Life Lessons from the Diamond with Christian Sheppard

Moore to Consider (00:01.76)
Welcome to another edition of Moore to Consider. So today I have on author Christian Shepherd, who is originally from Boston, Massachusetts. So we're going to talk a little Red Sox. He now lives in Chicago and has converted to the Cubs, which is a wonderful thing. And he has written the book, the ancient wisdom of baseball, how everything relates to baseball. think it's some, it's some level Christian, how are you, sir?

Christian Sheppard (00:27.123)
I'm great. Thanks for having me, Jack.

Moore to Consider (00:29.172)
I am so happy to have you. Some, someone that's in the world of writing and loves baseball. So we were talking off the air before we got started. You're a Red Sox fan at heart. know probably still. So what was that like growing up in Boston? What the images of Red Sox baseball, what did that do for you in your formative years?

Christian Sheppard (00:48.937)
Well, it was a great thing to be in Boston. For me, I was a catcher. was the backup backstop for the Oak Square Orioles. My favorite player of all time was Carlton Fisk. But there were so many great players to cheer for. It was mythic. Just Jim Rice and Louis Tiat and Bill Spaceman Lee and Fred Lynn. It is amazing how the names begin to come back.

But I just, Boston's a great place to be a baseball fan with that ballpark, like right in the city. I was taken there by my dad and my grandfather. And I was sort of lucky to get to spend a lot of time at Fenway Park and sort of experiencing that. And that's one thing I like about being a baseball fan here in Chicago is like we're in the city. I live, you know, less than two miles from Wrigley field. I walk there and back after the game. So it's a real treat.

Moore to Consider (01:42.882)
Wow.

Moore to Consider (01:49.1)
man, you really brought back some names. was actually, I was talking to somebody the other day about, I was born in 62, so I'm 13 during the 75 series. I don't have a lot, I guess I have some subconscious memory of the 67 season in that I fell in love, I'm a Virginia guy, but I fell in love with Yostremski and through the years, I'm a baseball coach, college baseball coach, got a lot of friends in pro ball.

And the reaction I always get is like, what part of Boston are from? No, I'm actually from Virginia. Why? Yes. And I'm like, I don't know. I just fell in love with. Yaz. But the 75 World Series was heartbreaking. We scored 30 runs. The Reds scored the Reds scored 29. We should have won the World Series and all that. And, know, game six and Teyon's opening game, game one. But what hit me at that time frame and I've told so many friends, they had Evans, Rice and Lynn pretty much come up together.

Evans was pretty much a year ahead. That's an amazing outfield. And Berluson at the time was one of the better short stops. Enrico Petrocelli was on his way out, but you we had a little bit of Doyle followed by Jerry Remy. George Scott came back in 77. Carlton Fisk was in the top three catchers in the American league, probably top two. He and Munson. And yes, still was playing well. Cecil Cooper was part of that group that eventually left.

I thought they would be bulletproof for 10 years. Yeah. And then 78, you know what happens there with Bucky Dent and all that. And then it's not until 86 and then we blow that world series. it, you know, the whole, well, I'm sure that's probably part of your writing is both Cubs and Red Sox, what it's like to be a fan of both.

Christian Sheppard (03:15.251)
Yeah, isn't that crazy how that happens?

Christian Sheppard (03:32.531)
Well, started, the book starts out not right away, but the first main chapter is recalling the Fiske's walk off home run in the game six that takes it on. I compare that moment to when he's waving that ball, that ball fair, that's like winged victory. That's like a mythic moment. He is an indelible hero in the mind of everyone in New England and apparently every Red Sox fan.

Moore to Consider (04:01.414)
absolutely.

Christian Sheppard (04:01.471)
around the country. And I was just a huge Fisk fan. when the Red Sox let Fisk go, I was like inconsolable as a child. And I basically stopped following baseball from there on out, almost just like in protest. And then when I came to college and I was at the South Side of Chicago, my then girlfriend got me tickets to the White Sox and who's...

catching but number 72 Carlton Fisk. And I just like went whole back into baseball at that point. there's, I was still following it all along, but it was just like one of these traumatic moments as a child when your favorite player, you know, I think I bet you a lot of kids right now in Chicago when they let Chris Bryant, know, when Chris Bryant left and Rizzo left and Baez left and everyone has these, you know, these feelings and attachments to their favorite players.

Moore to Consider (04:47.976)
Yeah. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (04:54.632)
You know, uh, gosh, HBO did the wonderful series when it was a game. They took all the old film. did one and two, and I think a third. And I think it was in the second installment. Bob Costas who has a lot of neat things to say about baseball and, uh, and sports in general, but definitely baseball. makes a great point. I think we loved it far more when I was a kid, simply because there was a game of the week. And he said,

You know, we knew that Kofax were 32 and that Willie Mays were 24. And if it was eight, it was Yaz. And if it was 44, it was either McCovey or it was Aaron. Like we knew all the numbers and we knew the players. And I think back, Yaz comes in at 61, retires in 83. That's really the first quarter of my life or the first quarter century of my life. And I don't have to worry about where Yaz is going. Yaz is going to be a red Sox.

Christian Sheppard (05:46.783)
Mm.

Christian Sheppard (05:54.334)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (05:54.67)
So it's funny when you say the thing about Fisk, I remember it did emotional damage to me. I was like, whoa, wait, what the hell just happened? He can't go there. Then Fred Lindtakes often goes and goes to California. Rice stays of course. Evans until the very end goes to the Orioles, which always seemed really weird to me. But you had a sense growing up, at least a portion of my life, until that happened. You're a Red Sox fan, Red Sox stay. And then they didn't, you know, and it's...

I think that had never happened before, but we did kind of grow up in a different era where the players stayed in one city.

Christian Sheppard (06:29.055)
Yeah, it must have been like an Alice in Wonderland moment when like Johnny Damon went to the Yankees or my mom, my grandmother was a huge fan of Wade Boggs. Like she idolized Wade Boggs. And then when Boggs went to the Yankees, you know, it's like, how does that, you know, he could do no wrong. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (06:42.095)
Yeah. Well, Clemens Clemens, I think, you know, was a big part of it. But of course it started with Ruth, you know, and the, you know, it all starts with Ruth. Ruth leaves and the curse comes about. And, but yeah, I have, I read Mondville's book about Ted Williams and I saw Ted Williams one time live. I was with the college baseball team.

Christian Sheppard (06:51.011)
Hit the curse.

Moore to Consider (07:06.661)
1986 and at this school was a young lady that was Enos Slaughter's like ninth child, I think, something like that. Many, many daughters. So Enos is mid seventies and the daughter's 18. She's a freshman at the college and she's like, coach, coach, I want you to meet my dad. I want you to meet my dad. So Ted Williams is going to speak that night. she goes, you know, when my dad got inducted in the hall of fame, she was 14. It was four years prior.

I was in the elevator one time in Cooperstown and this big tall man got in the elevator said, whose little girl are you? And I said, Enid Slaughter. And he said, will you tell him uncle Ted said hello? So she comes back and tells him, saw this guy named Ted and he, you saw Ted Williams, you know? So at this dinner, Williams gets up and the first thing he says is he goes, young man, one day you're going to tell your grandchildren you saw Ted Williams. And he was tall, lean and good looking.

Christian Sheppard (08:04.275)
Hahaha

Moore to Consider (08:05.507)
So later in the talk, he points at Enos Slaughter, he says, one of the greatest competitors. And you know, man, they gave that kind of salute to each other. And I was like, holy cow, that's Enos Slaughter and Williams. You know what I mean? So you grow up, they're mythical figures and all of that. And Ted Williams was such a tortured life, but God, he was the best hitter that ever played. He was the best. And he was a hero. He was John Wayne.

Christian Sheppard (08:15.508)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (08:25.065)
Yeah.

Yeah, he was, was. mean, and you see the pictures of him, you see the pictures of him as a pilot. And he like, could you ever take a bad picture of that guy? I mean, he looks, he's like the epitome of manhood. He was well dressed. was, and he had that kind, he was like John Wayne, you know, he's, kind of had that, see that swagger and that, but that anger too, that he brought to the, brought to the park all the time. He was my dad's favorite, favorite player. And I saw, used to, went, one of the thrills was my dad brought me to a,

Moore to Consider (08:41.122)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Sheppard (08:59.147)
we went to like the Bass Pro Shop fishing demonstration. There was Ted Williams giving instruction in, in how to cast the, how to cast your fly rod. Right. And so that was, really? Yeah.

Moore to Consider (09:09.451)
He was a big Sears guy. Remember? Yeah. yeah. He had the big gig with Sears and Roebuck and they had a whole line of baseball gloves with Ted Williams and bats, but he sold the whole fishing line. yeah, he would. Well, he was a world-class fisherman. He was.

Christian Sheppard (09:24.017)
Yep, yeah, he was a world-class everything he did, know, was he in life, you know

Moore to Consider (09:27.425)
No, you're right. Yeah. But in the Montville book, what's really touching is he grows up with Bobby door and Dom DiMaggio is a California guy. Ted, of course, is San Diego and Dom DiMaggio San Francisco, Vince, his brother, and of course Joe DiMaggio. And at the end of his life, I think he's 82, 83 when he passes away, he's gone through the three wives that were

basically models and he's got the three children. And there was a lady that kind of stuck it out with them all through the years. It's there holding his hand at the end and Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesci and Bobby Dore. And they said, there was a moment he looked at and according to the book, he looks at and he goes, you know, all this guy's been married 50 plus years to the same woman they're love. And I've been through three wives and failed marriages and I've been to it, but they still love, they still came to him. They still held his hand in the end.

Christian Sheppard (10:22.505)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (10:24.916)
Especially Dom DiMaggio. And I think it's a beautiful story how close they were. And, well tell me more about your book. So tell me some of the stories that are told through baseball and how they relate to life.

Christian Sheppard (10:37.799)
Yeah, I tell a lot of stories, starting off with that Fisk story, and then going on to me just going to the, sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field and deciding that I'm gonna become a fan of this team that's horrible. But seeing Andre Dawson in Wright Field, just, and there's an argument, that was, and the idea, there was a way in which,

Moore to Consider (10:59.752)
Wow.

Christian Sheppard (11:05.279)
Him playing for that team just made him bigger and brighter and just like this is someone I can cheer for and was excited about. And then just the whole atmosphere of Wrigley is a fantastic place to see a game. The book begins though, like with the question of like baseball and the meaning of life. The book kind of begins, I'm a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I teach liberal arts and my PhD is in

Moore to Consider (11:18.321)
it is.

Christian Sheppard (11:34.783)
divinity. in religion and literature, and at the University of Chicago, so went there for college and went on to stay for graduate school just basically decade of my life reading. And my I'm coming out of the Div school, which if you want to imagine it's kind of looks like Hogwarts. I mean, the place looks like it's based on Oxford. It just has this whole gargoyle sort of peering down at you. And I'm pushing

Moore to Consider (11:42.738)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Moore to Consider (11:56.307)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (12:00.158)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (12:02.271)
my baby daughter's carriage. just dropped off some papers for the professor I was working for. And there in the, um, some of the eaves of the, of the Divinity School is a fellow grad student dressed all in black and she's like smoking a cigarette and she looks down and she says, huh, how are you going to raise her? Right. And it's like not the type of question you usually get when you're pushing your kid around the, around the, you know, how are you going to raise her? Meaning like, what are you going to tell her about, uh, you know, God, the devil, the Buddha, Shiva.

Moore to Consider (12:24.677)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (12:30.653)
What's, you know, how to live your life. And, you know, I didn't have an immediate answer. I'd been raised basically a strict Roman Catholic. was raised by abusive nuns and cynical Jesuits and they gave me a great education. But I didn't necessarily, I wasn't necessarily sure that that was gonna be the path to my baby daughter's happiness. But I kind of like quickly quipped, you know, I'm gonna raise her a Cubs fan. That was my answer. And then I began to say like, what would it mean

Moore to Consider (12:45.115)
Absolutely.

Christian Sheppard (13:00.379)
if all the questions that you ask of a religion, like when you study your religion, what is the ethos? How does this system tell you how to live? And what is the vision? What does this religious point of view say the world is all about? What if you ask that question of baseball rather than ask it of another religion? And I thought about it like for a couple of decades. And the answer that baseball gave was something very similar to what the...

Moore to Consider (13:04.541)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (13:29.651)
you know what the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome found when they looked back at the epics of Homer and they said that you the world, you can actually have a heroic vision of the world and if you look at baseball it will teach you the classic cardinal virtues like hitting will teach you courage and pitching will teach you prudence, the head game and know fielding teaches you temperance in the sense of being a well-tempered player you're like a

samurai sword that has to like make all of the good actions and the good react make all the good actions that you learn into just your reactions and then when you play together as a team it's like justice so that's the the what's espoused in the book it's nine innings plus one extra where I give you know the break I break apart baseball into its fundamental elements and show how those

Moore to Consider (14:05.413)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (14:22.761)
So to correspond to the teachings of Socrates and Plato and as they dramatized and Homer. And then I have this show how baseball, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes to happy comedy, sometimes it's a last, it's a tragedy. Sometimes it rains and it's sublime. It's always beautiful. then sometimes when the Cubs win the World Series, it's just epic.

you know, that last final, final, so I cover the Red Sox breaking their curse and I cover the Cubs winning, you know, their curse. When the Red Sox won, that was actually, that was sort of a revelatory moment for me, because I was totally into it, right? I mean, just watching all the games. And then the Red Sox, they break the curse. And I'm like, yes. And then I sat back and said,

Moore to Consider (14:54.415)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (15:11.555)
Yeah, sure.

Christian Sheppard (15:19.535)
I've had only been the Cubs. And at that moment I knew that my allegiance had like completely changed and my heart was with this other team, which was too bad. had to wait a long time then to actually be happy.

Moore to Consider (15:34.201)
Well, see, I have a weird background. I played college baseball. I coach it and I'm an attorney and I got a master's in history. I've always been into pop culture, I think, for whatever reason. And I was actually talking to a friend today that is a female that played, she was an all-American softball and she's coaching professional baseball. And we were talking about

what has happened today with the amount of money they have invested in the players and everything. I said, you know what's interesting about the movie 61, because Billy Crystal had become so close to Mantle, is that Mantle was literally drinking himself to death. And the Yankees thought the best they could do was put him up in the swank hotel and get him away for, you know, then they took him out and put him with Maris. And, you know, as depicted in the movie. But there's something heroic about

and

The scene I thought was so important. He's a guy from commerce, Oklahoma. Had he ever met a black person in his life? And one of the stories was when Elston Howard breaks the color barrier for the team, he goes to the bus and eats with him because he couldn't eat in an all white restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida. And he's that teammate and Ted Williams, you know, I was, I explained to somebody the other day, know, his mother was Mexican. He was always sensitive to race in 66. He's the first player to say, put the Negro league players in the hall.

Christian Sheppard (16:53.652)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (17:05.394)
Yeah, I saw that. They replayed recently his Hall of Fame speech. It's great.

Moore to Consider (17:07.905)
Yeah. So, so as a Red Sox fan, I saw the story that Pumsey Green, who was the first black player in 1959, know, Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier for major. You know, of course, Moses Fleetwood Walker had been a black player in 1888 with the Toledo Mudhands. And then they made this gentleman's agreement to exclude black players. But so Pumsey Green.

Christian Sheppard (17:20.009)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (17:34.294)
And I've seen him on, you know, he passed away here a few years ago. I saw him on these interviews where he said, I come in, I'm scared to death. I'm the first black player. Cornell green was his brother played for the Dallas Cowboys. And he goes, I walked through, I walked through the, uh, the locker room doors for spring training. And what should I see? I go, Hey, you want to go out and get a catch? It's Ted Williams. And I'm like, Teddy ball games, talking to me. And he said, the guy that takes me in and shelters me and looks out for me is Ted Williams.

Christian Sheppard (17:54.943)
Ha

Christian Sheppard (18:04.169)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (18:05.91)
So think those stories are beautiful that Mickey Mantle looks out for his teammate at a time. know, everybody, you know, on his monument, it, the first thing it says is great teammate, but he was literally drinking himself to death. And, well, what I was telling my friend is I played for a guy in college or I had a college coach that played the big leagues. goes, Jack, you know, I think, 85 % of us were alcoholics. It was a lifestyle. He said, you know, you came in every night.

Christian Sheppard (18:18.014)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (18:35.935)
You drank a few beers after the game. Then you went back to the hotel. was a lobby with the bar off of it. You drank some more. You're away from your family. So there's that sadness and then there's the heroics of it. And people, it's not a glamorous lifestyle. It's not.

Christian Sheppard (18:52.735)
Yeah. Well, yeah, alcoholism is not a glamorous lifestyle. And you think that, some people in the hall need an asterisk because they use performance enhancing drugs. Other people need an asterisk because they use, you know, performance inhibiting drugs. And you can't even imagine people, like all these people, how much they invest in their bodies now, you know, they're just, and then you have someone else smoking a cigarette and drinking in between. yeah, but mantle is alleged, I mean, that's...

Moore to Consider (19:06.228)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (19:10.312)
Yeah, right, right.

Moore to Consider (19:17.428)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (19:19.931)
There's a biography recently about Bo Jackson, like the last American folk hero. There's a way in which Mickey Mantle is one of those guys, almost like Paul, like a guy who just like walks out of the woods and picks up the bat and can hit it, you know?

Moore to Consider (19:34.247)
You know, that's because I'm old man, get off my lawn. About 15 years ago, I'm coaching some kids and, you know, we're on the van coming back. We're always having these arguments. Our discussions were really incredible, but one day I said, you know, guys, baseball, well, actually I said pro football peaked in the eighties, maybe into the nineties. Now it's flag football. It's powder puff football. They're like, coach, I, don't think those guys could back then could play. I'm like, you tell me Lawrence Taylor couldn't play today. So we get into that.

And I shut the discussion down with them. Like, okay guys, who's your Bo Jackson? Who's your Bo Jackson? And then they're pulling up their phones and they're like, my God, they're looking at film of them. And I do wonder about that, that multi-sport athlete we don't see anymore. And you're right, Mantle is from commerce, Oklahoma. And he's discovered he signs for $2,000. And then he makes it up to the Yankees organization. it is, he's 19 when he gets called up.

And, know, we could sit there as a couple of guys, look at it, think about, think of 1951 New York and 1951 commerce, Oklahoma and playing in the Bronx and seeing Broadway, doing all the things that he was looking at. That must've been incredibly daunting. No television yet really to speak of, know, I mean, what images did he know of New York?

Christian Sheppard (20:41.012)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (20:53.14)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (20:58.879)
Yeah, and you talk to New Yorkers about Mantle. There's a whole different sentiment that's attached to him than to any other player. And it's that kind of like, alas, what did we see dwindle away in front of us? Bo Jackson with him, you hate to say it, because you see him play football. But I don't know how many times I've gotten to bed at night and said, why God did you let him play football? Because he could have been, he was an epic player.

And we lost, but that's part of the mystique around Jackson, I think, is that what could have been, because you know he could have, you know, he could have it for the Royals, he could have for the White Sox, it's crazy.

Moore to Consider (21:36.176)
Well, and you know, Manil's a lot of what if. That's 536 home runs, but he's pretty much done by the time he's 33. He limps into 36 or whatever the number was, but he was a shell. I mean, physically those last three years, he falls off. They stick him at first base. He's lost over there. He's not Mickey anymore. you know, it is the old song about, uh, if I don't have to live this long, wouldn't take any better care of myself. And, and, uh, there was a lot, but.

Christian Sheppard (22:03.656)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (22:05.954)
In the end, everything he went through and how he got to speak to the public about, see another person that I've learned in all this, I think is a beautiful soul is Pat Summerall. Because you know, Summerall was the one that got him to the Betty Ford clinic and the things that Summerall as an alcoholic did to reach back to other athletes.

Christian Sheppard (22:26.815)
That's interesting, I didn't know that.

Moore to Consider (22:28.335)
yeah. Well, they're new. They were both in New York. So he and Mantle were tight and Frank Gifford. he ran with all the jet set football players with the giants back then too. So when Mantle's melting down from the alcohol, Summerall reaches out and Mantle said that he goes, I don't think it's towards the end. wouldn't be alive today if not for Pat Summerall and Pat Summerall reached out.

Christian Sheppard (22:46.271)
This might be one of the differences of, know, the legend that is the legend that is Mickey Mantle versus the folk hero that is Babe Ruth. I mean, you hear the stories of how Babe Ruth lived and how he, and he did all this stuff and that he had that career. And you hear stories about like the people complaining, Ruth did this and Ruth did that. And someone said, you know, so you didn't like Ruth. And it's like, no, everyone loved Ruth. You're like, he was just...

in in in you know the early how he made baseball in a way. Yeah, you know he he he he established and and my mom just recently sent me a video of my grandfather at at Thanksgiving telling the story about when he saw Ruth saw Ruth play at Fenway Park and I was like that's so strange that you know it's that seems like another time altogether it's a it's sort of you know.

Moore to Consider (23:20.312)
Mm-hmm. he did.

Christian Sheppard (23:42.271)
playing frisbee with George Washington or something. It's sort of strange to think that you have that connection, you know?

Moore to Consider (23:47.885)
That's a good line. like that. I'm going to use that. Yeah. Frisbee was like, yeah, you're right. Cause you're thinking like, I was in Fenway a couple of years ago, 2022, had a buddy of mine that was managing the Rangers for a short time and now he's coaching third again for him. So I went up there to see him and I'm in Fenway and I was going to catch my buddy after the game. they're the, the text he was with the Texas Rangers. They're coming out from behind a black canopy. it, they don't even really have a, a,

proper players exit and you're looking at things, you're like, this is 1912. They've done a lot of renovations, but you still recognize Ruth played here. You know, and, you're thinking of, and Ken Williams and all the other names we've talked about. So, but there is some part of it that you think you can't actually touch or feel or talk to somebody or see video of someone that actually saw Ruth play. It seems like from a different planet, but it did happen.

Christian Sheppard (24:26.013)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (24:43.059)
Yeah, no, it's yeah, that's one of the things that I mean, and I know you're a huge football fan too, and I am too, but there is something in the comparison is worth making because you can see the difference. There's a sense of, you baseball, you see baseball in sepia tones, you see it in kind of like that golden light of history whenever you see it. you know, Wrigley Field, that's where Ruth did the called shot.

Moore to Consider (25:05.995)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (25:10.927)
point up to the bleachers and hit it out there. You think you're in the place where these things happen and maybe that's the thing about baseball too. I remember hearing an interview with Tony LaRusso and they asked him, you've managed so many teams, seen so many things. Why do you do it? Why do you keep on doing it? And he said, I don't know what's gonna happen today. I don't know who's gonna win. Do you? I wanna be here and see.

There is a sense that you never know what you're gonna see and something new might occur. I remember I took my dad before he died to Wrigley Field. This was when Sammy Sosa and Martin McGuire were on their home run. And I don't remember exactly what number home run it was for Sosa. It was number 50 something. And it was an in the park home run.

Like who would have thought that that's the one that's supposed to be behind my dad said. I've never seen this many and I've never seen that, you know? So there's always something you can hope for too.

Moore to Consider (26:06.667)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Moore to Consider (26:15.836)
And I think that's one of the beauties of sports. We go to a movie that we know nothing about. We don't read the reviews. We're there for the plot. How does it end? Where do we think the movie's going? the butler did it, whatever. But the beauty of sports is every time we go, we hope at least, it's not scripted. But yeah, we go there because in the end, we don't know what's going to happen. And as a Sox fan, you'll get this. Because I know from being around the game at the level I've been,

Christian Sheppard (26:23.518)
I mean.

Moore to Consider (26:45.171)
Bernie Carbo took the most horrendous, awful swing out of the mitt before he hit a ball dead center over the center field wall there in Fenway and tied that game six that led. We don't have a fisc home run in the 12th. If Carbo doesn't come off the bench and hit that home run. And he fouled a pitch off and it was the worst swing that he, there was an emergency hack. got to, know, then when you're in Fenway.

And you see the 37 foot wall that drops down to like the 17 foot wall and it's 420 out there in that corner. Where he hit that ball is a shot. And after the worst swing ever, he hits that home run and he's a first round pick ahead of Johnny bench with the Reds before he comes to Boston. And sadly, I read his story that he said he doesn't even really remember much of that time.

Christian Sheppard (27:24.084)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (27:41.417)
Hmm.

Moore to Consider (27:41.692)
He had massive drug issues and or alcohol and that he was pretty much playing remote control. He didn't really know where he was half the time. And it's really, really sad story, but he was a phenomenal talent and he kind of self-medicated as many players do to get through the grind. And it led to addiction, but he hits that home run and we go on to see, now you mentioned four. I think the beauty of the Red Sox is only they.

could break an 86 year curse by coming back 03 against the Yankees. That had to happen.

Christian Sheppard (28:14.909)
Yeah. Well, I talk about that. The ninth chapter of my book is called, it's about comedy, which in ancient terms, they define as any story that ends happily, right? And it's happiness. that ends happily. Now the mystery is maybe you can explain this because I have a previous chapter called tragedy. And the heart of that chapter is Bartman reaching for the ball and

Moore to Consider (28:37.392)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (28:45.105)
It's, it's, you know, I occasionally have flashbacks to this and still wonder. It's, it's, it's, it's not fan interference. It's an unofficial, there was no, it's, it's, it's unofficial fan, you know, just another fan reaches for the ball and that, and the, and the Cubs, even though we have Pryor, even though we have Wood, even though we have Sosa, even though we have, they fall apart and it goes. You go to the Red Sox and there's Dave Roberts.

and he steals second base on Mario Rav- under Mario- Mariano Rivera under the tag of Derek Jeter and the momentum shifts the other way. How is it that some plays and I think like this, even that term, use momentum, you hear the announcer say they're like, they're looking for a metaphor in physics, momentum to explain how, how it happens. There's certain like,

intangible things that, that, you know, what is it that rouses the red socks and what is it that makes the Yankees choke? I mean, if I could bottle what makes the Yankees choke, I would be selling that in the street corners of New York, but that, that would be a, you know, what's, what's, what's your answer to that? How like certain moments.

Moore to Consider (29:56.549)
Well, okay. I have a friend of mine who played college baseball. He's a law school graduate. Love the guy. He's telling me one time it's all random. All the stats. People will tell you that, you know, bonds having a rough first five series and not so bad as last two Ted Williams, one shot at the world series and he hits one 67. It's just all chance. And I said, you can tell me that all you want. I'm gonna tell you what the one man.

Who's the most clutch human my life depended on. me David Ortiz to hit. Cause I'm sorry. He's going to do it. I said, Hey, 2013 team hit one 13. He hit six 50, whatever. He won that series by himself. He did. And so as a baseball guy, there are, Oh my gosh. And I was never this guy. The other day I was coaching the college team. I'm coaching with a bunch of buddies. And one of the guys, was, it's a Dominican guy played triple. And I love this guy so much fun.

Christian Sheppard (30:27.357)
Yeah, that's good to say.

Moore to Consider (30:53.751)
And he was, Hey brother, brother. I said, what? goes, he's tipping. okay. Here comes fast. Like he's one of those guys. He's like every pitch, the kid moves his glove and set up like 2.3 inches and he's calling the pit. And he was, he was right every time. So there are those things. So I was, I was saying to a friend recently that I don't know you ever watched this like documentary four days in October. All right. They do the whole thing on the last four days and

Christian Sheppard (30:58.943)
You

Christian Sheppard (31:15.871)
Mm-mm.

Christian Sheppard (31:19.324)
Okay.

Moore to Consider (31:21.154)
You know, Terry Francona appears to me to be that guy everybody wants to play for. He's a, he's doing the hot foot, practical jokes with the player. Everybody loves him, but he does a press conference down 03 and they're like, what do you think? You all the team meetings? Nah, they're men. They'll come, you know, they're men. They'll come up. So Ortiz comes in, no lie. 03, he's coming into Latin music, dancing. Everybody's got a spit can. They're dipping, chewing, whatever. They're playing cards and it's 03.

Christian Sheppard (31:35.22)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (31:47.564)
And then famously, Millar's on the field and I think it's Shaughnessy with the press up there. He's like, what do you think? goes, Hey, don't let us win the night. Don't let us win the night. Cause we win then it's Petey and then it's Schilling and he was serious. He's serious. So exactly, exactly, exactly. And so I'm looking at that. So in the documentary, you know, Terry, but these are men that do it every day. They, know, we look up and go, my gosh, but

Christian Sheppard (31:55.871)
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Right.

Christian Sheppard (32:01.533)
Yeah. Malar's the guy who got the walk. Malar got the walk off of Rivera. Yeah. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (32:17.557)
You know, he's sitting there and he's like, Dave, Malar walks. You're going in. You're going to steal second. Got it. Got it. Skip get shoes on. Let's go. You know, get ready. And it's, he says it just like that. And Dave Robinson got you skip got it. Take care of it. So Malar gets up there and works a walk. I'm fine. Rivera challenge him. I mean, make him hit the baseball you'd think, but he gets on. And then everyone in the world knows now Rivera is famously not good at pickoff moves or holding runners.

Christian Sheppard (32:30.292)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (32:45.579)
So he's trying to do what every base runner will tell you, which you can no longer do because the game is so screwed now, but it's hold, hold, hold. You just try to do the forever hold. Get Roberts to call time a couple of times. And I remember I was watching it in real time. And when he takes off, know, Posada is a good throwing catcher. He wasn't the most elite guy, but you know, he makes a good throw the tag, he's safe. I'm like, my gosh. And wasn't it Miller that hits the ball up the middle for the, for the, for the tying? Wasn't it Bill Miller?

Christian Sheppard (33:12.765)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Miller, who had been with the Cubs before, he got the, I think he had the batting title that year, right? He was, he was great that year.

Moore to Consider (33:15.093)
Yeah!

Moore to Consider (33:18.496)
So I'm watching this further and I think that was the night Ortiz hits the homer to win. Then think the next night extra energy gets a single to win. so I got a buddy I did a podcast with the other day, went to high school with Ortiz. I did a couple of days with Manny Ramirez at the Indoor Facility and I love Manny, but you know, I got to spend time with Manny, but I've never met Ortiz. Everyone I know that knows him loves him. You know, you can figure that he's most loved guy in Boston, but I'm watching him on this.

And he goes, yeah, so this Yankee pitcher, he likes to work the cutter in. you're like, I'm going to count gets to this. And I'm thinking, okay, the next time I see it in this lane is going to cut to about right here. I open up boom. I hit the home run. So like, wait, yeah. And I mean, the way he's talking, if I see this, I know this is coming and he's talking about the sequence and I know what's going to happen. And you know, these guys are pretty sharp in that. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (34:02.601)
He knew what he was doing.

Christian Sheppard (34:14.279)
Yeah, his mind works in a different way, right? I mean, he's he's got encyclopedia for every pitch he's ever seen, but he doesn't know Dustin Pedroia's name, even though he was announced in front of him in the batting order every day for for three years. You know, it's he's like Manny was like a hitting savant and and and and and my son is a mathematician. He did, you know, he goes and studies sabermetrics and stuff like this. And he's trying to convince me there's no such thing as clutch. And I just say, you know, you don't know.

Moore to Consider (34:19.614)
Exactly.

Moore to Consider (34:32.072)
Yeah, he was.

Moore to Consider (34:43.004)
Right. That's the argument. Yeah. You put it better, right. It is not clutching. I'm like, I don't know. Cause there are some people and I know probably again, where you're from. I love Tom Brady. He's seven and three in the super bowl. get it. But to me, and this is kind of that if a guy was in his prime in your life, depending on who you'd start, I'm still a Montana guy. I'm still a Montana guy and I get it.

You know, he got banged around a little bit more frail body. He's four and four for four in the Superbowl, but didn't get to 10. I get the whole argument, but I was always shocked at how precise he was in the biggest moments. And, you know, we're going off of baseball here to football a little bit, but I remember that story of the 89 yard drive to beat Cincinnati. First, he gets in the huddle and he sees John Candy. You may have heard the story. And Harris Barton said there was a tackle went to Carolina.

Christian Sheppard (35:19.913)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (35:30.803)
Yep. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (35:36.241)
He gets in the hut, we're like, we gotta do this. Come on, we got it. And he goes, and I look at Montana and he's like, like, and he goes, what? goes, Hey, there's John Candy, the actor. And I went, he's completely cool. However, as he's passing the ball down the field, there comes a point he's looking at Bill Walsh and he's kind of like, you know, giving it this number. Walsh like, nah, keep going, keep going. He's trying to call timeout. Do you know why he was trying to call? He's hyperventilating. He couldn't breathe. He's like,

Christian Sheppard (35:45.235)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (36:00.543)
wow.

Moore to Consider (36:05.658)
Hey coach, know, and Walsh is like, no, save the time out, keep going brother. He doesn't know. So now he's in the huddle halfway down the field and he can't hardly breathe. And then he throws a touchdown to Taylor and he's the legend like he always is. Yeah. So the thing is these guys are humans and he's seeing John Candy and five minutes later, he's struggling to breathe. Whatever the hell's going on.

Christian Sheppard (36:18.271)
Yeah. The rest of history.

Christian Sheppard (36:22.771)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (36:28.592)
And these are the stories. These are the stories about, so I do think that some people are built for those moments and some people just aren't as much.

Christian Sheppard (36:36.351)
And I think people are built in different, there's many ways to skin a cat. They can find that calm under pressure in different ways. I was writing that chapter on courage and how famously behind every backstop in America, every little league coach is saying, don't be afraid of the ball, don't be afraid of the ball. And then at some point it occurred to me, it's like, you know why you say don't be afraid of the ball? It's not because, well, because you should be afraid of the ball. If the ball hits you, you're gonna end up, it's gonna hurt or you're end up ugly or something.

But the reason why you say don't be afraid of the ball is to distract them from not being afraid to strike out. Like Babe Ruth said, don't be afraid of striking out. And baseball is a game of failure. it's like, this is one of those lessons where it's great thing, you being a coach, because it, how many of you, how many,

how many of the people you work with are gonna end up playing, I mean, how many are gonna play in MLB? How many are gonna play D1? How many are gonna play? How many are just gonna be the games that they play with you? But when they learn that calm, when they learn to take their mind in a different direction, that's a lesson that stays with them forever. And I think baseball can offer some of those, you I mean, it's like when you try to pitch, you have to be smart.

how many times in my life have I said to myself, know, okay, now be smart, be smart, be smart. And you say that to yourself, because you know, in past experience, I tend to be stupid. So you have to like remind yourself to, okay, what's the situation? How do I be aware? But I also think that some people, I just saw an interview with Manny Machado, and he did like a walk-off home run. And afterwards, they're asking him, you know, Manny, you get in these situations and...

Moore to Consider (38:17.444)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (38:24.061)
and you come up to the plate, how do you stay cool? And he like looked left and looked right and he said, I'm Manny Machado. I'm the best player here. I want my team to win. If I want my team to win, I want Manny Machado to be at the plate. It's like he had so internalized his own inner legend that he was just like the narrator for that win. thought, know, I'm never gonna be that way, but I'm glad Manny is for his team at least.

Moore to Consider (38:49.816)
You know, it's funny you say that because I was actually talking to a kid the other day who, well, let me back up and say this. I have a very close friend that pitched 13 years in the big leagues. I in a couple of All-Star games. Devout Christian, just one of the best human beings. Like really, really a close friend. I over the years it was baseball that made his friends, but he's really a neat guy. So years ago, he tells me, goes, you know what? I never got out of my head. He pitched in the big leagues till he was 38. And he goes, you know what? never got out of my head the whole time I pitched. And I said, what's that?

I never wanted to get sent home to my hometown and have to explain to everyone why I failed. And I was thinking, that's why you were good. So years ago when I was coaching junior college, we're in a bad stretch and I go to home plate and I'm like, guys, I won't say exactly how I said it, but I was like, guys, what is wrong with you? And one of the guys was like, Coach, I just don't feel like we're having any fun. And I went, this game is fun? Well, it should be. I'm like, would your mom tell you that? And he goes, what's that supposed to mean?

Christian Sheppard (39:29.204)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (39:38.431)
No.

Moore to Consider (39:48.055)
You never had fun. I'm like, no, I didn't have fun. One minute. There's nothing I ever did. I enjoyed more than competition, but I was too afraid to get my ass handed to me. Like if I was on the mound and I give up 13 runs, that ain't fun. didn't, I didn't come out of the game after getting blasted and felt like it was fun. I felt like I was in kind of the, you the metaphoric knife fight that I was trying to get out of the alley, you know, and the beauty of it was I'd look back and went, woo, we won. I pitched the six, seven, eight, nine innings and we won the game.

Christian Sheppard (39:56.318)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (40:16.288)
But in the midst of it, I didn't think it was fun. I really didn't. So then I've asked other guys, I've talked to big leaders, I was a blast. I loved it. I'm like, okay, you loved it, but was it fun or what am I missing? So when I said my friend was saying I didn't want to get sent home, I think what he was saying is I had an emotional stake in the outcome. And if you don't, I don't think you're very good at it. So Ted Williams, we talked about all the anger issues he had.

Christian Sheppard (40:19.22)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (40:35.687)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (40:43.615)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (40:43.798)
What did he say? I want to walk down the street and say, everybody say it's the greatest hitter that ever lived. And he was angry. You and I both know he was angry. But what was he? He was the best hitter.

Christian Sheppard (40:54.527)
Yeah, his best player ever lived. He was Ted Williams. The only one I've heard, you know, it's funny you said that the fun after that game six, when Fisk had the walk off and it was like a great game. I quote this in the book, Pete Rose, they asked him, what do you feel? And he said, wasn't that a great game? Wasn't that a lot of fun? And there's the guy, there's no more competitive guy in the world, right? Than Pete Rose. And so there's something about it.

Moore to Consider (40:57.526)
Go ahead.

Christian Sheppard (41:21.567)
But I do think that, I mean, I'm like you. did, well, I didn't do, I didn't play baseball. I played football when I was a little bit younger, but then I did a lot of martial arts and it was all about intensity and just sort of being in the moment of, know, I never thought about fun until it was afterwards, but in Cooperstown, they have a movie there that's on a loop and they interviewed Dusty Baker. And Dusty Baker says, when I was a little kid playing in the sandlot, it was always,

Moore to Consider (41:42.708)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (41:52.063)
Game seven of the World Series, ninth inning, bases loaded, and I'm up at bat. And so when it was, when I got to game seven of the World Series, it was the ninth inning and I'm up at bat. I was just that, I'd been there before and I was just this little kid on the sandlot. And I was like, wouldn't it be beautiful to play, to like live your life like Dusty Baker in that way? I mean, I think maybe he has a different disposition than others.

Moore to Consider (42:16.264)
Well, it's interesting when I was talking to a coach friend of mine on a recent podcast, we were talking about, I was at a convention of coaches back in December. I was at the Virginia convention than the national convention a couple of weeks later, but there was a young lady speaking and she's working with pro athletes, mostly baseball. And she said, the number one thing, talking point type of thing I hear from coaches is how do I get Timmy more confidence? And she'll say, why the hell does that matter?

Well, they can't play without confidence. And she said, you know what? She goes, I say to coaches all the time. I've talked to Billy after he went four for four and he said he was scared to death. And I've talked to Timmy after he went over four and I said, Hey, do feel pretty good? I felt great. I was just very confident and they went oh for four. So she goes, what the hell differences that make? And I'm like, thank you for saying that. Cause I think the best motivators being scared. I really do. Cause I think whether it's Ted Williams, angry at his childhood.

Christian Sheppard (43:01.353)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (43:10.589)
Hmm.

Moore to Consider (43:15.218)
angry at the reporters or, know, Machado, he says what he says there, but I think there is also the aspect of we're playing ourself in a movie in our head. think males tend to do it, Whether we think we're an action figure, I think have to, I used to hear that about bad cops. They're like, well, he thinks he's playing himself in a TV detective series. if, go ahead.

Christian Sheppard (43:26.909)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (43:36.371)
Yeah, they say he has like main character syndrome. He's the protagonist, yeah.

Moore to Consider (43:42.172)
Yeah. Yeah. So if you're a baseball player though, and you're in big moments and you see yourself being heroic, that's halfway to maybe pulling it off. Right. I I think it kind of, yeah, I do notice though, I had a kid a few years ago, five bedroom home, dad was a Harvard graduate, not to knock any of that, but he wasn't exactly the toughest kid and he pitched in an organization we've discussed today and he gained a lot of weight, wasn't doing so well.

Christian Sheppard (43:51.453)
Yeah. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (44:11.462)
Dad said, you know, maybe you ought to have a talk with him. And as I talked to him, I said, do you know that Babe Ruth basically grew up in an orphanage? He was born in a bar basically in Baltimore, Maryland. said, you know, Ted Williams kind of came from the broken home. said, people have said that Cobb's father may very well have been killed by his mother or his or her lover. You know the story, right? And then I'm like, you take Jackie Robinson, what he went through, Willie Mays, poor kid going up in Alabama, Hank Garen.

I said, what are you hearing from me? You don't hear a lot of grew up in a five bedroom house where everything was pretty much taken care of. And a really close Italian friend of mine said this years ago, goes, you know, my dad, he grew up in New York. He goes, my dad always wanted to my Joe to be the best, but he always thought maze was the best. But he said, there was supposed to be a famous quote where Yogi bear turned to demise. You only goes, Hey, why is it so many Italians like us plan? You know, and we're talking the forties. goes,

Christian Sheppard (44:48.019)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (45:09.807)
Because it's a poor and this is what DiMaggio supposedly say, hey, because it's a poor man's sport, rich kids can't play this game. And you know, historically, the turn of the 20th century forward, it pretty much was kids from the factories or the kids from the farms. And I think it is a tough man's game. I really do. think it still is. And so where the kids come, Dominican Republic, you know, I a lot of close friends from there. It's not exactly like those kids are growing up in a lap of luxury, but they're 20 % of Major League Baseball.

Christian Sheppard (45:15.347)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (45:22.74)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (45:37.455)
So think there's something built into the sauce with the players in the history. Most of them had a lot to overcome.

Christian Sheppard (45:42.813)
Yes. Yeah, it's something to eat either. It's either hunger like DiMaggio or anger like what Williams. There's something there. Yeah, fun. And even I think that when they when they become the hero in their own mind as they're playing, they're telling that story, they're overcoming. I remember I remember this, that actually the story didn't end up didn't end up well. But I remember when the Mets were playing and David Wright, they were down by.

They were one game about being eliminated and someone asked him, what are you gonna do now? And his response was, well, I guess we're gonna have to break their hearts, right? And it was just like, could tell he was telling a story in which just like Millard did, don't let us win one, don't let us win one. Part of being good is telling that story so you can win. I you have someone like Michael Jordan, who is probably best known as not the best baseball player ever, but he would use, in Chicago, I got to see him play a lot.

and just the stories that he would use in order to give him that constant anger, constant hunger in order to be, you know, the greatest ever at anything.

Moore to Consider (46:48.461)
You mentioned right. had David and I had him at 11 in an indoor facility. He's one of my favorites. Yeah. Yeah. I had him. I had Kadiar Young, Mark Reynolds, Josh Roop, the picture up here, pitched with three clubs. So I was in Virginia Beach, Norfolk area. I was at an indoor facility, Grand Slam on Dean Drive off of South Lynn Haven, off of Lynn Haven Parkway. And I never seen anything quite like David. Like he was 11 and

Christian Sheppard (46:53.343)
I don't know what.

Moore to Consider (47:16.341)
His younger brother, Steven and I were close too, who was nine at the time. So mom, his dad was a homicide detective, went on to be the assistant chief of police. And the mom was a school teacher, gym teacher. And she used to bring them in. was two in diapers at the time. And David would come in with Steven and do hidden lessons or whatever. And David's just like a really neat human being, but he was very intensely. Now Michael Kadiar was four years older. That was kind of his blueprint. I'm going to follow Michael.

Michael's the most wonderful guy on earth 15 years in the big league. So I watched him both grow up and David was always very precisely professional and He did have an air about himself though. I think he He was aware of how he presented and it was it was kind of weird for me because you know, we always were like I was like uncle Jack, know that kind of thing and then he's the heartthrob in New York, you know, he's this big deal, know and

Christian Sheppard (48:12.425)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (48:13.373)
And it was really neat to see. then of course his career got cut short with the injury and everything, but that's a neater part of having dealt with some young people in professional sports. You know them, you see them grow up. And I think theatrics is a big part of it. do. I think that there's some guys that can be completely shut off. But when I mentioned Gary Lavelle earlier, I asked him about some of the personalities and you know, he said there were some guys that were completely separated from all events.

And they just show up and they could just play. And then there were guys that the slightest bit of difficulty led to failure. You know, was just, they're just different. And, um, and then you mix in the addictive properties. You, you mix in that it is a tough lifestyle. I think that's the thing that bothers me most about fans. I had a friend of mine that had four years in AAA and had it not been for some of the choices he made, I'm sure he would have hit, he would have played.

Christian Sheppard (48:45.215)
Hmm.

Christian Sheppard (49:02.59)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (49:12.971)
Three of the four years he had over 300 triple A. He was a great hitter. And his mom tells me one time that when she was working in Belks, you know, in the department store, working in the men's a lady said something along the line. So what does your family do? Well, my husband builds pools and my son is a baseball player. Oh my gosh. And you work? She goes, yeah, he made like 17 grand last summer in the minors, right?

Christian Sheppard (49:37.257)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (49:38.599)
And people don't get, think every Major League Baseball, or I'm sorry, every Minor League player is making $37 million and they have no idea what these guys are playing for.

Christian Sheppard (49:47.123)
Yeah, they're playing for the hope and they're playing for the love, right?

Moore to Consider (49:49.99)
Yeah, and they're getting a lot of earning years of no money coming.

Christian Sheppard (49:54.783)
Did you have a perception of David Wright as a leader back then? Because one of the things I got a sense from him from the Mets on that team that he was like a team leader. And there's a question of like individuals, you know, they find their confidence, they find their courage and they find it in different ways. But there are some people who are like the leaders of a team. And it's a strange thing for a baseball team, because baseball really is kind of like a lot of parallel play, right? Like that's what everyone's doing. So how is it that some people not only have their own confidence,

Moore to Consider (50:18.408)
That's exactly right.

Christian Sheppard (50:24.659)
But like, know, Michael Jordan brought a lot of confidence to the Bulls because like, he's on our team, we're going to win. And I guess you have the sense with David Ortiz, but I don't think he was the leader of that team in a way, you know? How does someone like David Ryder, how does someone like Derek Jeter become a leader?

Moore to Consider (50:37.293)
I think, I think we're.

I think Ortiz absolutely was. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think when you play, I'm going to, you know, I mean, I didn't play at that level. I played in college, but I can tell you the number one thing I wanted from you as a teammate was do your job. I don't care if I liked you that that's a problem too, that I've really seen in baseball as a coach.

Christian Sheppard (50:42.814)
Really?

Moore to Consider (51:06.791)
guys will give a lot of sob stories about, the chemistry is not, and I'm like, screw the chemistry. I could not stand the shortstop. If I'm pitching the balls on the ground, he throws it first before the runner gets there, I could give a rat's ass if I like him or not. I respect him. So it meant far more to me. So I think what you're saying about David, and I know this about David because I saw him grow up. No one, no one was ever going to question if he was prepared to play.

Christian Sheppard (51:19.135)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (51:33.375)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (51:34.278)
So the thing is, if you show up every day and you make all the plays or you make the vast majority of the plays, you make the plays, they like you or they respect you. And, absolutely. And when you say it with G, no, thing about Jeter is I remember, I saw Tori a few, just a few years ago talking about how he played for the Cardinals, the Mets and the Braves. And then basically felt like he'd ruined his opportunities to manage by having those three teams.

Christian Sheppard (51:42.887)
Maybe he said a tone or something.

Moore to Consider (52:04.184)
And he said, he went to a seminar. had no idea about this. Like when he signed professionally, his brother, Frank was already in the big leagues with the Braves and he was a chubby nobody. He said that kind of became a catch in prospect, probably because of his brother. So he's telling the story. He goes in the nineties. His wife is like on a real estate sales team and he goes to a seminar and a guy is breaking down self-esteem and Tori's like, I'm about to cry thinking about the things.

of what I've thought of myself. So I get a second chance with the Yankees. First they call to say, be scouting director or something. like, thought, be the manager. So friend of mine in Pro Ball said, you know what really defined that second chance he had was he went over Jeter. And Jeter ruled the locker room. And it reminded me of the old saying that Earl Weaver had. Earl Weaver said, on every 25 man roster, five guys love you, five guys hate you.

and 15 are indifferent. The secret to managing is keep the 15 indifferent away from the ones that hate you. He literally said that. And I was like, there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, as a coach and all, I can tell you, there's always going to be five kids that hate your guts. I don't care what you do or say. There's five kids that love you. And I've tried to explain to kids, I'm like, you know, a lot of times you guys don't believe this, but I've absolutely despised kids I had on the field every day.

Christian Sheppard (53:08.879)
Hahaha

Christian Sheppard (53:18.335)
Mm.

Moore to Consider (53:32.897)
And I've loved kids that were on the bench. wish they were better and they're not. And you guys, I've been there. You're like coach likes me or doesn't or coach doesn't like me. That's why now we don't play you because we don't believe you're going to pull through at the time it matters. So yeah, we kind of think in those terms we want to win. So, yeah, I think that Jeter was a very professional. I don't know. I'm just spit ball, but I think his professionalism and the fact that he was the young guy.

Christian Sheppard (53:46.643)
likes to win.

Moore to Consider (54:01.443)
I think Passada had a lot to do with running that program. But, you know, when I think back to those late nineties Yankees, who's the guy I wanted to play with? I want to play with Bernie Williams. I want to play with Bernie Williams because Bernie shows up and does everything well. But I think Paul O'Neill was probably a pretty cool guy to play with because he was a little fiery, but then they get Scott Broschus. What's Scott Broschus? He's everyday Scott. He's going to make all the plays. He's going to make the, you know,

Christian Sheppard (54:10.655)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (54:26.825)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (54:28.331)
And that's what I think you can kind of see from the stands and certain chemistry and you're probably not far off just reading the body language of the players. But would you want to play with Ortiz?

Christian Sheppard (54:38.431)
Oh yeah, for sure. It'll be a ball. Maybe they needed that. that's, mean, you think about when you, as you describe the Yankees, as you describe that team, I'm thinking that's the Yankees. That's, that's the DiMaggio. That's the Jeter. That's the, you know, the Yankees are the Yankees in there. This, you know, professional pinstriped version of the empire that, that, that rules. They, they win that way. And then you have the band Happy Idiots that was Boston and maybe, maybe they, Frank Conocat,

caught, you know, in a bottle. I mean, it helps to have Manny and you just know they're gonna hit. You know they're gonna come through and they're not gonna be affected by it. And so they could play like their hair was on fire the whole time.

Moore to Consider (55:25.729)
do believe though that that whole thing about Francona in that moment, that's definitely something. I mean, when I was playing summer ball in my late teens, early twenties, we had a guy that played in the big leagues. He was in his forties, could still outplay all of us, but he played in the big leagues. He was fast and powerful. And one day, I just said, one of the biggest moments of my life when it came to development as a baseball player, we got our ass handed to us. 16 to one summer league.

And guys are back by, well, if you just covered first, if you know whatever, he goes, guys, everybody shut up. He goes, I'm used to playing 140 to 160 games a season. That that's going to happen. Tonight's going to happen. Leave it alone. Move on. Leave it. And guys are like, but but he goes, no, no, no, no. You're putting emphasis on it because you play 20 games in summer. Whatever. This is going to happen. You move on. You come back tomorrow. Just don't let it bother you.

And I remember how much wisdom there was in that. goes, he goes, and I kind of pulled him aside. He goes, Hey, you play 140 games in the summer in the minor leagues. You're get your ass handed to you. There's going be a 20 to one game one night. Everybody knows it. Nobody goes back to the clubhouse and makes a big deal out of it. Cause it's going to happen. And I thought, yeah, our perspective is different, but it might be the once or twice a week. So the professional people I've been around, I could understand.

Francona. I can understand a fan seeing Francona say, hey they'll figure it out, they're men. Damnit, Terry, you better get in there and say something, you know, and he's just like, nah, they're men, they'll figure it out. They'll do it. They're guys. They'll figure it out. But that's what they do for a living.

Christian Sheppard (56:58.344)
you

Christian Sheppard (57:03.103)
If you watch Frank Kona in the dugout though, he's chewing like a gerbil the whole time. I'm surprised the ulcer hasn't cut through his entire, know, gone straight through his body because he puts his whole soul into every, you know, every, yeah.

Moore to Consider (57:20.319)
He's a lifer, He's a lifer. He's a first rounders. Dad played in the big leagues. Um, you know, he had a little bit of a career at the big league. I mean, I say a little bit, but he was a first rounder. He's been around it all of his life. I've known some guys that have played for him and they say the thing that shocks you the most is he's in on all the jokes. There's a guy that played in the big leagues that played in about seven or eight different organizations. He went up with one and then he trickled into some others and got some triple A time.

And so he was in spring training and it's funny kids ask him questions. Like, was it like for this guy? What was it like for this guy? And he played a little bit with Cleveland and he said, Francona was in on the hot foots, that kind of stuff. He said, one day I was with show Walter in Baltimore and a play happened on the field and he spun his head around. What was the second baseman's responsibility? I went, Oh, good thing I was watching. So he said, what he respected about show Walter was it was all business and know the game.

But he said he played for Bud Black in San Diego. And he said the reason we'd all gone through a wall, it's a man's game, but you're six months together. Because every day he would go around the outfield and talk to us. How's your wife? How's kids? Kids doing okay? School's a cool start, know, everything okay at school? And he's like, you loved him. He literally cared about your family.

So the X's and O's bunt, don't run, whatever. mean, that all comes into the game. We expect that. But he said the fact that he cared about us as people made all the difference to us.

Christian Sheppard (58:53.651)
Yeah. No, it's so interesting how many, there are so many different ways for a player to be good. There are so many different ways for a team to be good. There's so many different ways for the, that's why, like the idea that each game, each season is the same, you know, it's it's nine innings, but at the end there's infinite variations. It's like the alphabet, know, 26 letters, you can put them, Shakespeare can put them into different orders and the game itself.

You know, the ball bounce is a different way too, and someone is revealed in a different way.

Moore to Consider (59:27.963)
One of the nice people, Old Dominion University, when I was down in Virginia Beach, Virginia, had a lot of Hall of Famers coming to do the banquet each year. And one of them that I was happiest ever, I got Jim Palmer's signature. Okay, let me tell you, two most beautiful people I ever met as men, Harmon Killibrew and Lou Brock. Lou Brock must have had on a $2,500 suit with French cuffs, cufflinks, beautiful guy.

And he was nice, just a nice man. Harmon Killabrew looked like the guy down at the hardware store, working the hardware store. And I went up to him and he goes, what's your name again, son? I said, Jack. goes, all right, 2Jack Harmon, great guy. So I see all these different people come through there. Well, one year it was Tom Seaver. And Tom House has been a good friend of mine for 30 plus years. And so Tom pitched with Seaver at Southern Cal. So I went up there and I said, hey, I'm friends with Tom. goes,

Tom's like an astronaut. You know, how's Tom doing? Cause Tom's one of the brightest guys in baseball for sure. And he was really genuinely nice. He was, wasn't as large as I imagined, you know, and now that he's passed, I'm really happy I had that baseball and, and then I got to spend some time with him. So he was a super bright guy. And I remember him talking about, played a game of chess with the clubhouse kid one time and threw one of his best games. You ever heard this story? Yeah. So he gets a game of chess going.

Christian Sheppard (01:00:47.891)
No, no.

Moore to Consider (01:00:51.546)
with the clubhouse kid and then it's go out, pitch, come in. Hey, you're up. You're on deck. Cause national league guy. he goes in, grabs his helmet, wants to run her over, whatever goes back every break he got. And brother, I'm going to tell you what you're a literary guy. You're going to love this. I see him in an interview with Bob Costas one time and he's talking about this and he says, Hey, you know, baseball's art. I'm a painter.

Christian Sheppard (01:01:21.439)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:01:22.049)
I'm out there painting my masterpiece. Sometimes I knock the paint over and I got to clean up the spill. But every time I went on the mound, the pitch, I was thinking in terms of what kind of masterpiece can I make today? Didn't always get there, but I was always in my mind imaging this great work. So the day I played chess with the clubhouse kid, it was a nice diversion. So his diversion from the next inning was going to play chess. Well, that's pretty bright guy.

Christian Sheppard (01:01:47.751)
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and to know that he's I mean, he's he's dealing with himself too, you know.

Moore to Consider (01:01:58.52)
kill somebody real quick. Yeah, so it was interesting that he said that and kind of knowing that's I think how he was kind of imaged as a pitcher. Although he well, I had a college coach that played in the big leagues and we got to be really, really close. were we

Christian Sheppard (01:02:18.623)
but did he lose the chess game to the Batboy though? what's the end of that story? That could be the whole-

Moore to Consider (01:02:22.892)
You know, that's a great question. I think he threw a really, really great game, but I don't remember what happened with... You know, that's... that's... we gotta look that up.

Christian Sheppard (01:02:29.631)
If he, if if he won, if he won the chess game or not, like there's a great story of Joey Vato being in the stands and he would play chess on his, he was playing chess on his, on his app. And, Gary Kasparov, the great Russian chess master was in, in, said, you know, they said, Vato, do you want to meet Kasparov? And he said, Oh, that'd be great. Kasparov comes down and he says, what are you doing? Oh, I'll play in the games. Akara Sparov takes, takes his, his phone starts to move and Vato's looking over his shoulder and says,

Hey, you just lost my queen. And then two moves later, yeah, we won.

Moore to Consider (01:03:04.794)
Yeah, yeah, that's how, yeah, athletes can be that way sometimes. Yeah, we won. Yeah, the thing about that beauty in baseball, well, certainly have to ask you this, what was the greatest baseball film ever?

Christian Sheppard (01:03:22.611)
Okay, so it's funny you asked that today, this month, before the baseball season starts here in Chicago, we have this great, great old cinema called the Music Box Theater. It has the lit marquee and they're doing a film festival called the Playball Baseball Film Festival. And I just introduced on Saturday at the matinee to 500 people and they're playing an organ and selling

Moore to Consider (01:03:29.493)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (01:03:52.297)
Cracker Jackson's is fantastic. Bull Durham. So Bull Durham is my favorite baseball movie. I have a theory that you either like Bull Durham, you like Field of Dreams, or you like The Natural. Those are the ones that seem to me, the ones that people like. What do you say?

Moore to Consider (01:04:09.301)
Brother, we're Kendra spirits. You nailed it. You're all over it. You got it. 100 % agreement. And I actually almost cut a kid from the baseball team one year. We were on a road trip and we got into this discussion. He goes, you know, I think for the love of the game and I'm like, I won't say exactly what I said, but I'm like, I'm about ready to cut you from the team. What are you talking about? I'm like, it's a chick flick. Are you serious? Like what happened? Now the perfect game, the, you know, clear the mechanism and focus, but

Yeah, the beauty. my gosh. Well, bull Durham, Ron Shelton, you know, played AAA and he was in a minor league strike when he quit. He probably could have played the big leagues. He knocked it on the door. So he knew all the inside stuff. But I tell kids all the time, I'm like, watch the movie. The greatest scene for me.

It's about a guy that realizes we all go through. not going to be what we dreamed of being. You know, we all go through that to some degree, every male pretty much, even the ones that make it probably feel the same way at some degree. But that scene when Newt comes in and he said, hey, when you get up there, they're going to light you up. But you keep acting like you own the place, basically, because, that's that's the secret fear and arrogance. He goes, got it. Fear and ignorance. He goes, no, you dumb hasty. Not just like to make you mad.

But that is so true. It has the degree of what I was telling you about with my friend that said he didn't want to get sent home. I've explained to kids, and you'll appreciate this, I'm watching a game, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, Smoltz is already out of the big leagues, and a guy said, did you ever leave the bullpen with nothing? He goes, all the time. He goes, what'd do? goes, I acted like John Smoltz.

Christian Sheppard (01:05:52.797)
Hahaha

Moore to Consider (01:05:53.575)
And he goes, what does that mean? He goes, don't get me wrong. I was pretty successful pitcher by that time, but I'd get, would coast through four innings with crap, with no stuff, because the hitters are reacting to John Smoltz. I could not ever act like John Smoltz with no stuff. I couldn't give up. You know, it's prey and predator and what am I looking like? And I was explaining to kids, I'm like, I tell you that story. I do what you can probably tell. I do a lot of storytelling cause I'm kind of like, think about what he's really saying. They'd up there, some of them get it. Maybe one of them down the road will get it.

Christian Sheppard (01:06:04.351)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:06:23.004)
But what I'm saying is there is a body language to success, to successful execution. If you do that, your body kind of follows along. If you know, in the bullpen, I don't have my best stuff. Don't let it show. And that's basically what he was saying. So in that movie, what cost is trying to tell this kid is you go act like you own the place even when you don't. And then the other bar room scene where they're in the billiard room.

Christian Sheppard (01:06:35.123)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:06:49.477)
And he said, this guy hit 367 and AAA. That's a career. That's a career.

Christian Sheppard (01:06:53.151)
Yeah, it got AAA in Louisville, right? And you said, it's just no matter where it is, that's a career. And then he stays, he leaves the bed. Like, is it? Why is he leaving her bed? He leaves her bed so he can hit the home run that he doesn't want sporting news to know about. But he'll know about. It's beautiful. I compare it away to like Jim Bolton's book, Ball Four, which tells like the underside of things.

Moore to Consider (01:06:58.586)
Yeah!

Moore to Consider (01:07:11.002)
Exactly.

Moore to Consider (01:07:19.034)
Yeah?

Christian Sheppard (01:07:22.463)
But there's a side, think some people read that book and they become a little cynical about it, right? And there's a way in which you could see, the way in which you could see Bull Durham and become cynical, except it's not. And I think the reason why is it's a romantic comedy, but ultimately the romance is with the game of baseball, right? Like the love of the game goes through that so strong. And it's actually right in the beginning when Nuke meets Crash.

Annie is sitting there with Max Patkin, the clown prince of baseball, right? In the first line that Annie says, it's not the voiceover, she says, Max, how do you do it? How do you do it for so long? And he says, Annie, I just love the game. I just love it. And I think that tone of the love is what allows you to, for them to have, I mean, the booby is why it's hilarious, because it's like crass.

Moore to Consider (01:07:54.223)
The Clown, Prince of Baseball. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:08:18.911)
It's raunchy, it's a little bit blasphemous in some ways. Nowadays, for some kids it might be like a little bit cringy, politically incorrect. But all of that, it's so great, it's so funny. But then there's just this love and Annie just loves baseball as much as anyone else. And so it's a beautiful thing.

Moore to Consider (01:08:36.163)
Yeah. I remember somebody saying the irony of as he's going out with the, what do you believe in crash? And he says, I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone only to do JFK a few years later when he's playing. Well, and the other one about that, you probably know about this one too, is the Seinfeld episode where they do the second spitter. Do you know the, okay. So they do a Seinfeld episode where Seinfeld becomes friends with Keith Hernandez.

Christian Sheppard (01:08:45.919)
That's right. I know, I know.

Christian Sheppard (01:08:57.422)
no.

Christian Sheppard (01:09:05.704)
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:09:05.983)
first baseman. he, so Kramer and, and, Newman come in together and they, says something Seinfeld says something about seeing, Hernandez and both Newman and Kramer yell out, hate him. He goes, why? He goes, it's June 2nd, 1986. It's Mets are up and Keith Hernandez makes an error, which leads to a four run in and blows a day.

then they get spin on by Hernandez. And so as he tells a story, Jerry Seinfeld takes out his golf club and tries to do the, hits you here, but then ended up here and your head went backwards. So everyone's laughing their ass off because they see that he's doing basically the courtroom from Kastner. The ironic thing is the actor, I think it's Wayne McKnight is in both. He's Newman, but he's also Newman with a different spelling in JFK.

Christian Sheppard (01:09:57.432)
really?

Christian Sheppard (01:10:00.817)
that's interesting.

Moore to Consider (01:10:03.062)
So when Koster's going through the single bullet theory, it's the same actor in the front. And I wondered how many people picked up on it. I wrote my master's thesis on the Kennedy assassination. So as soon as it starts, I'm like, my gosh, Seinfeld's going here. Yeah, so that was really neat. And that's the pop culture I think we've lost. All the funny references we could make because we were only watching.

Christian Sheppard (01:10:08.041)
That's great.

Christian Sheppard (01:10:16.083)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:10:27.084)
You know, then, I don't know, cable was already around, but if you're old enough, there was three stations and maybe you got a UHF station and you listen to the same radio shows. We all, we all watched Ed Sullivan. I told a group of kids that in college the other year. said, you either came through Sullivan a few years later. If you were comic, you had to go through Johnny Carson. Who's Johnny Carson? I'm like, guys, everybody went through Johnny Carson, right? And they don't, they don't know. We don't have a common culture.

Christian Sheppard (01:10:45.523)
Yep. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:10:49.427)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's not a common culture, except one of the, was going to add to, to, to call back to when you were talking about John Smoltz being John Smoltz and having that, I wonder, I'm curious what you think about the last world series when Otani was obviously injured. And I think that Dave Roberts used said, used Otani to be Otani. And because the, think they didn't know like, is, is he just going to knock it out of the park?

Moore to Consider (01:11:01.27)
Yeah, yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:11:19.177)
And then he'd walk and then he's on base and the guy could steal 50 points and can steal 50 bags in a year. And I think he gives hope right now. We had an era of Babe Ruth. We had an era of Jackie Robinson. We had an era of DiMaggio and then the era of maybe like the free agent era of Ricky Henderson or something. And now we have this international figure that's Shehue Otani that maybe could be a face.

Moore to Consider (01:11:19.244)
No, you're right.

Christian Sheppard (01:11:49.001)
you know he's all american is also all japanese and he's he looks like it looks like that uniform is made for him like superman's outfit was made for superman you know

Moore to Consider (01:11:59.41)
It's an interesting point you make because I have a kid that I did pitching lessons with. I won't say his name out here, but he's in the big leagues as an umpire. And I saw him last year. We're done in spring training. And I ran into him. I talked for a while and he's like a son to me. know, I was doing lessons with him 20 years ago and I said, tell me some things. I said, what? I said, who's best hitter you've seen? He goes, Freddie Freeman. I said, really? He goes, yeah, he never misses. Like in a pitch count.

Christian Sheppard (01:12:25.427)
OK.

Moore to Consider (01:12:29.13)
where it's a hitters count. If it's the, does not miss, he squares it. And I said, who's the best pitcher you've seen? And he said, Verlander. Verlander is the best I've seen. Now I had Verlander on the fall ball team. He's from Goochland, Virginia, west of Richmond towards Charlottesville. And he was 89, 90 for us his senior year. And then I saw him his freshman year in college. He's sitting 95. I don't even know. I'm like, Oh my God, I don't even know who that is. So he is all of that. He said about Verlander,

He just challenges, he pours the ball in. If you hit a solo homer, great, good for you, but he's not going to make more damage. So he's not going to allow damage. Now once runners get into scoring position, he, his stuff just escalates. So like he knows how to pitch. He also told me Otani is a very impressive pitcher. Like to watch him pitch is amazing, but he was interesting. When I asked him to, said, who do you like that? I wouldn't expect. goes,

Everybody misreads Manny Machado. And I said, really, goes, perfect gentleman. Love him. I said, really? He goes, yeah, love him. He goes, a lot of what he does, I think, is a lot of taking pressure off his teammates. He plays the villain. He plays the villain for, and I remember A-Rod said that last year during the playoffs, goes, everybody misinterprets him. He grew up with me. You we used to come over to my place when he was a young kid, because I was an established big leaguer and I kinda, he was legacy guy with me, you know, growing up there. So yeah.

My buddy says yeah great guy. He loved I said what's who's your favorite catch? It was Molina He goes I mean call the whole game for me like that He goes if a pitcher ever looked at me sideways, he goes gotcha be right back. He'd run out there light the guy up So don't you ever show up my umpire and go back. He goes, okay We're good. Yeah, cuz he didn't want to lose calls. So he goes up the pitcher showed a little attitude He goes hey, I'll be right back and he goes he'd go out there Hey, don't you get upset with my umpire and then hey, we're good. We're good

Christian Sheppard (01:14:11.727)
that's interesting.

Moore to Consider (01:14:23.889)
So he goes, he was working me the whole time, but he goes, yeah, you kind of liked it. Cause you know, but he said, phenomenal receiver understood the game, understood the dynamics of, you know, player and umpire. So he's told me some really interesting stories about, know, what these guys are like in those moments and how they compete and how, how they're different.

Christian Sheppard (01:14:41.991)
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I've seen Malina play a lot against us here in Chicago. And, you know, yeah, no, he's he's fantastic. One of the stories I tell in my book was about this game. And it is, you know, there's a there's a tradition in in West in Western culture, you know, with these cultures that are based on competition. You know, the the ancient Greeks had this term agon conflict. Everything was conflict. Everything was competition. Like they

Moore to Consider (01:14:47.558)
Kinda hard to beat.

Christian Sheppard (01:15:11.401)
that the playwrights the poets they competed every the politicians everything the greeks are super super competitive and part of that is to honor your honor your enemy honor your foe you want someone that you can compete with because that's how you get better you know you you have to court you we compete but in order to compete you have to cooperate enough so that you each make each other better you looking for the photo the worthy foe that can be taken that can be

Moore to Consider (01:15:15.705)
Right, right.

Christian Sheppard (01:15:41.663)
And so, you know, that's why like Aeschylus writes right to play about the Persians, like the classic enemy of the Greeks in order to honor that enemy who is their enemy. So I wrote, I devote a sub chapter to, you know, hail Javier Molina, because there's this one, and it's in this chapter on courage and hitting and the pain of getting hit by a baseball. And it's a game that really doesn't matter. Like the St. Louis Cardinals are,

out of it. They're playing against the Reds who are out of it. It's an August game, but it's going into like the 12th inning and it's tied and the bases are loaded and Molina is up at bat and he just gets hit in the ribs with a 95 mile an hour fastball. It's like crunch. Like you can, you can hear it when it hits him and his immediate reaction, like I went seeing a man being hit that way and his reaction is just like he's hitting it's like victory.

Moore to Consider (01:16:30.221)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (01:16:38.665)
complete victory and you know that's it's like there's no there's no pain when they're when they're when there's victory and that the other sense of you know that's harvey molina like this guy is is there to win all the time he's taken the whole team with him is a helps to have a couple holes on your team but the cardinals are great organization get to get to watch a lot

Moore to Consider (01:16:57.837)
Yeah, the Cardinals have, you know, I mean, I think, you know, the premier franchises, clearly Yankees. think the Red Sox are in that conversation. I think the Cardinals are in that conversation. I mean, they've been what more World Series than anybody in the National League, believe. Dodgers, classic, you know, there's no question, classic organization. And that's what I always think about with baseball. They all have the best uniforms too, because they're still the classic uniforms. I mean, the Red Sox, you can't beat that.

Christian Sheppard (01:17:23.497)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:17:25.907)
the piping on it, the red piping and the old English letters and the Yankees with the pinstripe. And there's just things you don't mess with. The Cubs have messed with their uniforms a lot through decades and decades, but Detroit, the home Detroit uniform, the D, there's just things. I think that's the beauty of America and baseball. You mentioned.

Christian Sheppard (01:17:36.67)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:17:52.417)
And you're absolutely once again, brother, I think we're a hundred percent in agreement on a lot of things, but, uh, I think it's bull Durham, but for the love of the game, it's a father son movie. I was watching out with a friend of mine to play pro ball with the giants. I'm at a college base. We had just met. He's from Chicago. He's from Chicago. And he went to university of Illinois and he got drafted by the giants and he's just the guy's guy. Oh my God. He's a great guy. So we're sitting around a bunch of coaches at old Dominion camp, all these college coaches.

And I've watched it to this point. He's already seen it. And I went Tony and he was like, if that's his dad, he asked him to play catch. I'm going to start ball. And he goes, Hey, keep it. He's like, Hey brother, keep it together. And I'm like, it is it. It's a standard. I'm like, hell here it comes. And that's what it was. You know, that's, could, I could start to sniff it out there at the end. but you know, the whole James Earl Jones, they'll come, the steamroller of history. You think about.

Christian Sheppard (01:18:27.379)
Go on.

Christian Sheppard (01:18:30.874)
Hahaha

Moore to Consider (01:18:51.52)
all of these things in America. The fact that, and I've got my Jackie Robinson doll over here. I found that a memorabilia store. So it's a starting lineup. I was explaining to a friend the other day, Rosa Parks, 1954, many people know that. In 1944 at Fort Hood, Texas, second Lieutenant Jackie Robinson was court-martialed for not giving up a seat on a bus.

Christian Sheppard (01:19:00.319)
life.

Christian Sheppard (01:19:17.245)
Yeah

Moore to Consider (01:19:19.487)
He was sitting beside the post commander's wife. The post commander had said, travel with my wife from point A to point B. And he won the court martial. And I was talking to a kid, was like, wait a minute. said, yeah, before Rosa Parks 10 years prior, that was Jackie Robinson. And what's neat about race, not neat about the race, but people is I remember seeing Duke Snyder who grew up in Southern California and these white guys.

From the South generally, we're like, Hey, we're going to boycott whether or not, it wasn't all the guys from the South. There was guys from the Northeast too. We're going to boycott. And Duke Snyder said, remember thinking I idolized Jackie Robinson. was from Southern California. He played four sports at UCLA. And I was like, guys, I would be honored to be on the same field with Jackie Robinson. So baseball integrates again in 47 to break the color barrier. Military doesn't integrate until 48. Baseball led that.

Christian Sheppard (01:20:03.721)
Right?

Christian Sheppard (01:20:17.693)
Yeah, totally. That chapter on courage and hitting culminates with Jackie Robinson and quoting from his autobiography and how he says that you need a lot of courage not to fight back to be able to make this thing work. And I end with Martin Luther King saying that Jackie Robinson was a freedom fighter before freedom fighters. And that shows the power of what baseball was in American culture at that time. You know, Jackie Robinson was

They asked him, what are you gonna do if they throw up my head? And he said, I'll duck. And they threw at him. And then of course he got on base and then he stole off him. he was, and you have a sense that he was fighting for something larger than himself. Maybe that was what it was, but that's why he's a transcendent hero in so many ways.

Moore to Consider (01:21:12.625)
He dies at 53. He had many health complications, diabetes. I think he'd almost lost his sight by that time, but his wife said in some way she thought he died of a broken heart.

Christian Sheppard (01:21:25.246)
Yeah. Yeah. What do you have to hold in? mean, that the, the, must have, that's why I the film did a good job. Um, I thought that's a beautiful film. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:21:27.451)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:21:31.964)
42 yeah, the one thing though that I think that and This is not exactly the same impact but to me it was As a little white guy growing up you can see all my redskin paraphernalia that's another whole show I've done on the name but Growing up. I love Bobby Mitchell. I have his autograph

from 1969 NBA All-Star game. He was at the game and a guy in my hometown brought it back to my dad to give to me. So I love Charlie Taylor and I love Bobby Mitchell. They're black superstars for the Redskins. I don't know any different. They're my guys, right? So then when I find out later in life that Bobby Mitchell breaks the color barrier in Washington and he's in restaurants and someone spits on his shoes and the stories he told about the ugliest, but...

Christian Sheppard (01:22:10.919)
Yeah. Right.

Moore to Consider (01:22:23.952)
What's interesting is he said, I think the hardest part for me was the expectation of blacks in DC because if I failed. So he talked about, and I think this is a lot of what Jackie Robinson went through too. People don't think about the sense that, he's a pioneer. He's breaking the color barrier for the black race. Well, there's probably a lot of black folks looking at him like, Hey, don't you fail? And there's a lot of internal pressure that comes with that. And that's what Mitchell said.

Christian Sheppard (01:22:31.379)
Hmm.

Christian Sheppard (01:22:48.276)
right

Moore to Consider (01:22:52.397)
Mitchell said, if I didn't get four touchdowns, black folks would be like, Hey, man, you're, got to do better. You know, if we're going to establish black players. So the Washington Redskins do not integrate until 1962. And they're forced to do so because they're using RFK stadium, which is on federal land. And they're forced to either draft a black player. They drafted Ernie Davis made the trade, but I know this history. And by the time I go to my first game when I'm six years old.

Christian Sheppard (01:22:58.121)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:23:06.463)
Hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:23:18.894)
I don't even really know what's happened. How would I? I'm six years old, but there are these established black stars in six years that I love. And I don't know that six years prior, they're breaking the color barrier. You know what mean? I just, don't even, I don't even consider it. So I'm born in a wheelhouse of time where a lot of things are changing and we don't really recognize it until we look at the history books and kind of work back. Go ahead. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:23:33.289)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:23:43.407)
It is important for kids to see that too, because you're right. It sets your expectations. You know, that's who your hero is. I remember when I was in college, I had a friend of mine who was in a, we had a band in college and he was the drummer in our band. And he says to me, you're not going to believe who I saw this weekend. I could tell the way he said it. It was going to be like so unimportant. And I said, who would you see? Sammy Sosa? And he's like, no, better. I was like, better than Sammy Sosa.

What'd see, Michael Jordan? And he says, no, better. And I'm like, there's no one in the world better than Michael Jordan except for Muhammad Ali. And he went, that's right. And I was like, you met Muhammad Ali, and had seen Muhammad Ali. But the notion that these like, you know, this white kid from Wisconsin, this white kid from Boston, like notion of what greatness was, who the greatest was, was just set. And it was, it's a,

Moore to Consider (01:24:33.646)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:24:41.651)
you know these these athletes who are playing games you know gave a gift to our to to to future generations that i think someone like ali knew new the importance of what he was doing but jackie robinson you know i don't know if he couldn't could even know what what he was accomplishing

Moore to Consider (01:25:02.091)
He absolutely did. Jackie Robinson was. Yeah, I think he was way ahead. And yeah, I just think he's a very heroic figure. And when you bring up the thing about Muhammad Ali, something that crossed my mind, I did on the previous show being again, a Redskins fan. I was talking about to a friend of mine who is multiracial. But I was saying, you know, I.

Christian Sheppard (01:25:04.297)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:25:32.075)
Look back to, I remember why I remember these things. September 5th, 1983, first game of Darryl green. The Washington Redskins were super bowl champions the year before in the strike short and season. And they opened up against the Cowboys. And I was talking to this friend on a podcast about how much I hate crazy cancel culture in that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Like when someone does not. So famously.

Christian Sheppard (01:25:57.651)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:26:00.978)
Alvin Garrett, wide receiver for the Redskins catches a pass over the middle and Howard Cosell says, look at that little monkey run. He's off of Monday night football. Not long after that, all kinds of groups are coming after him. watched the documentary on, he's a Jewish lawyer from New York who backed Jackie Robinson when no one did. The only journalist who stood up for Muhammad Ali, the only one. So.

Christian Sheppard (01:26:22.143)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (01:26:27.111)
Right, right. Yeah, he didn't call him catch his clay. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:26:31.039)
So here we go. They do a documentary and they're talking to his grandchildren and they're fighting back. They're sorry. It was so wrong. Then they show all these home movies. He's bouncing his grandchildren around, call them a little monkeys. Then they pull the film of Mike Adam Lee, white running back in a game on film. He called him a monkey. So then you're like, that was his thing. But, but I'm like, how do you look at Howard Cosell's life? He's the only person.

Christian Sheppard (01:26:49.407)
Yeah, it's a term of affection for CoSale.

Moore to Consider (01:27:00.613)
in mainstream media, whatever the sports apparatus you want to call it, that defended Muhammad Ali for taking the stand he did. And you're going to call him a racist because he called a black guy a monkey. Maybe you wanted to check and see what's your perception of what that term means. I think that's more on the people that saw it offensive. Now, as it turned out, his grandchildren are like, that's all granddad called us was little monkeys all the time. Then they find him, you know, calling a white play. They found a multiple instances of him calling lots of people that.

Christian Sheppard (01:27:19.38)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:27:30.919)
But you have to imagine a guy that was probably faced the amount of presence he did as a Jewish guy from New York that, you know, went into law and the things that he went through and how he stood up for black athletes all the time. That shows how much he wasn't a racist. That he would call a young black football player something he affectionately called his grandchildren in a white. I don't know when that, when that went down, I'm like, wow.

Christian Sheppard (01:27:49.321)
For sure, yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:28:00.208)
Howard Cosell?

Christian Sheppard (01:28:02.071)
I think sometimes with someone like Kosel, he's the king. He's the top of the game. And when you're the king of the hill, you have people who want to take you down and take your place.

Moore to Consider (01:28:12.902)
there was lots of reasons why people wanted to take him down. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:28:15.859)
Yeah, yeah. So any excuse they had, they're willing to take it, even if they know, even if they know, they're willing to take some down for their own agenda. But Cosell was one of those guys, I heard some people are ambivalent about Joe Buck, but I think Cosell was similar. It's like, if he's calling the game, you know it's a big game. It's like he brought the grandeur to the moment. His voice is just indelibly playing in my head.

Moore to Consider (01:28:36.337)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:28:44.914)
Well, there's a, there's a lot of two to each their own because I, I couldn't believe the split that I heard from people about John Madden. I love John Madden. I thought John Madden was chilly outside Thanksgiving weather and beautiful football. And I love Pat Summerall more than anyone. And I was Harry Carrey. I don't think he was everybody's top cup of tea, I'm like, if you don't get Harry Carrey, you don't get baseball. You just don't get it. Right.

Christian Sheppard (01:29:11.549)
Yeah, that's right. You then you know like fun because it should be fun for the for the fans, right? Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:29:15.919)
And he knew the game. He knew the game. So Jack Buck, I thought was wonderful. So there's just, there's an era where, you know, I don't go back to, I don't have a lot of, now Yankees forever. except in, this week in baseball towards the end of his life. why can't I think of his name all of sudden? Yankees, Yankees famous Mel Allen. So, so Mel Allen as a kid, I more saw him at this week in baseball. He did the over, you know,

Speaking of, but I didn't know him as radio guy. I mean, I've heard the replays throughout my life, but, and I've watched the films, a little bit of the films of like Dizzy Dean doing games. And I remember my dad telling me, he's like, oh yeah, there was all these like grammar teachers or professors that came out against him because of how bad his grammar was and back in the era. But if you ever watched some of those films, him and Phil Rizzuto together.

Christian Sheppard (01:30:06.653)
Thank

Moore to Consider (01:30:14.57)
That was just classic. You got an Italian guy from New York and some farmer kid from wherever the hell Texas or wherever the Dizzy team was from, and you get those two and put them in a booth together. It's beautiful.

Christian Sheppard (01:30:27.933)
Isn't Phil Rizzuto the voice of Paradise by the Dashboard Lite?

to

Moore to Consider (01:30:36.334)
think so.

the coming in from third and going to score. If it was holy cow, it was definitely you're right.

Moore to Consider (01:30:50.329)
No, I think you're absolutely right. Cause that was definitely his line. How much, okay. In your book, how much do you really in drawing these stories from baseball, 1839 Ford, 1869 with major league baseball, whatever we're to call professional baseball. How much of American history as James Earl Jones was saying, do you think is painted by baseball?

When we think of American history, how much do we see baseball?

Christian Sheppard (01:31:25.311)
Yeah, I mean, it's curious to know now. This is why I was bringing up earlier that I heard the, I forget his name, the biographer, the guy who just wrote the new Ricky Henderson biography. And he talked about, it's one of my, it's on my, you know, two read list, but I got to hear a great interview with him. And he talked about how there are different eras. And that's why I was saying the era of, you know, it came with Babe Ruth and Babe Ruth made the game. I mean, it begins at the end of Bull Durham.

Moore to Consider (01:31:35.917)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:31:55.807)
Susan Sarandon or Annie Savoy quotes Walt Whitman and says, it's America's game. It'll be good for us. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Walt Whitman. I've read everything he ever wrote. And that's in specimen days. And he was watching, you know, boys out in the fields of Long Island and guys after work playing in Manhattan and sort of see where it was like.

Moore to Consider (01:32:18.881)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:32:19.517)
It's an indigenous, a strange game where we're funny outfits and they play these games. And then it grows into something that then Babe Ruth, right? Babe Ruth is one of these figures that's as large as any figure in the history of American in the collective unconscious of the entire country, right? And then the game changes. And now it's interesting that you like both, you you're a devotee of both baseball and football because we're in this, you know, we're in the NFL's era right now.

Moore to Consider (01:32:36.3)
No question.

Christian Sheppard (01:32:48.007)
And baseball is different. And I think one of the things that makes baseball different than football, and why I think it will still play a part in the minds of Americans, is that baseball fandom is local. Like I'm a fan of the NFL, and so you tell me, but I know players on every single team.

But growing up, I followed the Red Sox and everyone I knew were people who played the Red Sox or I had their baseball card. Like I never saw a National League game unless it was on TV during the World Series, right? And even now I follow the Cubs. I'm following the Cubs. I know other players, other teams via the Cubs. And still baseball is even though it doesn't have the viewership that the NFL has on Sundays and Thursdays and sometimes Saturdays now.

Moore to Consider (01:33:20.876)
Right, right.

Christian Sheppard (01:33:36.799)
You still, the games are long. There are a lot more of them. You watch it on television. Yes, you go sometimes, but you listen to the radio. It's like baseball permeates your life and permeates your like local life in a way that few other things do. So I think there was a time, you know, from Ruth to, um, you know, to Robinson, to DiMaggio and Williams and all that type of stuff when it was, it was the king of all. And now

It has to share that stage. And I think that football is, for a lot of reasons, football has achieved ascendancy. But I still think baseball is something that's particularly American. You especially hear a lot of people who newly come to America and they realize that they're American by their liking of baseball. It's the way someone becomes native and we welcome people to do that. So I think baseball is still there.

Moore to Consider (01:34:35.018)
You know, just, I don't know, it just struck me as we were, as I was asking that question and your response. I think some of the downfall of, I don't know if downfall is the right term, but some of the loss of American pride, Americanism or whatever I see has been a, has been a downslide of baseball as well. Cause like, if you'd have gone to 1980 when I graduated high school and you're like,

Americans are gonna go out and play anybody will oh Americans will win baseball. We're not the best players We're not even close to the best players anymore and I've worked with Venezuelan kids Cuban kids Dominican kids I love these kids and they love baseball and they you know, they're devoted to baseball and American kids are soft I hate to say you know American kids just aren't into it anymore really and I think that when we were that country of factory workers and farmers and those guys that played in the big leagues

There was always some kind of a foreign influence, but if you go back 40 years ago, if you'd have thought that our most dominant players were foreign kids and American kids couldn't hack it, you you wouldn't have thought that. And I think football, I don't want to call it trash. I didn't say that, but I don't like pro football anymore. I watch it, but to me it's like powder puff. It's complete. And I'm the last one to be, I'm no tough guy, but what I'm saying is.

There is no hitting anymore. There is no defense. Defense isn't allowed. It's whoever gets the ball last. It's a pinball machine of scoring. If people like that, I think it's a low attention span. You know, I'm again, old man, get off my lawn. I'm, you know, crying about this, but I just don't think the players are there. They're more paid there. They're, they're better managed probably, but it's not the same. They don't seem heroic to me anymore. They, they, they,

Christian Sheppard (01:36:22.847)
Yeah, that's where, yeah, I agree. I think, you know, football has done a good job of, they're a spectacle. There's pretty great parody in the league. you know, any football game, not always, but they're good games. But there's also, fantasy has come along and now gambling has come along and you have people, that's sort of my goat is that I hate people. You listen to the radio now and.

Moore to Consider (01:36:37.871)
No, I'm with you. I'm with you.

Christian Sheppard (01:36:50.399)
You have to hear people talking about the spread and everything like that, which seems to me like not about winning or losing. I am curious though about, this is why I'm kind of excited about baseball as this international sport. I've been getting up early and watching some of these world baseball games. They were awesome. I'm excited for this opening day, the Cubs against the Dodgers in Japan. And now I'm excited about Otani and what he's bringing.

You know, he struck out Mike Trout to finish the last world baseball classic or former teammates. It's like an amazing thing. And I've been thinking about, I've been following this, this, this going to Tokyo series. And one thing that strikes me is, you know, first of all, like pop culture, they're doing like an anime thing, Demon Slayer to go along with these, these teams. They have this contemporary Japanese artist named Takahashi Morikami who's designing

Moore to Consider (01:37:23.239)
Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Christian Sheppard (01:37:46.911)
some special uniforms. And I'm sad to say the ones he does for the Dodgers are kind of amazing. They're these Dodgers uniforms and they're just like bursting with cherry blossoms, right? If you know anything about Japanese culture, they have an entire religious Shinto ritual dedicated to the cherry blossoms. It's the cherry blossom festivals. Everyone stops and they go and they observe the cherry blossoms blooming.

And what was, thought, genius that Murakami did with these uniforms is what tells you the coming of spring as well as the blooming of a cherry blossom? It's opening day of baseball. And it struck me as you know, they've been playing baseball in Japan since the 19th century too. And maybe baseball is the, know, it's all American, but baseball is also all Japanese.

And maybe baseball is all Dominican and maybe baseball is all Cuban and maybe baseball is a lot of things. And so it's kind of exciting to get these different, there are many ways to love baseball. was even during like, the whole lockdown era was kind of a hell, but I kind of enjoyed getting up early to watch when Korean baseball came back before anyone else and seeing what they did and how they did it. It's...

It's a good show no matter where it is and who's calling it.

Moore to Consider (01:39:11.296)
It's, the more I think about some of the lines from the movies, it just struck me. One of the other things that has to be said about field of dreams and.

Having James Earl Jones in a movie, Choster, having Burt Lancaster in a movie. And the scene, I was explaining this to a female friend of mine. I said, it's just, it's a guy thing. And I do, think not to be the sexist, but I think it's just a guy thing. It's what's missing with those kids that I talked about that were saying we're not having fun. One of the kids asked me later, he's like, why did you play? said to prove to other men I could play.

Christian Sheppard (01:39:31.988)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:39:54.975)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:39:55.938)
If not, I'll sit in stands and watch you play. I'll go, but if I'm going to be on the field, I have a pride in my performance. Joe DiMaggio famously said he had bone spurs. He could barely walk. The end of his career, writers like Joe, why do you put out so hard? He goes, because it might be the one time that this little kid shows up and sees me play. It might be the only time he ever sees me play. Dude, that's a lot. he's when he's saying it might be the only, if he's conscious of it might be the one time. So in that scene,

When the little girl drops and the Doc Graham comes to the rocks and you know this is it. If he crosses this is it. And when Costner does the gosh you can't get this okay it's okay it's all right. And the fact that those players are so respectful. But the scene that makes the movie is when he's halfway to center field. Hey rookie you were good. Hey rookie.

Christian Sheppard (01:40:54.877)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, the old rookie.

Moore to Consider (01:40:55.797)
You were good. And that look from Burt Lank had to be him. You know, it's like, it's that I got recognition from Shoeless Joe. Joe Jackson just told me I was a good player. That was good. It's all I ever wanted. All I wanted was that one at bat. I got the one at bat. It's not a tragedy that I was a doctor for 50 plus years that I gave the kids milk and food.

Christian Sheppard (01:41:05.577)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:41:22.696)
things he did. It's not a tragedy. I never got to play in major league baseball another day, but he gets field of dreams. But what he played for was the recognition from his peers that he was a good player as a, as one of the most beautiful scenes in a movie ever. There's a lot in it. There's a lot in all these movies that Costner happened to play in. Costner had a little run there, but, yeah, bull Durham's still the best.

Christian Sheppard (01:41:23.988)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:41:34.879)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (01:41:38.515)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:41:49.341)
Yeah, he's America's ballplayer. He's America's ballplayer. He's America's cowboy. You know, he does a good job doing that. think of the story of and how I mean to play in front of your peers. But then there's the story of DiMaggio.

being home with his wife Marilyn Monroe. And he says, she had just come back from entertaining the troops, the USO troops. And you know this, and she says, no Joe, you don't know what it's like to have 40,000 people cheering for you. And he's like, yes, I do. And to be able to play on that stage, to be the cool of DiMaggio is beyond.

Moore to Consider (01:42:15.188)
Right. Korea.

Moore to Consider (01:42:22.88)
Kinda do, I kinda do.

Moore to Consider (01:42:31.41)
You

Oh, you're talking about Sinatra and Sammy Davis. I was like, you know that? Like, how the hell do you know that? But when you think about Marilyn Monroe, Marius Jodemache, right? And you got Mickey during the time as we've talked about, and you got Sammy Davis and Sinatra and Dean Martin and all of that going on. And that's that America.

Christian Sheppard (01:43:06.461)
Yeah. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:43:19.965)
You know, as you get older, you realize 10 years is nothing. But when you think of that 50s or you think 55 to 65, you think of that era, that decade. And, know, in my, in my writing the master's thesis on the Kennedy assassination, one of the things I clearly understand, I do think that's when innocence died. I think the 50s ended with his assassination, regardless of who's behind it, regardless of all the other stuff. We're in the midst of the cold war. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it ended the innocence. I think Kennedy dying.

and the fashion that he did, followed by Malcolm X and King and Bobby Kennedy. I remember telling one of my thesis board members, I was like, yeah, know, as a kid I was always wondering what war I'd get drafted and sent off to. And she goes, oh my gosh, I find that fascinating. I'm like, really? I had six great uncles in World War II. My father was drafted during Korea. I'm like, how the hell was a young male not to think that then? She thought it was a fascinating view that I had as a young male then.

Christian Sheppard (01:44:14.804)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:44:18.781)
I was like, that's all I knew. My family history is everybody got drafted into something.

Christian Sheppard (01:44:20.243)
You that?

Yeah, it seemed like a likely story. now, I mean, my kids can't believe that when I was growing up, I was pretty certain, and my wife says the same thing, we were probably gonna all die in a nuclear war with the Russians. That seemed like a likely, and they can't, but then, know, the things change, things stay the same. And there was a while which it seemed like history was over, but now we're going through times where it's like every day there's something that seems like we're living through.

Moore to Consider (01:44:36.718)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:44:52.743)
historical events and then there are there are good things to like with this with with technology and things being available internet you have a kid you work with now he's getting your brat pack references you know my son says he did hear this band called the rolling stones he's listening to all these rolling stuff so there's a way that if i want to watch bullderm again i had to find someone a neighbor who might have the vhs tape and they can loan it to me now

know, can, kids can go back and watch the Ken Burns documentary and they can read the stories and maybe there are resources for a renewal of historical consciousness and a renewal, as you were saying, of almost like a national pride that is waiting for us to take advantage of, you know?

Moore to Consider (01:45:38.853)
Yeah, my birthday is April 20th. And I remember one time telling some of the students in class, said, you know, I share that tragically, I guess, to anyone that has that birthday with Hitler. said, but the saving grace is I also share it with Luther Vandross. And there was crickets in the room. They're like, who? Like, go ask your parents. you're probably conceived to Luther Vandross, right? So, you know, go ask your parents. Then Prince dies. And I just absolutely love Prince. I just think Prince was like,

Christian Sheppard (01:45:52.461)
Ha ha.

Christian Sheppard (01:45:59.281)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:46:06.89)
The night that Purple Rain opened, I was in the theater. And I just, loved Prince when the first time I heard Prince, I'm no music guy. I'm not, I don't play, I mean, but I just loved him. I love the energy. And I come in and I'm, it was pretty good wasn't it? Yeah. He's, yeah. But I come in and I said, Hey, you know, it's tragedy. Prince is gone. Who? I'm like, students didn't know Prince. And then I kind of go into, okay, but is that like, I would have known that

Christian Sheppard (01:46:17.596)
Super Bowl halftime show.

Moore to Consider (01:46:35.417)
Bob Hope passed or two. I don't know. But who was Prince 50 something at the time? I think he might have been mid 50s. He wasn't 186, you know, but I was a little bit shocked at that and then I made a comment to him I said No one's big in your generation. I said I think that there's some bigness but I Remember in the 80s my mother would not have approved of Madonna, but she damn sure knew who she was and She knew Michael Jackson

Christian Sheppard (01:46:59.411)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:47:03.907)
probably to some degree, new prints. Born in a different era, would not have been following the music, but you know what I'm saying. Because of the commercial, there's a Pepsi commercial, there's a something. There were certain people in the pop culture everybody was exposed to. And I think we're so fragmented in our sources of entertainment now, we don't see the same thing.

Christian Sheppard (01:47:10.761)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:47:19.859)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:47:25.181)
Yeah, we don't have a common frame of reference. And you don't know, does that mean the culture is dispersing in a way that we're gonna become atomized as a society? Will there be ways where, right now I think a lot of people are feeling that traditional forms of media just are not trustworthy whatsoever. And the not trustworthy. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I wish we had smartened up before.

Moore to Consider (01:47:47.687)
they're not. And they never were.

Christian Sheppard (01:47:54.783)
But before now, but now, you you have podcasts, you have this like, we are in a golden age of like long form storytelling of conversations that strangers from around the world can actually eavesdrop on. it's, you know, they say it's a great, we're in a time of crisis, but crisis is great opportunity too. you know, I don't know what's, how it's gonna.

how it's gonna play out, I do feel like suddenly we were thrown back into history.

Moore to Consider (01:48:26.966)
Yeah, I did a show with a friend of mine the other day and then we were off at the end. We're kind of like off the air, even though this isn't live, but we were off and we got to talk in politics a little bit. And he goes, hey, I'm gonna tell you what, somebody's gonna have to rein in like the old classic media or the mainstream media. And I'm like, nah. And he goes, but there's things that are being proven to be blatant lies. I'm like, let them tell them, because what's happening to their ratings, they're gonna take out. And I said, if.

Christian Sheppard (01:48:47.689)
you

Moore to Consider (01:48:56.182)
There's freedom of speech. Lie all you want. Do whatever you want because there's somebody. And I said, look at Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan just seems like a guy at the corner bar. Now he does real macho stuff and I love his success, but he's basically, hey, the door's open. Anybody can come in and tell whatever story you want. He doesn't preclude anybody. And he's kind of the guy that was kind of lefty and kind of shifted, I think, more to the libertarian. Because I think everyone naturally at some point becomes libertarian. Just kind of come into.

Christian Sheppard (01:49:03.688)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (01:49:21.492)
Right.

Moore to Consider (01:49:26.165)
You let me keep my money. You do whatever you want to. You want some money. I'll help you find it, but let's not use the government to take from people, you know, that kind of thing. And I think that's a beautiful thing that people are like you said, and what we're doing right now is get on, run your mouth, talk about things. And, um, yeah, the press has never been particularly, uh, it, well, what's television 19, it's 39. It's at the world's fair, but it becomes a thing in the late forties, post-World War II.

It's always been, you know, it's about the same time, 48, same time as CIA, I think. So we've had manipulated news agencies since the beginning of time. And when we look and see that the same companies that pay for all the advertisement are the ones that seem to profit the most from all the things that we see, you know where I'm going. It's kind of after a while, like, Hey, funny that people would get on an alphabet agency type of,

Christian Sheppard (01:50:13.779)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:50:19.824)
know, cable news network and say what seems to be in the favor of certain people. Imagine that.

Christian Sheppard (01:50:25.501)
Yeah. It may be curious. I'm curious to see, I'll be, and I'm sure you are too. I know you are when, when all this new JFK stuff comes out and cause you said that's what that's when that's when innocence was lost. And now it'll be interesting to see how people react or, I guess it'll depend on what's, what's shown or what's not. But even just the fact of that, of how, of how the various narratives grew up around it. And then, you know,

after the loss of innocence was also like this era that became the 70s, which was an era of conspiracy theory and paranoia and cynicism and nihilism. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, where the, my suspicion is that the American culture is fractured in so many ways that we're gonna have every variety of reaction to it, including indifference. But I'm not indifferent to it. I I grew up with John F. Kennedy's bust on the mantle growing up in Boston.

He was a major hero to everyone in my eye, everyone in our family.

Moore to Consider (01:51:31.026)
what I think and to kind of go off on that tangent, I was in Dilley Plaza in 1994, run into a guy. He says, Hey, what do you think happened? I'm right there on the grassy knoll. And I'm like, well, I'm going to crazy people think Oswald did it come with me. So we go up and argue with the guy. We pull away and the guy says, Hey, you really know your stuff. What's your story? I'm like, well, I just wrote a master's thesis. I said, you too, what's yours? He goes, well, I'm from Northern Virginia near DC. I'm like, I'm from Virginia.

And he goes, well, my daddy's somebody. And so the guy at the time is 34. I'm 32, I think. And I said, tell me more. He goes, well, my dad got me on the house select committee on assassinations as a page. So he got me in and he goes, I'm a pilot for American Airlines. He was in a suit and I'm like, goes, what are you doing tomorrow? And I had a car I'd driven from Virginia to Dallas. And I said, what do want to do? So we go to.

1026 North Beckley, where Oswald had the rooming house. went to the Neely street address. We rode up in the backyard with the backyard photo, everything. We go to where he was arrested. So after doing that for a day, he's like, Hey, uh, you want to do me a favor and take me to the airport. So I don't have to get a taxi. And I'm like, sure. So I drive him there. My 1991 Honda Prelude. I'll never forget. I'm on the front seat. He grabbed, he grabs his American airlines garment bag and he starts to get out and I lean over the seat and I said, Hey dude, I may not ever see you again.

And I haven't tell me what I'm not going to learn for 50 years. And he went, Hey, I was there. Oswald did it. I saw everything. He goes, the problem is who he did it for. And then I was kind of like, Oh, and he goes, he was so connected to us intelligence. I'll just leave it at that. Now, when he says that everything is, you know, so JFK comes out, it had just come out before this, but JFK is out.

Christian Sheppard (01:53:15.199)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:53:26.127)
Now this congressional committee has established, you know, what has to come out in 2017. Then Trump won't do it. And I remember that judge Napolitano from TV said, and you kind of saw it in the assassination attempt in the summer or whatever. He goes, I've never seen Trump afraid. And he goes, he called me trembling. He goes, the CIA just came in and says, don't release the rest of the files. And if you saw what I just saw.

Christian Sheppard (01:53:56.146)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (01:53:56.431)
And yeah, the, the Palatino said that on the podcast. So then Biden kicks the can down the road and now Trump's got a second chance. And he says, I'm going to open it all up. I believe what some people think is this is going to show that the American government at the highest levels knew far more about Oswald than they let on. And it's going to be embarrassing. There is another thing, Dave Smith, a libertarian podcaster. I love to listen to made a good point. goes.

Christian Sheppard (01:54:13.852)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:54:22.126)
Do really think the CIA was like, hey chief, where's the thing that shows we killed him? Oh, that's in that filing cabinet over there. You know, like, you really think there's a file that says that? So most likely it's going to be compromising, showing that the agencies were basically buffoon bureaucracies that you would expect.

Christian Sheppard (01:54:26.953)
Yeah. Right.

Moore to Consider (01:54:44.343)
And I really do, but I do think Oswald did it. There's no question in my mind. The single shooter above and behind, no question at all in my mind. I've been to Dillie Plaza 20 times. I've walked it, I've looked at it, and there's no question about that. But what you say, I did a show recently on that, and a friend of mine said, you're right, there's two paths. Some may go, hey, finally we know the truth. The government's being transparent. And another one's gonna be, you mean to tell me they hid that from us for 60 years?

But the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that was written before the incident, which escalated the war of Vietnam, I think that's a big one. We got 57, 58,000 people dead. When Kennedy leaves office, it's less than a hundred. So Johnson escalates the war after claiming he would not, and then all these thousands of people lose loved ones. And then they go, oopsie, we lied about the whole war. I mean, you know, that's a big one. And it's not really talked about.

Christian Sheppard (01:55:23.508)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (01:55:39.283)
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe, maybe, maybe the loss of innocence will, will, will, you know, it took a generation or two, maybe a loss of innocence will mature into, you know, what maybe the founding fathers have had when they overthrew the English government, which was, you know, to have self-reliant citizens, they need to be properly skeptical of, of, of power, you know, and, you know, the, government can be shrunk and, and, and stop letting

these forces lie to us or give them responsibility to tell us what's true or false, you know?

Moore to Consider (01:56:14.614)
Well, I always think about like first principles and we know one of them is we all entered the world the same way. You know, it's kind of like we weren't exactly on our two feet standing and really very powerful. We all kind of entered with a lot of dependency. We're the most dependent offspring to rear to maturity. So we come into this, we ought to ask ourselves like, well, by what authority does a group of legislators or legislators

or some executive, why do they get to call the shots? Why do they have any more control than anybody else? So if we're going to have a government by a collective agreement, maybe it ought be very narrow. And I'm trying to get, I'm trying to give a speech here, but literally, I don't know why people would buy into it. Anyway, I might start to think, you know, in doing a show with the, with a friend the other day on the second amendment, not to be political, but it's pretty clear to me what it was about. If you look at article one, section eight, it says one sentence provide for the Navy. Then it says.

Raise armies only time and military need never for more than two years all these gyrations because they wanted the citizens to be the army because they feared standing armies. They didn't want they didn't want a professional army because the British came door to door in your neck of the woods where you grew up and they took their weapons from them.

Christian Sheppard (01:57:26.515)
Yeah, that was the great thing actually about growing up in Boston is that you have a sense of the Revolutionary War. When we studied that in school, we could actually see, here's where the Boston massacre happened. Here's where the Tea Party happened. And that's one of the, I've been to the Grassy Knoll. My wife and I went there last year for the first time. And it is, has like an aura about it. And you're like, wow, I can see the, someone could make that shot. It's interesting like what to, and to,

Moore to Consider (01:57:32.32)
Yes!

Moore to Consider (01:57:49.267)
Absolutely.

Christian Sheppard (01:57:56.923)
America is a funny place, think historically, historically our culture, we're so new, like America is, I think, you you said we woke up with the, from the JFK assassination, but part of that is because there's a side to Americans that want to be blissfully ignorant, you know, they want to be blissfully ignorant. And we're one of the only

countries in the world where someone says, that's history. And by that mean, when they say that's history, they mean like, that doesn't matter. think because we were so progressive and we're so innovative and we're so entrepreneurial, we're always like, look, we're very future oriented. We're not past oriented, like China or Britain or something like that. But maybe, maybe becoming a more mature culture is one that cultivates this keener sense of historical consciousness where we know that,

the grassy knoll is a place that like every citizen should go and visit and everyone should walk the freedom trail in Boston and see that and know that people like us made decisions that have had repercussions 300 years later, you know, and that our form of government to the extent that we still have freedoms in a way we could have this conversation is a rare thing in the history of human civilization.

Moore to Consider (01:59:19.259)
Yeah. And I think as you're saying all of that, and I really enjoyed this discussion, we've gone really far from baseball, but I think it's all important because we talked about the history that baseball has an impact on us as a culture. I'm a big believer. And if we've loved baseball, there's a certain sense of rules because I think of as a coach who was a red ass got tossed a lot. You know, when people were like, why do you get so upset with umpires? And I'm like, it's the balance of power and a good umpire.

Christian Sheppard (01:59:46.228)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (01:59:48.516)
doesn't allow me to feel that the game is not on an even footing. And the moment it's not, I was actually talking to one of my coaches this weekend. goes, it always meant a lot to me if my coach pushed it to ejection or got ejected. a lot of kids don't understand this. To me, when my manager fights the battle, it's not nitpicking every call. A couple summers ago, give me example.

I saw a pitch with two strikes thrown to one of my batters and honestly in my head I was like, that's on the black. If he called him out, I'd have been fine with that. I thought it was a great down playing pitch and it looked like it was on the corner ball. They're, they're a dugout erupts and I'm coaching third base. So I'm like, I hear it. I can't believe that guy. The next pitch is clearly over the chalk of the left-handers batters box, right-handed batter three. And I come down the line. I'm like, this can't happen. He goes, coach, you are on site.

Yeah. And I just light them up and I light them up and I'm like, you look like a coward. You didn't call the pitch before. you call the pitch before have at it, but you can't let them do that. I have to take up for my player. get tossed. Well, the average parents like, why is he yelling at the poor umpire? The player I hope respected and care. So I go back and watch the replay. The first pitch is near the black of the plate. The next one is six inches off the plate. So what that guy just showed me was he made a gutsy call to call it a ball.

Christian Sheppard (02:00:54.729)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:01:12.514)
Maybe it was a strike, whatever. But now that they influence him, that upsets me. So I have to go out there. So we have a set of rules. We have a set of ethics. There's a way to play the game and some good umpires know sometimes you're just out there kind of chewing on them because you're trying to get the team to wake up. You know, you learn all this. But when I think about this country, I really do think, cause it's interesting the dynamics between you and I from where we grew up. You're right. It happened in your backyard.

And all the founding documents were written by my people in Virginia. That's pretty much it. I was telling a friend one time, said, Hey, Jefferson wrote the declaration and Madison pretty much wrote the constitution, right? And they're Virginians. First 36 years of the country's existence, 32 years as presidents from Virginia. George Washington is the father of the country. But with Jefferson wrote about that, we believed enough in the opinions of the world.

Christian Sheppard (02:01:45.951)
Yeah

Moore to Consider (02:02:12.75)
to put to paper why we are separating. We don't do this willy nilly. And then he goes on to say, because I was arguing with somebody about this the other day that was like where he would be on certain things. I'm like, he wrote the grounds for further revolution. He goes, hey, if you don't get it right, ultra abolish it, start over. And then the Constitution was clearly just a document of mass limitation of what the federal government had the authority to do. That's it. It's not an emotional document.

Christian Sheppard (02:02:14.911)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (02:02:30.461)
Yeah, just ask Lincoln.

Moore to Consider (02:02:42.838)
It's really not a document of any real political philosophy other than these are the narrow jurisdictions of what the federal government can do. Period. That's it. And when people get all of it, it's a living, breathing document. No, it's not. It's a document of limitation. States, knock yourself out. Do what you want. Be laboratories. Do what you want. You don't like it moving into Nebraska. Whatever. That's what they intended, I believe.

And now it's gotten very complicated because I don't think people really care what's in the founding documents. And I think that's a real shame.

Christian Sheppard (02:03:15.007)
Yeah, that's a loss of that. But I think, I'm not surprised that you feel that way because one, like a lot of lawyers love baseball. That's one thing my wife's a lawyer and all of her colleagues, they're excited for my book to come out and they're big supporters and lawyers love baseball. I think that's why lot of people, why immigrants love baseball, because they're coming from places where they don't enjoy the rule of law.

Moore to Consider (02:03:22.549)
Yeah!

Christian Sheppard (02:03:39.839)
where they don't enjoy something that's fair. And so they come, like, we can all play by these rules, you know? And it's, we are a country of laws, you know? And that's great, it's a great thing. And baseball affirms that, all the little details and people getting the arguments over all those little details and even the, the umping, it's a great thing.

Moore to Consider (02:03:40.757)
Yes!

Moore to Consider (02:04:04.907)
You know what you said there too just struck me too about the beauty of the Jackie Robinson story and the immigrant coming to the United States. The fact that DiMaggio's father was a fisherman from Italy that didn't speak English and wanted him to get an education and didn't want him to play baseball. And then Vince snuck out and played in the Pacific Coast League first and he was wonk the great arm, but you know, didn't have the same kind of career.

know, Joe DiMaggio never making it to professional baseball because his dad said, you know, get a real job kind of thing. These are all beautiful stories about really hard scrabble people that had it tough. They came from all kinds of different kinds of backgrounds. But you probably know the story too, that there was a very ugly article written about DiMaggio at the beginning of World War II. And it was really kind of an anti-Italian.

What was the guy's name? it Roy Blunt Jr. was the writer for Sports Illustrated. He wrote an article, I think, 91, 50 years after 41. And there was a very anti Joe DiMaggio book. I mean, article written and it was like in life.

Christian Sheppard (02:05:02.249)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (02:05:12.007)
yet creamers it is the biography of jorda maggio the cut that it's very anti-demagio say basically just did for money and use a a bitter angry man

Moore to Consider (02:05:19.763)
Yeah, but Life magazine wrote a real hit piece on him during the war. Yeah. And it's, man, you go back and look at it you're like, wow, like you can't believe the things they said about DiMaggio, but it was in the midst of World War II, Italy, Germany, Japan, and they're writing nasty stuff about an Italian immigrant playing baseball. So there's been ugly moments and all that kind of thing, but something that. Gosh, I don't want to, I don't want this to sound the wrong way, but when I was talking to a friend the other day.

Christian Sheppard (02:05:23.041)
okay.

Moore to Consider (02:05:50.302)
One of the beauties of where I grew up, I grew up in the county, the Loving versus Virginia case, the biracial marriage case that went to the Supreme Court. My father defeated the sheriff that arrested them. So the man that arrested him, my father was sent there as a state trooper. goes on to be sheriff for a number of years. So where I grew up was about 50-50 black, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, African-American. I that's pretty much what it was. Not a lot of other variances of ethnicity. It was black, white, a lot of Native Americans, a lot of Native Americans.

So where I grew up, we had what was referred to by the guys as the beer and chicken leagues. We played black baseball in the restaurants in the woods. And I used to play and I'd go to the nightclub afterwards. was, it was 200 black folks and me at the nightclub. I never felt more loved. I never felt more included. The only white face that would be at the games generally was my dad. My dad, the sheriff would come out to the games.

So I hear a lot of people talk about race and they're like, wow, you know, I went to an all white private school, but I have a view on it. like, well, you didn't grow up where I grew up in. It really was a pocket of time in the eighties and nineties. It didn't matter. But the reason I was kind of loved was I was a white guy that could pitch. So they loved me. So I was kind of a celebrity in the restaurant because, you're Jack, the one that comes to pitch for us. So, you know, it was, it was kind of cool, but culturally I, or whatever the hell you want to call it.

Christian Sheppard (02:06:59.935)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (02:07:13.841)
We were all pulling from the same end of the road. My run counted, their run counted. You know, so when you played ball together, you didn't care about crap that didn't matter. And one of the saddest stories I ever saw, the reverse, was I went out to a ballpark one time and the guy that ran our team was hysterical. He was a long distance truck driver and he was just a beautiful guy. We'd go to this place to play and this old black man that was so sweet came out.

And the guy that ran our teams like, Hey, where's your white boys? Where's your white boys? Your white boys aren't out here. And he goes, he looks at me and the elderly man sits son. I apologize for what I'm getting ready to say. I'm like, no sir. I'm good. goes, well to my guy, the guy that ran our team, said, the dad came out the other day, pulled up in his Lincoln and they were twins and they pitched and caught, they pitched to each other. And that was a big thing. A lot of white kids would go out and if they could pitch, played in the black leagues. So.

He said the father pulled up, he was the bank president in town. And he told the kids to get in the car and leave. And the kids were heartbroken. So these kids were about my age, 18, 19 at the time in the eighties. And this old man is like apologizing to me for the storm. Like, sir, sir, it's their loss. And he says, Sunday was so heartbreaking, but broken. the father said, well, we got to keep up appearances in the community because I'm the bank president.

Christian Sheppard (02:08:28.921)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:08:39.3)
So in 1983, 84, he's taking these kids and sons, or earlier than that, he's taking them off the field because of what people in town may say, the two kids don't want to come off the field. And it meant a lot when my dad passed away, I thought about how special he was in that light. Not only did he support me playing with these gentlemen, he came to the games. He came to the games and I don't know, was a...

I don't want sound like some kind of race pioneer, but it was just such a neat thing. Cause where I grew up, I'm going be honest with you, if you're a white athlete, you wanted to respect the black guys. Cause our football team was 35 black guys and five white guys. Basketball was 15 black guys and a white guy. In baseball, we were about eight and eight, 16 guys and half of them white, half of were black. Just the world that I grew up in. And when you grew up in that world, um, we got along fine. We really did get along fine.

Christian Sheppard (02:09:16.188)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Sheppard (02:09:33.961)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (02:09:36.173)
But the opportunity when I was invited to play in that atmosphere and the fact that, that they respected me enough to want to play there, I was honored to be honest with you. And I think it did teach me a lot about that. Again, that kind of thing. I guess I became more aware of it 10 to 15, 20 years later at the time. I just thought, my gosh, those guys want me to play. I'm honored. Let's go. And

Christian Sheppard (02:09:59.933)
Yeah, you weren't aware of the historical, what was going on, the changes that came. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:10:03.032)
No, no, no. And the fact that my dad was not only supportive, it came to the games. It didn't surprise me at all. I don't know why he was that way, but he was a pretty progressive guy to grow up dirt poor to farm in central Virginia. I think a lot of it was to do with the army. He told me that having been drafted during Korea and going through the army, it was a foundation of merit based success.

Christian Sheppard (02:10:28.221)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:10:28.944)
And he didn't, he, he felt like that people got opportunity there. You know, he went in the army in 1950. So it's a time when I think it was, I think it was a time that there was probably some pretty good aspects of American culture that were agreed upon. I, I don't think that any country can really survive very long without conflict. If we don't accept the same things, I mean, the base things.

Christian Sheppard (02:10:53.983)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:10:56.798)
You can worship, I can worship. But, and you know that from a theological background too, lots of people can come to the same conclusion. There's a greater thing than ourselves and how one achieves that purpose or achieves whatever level of worship they have for that. That's fine. As long as you and I can agree on it's your life. I have no possession over it. I can ask you to be.

like minded and causes we support in trade. You know, you make beautiful things that I want to buy and then the currency is good and that and that's what I'd hope that people could find.

Christian Sheppard (02:11:35.209)
Yeah, well that's why this country is an experiment. mean, they were, that, especially with the religious side to it, because people believe a lot of crazy stuff, a lot of their own stuff, and to think that everyone could live together and thrive together. We've done it so far, you know, but when you demand that everyone agrees with you, it's not gonna work. those, you know, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. He also put that line between,

between religion and the civic space that I think allowed things to thrive. And it's not even so, it's, it's in some ways, I don't know if he could have predicted it. I mean, he probably would have hated this, but the fact that he did that allows for all these American religions to grow and be strange and be interesting and people to believe what they want in all sorts of wonderful ways. It kind of created this Petri dish of, you know, go, can drive through Amish country for between here and Wrigley field.

I can count, I can see every religious position ever done. I'll pass a Muslim temple, I'll pass a Jewish temple, I'll pass five different types of churches. I will see Krishna and Vishnu at the newsstand. And it's only in America where that kind of thing happens.

Moore to Consider (02:12:36.533)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (02:12:54.388)
Yeah, was a big fan of, or I am a big fan of C.S. Lewis who died the same day as Kennedy, November 22nd, 1963. yeah, I thought one of the beautiful, and also Huxley, Brave New World, he died that day as well, which was interesting because a guy wrote a book about that. What would Huxley, Kennedy, and Lewis say about society since they died the same day? But C.S. Lewis said, I think a very important thing. He was asked one time about Christianity. He went from atheist to theist to Christian.

Christian Sheppard (02:13:01.241)
I didn't know that, yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:13:24.219)
And he said, if I speak to the vast majority of people, regardless of their faith, whatever they call themselves or however, whatever dimensions they cut this, this, this faith upon, they're going to love their children. They're going to want prosperity to some level. They want to be charitable. And he goes, the defining characteristic of my religion is the divinity of Christ and the resurrection. It doesn't mean I can't love this brother that doesn't see it that way.

But the very fact that I define it upon, if you don't believe in the resurrection and the divinity of Christ or the salvation through Christ, then you're not a Christian. But you can be this other thing and maybe in the final analysis you got the wrong answer. But he goes, most of the time we can come together as people of different faiths because we have the same ideas about the importance of thrift and family and all of these things and therefore we can live together. It's when it becomes

Christian Sheppard (02:14:20.435)
Yeah.

Moore to Consider (02:14:22.578)
forced upon. Now what's interesting, probably know the history on this as well, when they wrote the first amendment, there were, think, six states that were still taxing their people to support their state churches. All they were intending with the first amendment was there would never be a Church of England national church. There would not be a church in the United States. Now the Danbury letter that Jefferson wrote as president, he was like, well, there's always been an accepted notion of separation of church and state. But I remember Bill Clinton in the nineties when he was president, he goes, well, it's right there in the constitution, Jefferson, you know, he wrote that in

Christian Sheppard (02:14:32.467)
Mmm.

Moore to Consider (02:14:51.793)
Well, he didn't write the constitution. He was in France and he certainly didn't put separation of church and state in. However, that would have been the view I believe that they had because there's a free exercise in the establishment. There will be no national church and we're not going to monkey around with how you go about following your particular faith.

Christian Sheppard (02:14:53.127)
Yeah

Christian Sheppard (02:15:13.415)
Yeah, well, he's right. goes back to why the Pilgrims came here. They were fleeing religious persecution. So Europe had suffered more than a century of just the most terrible wars fought in the name of two ways of defining Christian faith. And so they wanted to get away from that.

Moore to Consider (02:15:18.609)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Moore to Consider (02:15:35.451)
Political force or political force and religion does not have a good history It just does not it does not but you know What does scare me too though? And we've come out of a like a Trent when I almost like the car wreck You know that we just missed like the head-on collision. I think in some ways What really scared me in the last five years is I was watching 1984 play out You know having read the read the novel when I when I hear people say

Christian Sheppard (02:15:40.306)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (02:15:59.807)
Mm-hmm.

Moore to Consider (02:16:04.836)
things that I know are at odds with nature and I have to kind of go along with it or something. That's what really begins to scare me. If you want to believe that, which is not true, that's fine. Don't use the force of government to give penalty to me for not, you know what I mean? That's where I get scared. That's why I'm such a proponent. Like I said earlier, if alphabet agency or alphabet network wants to say really crazy lies, they'll suffer in the end. They'll suffer the consequences of lying. And when

Christian Sheppard (02:16:17.96)
Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (02:16:29.897)
Yeah. Right.

Moore to Consider (02:16:33.079)
You have 60,000 people in the prime time watching you and Joe Rogan's getting two and a half million to watch this podcast. There's your answer. And when they throw up their hands and go, but we're established media. No, you're full of shit. And I mean, people know it and that's where you are. So, you know, but I think again, forces are going to, are going to move because it is a business. I hate to think that way, but you know,

Christian Sheppard (02:16:40.927)
Yep. Yep.

Christian Sheppard (02:16:58.175)
I think that's also one of the, like when you were talking about Orwell, I think one of the most important things about him is what a clear writer he was and how he stood up for like, and he satirizes so viciously and so like on the money that speaks to the last five years of how language can be warped in all those different ways where you could say, you know, they're saying the opposite of the truth and they're defying you to disagree with them. I think one of the great things, almost like a trial for being a citizen,

is like the bar room conversation about the game we just saw. Like, was that a good player or not? Is Muhammad Ali the most important person or not? Like when we build toward a consensus by questioning, you know, is this excellence or not? When you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball, everyone says, yes, that is excellence. And so the performance of the game.

Moore to Consider (02:17:31.139)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Christian Sheppard (02:17:54.547)
you know, these, these intermittent epiphanies of excellence that we all bear witness to and point at and nod together, then that's something that, that's something, that's how I think shared values are created. So you get people from all over the place. You know, you get some guy who's screaming, know, hail to Allah, my son just hit it. And the other one saying, you know, hail to Krishna, my son just caught it. And everyone is saying, hail to you both because your kids are great. That's a, that, that, that, that's where I think the hope lies.

Moore to Consider (02:18:21.364)
I think that's very well, well put, well spoken. I absolutely agree with that. I have so enjoyed having you on. I would hope that we can continue to do this. Would you like to do this again? Sit? Yeah. I think this would be great. yeah. So we're going to finish up right there. before we go, please tell everybody how to get ahold of your book, where they can find you any other places to make contact with you.

Christian Sheppard (02:18:32.415)
That'd be great.

Christian Sheppard (02:18:47.933)
Yeah, so my book is The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball and it drops March 25th, the week of opening day. I think, it's wherever fine books are found, but Amazon will get to your door in time for opening day if you get it. So yeah, read the book and we'll talk about some more. I've really enjoyed this conversation.

Moore to Consider (02:19:13.996)
Yeah, yeah, I will get that and get that going. I enjoyed having you on for everybody that watches Moore to consider. We're to have this gentleman on again really soon and talk some more life and baseball and all the rest. God bless you, sir.