Armchair Anonymous: Little League/Coaching
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Miniature Mouse.

Here I am. Hi there. Hi. How you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good? Yeah. I'm in the holiday spirit. Did this prompt make you wish you had played Little League Baseball? No. No. Me neither. I went to a ton of Little League games because I supported Aaron. I would go to all his games. Oh, that's cute. I do love going to a Little League game or to a high school game. Yes. There's something very nostalgic about it.

I'm about to enter that phase. Yeah. Where Lincoln goes to a school that has sports and I get emails inviting to sports. She's not even on. But, you know, should we go support the school? And I very much want to. I think that sounds really fun. That's so fun. I want to go. Yeah, you can come. I will. They need support. Critique the cheerleaders. I don't even know that there's cheerleaders. That's sexist. Fuck.

Okay. So, okay. Instead, I will start a cheerleading squad. Okay. I don't even know if there is. I'm just, if ever there wasn't going to be one at an all-girls school, I feel like maybe that would be the place. They should still have cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are their own thing. Let's just get clarification for you. You like competitive cheer. No, I hated sideline cheer. Okay. So you're not, you don't really want Gail's... No, but they can do competition. Yeah.

Okay, but just it wouldn't be a part of the sports game I'm going to see, right? No, it is. It's the same squad. So for us anyway, our competition squad cheered varsity football.

But you didn't? You did. Yeah, we did. We had to. But you didn't like that part. No, I didn't. It felt annoying. I like the vibe of the games and the ambiance, but I wasn't really into sideline cheering very much. But we did use it as like we practiced stunts. Anyway, it was part of it. It was part of it. Now, what I liked, and I know you guys didn't have this, but we had pom-pom. Sure. And they came out at halftime. They weren't there on the sidelines.

bouncing around during the game, but halftime came and they put on a full dance routine. Yes. And that was Sassy Feld was one of the premier members of that team. JV. We did that. So when I was in JV or freshman football, we did have a halftime dance. You did. And you liked that. Yeah, but it was nerve wracking, but yeah. Okay.

All right, well, this is about Little League coaching disasters, and we have four of them coming your way. All of them are pretty PG. You might want to skip it because there's really nothing to see. No, don't say that. Okay, now we...

Okay. I like the idea that you shouldn't listen no matter what. Okay. Yeah, but I'm scared of that one a little bit. Oh my gosh, hold on. Okay. When I was at Sephora the other day, I ran into a very fashionable armchair and her son, and her son listens. How old was he? I didn't ask, but my guess is 13. Oh. And it was so sweet. Yeah, I like that. I hope he enjoys this episode. Yeah.

Yeah, he might get some PTSD. Maybe he's been in one of these situations. Then I hope he doesn't listen. Okay. Did you call him Tiger? Champ. Champ. Okay. Please enjoy Little League Coaching Disaster Crazy Stories. We are supported by Audible. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here. Audible's curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best in audio entertainment.

Like a stunning new full cast production of George Orwell's 1984, this is the one I am most excited to indulge myself with. I'm so excited to listen to James, which is a new title by Percival Everett that is very, very hot right now. Well, there's so many good ones on the list. We love Audible. This is how you go to bed.

I love Audible. I swear by Audible. I can't wait to listen to the Orwell 1984 off this list. I'm also doing Fleas by autobiography right now, which I'm obsessed with. I can't get enough Audible in my life every night. Go to audible.com slash DAX and discover all the year's best waiting for you. That's audible.com slash DAX.

We are supported by Audible. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here. Audible's curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best in audio entertainment.

Like a stunning new full cast production of George Orwell's 1984, this is the one I am most excited to indulge myself with. I'm so excited to listen to James, which is a new title by Percival Everett that is very, very hot right now. Well, there's so many good ones on the list. We love Audible. This is how you go to bed.

I love Audible. I swear by Audible. I can't wait to listen to the Orwell 1984 off this list. I'm also doing Fleas by autobiography right now, which I'm obsessed with. I can't get enough Audible in my life every night. Go to audible.com slash DAX and discover all the year's best waiting for you. That's audible.com slash DAX. Hard times come and go. Take them slow. I had them both. But one thing you gotta know.

Hello. Hi there. Oh, wow. Immediate connection. We love that. That's very rare. Almost never happens. Hey, I do what I can to help you out. And you sound phenomenal. Are you a podcaster? I have to do a little bit of podcasting for my job, but yeah, they hooked us up with some sweet gear. Yeah, you sound phenomenal. Maybe even better than us. I know. I'm jealous of your mic. Are you recording? I am recording. We're set. Matt, you're on top of it.

Are you an overachiever? Sometimes. My wife would tell you I need to slow down. Oh, that's good. You sound like one of us. Where are you at? I am in the western suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Oh, we love Minneapolis. Nice guys. Yeah, good guys. Oh, and this story is all about Minnesota nice. Let me tell you. Oh, wonderful. Tell us. Set the scene. It's pretty raw because it just happened. It happened in June.

It takes place at my daughter's eight and under machine pitch, fast pitch softball game. Oh, what's a machine pitch? In Minnesota, we use this funky blue spring loaded arm and you'll put the ball in and you pull this little lever and shoots the ball in at about 35 miles an hour. It's mechanical, yet it's not automated. So you still have to load it. A person has to pull it.

Yeah. And there's a little bit of skill to it. You know, we have a couple of coaches who put on like a little tutorial and they teach you how to do it. And the ball go every if you put the ball in wrong or it's wet. Next thing you know, you're putting into the girl's ear. Oh, boy. And can there be a strike or does it always throw a perfect ball? Oh, God, no. It is terrible. Oh, it just really depends about the user. There's a spring. So if the spring goes bad, if there's a wind, I feel like it's bad.

The point of me saying it's machine pitch, though, is like this is entry level softball. Nobody's getting the full ride tomorrow. We're learning how to throw the ball, catch the ball, where to throw the ball, all those pieces. Last question. Is it co-ed or just girls only? Girls only. This is girls fast pitch softball. So my daughter.

I've been playing now for a few years since she was like five. And now she's going on 10, but she'd been in machine pitch for a couple of years. And this year was unique because she wanted to try out for an A-level team. So like an advanced team. When you sign your player up, you check the box to be a parent volunteer. I always do that. I loved a coach. I've been a head coach. I've been an assistant. So I always check the box. And this year I got to be head coach of an A-team. Oh,

There's some differences. One, the players actually give a damn. They want to play. They love practice and they really want to win. The parents are in the same place and they may want to win a little bit more than their player. Sometimes I've been very fortunate. Our parents were great people. I didn't ever really get that vibe, but some of the teams we've played.

Mom and dad are living vicariously through their eight-year-old. Oh, God. Okay. So it's a Saturday morning. We're an A team playing in the top tier of the Minnesota State Tournament. Oh, wow. You made it to the state tournament. When you play at you, everybody makes it to the state tournament. Okay. But we're in the tier one, which was shocking to me because I wouldn't say we won a lot of games.

All right. Everybody gets ranked and they have some weird algorithm and I don't really understand it, but they're going to rank these eight-year-old girls and we're like the 15th seed out of 20 in tier one. And if you follow March Madness in a bracket, you know, the bottom seeds are going to play the top seeds. So we're going to play a team that has won more than they've lost. In fact, I don't know if they had lost more than like three or four games. Well, I was going to say, given the fact you made the top tier with a losing record tells me that there are a handful of teams that won every fucking game.

And then everyone else is kind of normal. Yeah. In fact, the first team we played for the season beat us by one run. They went undefeated the rest of the year. Wow.

So we get into this tournament and it's a Saturday morning. It's beautiful. We have a 9 a.m. game time. Before the game, we met with the umpire at home plate. You know, it's both coaches, a couple of players from the team, and the umpire is walking us through the rules. And there's some key rules for 8U softball. You can't advance on an overthrow. Girls can't run extra bases on ground balls that are fielded in the infield. So really, the game is kind of a

checkers mats and they go one base at a time. Okay. Unless you've got girls who are like five, six and they say they're eight or nine, but they might be 11 and they're hitting bombs to like left center. They walked us through that you could have a couple coaches in the field. We had a 70 minute time limit. The kicker is the umpire who's walking us through this is holding the rule book because she's 13 years old. No. Okay. Interesting. And this is her first game. Uh oh. That's a lot of pressure. I know.

She's on the umpire track. Welcome to the Thunderdome. You know, it's like, holy shit. Here you go. Good luck. So we get into it. I'll just fast forward to the fourth inning. We're winning seven to nothing. We had a girl backhand a ball and throw it from third base to first on a line. And she had never done that in her life.

Wow. We were on fire. So there's some run limits too. In AU, you can only score five runs an inning. When you get into the fourth inning of a five inning game, you start doing some math and you're like, oh, if we score four runs, this game's over. So I tell our coaches and our coaches are like, great, here we go. And we went out and just wet the bed. And we went one, two, three. We get through four innings, seven to three. We go in to the fifth inning. We have now run out of time.

All the other games are letting out. And the teams that are playing next on our field are warming up in the outfield and all their fans are coming in. So we have a crowd and it's getting heated. And as they start to score, things start coming out of their mouths like they don't deserve to win. Oh, geez. Typically, you hear them coach each other's kids up. But now they're coming at my players. So all of a sudden, it's 7-6.

There's two outs and the bases are low in the bottom of the landing. We have an audience. This girl comes up and hits a BB at my third baseman, who thankfully was probably our best player on the team. She was a stud and she misplays it and it bounces off of her knee.

She fields it. She gets to third base, steps on the bag, beats the girl. And I'm thinking, game's over. And the umpire, 13-year-old girl, calls her safe. Uh-oh. Oh, no. Was she just at a disadvantaged viewing spot? I'll get to it here in just a second. Oh, okay, okay, okay. My wife would tell you I jumped about 14 feet.

in the air and yelled no at the top of my lungs. I did not argue with the umpire. She's 13. They're going to miss the call. And we didn't have umpires all season. Mostly coaches called the games because it's beginner softball. So who gives a fuck? Yeah, sure. Also, though, Minnesota honor policy works probably in Minnesota. Not everywhere. Nobody lies here.

Right? I start running to third base because I got to check on this girl. Both of my coaches on the field now huddle the girls up because based on what has happened, the game's tied seven to seven and they can win it with one more run because they can score five in an inning and that'll be their fifth. I have another coach who asked the umpire, can you just clarify what you saw? And the umpire said, oh yeah, your third baseman beat her to the bag, but she had to tag her. And our manager coach goes, why?

It was bases loaded. And the umpire like has this aha moment. And she goes, you are 100% right. And she announces very loudly, coaches, I'm reversing my call. The runner's out.

I'm like, it's a force out. The game is over. And she goes, you're right. Coaches, line them up. Game's over. Oh, no. This poor 13-year-old girl. So now she's changed the call. No, no. When you get a third person out, you automatically get five runs. We won by six points. You're right. And I'm like, great. Line it up. And the fans in the other stands have gone ape shit. Oh, wow. And they are screaming.

at the 13-year-old girl. Like, they are letting her have it. Oh, no. How dare you? You can't do that. You're not allowed to change calls. You're such a bitch. Stop it. They're like, how the fuck could you do this to us? They are lighting her up. The parents are screaming at our girls. Oh, boy. They're now also telling the girls, don't line up. Shake their hands. Oh, my God. These girls are cheaters. They're liars. They don't deserve it. Our girls are hearing this and the tears

Oh, no. This guy comes screaming through our dugout, making a straight line for the umpire. He's charging at the 13-year-old girl. What the fuck? Oh, Jesus.

What the fuck? People lose themselves. One of our coaches sees this and he steps in immediately. And this guy's like 6'2", 220. Okay. And the guy's onto the field yelling, fuck you, you bitch. I have words for you. You fucking ruined our season. He's going off on her, right? Oh my God. My coach gets in between him and her at about the first base bag. Our girls are sobbing.

And my other coaches are now like put their heads together and like bear hug them. And they're like giving them positive love and affirmation. You know, they're like, you're great. You're beautiful. Gosh darn it. People like, you know, meanwhile, I'm listening to this assistant coach who's like my brother. I'm listening to his voice go up and up and louder. And I'm like, this is getting bad. And I look and this guy's like poking him in the chest. The angry dad's poking your buddy. Yeah.

Except he's not a dad. We didn't know that yet. And he shoves my assistant coach. And I watch like the slow motion of his arms cocking back to like light this guy up. And I go running. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Get out of here. You need to go get our girls lined up. I've got this. And now I'm face to face with the angry citizen who wants to crush this umpire. Pretty sure I heard the C word. Wow.

It was unbelievable. And I'm like hurting him off the field like he's a cow. And I'm like, sir, you have to quit cussing. I need you off the field. And he's screaming at me like at an 11. So I'm talking to him at like a three. My wife hates me for it. I do it all the time. So I'm like talking to this guy and I think I've got him calmed down. And all of a sudden I'm like arms out. I'm ushering him off. He goes, don't you dare fucking touch me. And

Boom! Right under my left eye. No! He throws a punch! Throws a punch. Now, I did not know I was in a boxing match. Yeah, your three backfired on you. You went to three, he went to 17. He went to 17. Pop me in the eye. I go tumbling backwards. Oh my God. I'm so sorry.

I've never been punched before. And I would say it was a good punch. It wasn't the best punch, but he got me. He tagged you. He surprised the shit out of me. Sure, sure. Been there. And it takes you a good 20 seconds before you put all the pieces together. Like, okay, huh? I was standing. I'm laying down. Oh, and I heard a crack in my head. Oh, right. I've been punched. Oh, here we are. Right. You got to kind of like catch up to what's happening. All of that. I mean, I'm on the ground. I look over. The girls are still sobbing. And now they're really freaked out. Yes. Coach Matt just got...

So traumatic. I know. Coach Matt is on the ground looking around, dazed and totally confused. And our fans obviously erupted. And it's the state tournament. So it's aunts, uncles, grandparents. Wow.

But other teams had made their way listening to what was going on. So now there's coaches from other teams and they're chasing this guy out. Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a pile of dirt and I look at one of our parents and I said, did that guy just fucking punch me? And she goes, yeah, he did. And I'm talking to the police right now.

So 911 gets called. Now other teams players are sobbing. Oh boy. They've seen it. It's become like a crime right here on this field. So this guy and his girlfriend tried to flee the scene. We had parents that had to sit on the bumper of this car. Then we had to look at our players and say, okay, you just won. You have to go play again. Like, good luck. Use

I mean, they were a mess. Half the girls wanted to quit. We have players from other teams that wanted to quit. And now I'm like, somebody's got to clean the dugout because I've got to go talk to the police for the next 45 minutes and press charges because you don't get to do this. You don't get to behave like that on the field. The worst part, I think, about it, too, was that the other coaches never came and checked on us. They denied knowing this guy. This was an uncle of a player.

Okay. Uncles. Yeah. Uncles get serious at 8U softball. Okay. They get fucking irate. And now we're like picking up the pieces. And I became a celebrity at that tournament for all the wrong reasons that day. Yeah. That's huge. So did you guys lose the next game? You guys, I'm going to be really honest. We kicked the shit out of the next team. Nice. Wow. And then we went home for the night and then the adrenaline went away and we came back the next day and got thumped. Yeah.

But we finished fourth in state, which was great. I will tell you the core memory of these girls is not fourth in state. It's Coach Matt in the dirt. What did your daughter think of all this? So my daughter, thankfully, she had her back to me when I got hit. So she had a lot of questions about why would someone get so mad about

a little league game. There's no answer for that. Hard to answer. Yeah. We went to Zoom traffic court, basically. He had come to terms with his mistake and pled guilty. Oh, good. He could have gotten some jail time, I think, but they pled him out with some money, a lot of community service, anger management. I hope that sticks. Sure. Did you find out if he had any priors for cold-cocking strangers in public? He had never been arrested for cold-cocking somebody.

He'd been arrested for other things. Okay. He almost punched that 13-year-old. That was going to happen if no one had intervened. If he had gotten to the umpire, I think that probably gets pretty ugly, right? Yeah. Even when you call her an umpire, I lose track of it. I know. She shouldn't even have been called that, but yes, I understand.

13-year-old girl who's trying to do her best. Yeah, I'm picturing a 62-year-old man on the weekend making 20 bucks. It's not like she was even out there in, like, ump gear. She was out there in shorts and a t-shirt. This was, like, her warm-up. Like, do I want to go be an umpire and get paid on the weekends when I'm not playing competitive travel softball myself? And the next day, she showed back up. Like, she was there. Now, her mom came with her the next day, and I think I probably would have, too. Oh, bro.

Madness. That's crazy. We have a friend who's almost permanently at a little league game. He's got two boys. Two weeks can't go by without him reporting on some dad who goes berserk. It's crazy to me that people don't enter going like, okay, we know the bad thing. I can't be that dude.

It's not like we don't know about this archetype. What's fascinating to me is I played competitive sports growing up forever. So I've been in this for 35 years. I've never seen that. I've seen some crazy. I've seen guys throw buckets of balls on the field. And I've seen guys get thrown out for arguing balls and strikes and dropping F-bombs and saying inappropriate things to umpires. But I've never seen someone go onto a field and chase down an umpire. That's next level crazy. And I blame participation trophies. Haha.

Everybody thinks they deserve to win. It's like, come on, you got to lose. That's part of the game. The majority of people don't win the championship. That's right. Yeah. Monica wouldn't know what that's like. I do majority win the championship, so I don't know, but I know it's like to be a loser. Yeah. Well,

Well, Matt, that was delightful. I'm sorry you got tagged, but also I'm glad I got to hear about it. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm sorry I got tagged too. I think at the end of the day, we're glad I was the one that got hit. And this is a very weird thing to say, but I also think it's good for a man to get blasted once in the face before they die. You know, we should all have that experience.

I mean, not really, but also I kind of feel that way. It was eye-opening. You live in fear of it your whole childhood. It's actually eye-closing. And then it happens and you live. I just, I think, was always really good at evading the right hook. And this time I just was ill-prepared for it. Right. All right. Well, great meeting you. Thanks for telling us that story, Matt. Yeah, I hope you guys have a really nice holiday season. Okay, you too, brother. Take care. Bye-bye.

You missed my really good joke. Luckily, Rob heard it. I know. I looked over and you guys were giggling to each other. Yeah, because you said it was eye opening and I said it was eye closing. That's really good. Do you want to punch me in the face a little bit? Never. I kind of do want to know what it feels like. Right. That's what I'm saying. It's like I can only speak as being a boy. You're seeing your buddies get punched all the time. You're so afraid of it happening. And then it happens and you're like, that's okay. Yeah, except you

Except you wouldn't say that about a car crash. I might. No. Okay. If you can go through life without getting in a car crash, that's best case scenario. Oh, yeah. Maybe that's better. Do you want to try to punch my leg so that could be kind of like it? I don't want to punch you at all. Rob, do you want to punch my leg and see what it's like? Have you ever punched anyone? Just Vinny. When I was a kid, probably. Okay.

Can you imagine if someone punched Vinny? No, that's what I'm saying. You don't want Vinny to get punched in his life. I don't. Well, only if he was afraid of it and he lived in great fear of it and then it happened and he was like, okay, I don't need to worry that much about that. It's not a big deal. Only in that scenario. It's very, very. It's a very specific set of guidelines I want Vinny to get punched under. To the armchairs who heard that, don't take this as an invite if you see me on the street to punch me, okay?

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Hello. Megan, is it? Yes, Megan. Nice to meet you. Where are you? I'm in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, yes. Monica's on a pun kick right now. This is like the third in a row. I swear, we had very little Oklahomans, and now we've had like three in a row. It's spreading there. I've been proselytizing you guys to everyone I know.

Oh, thank you. So are you the parent of a Little Leaguer? Not yet. I have a five-year-old son. He's about to start playing basketball. But you have a Little League story. This is my story. Oh, yay! Oh, wonderful. It's a personal story.

First of all, can I see your t-shirt? Yes, it's you. Oh my God. What? I've never seen that. That's incredible. It's from Etsy. So it's not off your website. We encourage people to make as much shit as they want. We're not litigious. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, go crazy. But we are going to have a new merch drop coming soon.

for anyone who wants more merch. I was wondering about that. So that's awesome. I'll be on the lookout. All right. So yeah, hit us with Little League. So this story takes place in 1994, small town, Oklahoma. I was nine years old. My brother, he's five years older than me. So he had been playing Little League for several years before I got to the age where I was ready to start playing. I loved every part of being at his games. And my dad was always his coach.

So my parents just kind of thought, well, we'll throw her in little league with the boys versus softball. I was all for that. So I was a decent player. I was pitcher for my teams most of the time. Oh, wow. I didn't throw super hard, but I was really accurate and consistent. But because I was pretty good, I hadn't really had a whole lot of boys teasing me about being a girl on the team or anything like that yet.

But one day we were about to play a game and me and my teammates were warming up and this kid from the other team comes over and he says something to the effect of, you guys have a girl on your team. We're going to kill you guys. Like girls suck at sports basically is what he was saying. Yeah.

Yeah. Standard fare. Exactly. I was pretty pissed. And my dad, he was an assistant coach on this team, and he saw that I was pretty upset. He asked me what the kid said. And I told him and he said, well, what do you think you're going to do? And I said, well, I'll just strike him out every time he comes up. Yeah, that's right. My dad said, well, I think he needs to learn a lesson. I had a hunch maybe dad might say, why don't you beam him? But these are two approaches.

Two good options. So I'm pitching that game and this kid comes up in like the third inning, which tells you that he sucks. Yeah. Ugh, I hate this kid. And then maybe you could even be compassionate. No! He sucks. Now he's insecure, so he's got to make other people feel bad. I don't.

Okay. All right. I didn't feel bad for him. It pissed me off even more because he thought he was automatically better than me. Exactly. Because I was a girl. So anyways, third inning, kid comes up and I start pitching to him. I pitch the first pitch straight down the middle. The kid swings and misses. Second pitch, same thing. I throw it right down the middle. He swings and misses. So I've got two strikes on him. No balls. Right before I throw the third pitch, I look over at my dad and he's just got this look on his face. He nods his head up and down like, yeah, you know what to do. Oh, geez. What?

I love your dad. This is uncharacteristic of you, Monica. You're voting for violence. This is not like you. Right? Yeah, you never go for violence, Monica. I know. This is my role. This little shit deserves it. Third pitch, I throw it as hard as I possibly can right at this kid's body. Yeah.

I didn't throw it at his head. I wasn't trying to kill him. That was nice of you. Monica's upset, but continue. You could have, but you showed some mercy. The kid panics when he sees the ball coming at him. And instead of turning away from it, he opens his body to it. And it just lands right in the middle of his chest. Everyone can hear the thud. And he immediately falls to the ground. He throws his bat. And he just starts bawling crying. Okay, so now did it turn, Monica? Are you still in? I'm still kind of in. Okay, okay.

I mean, he's definitely an incel right now. That I do know is what the product of this was. The umpire was finally like, hey, you can take your base to first base. And about that time, his mom had come down out of the stands, out onto the field and took the kid out of the game and they left completely. The country? Maybe.

Amongst all of that drama, I looked up in the sands to my mom and she was pissed off, like I could tell. At you or your dad? Well, she knew I had done it on purpose. She had a hunch that he was behind the whole thing. Of course, yeah. So later that night, we got a pretty good lecture about how terrible the lesson that is for a nine-year-old. Uh-huh, yeah.

Fair. Sure. But I felt vindicated. I loved every second of it. Oh, good, good, good, good. Yeah. I hope that's the last time he opened his mouth to a girl, but I'm afraid it maybe got worse. I'm afraid too. I know love's the answer, Monica. It's hard. Tell him love is the answer.

love is the answer. He sucks. Well, the funniest part of the story is years later, I ended up having a one night stand with this guy. No! Stop it. Stop it. Wait, wait, wait. You gotta give us a little more than that. Under what circumstance? What?

I gotta love this. Did you give him blue balls? Was this like a long game? I ended up going to high school with him. And when this all happened, I didn't make the connection at this time. I didn't realize it was the same kid until later on. And I don't know if he made the connection either. Obviously, he wasn't too bad heard about it. But yeah, let's just say he was about as good in bed as he was at playing baseball. Oh, this piece of shit. I mean, the bar is fucking low. No, he sucks.

He sucks. We knew it then and we know it now. That's right. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. I love that you hooked up with him. That's crazy. That's hilarious.

What would you do in that situation, Dax, if a kid said something to one of your girls? It's really funny you would bring this up because I didn't foresee this would ever be a thing that I would have to deal with having girls. But I'll leave them for you to guess. But one of them has a classmate that keeps touching her inappropriately. And she has told her like very directly, do not touch me again. I'm going to be a little sympathetic. This girl's probably got something going on.

I don't know why she is this way. Oh, it's a goal doing it? Yeah. I have to assume something's not great at home. At home, yeah. And they're young. And I said, okay, well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to make the teacher aware of this. And that is step one. And if it does not correct itself, you have my full blessing to do whatever you want. If someone's ever touching you inappropriately, whatever has to happen, I stand by you in this situation. So weirdly, that just came up. I understand.

of that. Okay. TBD. Teacher first. You know, you do all the protocols. Hopefully that will work. But you don't let someone touch your body if you don't want them to. No, you don't. Again, it breaks my heart because I think this girl's probably already got some stuff going on. So I don't also want her to get beat up. But I've seen Delta go after her older sister and I mean, that's... It's obvious. Yeah, it's kind of obvious.

I've seen Delta go after her older sister and I have had the thought. I hope no one ends up on the other end of her because she is a feisty motherfucker. I love it. It's good quality. Oh, Megan, what a story. Yeah, that was fantastic. I love that story.

Monica's horny. I want to say something real quick before I go. I know you don't like talking about day seven, but May of 2022, I was in a gnarly relapse. And one day I had a particularly bad night. And the next day I was home alone and decided to listen to day seven again. And when you started talking about how it just hit you all of a sudden that you needed to get honest with Kristen and Monica, that happened.

set with me and it was just like, "Oh my god, I have to get honest with my wife and everyone." And so later that night, I told her everything I'd been hiding and a week later, I got into treatment and I've been sober ever since.

Oh my God, congratulations. That's so beautiful. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, you're killing it. How liberating is that, huh? To finally stop carrying all that. It's great. In fact, we're going through some tough stuff with my son right now. And I'm like, thank God I'm sober, man. It would be way worse. That's the big gift, right? You can show up for people. That's right. Thanks for telling me that. Yes, of course. You guys take care. You too. Keep proselytizing. Okay, I will. All right, bye. Bye.

She's awesome. And I love her. I hate that boy. Yeah, you really hate that boy. Was it you? Really brought up some stuff. No, I didn't talk to girls like that. I was a nice boy-ish. You talk to me mean. You talk to me mean. I know. You're a worthy adversary. Maddie. Now, you know, I say I don't like when people spell standard names differently. I'm really enjoying the spelling of this. What is it? M-A-D-I. Oh, I like that. Right? That's good. I reversed my position. Reverse back.

Hello. Hi. I was just saying, Maddie, I generally don't like when people spell a standard name differently. Yet here I am. I love M-A-D-I. Thanks. My name's Madison. And so when I was little and people called me Maddie, I just cut off the S-O-N. Ditch the sun. Smart. Efficient. Okay, Maddie, you have a Little League story? I do.

For context, I grew up in Northern Virginia, which is kind of intense with sports, kind of intense with academics. Really quick, why? Is that where George Washington is? What's there? Why is it academically hard? It might just be because it's outside of D.C., but I know that it's like nationally ranked in academics. And I did crew. I rode for my high school and we had to...

practice five days a week. We had races on Saturdays and it was a whole day affair. Also, we were required to go to this training camp every spring break and it was in South Carolina. Our whole team would get in a bus and we would drive eight or nine hours down to South Carolina to go to this crew camp and we would practice and train for weeks

six to eight hours every day for a whole week. It was fun. It was a cool destination. It was a Boy Scout camp. So the place itself was maybe a little bit run down, but it was fun for high school. We were having a great time. We were a little sleep deprived. It was all together a good experience.

And we were down there and I've got two kind of related stories to share from the same trip. Also, our coach was probably as old as I am now. I'm like 27. I don't think this guy could have been older than I am. Oh, oh.

Well, hold on. Don't worry yet. Don't worry. He was in the military and then wasn't anymore. I think he had some sort of experience with crew and he took himself very seriously. But we as a team maybe didn't take him as seriously as he would have maybe liked us to. I can picture it perfectly. So he had the idea that we should go on a night row, which isn't a thing. Never done it before. Never done it since. But he thought we should go rowing at night by the moonlight. And as

an adult now, I know that there are requirements for the kinds of lights that you need to have on a boat to go out in the water at night. You need a little light in the front and a light in the back. We didn't have that

The coach gift did not have that. And it's kind of a silly atmosphere. It's very leisurely. It's a little whimsical. And we're out here and we're rowing and something hits the bottom of our boat. Can I ask, are you in a lake or a river? We're in a lake. And you're not supposed to keep going if something hits your boat. You're supposed to stop because the rudder underneath can break off. So we stopped rowing. And whatever it is that's just hit our boat is now sliding towards the front of our boat. Oh.

but in a way of like a living creature. No, like it's not going in the same direction as the current and we're in South Carolina. So we're sure that this is an alligator. Oh,

Of course. Oh, I hate your coat. I'm going straight to gators. So that alleged alligator then hits, like thwacks the bottom of the boat in the front. So we're spooked. It's dark. And we've been messing around this whole time. So the tatter from us is not probably alerting our coach that anything's wrong. The girl in the front of the boat then starts telling everybody that

There is water coming in from underneath her feet. Oh, we're trying desperately to get the attention of our coach. He comes over. It's really hard to get a little motorized boat next to the really small crew boat that we have. So he's trying to investigate and see what's going on, but he can't really see. So he just takes our word for it and he gets on his coach voice and he's like, all right, we got a power 10 all the way back to the dock.

So now this goes from like leisurely funny and then we're rowing full speed all the way back to the dock. Can I ask a quick question? Did he even bring a flashlight? Did he shine a light at the boat to see if water was coming on? He did shine a light. I can't remember if it was his phone flashlight or if it was an actual flashlight. We know it was the phone. Oh, geez. Okay. So we get back. He sees that there is a hole. We can't take that boat out anymore because we have to repair it back in Virginia. So that boat is out of commission.

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Woo!

I love this show. I got to give a personal stamp of approval. It's so good. Also a 1920s Spanish style villa. It's a gorgeous house. You want to live in it. No Good Deed starring Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano launches December 12th only on Netflix. Then we fast forward to the last day of our crew camp. We

We would always do like a scrimmage. On this day, it was really cold, maybe 45 or 50 degrees, and it was really windy. And other coaches had safety concerns about putting us out on the water because there was white caps and it was really windy. Obviously, our ex-military coach is having none of that. So he determines that we should probably go on this race, even if it's just the boats from our school. So he's like, we're going to have our own scrimmage. It's going to be great.

Oh, boy. So we're mad and it's hard to kind of row against the waves and we're generally not having a super great time. And we get like five or ten minutes out from the dock and then he realizes that the other boat that was with us is lagging behind. So he tells us to pause

pull our boat over into this little cove off the main waterway of the lake. And he says he's going to go back and check on the other group. So he goes back and we're sitting there and the waves are lapping up on the boat and it's uncomfortable. It's splashing us like it's really cold. Quickly, the boat starts taking on water. Oh, the waves are coming over the side of the boat. We start trying to bail out the boat.

with our water bottles, with our shoes, and by just splashing water out. That's clearly doing nothing. I don't know how much time elapsed between when he told us to pull over and when we're like way steep in water, but I think it was five to 10 minutes. And I'm talking like I was up to my waist. The boat was underneath me.

the water, but we were still sitting in it. Oh my God. He's coming over and we're like arms up in the air, screaming, panicking. There's crying, there's laughing. Everything's kind of going on. At any point, did anyone think to row to shore and get off the fucking boat? No one thought about that. And I couldn't tell you why. There wasn't like a shore shore that we could have rowed to. It was houses with dock.

and like a seawall, but nobody thought that we should move or do anything. Right, because you've been bludgeoned into submission by a coach. Yeah, it's literally Stockholm syndrome. Yeah, the military is dicey because sometimes you gotta break that chain of command.

He comes over and he yells at us and he says, listen to me, you need to row. And at the time, that was the most hilarious instruction that could have been given because we're almost sunk and it's hard to get the orders up out of the water. And so nobody listened to him right away. And then his complex kicks in and he's like, I know what the hell

I'm doing. You need to row. And so he's yelling at us. So then we do start trying to get our little oars up out of the water and like push the water back. And we get a little bit of momentum and we come up out of the water a little bit, but barely. And then his next instruction to us is that we need to get rid of our oars because these boats are really skinny and the oars are really long. And so the oars are kind of keeping the boat balanced.

And the goal is essentially for us to abandon the ship and flip it over. Oh. We need to jump off on opposite sides of the boat. We all get off. And at this point, my memory is a little bit fuzzy because we're in the water and it's freezing and we know there's alligators in there. Oh, fuck. At some point during this predicament, a family came out on their dock and they saw what was happening. A bunch of young girls dying. And so...

And some man yelling. Some dishonorably discharged cadet is screaming. They must have beckoned to us or to our coach to say that we could come to their dock if we needed to get out of the water. And our coach informed us that he was going to rescue the boat. He was like, I'm going to take the boat back. I said,

so that the boat is safe. So he hooks the boat up to a tow line and it pieces out of the situation. What? While you guys are just in the water? Yeah, we're in the water. We're 14. I'm just really glad we could all swim. Did you have life vests on? No. And we had layers on. Like I had a sweatshirt and this little vortex jacket because it was cold.

hold. So we're like sailing around. He leaves with the boat. We go up onto the dock of these strangers and then they took us into their house and gave us towels and tea. So luckily they were good Samaritan strangers. Very well. You could have never heard from the nine of us again because he just left. What a champ. We had to call a parent chaperone from the home phone of this nice family's living room and they had to drive from the camp to come get us and bring us back. Oh,

my how many girls are in the boat there are nine so there's eight that row and then there's one that coaches or is like the captain oh wow they had nine girls in their kitchen trying to warm up did that coach get fired he didn't come back the next year okay good now how did you guys perform that year sounds like you had gone through hell and back maybe you would be great after all that we were

all right that year. I think that there were other schools that were definitely a lot more competitive than us, but our boat did okay. Luckily, it didn't go in the direction you were fearing it would. Alligators. No, even before that. Yeah.

You heard 26. Oh, I did. I did. Oh, yeah. Young. So at least that wasn't on the table. But he sucks. Oh, I bet he was the boy in the baseball game. You think he grew up and wanted to take out his frustration against women? Yes. On women. It's a through line. Wow. Well, you made it. I'm sure you guys had a blast ripping him apart every time he wasn't looking or listening. That's a bonding. That part's fun. Absolutely. It went down in history. We talked about it for years and years and years after.

Well, Maddie, what a disaster. Thanks for telling us that. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Have a great day. All right. Nice meeting you. Bye. Bye. Hello. I'm going to cry. Don't cry yet. Cry at the end. Save it for the end. What name are we going to use? So my name is Mary today. Okay. Mary, Mary. We love when someone wants a fake name. That feels like it's very promising. Like maybe there's residual legal issues or something. Exactly.

Mary, are you allowed to tell us where you're at or do you think that'll be too revealing? I'm in the Midwest. That works. That's enough of a stereotype as I need. And of course, I'm changing some of the details to protect the innocent. Okay, great. Back when my daughter was in kindergarten, we were trying to get her into different activities to make friends.

The sport that she chose first was t-ball. She was so excited about it, made lots of friends through all of that. And as you know, with any group sport, you get added to a group text with tons of people. If you're the parent, right? If you're the parent, you're in the group text, for sure. And so...

Right off the bat, the first week, getting tons of notifications, I put it on silent and I'm thinking, I'll check this when I can. So around that same time, something that you should know is I was going through a divorce with my ex and he was having a good time. Different lifestyle. He's single. He's free. Okay. He's not really dealing with the t-ball. He's not.

dealing with the T-ball text. It's hard to be present with T-ball when you have this other life happening. During that time, I also wanted to take my kiddo on vacation. You're just trying to make life as normal as it can be when you're going through something like that. And so I invited a new T-ball mom to go on this trip with me. And again, daughter was very excited. We actually go to Florida. So we're out on the beach, right? We're doing fun things. Not looking at my phone. Notifications are off.

We get back to the room at the end of the night, pick up my phone, at least 50 notifications from the group text. I'm nervous because I'm thinking, oh no, someone got hurt at the t-ball. You know, something innocent happened. So I look at the text messages and the very first one in the list is my ex-husband. Uh-oh. He's asking for a sexual favor from someone. Uh-oh.

Oh my god. And that was obviously not intended for the T-Ball group text. Oh god. If you're comfortable, what did it say?

Do you want to spell it out instead? Do you want to draw a picture for us and we'll describe what we're saying? Can we do like a base? Yeah, sure. Oh. Third base. He wants oral. He's requesting third base. Okay. From a specific person? He thinks he's texting with just one member of this group text. Oh, somebody on the group text? Yeah, so he met some other t-baller mom and then he now thinks he's got a side thing going, but he accidentally, he went to her name.

Gale. And then got too hasty because he's in the mood for third base. And then he fires off a text and he didn't realize it was the one where they list all the options. No!

Is that right? Is that what happened? It's so close, but it wasn't someone from the text chain. I'm looking at these messages, right? And I'm with this fellow mom on the t-ball team. And I look up at her and she looks at me and our kids are with us. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. So you had some dads that were cool about it, like making jokes like, oh, lucky guy you are. Oh boy. Y'all come over and do that. Oh my God.

No one knows what to do. Did any women say, how dare you? For sure. Okay. It got to the point where finally the coach stepped in and was like, hey guys, this group chat is for kindergarten t-ball. So let's keep it to that and move on.

So needless to say, the rest of the T-ball season was very awkward because, you know, I walk up to a mom and you know they want to ask you about it. She must have felt so self-conscious. You're also going through a divorce. I feel like all this would just be so hard to deal with. So much. Like, yeah, I'm going through a divorce. Yes, my husband's clearly on the warpath.

And now you all know. She doesn't know, thank God. But the people know that your daughter's dad, it's too much. Men, keep it in your pants for a little while longer. Be considerate, right? Okay, two questions. Did your ex-husband respond ever after he realized what he did? He said sorry to the group. You know, it wasn't intended, obviously, for this group text. And did you sidebar with him? Oh, yeah.

Oh, you did. Okay. Now, how did that conversation go? I was very upset, obviously. You know, I was so embarrassed. Again, you're just going through all this already. And in the moment, it felt like my world was ending, honestly. And I was so angry, but we're fine now. And it's a story to tell. We've come a long way. Great co-parenting relationship. How many years ago was that? 12 years ago. Oh, boy.

I can't imagine the searing heat that would shoot through my body the second I realized I had done that. I can't imagine a more embarrassing thing to all the parents.

yeah as much as you suffered i guarantee he too probably i don't know we don't know how he is i doubt he high-fived anyone after that did he remarry he did a couple times a couple times okay but yeah i'd say we all lived happily ever after and we're good well i'm glad everyone's good or i'm glad you're good weird question did any of the fellow t-ball dads see this as a door opening opportunity for you that's so funny that you

Not that, but no. I could see someone going like, ah, this poor gal. She's got embarrassed by her husband. I'll take advantage of her in her most vulnerable time. I'll just say, hey, you want to get frisky too to show them? No. No. No, out of generosity and kindness. Okay. Okay. You don't like that one bit.

How long have you been listening? I started listening during COVID. I'm a very uptight person, as you can probably tell by I changed my name. And I even told her I wanted to change my voice when I was telling the story. But listening to your podcast has just like opened my mind in the best way.

I learned so much. I actually have a few people in my life that struggle with addiction and it's hard for you to understand, right? When you haven't been through it, it's been life-changing. And I just thank you so much for doing what you do. Oh, that makes me so happy, Mary. Oh my God, what a story. Thank you so much for telling us. Thank you. Have a good one. All right, take care.

If you could see her face, what a sweet lady. So, so nice. The last person that deserves to be on that text chain. It's just hard because you're embarrassed, but you're also sad. There's a lot happening. Jealousy. You feel betrayed. Oof. That's a sad one. That was a hell of a week of her life. I don't know if I should state the obvious. I don't think I should. Do it. What do you say? Men are terrible? A lot of bad men in this crowd.

A lot of men doing some not-so-hot stuff in this crop. I'm just going to say that. Yeah, we didn't have any ladies who really shit the bed ethically in this episode. It was pretty much every story had an unbecoming man. Sporty men don't tend to be the most evolved of our kind. Yeah, I think we could probably agree on that. Do you think so? Because CTE? Probably that, yeah.

I don't mean to laugh at CTE. It's not funny. Yeah, I just think if you just live in the sports world, you're just with other boys and men all the time. Might be the sport itself. I find basketball players to be fairly evolved. They're just so regimented and disciplined. Okay, this is great. You know who I think are the most evolved? Soccer players. Yeah, I also like soccer players too. Because that was kind of the alternative sport when I was growing up. If you weren't like a jock jock, but your parents wanted you on a team, that was kind of what you did. I like both of those types. What do we think is the worst?

chess players yeah absolutely yeah arrogant know-it-alls we know what's the worst football i love everyone

Well, it would make a bit of sense that as you chart the violence of the sport. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's not terribly hard to imagine. It's not a big leap. You're probably over-indexing in testosterone. You've been told to be tough nonstop. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Okay. Love you. Well, I love you. And I'm just so grateful that my kids aren't currently yet in. They're not in any of those. No. That's kind of sad.

That's kind of funny. Well. Although someone is trying out today for something. I thought Lincoln played soccer, though. For a minute. Yeah. It was like a. Didn't take. Well, no, it was just. I think that team only assembled to play a couple games and then they did that. It was like her school. But remember she wanted to quit and you were like, no, remember back then. Well, that was when she was a baby. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's back when we were in the phase of like they have to be in something. Yeah. And why? I don't know. Yeah. Not necessary. Yeah. All right. Love you. Love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? Or a theme song? Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. On the fly, I rhyme-ish. Enjoy. Enjoy.

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