I would take months and that that takes money. Is that by way of like digital media as well or well did digit in the early 2000s papers were just maturing their websites. You know they all played with it and it took 10 years to get them still an idea form almost right so uh but I realized that the kind of journalism I did and now enjoyed doing this long form journalism that took months yeah that wasn't going to be so I left and and uh on my own before they kicked me out the door um and work came down that's what got me down here and worked for the Coastal Federation where I was a coast keeper for 10 years riding a boat and looking and then Todd Miller who who runs the Federation and I were very close friends and we would bitch about the lack of meaningful journalism coverage for the issues we were dealing with. And we relied on a educated public. You know if if we're we're dealing with you know water pollution issues or erosion people have to know the basics and and that was the job of journalists you know to to to provide that kind of context about well that wasn't being done anymore. We complained complained about so finally we started our own um news service Coastal Review um in 2014. And it's now you know the most most respected source of environmental coverage in North Carolina won hundreds of press awards cool and that's what I that's what I retired from. So now I'm doing a podcast which when I started the word wasn't even known you know that's that's true that's true. No one invented that word yeah and and and I ended in the digital in the digital era so if anything you you you can teach an old dog new tricks.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:35

Yeah well you know people are going away from newspapers and stuff too I like a physical newspaper just like I like a physical book.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:43

But it it's now very expensive. And that's that except for things like the big paper, New York Times maybe the Washington Post but except for the the tr the papers with worldwide reach right yeah there's coming there there won't be you you won't have uh actual physical news it's all websites now it's you get the news on your phone it's just very expensive.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:03

We do have local one we have onsla business which is decent it covers Dunjournal local business issues other you know things that have been uh going on the community and everything it's I don't know how many locations you can get it at button we've got the Thailand news as well for around here. I think Jacksonville Daily News is still printing uh think alike wow they uh still down they're still out there they're just not as prominent as they used to yeah no but that's and I signed up I had the Jacksonville Daily News which it's Associated Press Associated Press well then why am I getting this paper?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:42

You know when when I worked for the journal in Winston-Salem we were one of the largest newspapers in the state the newsroom had almost 200 employees um today yeah it still prints um I think there are seven reporters in the building oh crap um you know and they do and that and they they're spreading their time with sports and county government right county government city government everything um and so yeah they exist the paper some pay it's still printing yeah but they are mere shadows of what they used to be um yeah the newspaper world I grew up in you you can still you you but you'd have to go to the New York Times or the Washington Post. And for a writer it was invaluable. I mean it truly was it was a great training ground editors I I never minded editors reading my work and making changes it was part of the process. And a good editor made you better and and and you knew who the good ones were and who weren't and and uh so you paid attention to the good ones. Yeah you ignored the fools and you know and and um and so you became better.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:47

Yeah um and it also seems like a situation too that you would have to be able to humble yourself to take criticism from somebody as well because you have to be able to take stuff with a grain of salt to be able to be told about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

You know most most writers who become so personally attached to their work they don't make it in the newspaper business. They don't you know they may try and they last a year and they go on to do magazine or something else that's more suited to them. But in in the newspaper world no you you didn't because once I you know I started with manual typewriters but you know once I handed the copy or later hit the sent key um it was gone. It was no longer me right it was my contribution to the day. Sure and if there was going to be a because you know you you also established a reputation in a newsroom and I had a reputation of being a solid reporter and writer so no one would make a major change without consulting me. But if if they wanted to change a verb or sentence structure or okay you know I'm not gonna get upset about it. Yeah. But you learn to do that because it's you you can't I mean you just can't. Because again it's it's you would drive yourself psycho otherwise and and it's again it's your daily contribution. Tomorrow's another day you you start all over tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

Damn so let me not good or bad you did yesterday yesterday's over.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:11

Let me ask you this question. So from like cop reporter to journalism to sports and all that did that did your career kind of just morph on its own or did you take these avenues on your own decision or just kind of changed in that way?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:23

In the old newsrooms they knew your talents and and so a good editor would mold move you to places where your talents were best. Okay. So it was clear you know that my talents were in deep reporting and this long form journalism and so that's where I I was allowed to migrate. They never offered resistance. It's what I wanted to do and they offered the path to do that because they saw that's what my talent was uh there were some who you know you know Lenno Rawlings um one of the best newspapers uh sports columnists that ever put word to to a computer screen that was his talent and and though Lennox did other things in our newsroom he was our sports columnist guy he was the insightful sports columnist so yeah newsrooms recognize those talents over time and and shape the the the room the the the duties so that they fit your talents yeah so then you went to the Coastal Federation you retired from there and then you were a commissioner here in the town of Swansburg. You know you were the mayor pro tem that's because you got the most votes no the the boards elected me oh they okay okay okay so the boards elected me to the to the pro tem position I gotcha um but I served eight years I you know it was rewarding in a lot of respects and um disappointing in some but that's life and uh but after eight years I'm I I've become I was never a believer in term limits until we had this crazy gerrymandering that we see in states and and if you can't allow politicians to choose their voters that's not a good idea. So if if that's the system we we work under then yeah I'm I'm a proponent of of setting a limit to how how right so I we don't have a term limit in North Carolina but I thought eight years was enough. Yeah given what time and talent I had let someone else do it and I'm now on the planning board so I can stay involved and help out in that regard but yeah yeah we were uh it was it was a pretty funny time when elections were happening because we were all telling Frank we were gonna and we did it we ended up writing him in for mayor but Mickey Mouse got moved Mickey Mouse and Superman got more actually kind of impressive yeah but you got like eight votes didn't you or something yeah something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:52

So Frank uh your journalism skills how what transferred over to being a commissioner or being a mayor?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:59

Um a lot actually because you know as a journalist as a reporter I had I you know I I really don't know how many people I've talked to it's in the thousands yeah but you have to develop these kinds of skills to and be able to get get gauge a room and understand how far you can go um with your questioning and and and so you develop these interpersonal skills uh you develop research skills um writing skills and all of that I think holds you in good steed for a lot of things in life uh but certainly in politics in local politics um because you know I I you know I I was very you know I issues came before us you know I I learned as a commissioner we we always say well this is a hard decision well no no it's not really once you boil and that's another thing journalists do is boil things down to their basics you know I have no I would have notebooks full of stuff two thirds of which I would never use right but they would help me in the forming of the story so I would you're able to take vast amounts of information put it down to the simplest and I found that almost every issue we face you can boil that down to a yes or no do I vote yes or no on this? It's really that simple.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:19

And I'm sure you you're gonna piss people off no matter which way you regardless.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

Yeah of course but you're making an informed you know vote so to answer your question yeah I think there are a lot of skills that the old newspaper journalists and I'm I can't talk for radio or TV sure but old newspaper journalists developed because of the system that that they worked under that then transfers very well. No that was yeah that was excellent yeah I'm I mean I feel like uh working on the radio has helped like boil down to a simple form of communication skills just it's it's communication talking to people breaking things down I got 10 seconds before the lyrics of a song start and I want to tell you about something that happened well it's word economy how can I make this long thing like you said that short no one has worked under the pressure unless you're at Carmichael Auditorium Carolina versus Duke and it goes into quadruple overtime it was a nine o'clock game a nine o'clock televised game which means it didn't end till 11 at best my last edition deadline we used to have five edition my last edition deadline well the the edition they won a final story was the next to the last and that was at 1115. Wow and this game goes into quadruple overtime we didn't have computers I was on a I was on a manual type router and literally typing paragraphs ripping them off handing them to a kid who worked at the for the sports information department carolina handing them to a kid who would then transmit it to the newsroom oh my god and then you you you put together that piecemeal story for that edition and you had I had one more edition to polish it up so I'd have to go down to the locker room get some quotes come back and have maybe 15 minutes to write the final story. I couldn't call up and say hey you know what no muse in the locker room today so um so yeah so but it's that kind of pressure particularly sports and yeah I did it because I wanted to do it but then it was time to move on oh my god I can imagine yeah yeah I I never worked I'd imagine after that game you're probably like what the f what am I doing I never worked hard I never worked harder in my life than as as a sports writer. Oh god this was in the days before computers yeah yeah yeah and then and typewriters aren't fucking light we had a we had a contraption called a tele telecopier it was just a a roll that spun and you had to type on white paper and if you used uh IBM Selectric you had to use a specific font a little ball that would fit in the typewriter and it transmitted at six minutes you put you you put a headphone receiver into this thing and it transmitted in either 12 minutes or six minutes. Okay so one page would take 12 minutes now if you had a 15 inch story that's about a page and a half so you had to submit you had to send two pages you had to figure in the transmit time. The copy desk always wanted you to do it at the 12 minute because it was there there was less garble at the end that they would then have to try to fill it in. So if you're gonna two pages it's that's 24 minutes that you slice off your deadline just to transmit it back to the newsroom. So yeah when you work under those kinds of yeah it uh it takes a special and I have some very dear friends who retired as sports writers spent 30 years at it it takes a very special person to do that particularly now when you have so many games and and and the conference the ACC back when I reported what six seventeen the farthest you went was Washington DC or Clemson South Carolina that's that's and most were on so-called tobacco road you know through North Carolina uh now the conferences are where you got one on West Coast I mean so yeah SMU and and so but newspapers nowadays they don't they don't they don't staff it the way they used to no I can't yeah I can imagine they don't call our our associates over in blah blah blah yeah so yeah but it was a special time um but oh there was somebody else that you interviewed that's super famous who tricky dick said be more specific tricky dick oh yeah Dick Nixon Richard Nixon um after his presidency yeah after his presidency for those of your long young listeners who might not know Nixon resigned in what 74 I think 73 74 after Watergate um and he spent a long time in sort of hermitage in California he was a disgraced president yeah um and so uh but slowly he started to refurbish his reputation and so here comes I must have been the mid-90s and he was speaking to the state Republican Party convention which was in Winston Salem and again I had 15 minutes I didn't get rained out was it raining I was gonna say was it raining luckily because I I I think we we probably wouldn't have gotten along but but um I have to say I spent his 15 you know he he's well he's well practiced in dealing with yeah yeah yeah so so all his answers were clipped he he or his people had anticipated you know most of my questions and I tried to throw him some zingers and he'd just laugh and wouldn't laugh and wouldn't answer them. So uh you know it it went as I expected sort of forma but yeah I sat as close as you are to me to Richard Nixon. That's pretty cool I will tell you uh Nixon story though I was living on working on Kibiscane um this was in working on what on the island of Kibisca working for a little newspaper there in the mid-70s Nixon had when he was president he had what they called his southern white house on Kibiscane he had a house on Bay Lane which ran to the Biscayne Bay and dead ended and during his presidency of course it was it was secured you know it was fenced off and there were cameras and so then he resigned and now the Secret Service says well we don't need to maintain this secure compound anymore but the neighbors had gotten sort of used to this sort of seclusion and they included some very wealthy people uh the guy one guy Robert Abelknap multimillionaire and he invented the nozzle on spray can Jesus yeah and uh so there there were wealthy people who lived along Bay Lane who wanted the street Secret Service said fine but the county don't have to pay for it so that then became this year-long debate about whether to open Bay Lane that's crazy so finally the county decided no they weren't gonna pay for it so they opened Bay Lane so the day Bay Lane opens I live two blocks away I had a dog Che street dog from Greenville he was part husky and Che was a wonderful dog except the other male dogs but we went out for a walk and poor Che had to do his business said no Jay and I'm dragging him to two blocks to Bay Lane. Finally I picked him up and he was about 60 pounds I picked him up because I didn't want him to poop before we got to Nixon's house so I plopped him down on Nixon's front yard and Che took a dump and I had a picture which I'm sorry I have never found of ordinary Was just Che taking a dump. Uh you couldn't see the house behind it. But I knew it was Nixon's car. So he he took a dump on Nixon's front lawn.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:09

Oh, nice. You're not proving before we get to Nixon's.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:14

Hold it, hold it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:17

That's my Nixon story. But that's not your only famous uh politician story, huh? RFK Jr.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:24

Um did you know he was this freaking famous? No.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:28

RFK Jr., I I work when I worked at Coast Federation, I was a Coastkeeper. We were members of the Waterkeepers Alliance, which is a national group who's done some very good work around the world. Right. Um protecting streams and rivers. And RFK helped start that. He he was a very successful environmental lawyer. Um it helped clean up the Hudson River. There's a lot to be said about RFK's legacy as an environmental protector. And that's what I knew him during this. I didn't know him. You met him, though. I met him a couple of times. Because we'd have these conferences and we'd have to go to the conference. His daddy was probably my last political hero. And um I was very excited to meet him the first time. Um and I told him how much he followed him to me, and I I remember we won't get into the assassination store because I'm not a hero, but uh it's very busy. Um and um I got no reaction. I mean, oh yeah, I I'd gotten a picture that I had found in a bookstore in Boston of uh Kennedy daddy, Bob Kennedy, with him on Sit Night, and he was probably three or four years old sitting on his lap and gave it to him and he took it and said, Yeah, I think this is in the family collection or something, but couldn't be bothered. Yeah, and and uh he traveled around with an entourage of water keepers that adored him. Um and it was very clickish and clannish, and I stopped going to the conferences because I just didn't feel comfortable in them. Um but yeah, I I I I knew nothing about his stance on vaccinations and what he did with roadkill. I knew none of nothing of that. But he was very standoffish, very not very personable, not very welcoming to someone outside the circle. And uh so yeah, I I didn't come away with a good impression.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:35

Yeah, my mom said he used to chase her around with uh like a four-wheeler or something. What's up? Oh crap, is it dead? Not yet. I got you.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:46

We didn't do that, we did not do that. Looking in the camera, folks. It's not dead yet. Good thing I looked over there. Thank you. This might be our best episode yet, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:13

You guys edit this stuff out. People see all the warts and everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:18

Yeah, when we leave it in.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:20

Alright, cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:21

Like we've done that in the past. Like in the beginning when we're like, okay, you ready? Are you ready? And you'll hear us saying that sometimes, and it's just funnier that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:29

It's more real. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:32

It's like when people come in, we're like, just walk in. It's it's a cigar shop. We've I mean the the show is meant to be interrupted and stuff. That's why you listen to those stupid diesel trucks earlier. Nothing against the other.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:43

Yeah, there's no editing that out. Yeah. Park loud truck here. Loud truck park right here during podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:51

Well, it's like he starts it up and then walks away.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:54

He went to get inside to go and did his damn to-go order. Yeah, yeah. Enjoying the air conditioning. In daddy's truck.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:00

Anyway. Okay. No, that was cool, but that's not well. I guess you don't want to tell that story, do you? Which one? With the pants. You don't have to.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:10

He had he had asked one of the female co-workers to go find some place to iron his pants. He was giving a when we started the Coast Keeper program here, he he was to come and give a well, you know, this it was a fundraiser thing. And it took months to get him to come, and when he finally did come and in his hotel room, he takes his pants off and asks one of the female co-workers to go find some place where he can iron his pants. What a dick.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:40

Oh, you know, people, man, some people they get famous or they've been famous their whole life, like him.

unknown 1:32:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:46

You don't know any other way.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:48

So some people learn to learn to handle fame well, and others don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:54

No. I couldn't imagine, man. I like I think about that when you see like asshole, you know, famous people. Like, dude, you wanted to be famous at one point in your life. You wanted to be to this position, and now you're pissed because people are trying to get their freaking autographs.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:08

Like you can't be bothered almost. It's like dang, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:11

No, that no, that's not true. But I mean, like, think about it though. Like, imagine like you're sitting with your wife and your kids, and then like somebody walks up to you in the restaurant while you're mid-bite of your steak, and they're like, Hey man, can you blah blah blah blah?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:25

Yeah, no, I get that too, and that's why I I wouldn't like I do agree there's a time and a place, you know. And I've seen people and I've been like, oh look, that's a but I I'm not gonna walk be the one to walk over there and ask them for anything. I'll just look from afar and be like, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:37

Like if they're sprinting through the airport and they're dragging their luggage behind them and you can tell they're late and be like, hey, can you like stop and take a photo with me? Like even though you're about to miss your flight.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:45

I was going through the airport and I was next to this famous lady. I think is her name's like Deb Mazza or Mazza or whatever. She was in Goodfellas. She she was the girlfriend with like the really remote white eyes or whatever, and she's right next to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:57

I was like, oh, cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:00

I didn't say anything to her, it's just cool, you know. We just walking through the airport together, and she's she saw that I looked over and I was like, all right, don't be a weirdo.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:07

Trying to think of the most famous person I ever met.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:09

I met Arlie Ermy, you know, full metal jacket. Oh, yeah. I met him. We graduated from recruiter school and drill instructor school the same the same graduation day. So we were at the the little on on base there in uh in in San Diego. There's a uh a bar where everybody went, and I grabbed my beers and I turned around and there he is.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:28

And I'm like, oh my god, what's up?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:32

And we sat there and had a beer together for like 10 minutes just talking, shooting the shit. And he was just like he is on the movies, you know, talk just like that, cuss just like that. Yeah, it was pretty neat.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:41

Um Matthew Modine, Joker. Yeah, he had an exhibit up at the uh National Museum. That's right, yeah. He told us about that. Yeah, he's got uh Full Metal Modine, it's his and it he was totally cool. Spent the whole weekend there.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:55

It was he didn't really like he's probably most known from Full Metal Jacket. I mean he did other stuff, but like he's Joker from Full Metal Jacket.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:03

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think about maybe Stranger Things or something, but Joker the dude with the glasses, yeah, yeah, yeah. Marine Corps actually made him an hour uh journalist. Yeah, you were saying yeah, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:20

Dear mom Ray Leo, Ray Leoto lived across the room. That's right. Really? Yeah, when when he he was a student at the University of Miami Drama School. Wow and he had a house across from us and on in Coral Gables. Um he had a he had a uh roommate, Bob Gentili, Italian kid from Buffalo. I grew up on the streets of Brooklyn. I've met hundreds of guys like Bob Gentili. Very loud, very he was a football player, very loud, very opinionated. Um he had a dome adventure named uh named after Trojan, a Trajan, named after a Roman Emperor. It was a standard Dominican. I had Shay, who was a street dog from Greenwich, and as I said, I did not do well with other male dogs. So I'd walk Shay and they'd bark at the fancy. Well, Bob said, well, we should let them get together to be friends. I said, no bother there's no friendship here. Trust me. One day I'm walking the dog, and Bob opens up the fancy gate, and here comes Trajan. I say I'm leash, I'll at least go. I wasn't gonna be in the middle of what was gonna happen. Well Trajan bounds up to him and does what 95% of dogs would do stop. Jay was in the middle of 5%. And he just got him by the neck. And for 30 seconds there, it was because Trajan was just howling, and and uh he got we got the hose and we were able to water the dogs down so then I was able to grab Jay. And he had to go to the vet. But ever since that day, when I'd walked the dog, if Trajan was outside, he'd run, he'd run for the porch.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:04

I said, I don't want no more of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:05

Ray told me once, I think you you ruined Bob's dog. But yeah, that that's that's really yeah. But he he was a nice guy, he was he was a nice kid.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:15

So like you talked to him and everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were neighbors. Went to bar. But that's before he was uh oh yeah, he was a student at uh so later on you're like, I fucking know that guy. Yeah, right. I mean I met his mother, who was uh mayor of some town in New Jersey. Oh yeah, she was nice, and his father, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:31

I mean, yeah, that's pretty cool, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:33

And I've always and I regret never contacting him. So I I'm sure he would remember me. Never contacting him later when he got famous, just you know, hey, what's up? Yeah, man, what's up? Yeah, it's going. I'm sorry I didn't do that, but uh I always thought it was sort of ghost, you know, just yeah but but yeah, I would have liked to have made the connection. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:52

Yeah, everybody wants to talk to the famous person. We just don't want to be that. But you don't want to be that guy, yeah. You don't want to be that guy, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:58

But as a as a as a college kid, he was a nice kid.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:01

That's cool though. Yeah, that is cool. It beats the RFK part, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:05

Yeah, he was a nice kid.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:07

Raleigh. They say don't meet your heroes, but that you know what I mean? Like because it'll disappoint you. But no, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:14

Like Mickey Mannell shoeing the kids away. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:17

Well, that is funny though. He was like, Man, maybe I struck out three times that day. Like there might have been a reason. Yeah, you might have caught him on a bad day, but that's the problem with being famous. And also that you're always on display.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:28

And he and he admitted, yeah, he said, Yeah, I know I was like that. And then we said, Give me that damn hat. And he then he signed my hat.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:33

That's cool. Uh well, but you know that you're human, you're just human, your hero. That's pretty neat. Yeah, growing up as a kid, you know, idolizing somebody, and then you get to but he was very easy to talk to.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:45

Uh so I told him my personal, you know, and he understood, I wasn't the first one. He he certainly understood where I came from in his rise to fame. Right. And um, but but he was very easy to talk to, and once he realized I was a knowledgeable baseball fan, he was telling me stories about Joe DiMaggio and Casey Stangles. So yeah, we entirely we had a wonderful three hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:07

Yeah, but you look so back in the day when you said the the other players, you got to see Yogi Berra?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:13

No, I I didn't know. Or is he a little too old? No, no, he yeah, I got to see him play. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:19

Oh, but I'm saying, like, you you saw him coming out of the clubhouse. Yeah, he played. Yeah, he's got a couple of things. I was like Yankee Toucher. All the big names back then.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:27

Yeah, Roger Maris was in uh right field, Nana was in center.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:31

Yeah, but who's on first?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:32

Who's on who was Moose Garrin was on first? What a mob.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:36

No, who's on first?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:37

What era was Murderer's Row?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:40

Uh that was in the 20s. In the 20s. That was in that was that was uh Ruth, Gehrig, Bob Musual. I got you. Yeah, that was in the 20s.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:49

Gehrig was a catcher?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:51

First baseman.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:52

First base.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:53

Bill Dickey was the catcher. Well, Dickey in the 30s was the catcher.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:56

Yeah. I was when I was a kid, I was a Mets fan just because we were the Tidewater Tides were their farm farm team or whatever. And then they've later became the Norfolk Tides, and I think they're the Orioles team.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:09

What kind of life was that, being a Met fan?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:11

Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, I didn't really watch it. It was when Daryl Strawberry was playing. Like the Mets were really good. Right. It was the 80s, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:19

But then they have like also like well, he was later, Joe P or Mike Piazza.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:24

Man, I didn't watch it. Was he a Met? He was a Matthew. There was like uh when when Strawberry was playing, it was like a a couple of years in there that me because we played baseball, right? So we watched a little, you know, we watched baseball, we watched the Mets. Um, and then just kind of fell off of it. I wasn't playing baseball anymore. It was more fun to be at a game than it is to watch on TV anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:44

So it's a true statement.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:45

I've I've never had a good time watching a baseball. I'll tell you what, what baseball game I do like watching is the Little League World Series. They care. Man, those kids are working for like aliens. All right, hang on. Let me go get her a treat. Nope, Penny.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:04

Hey, I'm leaving that in. Oh, I'm sorry. How you doing, sir? Good. Speaking of dogs, reacting. So, Frank, funny story about me about why I didn't play baseball when I was like five or six years old, seven, probably seven years old, and when I played T ball, run into first. I was at practice, and I'm running to first, and I go to look if I'm gonna beat the play. You know, I look and see where the ball is coming from and right in my mouth, knock my two front teeth out.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:40

So after that, I was pretty I stayed on the team, but I wasn't really motivated to continue another season.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:46

That's perfectly understandable. I was like, I'm okay with it. And you weren't alone. Yeah, you weren't alone. You know, I had a uh when I was in high school, um had a baseball coach, Brother Donnelly. I went I went to a Jesuit high school um in Brooklyn, and they had a they had a very legendary reputation as a baseball school. Um Brother Donnelly was the coach, and I played third base, and Brother Donnelly once asked me, he said, Mr. Tursey, why did God give you a body? I said, I don't know if that was Brother Donnelly, why'd he give me a body? So you can block them goddamn ground balls. Um so and he'd have practice, you know, where he'd hit standing from me you and hit these hard ground balls, and I'd go home. My mother thought I was getting in the fights because I I got home with black and blue marks all over my chest and my neck, but yeah because you couldn't catch them. All you could do was stop them, stop it. Get in front of them and stop them.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:44

Yeah, so yeah. I played short stuff for a little while.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:47

But you know, there were a lot of kids who couldn't do that, you know, and would say, Oh, I gotta go find something else to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:51

I think it was like maybe if it was it's hard when you're a kid, man. That ball's coming at you hard and hard and fast. I got I told you I got hit in the face when I was playing. That's what I told them when you went to time.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:00

But I feel like if it would have happened when I was like you could see the seams. I mean, yeah, that's what I would tell my mother. See that it's like look closer.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:07

But like I feel like if it was like happened when I maybe was like 12 or 13, it wouldn't have like spooked me out of it as hard. That's right. But I was like a very little kid, I was like eight or seven years old, and I was just like, I don't want to do this. And I played baseball one more time when I was in eighth grade because like I said, I played sports my whole school career, and all of my friends were baseball players. So I was like, I want to hang out with my friends. So I was like, I went out for the baseball team. I made it because you know I was an athlete, so I could play, but when it came time to hit the city. You could throw me a call, strikes dead down the middle, and I'm backing up. I just couldn't take it.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:46

What about a batting cage? Could you do a batting cage? I could do a batting cage because you know that it's going right down the middle.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:50

Especially even now, like I'm not afraid of the ball anymore. But like as an eighth grader, it's like I have another 13-year-old lining up to throw it as hard as he can at me with uh who knows the dispersion of where it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:01

Yeah, that kid that kid ain't accurate.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:07

Natural fear. Someone it is, and you don't know, particularly at that level, you don't know how accurate this pitcher's gonna be in coming, you know, this close to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:18

And you got that long to think whether it's I can hit it or I can't. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Or it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:24

Like, I'm not gonna be a little bitch in front of everybody. You know, I want to be, but I'm not gonna get it. I was a great pinch runner, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:29

You know, Michael Jordan, as gifted as an athlete as he was, when he played minor league baseball after he retired from basketball, yeah. I think his his lifetime average is in the low 200s, and he only lasted two or three seasons. But as good as an athlete as Michael Jordan had a hard time. The quintessential athlete hitting even minor league pick. Now, and once you make the step up, that that's the quantum leap that's now you got Randy Johnson throwing at you.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:00

Like you can't even see like it's just instinct where the ball is at that point. Yeah, that's the quantum leap. You know, yeah. Uh Bo Jackson played a bunch of sports. Remember Bono's baseball, Bono's football.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:11

What if he would have never got hurt? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:14

Yeah, he was supposed to be good at like damn everything. He was a demon.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:18

Definitely don't want to be on the receiving end of him running into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:21

It's kind of like actors, man. A lot of actors are multi-talented. Like they can also sing, they can also play an instrument. Back in the day.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:28

It's like show business, though.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:29

Well, back in the day, you had to be a triple threat. You had to be able to dance, sing, and act to be in movies and stuff like that when movies first started.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:36

Well, because wasn't like the said the segue to fame was Broadway. So you're doing all that, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:45:41

You're like, it's like you were talking about Humphrey Bog not Humphrey Bogart. Yeah, it was. Was it Humphrey Bogart? And yes, I you said, well, we were talking about how he was on Broadway or something like that, very well known, and then he gave that up for a career.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:57

Yeah, I think someone I don't know that. Someone else said that.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:00

Gave it up for a career into a relatively new thing, and then he became world famous. Right, right. Yeah, I think it was Humphrey Bogart because we were talking about Casablanca.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:08

And a lot of those song and dance teams guys came from Broadville, you know, and then and they made it into movies.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:15

Um, so yeah, there there were various avenues that they used.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:18

But yeah, but you I mean like Steve Martin. That dude is one of the world's best banjo players. He's not just a banjo player, like he's he's really good. Uh-huh. Like he's in groups with other banjo players and stuff. And uh I've seen some shit. I've seen some shit. I'm like, dude, he's good. Because I mean, I'm teaching myself the banjo, so I know how hard it is. This dude is good. Did you learn deliverance first? I've already known how to play that. I could play that on my guitar. So that's like the first thing. I was like, I've never seen that movie. It's not never seen. I've never seen deliverance. Really? I know what it happens because you know you need to be educated. I yeah, I've been watching a bunch of these old things. I just how do I watch it? I mean, how do you stream it? I'm not renting it. Just you, I don't know. Yeah, YouTube. It sometimes YouTube will have a full-length movie on it, dude. I'll watch that full.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:10

Free with ads.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:12

I'll take the commercials. We'll get to see it, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:15

Who was I telling that Dracula one? It's a three-part docuseries. I think it was Stefan. We were talking about this because he told me to watch that new Frankenstein movie from 2025. Yeah, and it was pretty good. Really? And I don't I don't really typically like Frankenstein movies, they're kind of boring, but it was good.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:31

That one was good.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:32

Yeah, did you see it? Yep. It was very good. Yeah. They start him out like he's a scary motherhawker. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah, it's just a good one. And then but then they go through like his whole how he became Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:45

Yeah. It's pretty good if he's. What do you want your name to be? Frankenstein. Movie go. Ooh, ooh, uh Big Daddy.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:53

There you go. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:55

Dude, what is up? How'd you get one in there? I wiped my own ass.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:04

Yeah, I'm the movie quote guy. Man, honestly, shout out to you, Frank. Thank you for joining us today. Yeah, seriously. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:12

And it's been our fault for not have uh making this happen sooner.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:15

I could probably pick your brain for a long time because I know with the journalism thing, I I find a little bit of that in myself with the radio stuff a little because I I'm starting to interview people and stuff, so it's very respectable.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:28

So yeah, he's interviewed some famous people too. Tim McGraw, Jelly Roll.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:33

Maybe not on the same facets and levels, but I'm just learning. I'm just finding my finding my ropes. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:41

No, it's got the media guys here, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:43

Yeah. Well, I enjoyed it. It was good, good being here.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:47

Yeah, so we uh we will like I said, I want to put I'm gonna put the description in the I'm gonna put the link in the description. Did you you didn't want uh the new one doesn't come out till tomorrow. It's already scheduled, everything's coming out tomorrow. Um, but I'll I'll put pictures up here and there. So I was like, we got the little nitro, and when we talked about it, yeah, buddy. So we talked about Justin Castellano, Swansboro's greatest guitar player. Anyway, um so I put the picture of the little nitro up there, and then I was like, but you can buy these at Candy Adventure, and I put Candy Adventure up there. Is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_03 1:49:24

Little Nitro?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:25

Yeah, Little Nitro. And then uh when they did it, I told you I put a little timer up there. And I had to figure out how to do that in Da Vinci, and I figured out how to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:33

See how there's like 89 steps to do one thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:36

The one step I was missing was changing that one thing to multi-camera view.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:41

The next time you get hung up on that, go to our pictures that we've sent each other, and you've like circled it and sent it to me before.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:47

Yeah, it like clearly told me that because you said you've sent me a picture of this before, and I was like, I was like, scroll up, it's right there. Yeah, no. Um, but it so it was funny. We we we add those things in the little time. And then at the end, I I put a little thanks for watching thing and it kind of like fades out. So I I try to do that each time. But uh remember when we were first showing his book? Or no, it was the plaque, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:50:12

It was the plaque that Chris gave us. So we're like, we're showing the back.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:16

And they can because I'm talking, so you see the back. And then when when we put that way, then then they're talking, so it's looking at that. So we never get it face in front. They never got to see it. So we needed to take a picture of it and just post it up because we were terrible at the end.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:32

Frank, have you have you ever done any radio before? I've done radio interviews. I gotcha, right on.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:37

Yeah, so you've been doing a bunch because of this book, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:39

Yeah, and when I worked at the Coastal Federation, I did a Coastkeeper, I did a lot of media interviews. Um yeah, I've been on the radio several times.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:48

I would imagine as a commissioner as well, huh?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:50

Yeah, and TV, and you know, yeah, it was part of the job.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:54

You're like, yeah, it's no big deal. People know me.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:58

Comes with the territory.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:00

I mean, that was, you know, at the Coast Keeper position, yeah, it was it was integral to be good on TV or you know, on a in an interview, you had to sound like you knew what you were. Right. And you gotta connect to the masses. And you got and you gotta connect with people to make it.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:14

You can't just have a face for radio. You have to actually have a face for radio. Well, I always get comments, and people are always like, Man, you ever thought about being on? I was like, Yeah, but as a matter of fact, my uh my co-host is on the radio and we do a podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:27

The drunk douche next to me is actually on the road.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:29

What happened to your arm?

SPEAKER_03 1:51:31

Carrying tent.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:32

Look, I got that happening right there. Oh, speaking of which, real quick, while we've got nine minutes left, tell me about your trip.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:38

Man, we go up to Calicoon, New York. It's around the Woodstock area, and we uh Nicole's family, my wife, she her family has like 50 or 60 people that go there every year. They've been doing it since I think like 79. They'll go out there and camp from like that window. That's a pretty specific year. I don't I that's in there somewhere. It's probably wrong. But in it's in that region of time that that long, that heritage level. Oh, it's they do it for the 4th of July, and um, it's a big gate down. It's it's just a field. There's a cabin there, and just small cabin. Oh, I was just gonna say, did you primitive or did you we primitive it because it's like everybody that's the older folks stay in the cabin and then everybody else tents out. Right. So you drive in, you tent out, they'd shoot off fireworks, the good fireworks on because you know it's in New York. The dangerous thing you can buy the good fireworks gonna blow your fingers off. Exactly, right? It's a risk. Um, anyway. So we do that for four days, five days, depending on when fourth falls, you know, we'll trip up there, we'll drive there, pack the truck full of stuff, and it's like it's always fun driving there, and it's always fun having the fun and drinking the beer, and then it's like Sunday comes, and it's time to pack everything back up.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:45

That's the worst. Like it's the worst. Anytime you end a camping trip. I remember because we grew up camping at Lake Gaston. Every time it's like the last day, we're all like it's like kicking sticks around. Even the day wants to leave.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:57

Even the day before, you're like, it's creeping into your mind. You're like, tomorrow is gonna suck bad. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:03

That's like vacation, dude. If you're on vacation, the second to last day, you're like, fuck tomorrow. Damn it. Right. You know, it's ruined.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:11

Like you ruined the second to last day of my vacation by thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:15

Yeah, by knowing that it's almost over.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:17

So it was a good time, but always we we always come back battered and tattered. You know, I walk around barefoot for four days and walk around without a shot. I keep the same bathing suit on for three days, wash off and clean. You know, you just take a little freaking dude wipe and just you know, wipe yourself down. It's it it is primitive camping when I say it we're grilling and over our fires.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:35

Well, was there is water? Could you swim?

SPEAKER_03 1:53:38

It's a river, so it's like you we dam it. So we come when we get there, we'll take it. Damn it. Yeah, we're like, damn it, because it's work. So exactly stack the rocks up so it it creates like a little deep area that becomes waist deep, and then but as it stands, it's probably shin deep before you dam it. You dam it and it gets deep.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:58

But it's gross river water, I got you.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:00

It's always it's flowing though, it's it's fresh.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:02

It's not a lake where you're in the cove and you get to just go.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:05

Like once you dam it, you can like really see like fish are swimming through there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty clear, it's as clear as it can get. And it's nice and crisp and cool. It's not like bathwater at the beach in the summer time.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:16

So they had is it somebody's house up, somebody owns a cabin up there? Is that why you go up there?

SPEAKER_03 1:54:20

So yeah, there's like a family like delegation of like four or five people that own that land, so they just go there to camp. It's not like a sustainable house. I think that they turn the power off when they leave and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:31

Well, you know, uh we were planning earlier this year, we were gonna talk, we were talking about going to um Idaho. That's right. Whoever wanted to go from the shop, because Cody's from there, and Shell has been out there, and there's a cabin that Shell's friend owns, and we were gonna rent it and all this stuff. Cody has some stuff he's still dealing with cordial. He's injured. Well, now he's injured. Uh in October or sometime around there, our second part of the year trip is up to Ed's family's cabin. They have a cabin. Yep, his dad, his mom and dad just bought a house down here. They're they're closing on their house up there in September, September 22nd. He told me yesterday. I don't know why I'm putting their business out there. But anyway, what is their social security number? So they're coming down, but they they still own this cab and it's their family uh, you know, cabin and it's right on the water. They go hunting up there. So whoever wants to go, it's gonna be a hunting trip because Ed's driving up, so he'll carry all of our rifles and everything. Everybody else is gonna fly up because that's crazy to drive up. I told him I might ride with them just so you can see.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:30

Another downward facet of traveling to do that in a truck with camping stuff. Right. So drive.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:35

And I don't want him to have to be alone on a drive by himself, so I'll probably just all right, I'll go with you and we'll have fun and all that shit. But we're gonna do like a week at that cabin. That's gonna be so good. And it's gonna be like, you know, cold out, nice and cold. We're gonna go fishing. No, no way. Because we're hunting. I would be scared, she'd scare everything away. No, you're being too loud. Yeah, I'm gonna have to have my mom watch her for a week. Maybe I'll have her bring her up here just so she still gets her fill of the cigar shop. Go say hi to everybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:06

Like normal.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:08

I'm telling you, dude, she barks at me when I when I go to put bags in the car. If her bag's not in the car, she's barking at the door. She's mad at me.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:15

She knows she knows she ain't coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:17

Yeah, and all she's doing is that that right there. Yeah. And if we're and if she's at home, I ask my mom, how's Penny? She's fine, she's sleeping. What are you talking about? Like, I know she'd be sleeping here too, but normal. At least she knows she's with daddy, you know. True that. So, and she loves everybody up here, so she knows who to check, which by the way, I need to remember to get some treats because I just gave the last two out. So um all right. But yeah, that was good. Uh, Frank, again, thanks for coming on, man. Chris, thanks for being on too. I know that it was the Frank episode, but still, you know, I mean, it it's it was a good one, in my opinion. Um, I love sitting around the table because I always get to hear all these stories uh anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:56

And it's like I'm grateful that I got to like, you know, like have these conversations with you, man, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:01

Yeah, I love to tell a story, whether they're not.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:04

I was gonna say, like, wait a minute, you would have told us before if you knew that famous person because you heard us talking about it one time. But no, it's incredible the career you've had and and and also the books, man. This is so cool. And again, I pick his brain all the time when I was writing my book, and I'm self-published. I was writing uh mine, and I would pick his brain because you know, I haven't been writing for 30, 40 years. So if I'm thinking about certain maybe I'm repeating myself too much, or maybe I'm quoting something improperly. And I was just telling you the other day I was reading uh Lord of the Flies, and you can't tell who's talking because they just quote one person after another, things like that. And so he would just give me, like, you know, what he does is he writes on um some inside baseball, if you will. Yeah, substack. And it's and it's good, man. And it's like, damn, I got some work to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:52

Yeah, you know, I I retired as a journalist, but you don't retire as a writer, you don't. Yeah, right. Well, so it's it's the way I express myself, and it's the best way I express myself. So that's I started subscribing. I used to put that stuff on Facebook, that's become a sewer. Yeah, it really is hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:07

It has, but I like Substack's cool, man. Yeah, Substack.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:10

When you told me about that, is that before we get out of here? What is that? It's like a blog.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:14

It's a blog.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:15

And it it doesn't, unless you uh and I don't I don't charge you.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:18

You don't have to, yeah. You just write articles.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:20

You can if you don't charge, I don't charge you.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:23

Is it something that I can like follow you on if I make an account?

SPEAKER_02 1:58:26

Yeah, I follow him. Yeah, um check that out for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:29

What's funny is I'll get emails about it from other people with like weird names, and I'm like, I've never followed that person. I don't know why I'm getting that, but I get yours, it tells me when your stuff's on there because I'm subscribed to you. And I started writing on there just like versions of a chapter of one of my books or something like that. I'll put a little article out talking about emotional intelligence or whatever. But uh yeah, it wasn't until Frank told me about that that I was like, damn, that's kind of cool. Because yeah, you want to write. Like, especially like uh I've always wanted to write. Whenever I wrote my first book, I just always wanted to write a novel. Now, have you ever thought about doing fiction?

SPEAKER_00 1:59:02

I have, but I've always found to be nonfiction stranger than fiction. Yeah. Um and so yeah, it's it's always it's it's it's what you know, it's what I've spent most of my life doing. So um yeah, the the people that story tell the people the stories that people tell, a lot of them you can't make up. Right, right. I understand that. And no one would believe you. And that's what makes it a cool story, you know. It's a cool story, bro. Yeah, so yeah, yeah. So so I've I've stuck to what I know. Um and and writers should always write about what they know. Yeah, yeah. And so uh, yes, Substack is just you could if you're a writer, you also want to write for an audience. You know, you don't want to write for yourself, you just otherwise it's a journey.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:46

Do you mind if we put your Substack on here as well, just so people can find your articles as well? And I write not only about it's not only about baseball. I was just gonna say you recently got rid of a good friend of yours. And you wrote about it, the truck.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:59

Yeah, I write about anything.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:00

He got this old truck or whatever, because he's had this truck for years and he used to take the kayak out on it. And the first time he has to take the kayak with the Tahoe. Suburban, suburban, I always say Tahoe. You fuck something up, right? Your garage door.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:14

I ran into the garage door.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:17

So yeah, and then the second time you went out, I think you broke your leg, right? Yeah, so I went out and broke my leg.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:22

So there you go. Should have I should have kept the old Toyota.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:25

Yeah, you see, it was getting rid of that truck. Yeah, that just started your downhill freaking.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:30

I I write about all kinds, just that's cool. I know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:33

But the detail you put in, like a lot of times it's like it might be an old man that you knew that told great stories, and then you'll tell about his life or whatever. Just the storyteller in you, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:42

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:43

Um, but yeah, look at fiction, man. Fiction's fun because you can just make up whatever you want, it's fun. Uh I I enjoyed it, but I I need you to sign this.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:53

I'll do it.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:53

And uh, we here at the cigar shop, we all like support each other and get each other's books and everything like that. I think it's awesome. And I also think George ought to have like a stack of them in there and be like, yeah, we got an author right here, like sell the book, whatever. But 100%. It's called Tar Hero Boys of Summer, Frank Turcy. Frank, what's the V stand for? Is it Vincent? Vincent. I knew it.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:13

My name is actually Francesco Vincente.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:16

I remember I remember you saying that that it's a different yeah that's that's the Americanized version.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:22

I go by Frank. Yeah. What Francesco? That's fun to say. Francisco.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:28

Francisco.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:28

Francisco. Hey, what's that what's that thing you taught me how to say? Capo. Capo de du Capo de Ductacopi. It's it's uh the godfather of all godfathers. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:41

It's it's it's a mafia term. It literally means head of all heads. Uh, but it it it's it referred to the the the dean of the the the the don of the five families.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:53

Uh which you gotta wait till next episode to tell that understanding. Tell a story about that. Yeah, there's a story, but you gotta wait for that.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:01

Okay, we not we're not giving that one out for free. That one's going.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:04

That's on Substack. You can find that story. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:08

Okay. I know the story. It's a good freaking story.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:10

Nah, I'm gonna make an account. I'm gonna follow you for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:13

You can follow me too, dude. All right, fine. Anyway, all right, we ready for some final thoughts? Let's do it. TK, final thoughts.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:21

Final thoughts, Frank. Thanks for joining us, man. Seriously, it was awesome. Uh let's let's be real. Let's call a spade a spade. Two hours wasn't enough. You know, appreciate it, man. Much respect on a great career and still continuing writing, and just uh honored to be in the presence of you, man. Appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us. Frank, final thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:39

Thank you, guys. It was fun and thanks for the kind words.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:42

Absolutely, man.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:45

So the uh scariest words out of a marine officer's mouth is I have an idea. So after uh we turn off the mics, I'm putting in an event together, and I want you to be a part of it, Frank. So it's a dead event, I think. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:01

Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah, it's an event. And my final thoughts again, yeah. Frank, thanks for coming on, man. Um, obviously he's one of the regulars here at the cigar shop, so he's a friend of ours that we see all the time anyway. But I wanted to introduce him to our entire world of followers and uh all 167 of you. And uh we're growing. But uh, you know, these kinds of things, man, when you can talk about cool crap that's different. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we talk about in the cigar shop. When you can talk about writing or interviewing super famous people who are not even famous people, or the struggles of growing up in small town Greensboro or Greensville back then, where you're working at some mill and have and working, you know, your dream is to play baseball, but you can't afford to because you gotta have a job still. That's those are those are the kind of cool stories that you'll see in this book. So check out the book.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:52

Link in the description of summer.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:54

And we'll see you next time. This is the Hot Ashes Podcast. Oh, yeah.