With Father’s Day soon arriving, we’ve invited some of our favorite authors back to discuss books and the reaction to their words and manuscript. No local sports book has received more praise than The New York Times Bestseller, “The Last Manager,” authored by former Wall Street Journal reporter and Orioles fan John Miller, who will be signing his book and telling Earl Weaver stories at the Babe Ruth Museum on June 14th.
Nestor Aparicio interviews John Miller about his book on Earl Weaver, which has been a New York Times bestseller since its release on March 4. Miller discusses Weaver’s impact on baseball, his leadership qualities, and his innovative strategies. Weaver’s teams averaged 95 wins per season after his arrival, compared to 77 wins before. Miller highlights Weaver’s ability to win with diverse teams and his underdog hero status. The book delves into Weaver’s background, including his rough childhood and his mentor, a mobster. Miller also touches on the current state of the Orioles and the challenges of modern baseball management.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Earl Weaver, John Miller, Baltimore Orioles, baseball strategy, New York Times bestseller, book signing, Father’s Day, leadership qualities, minor league, Hall of Fame, analytics, team dynamics, baseball history, coaching, baseball philosophy.
SPEAKERS
John Miller, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 task of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. You’re positively into the June month here. No June. Swoon around here. And if you are a father, and I’ve been one for 41 years, you better be thinking about getting pops a gift. And in tribute to Father’s Day sports writing, being that I’m a sports writer and that everybody put me on their show when I had a Father’s Day, Purple Rain one and two to pimp, I’m gonna bring some authors on around here for Father’s Day. But before that, we’re gonna have some crab cakes. Gonna be at a green mount station in Hampstead on Thursday, doing the Maryland crab cake Tour presented by the Maryland lottery, I will have the Back to the Future scratch offs in the Maryland lottery. My thanks to curio wellness as well as Liberty pure put me out on the road with Raskin global as well. We will be next Friday at fade leaves at Lexington market with Luke doing crab cakes. And that’s Father’s Day weekend. I don’t know if John Miller is going to be here next weekend, but he was here for Enoch Pratt doing a book signing. When I tell people I have John Miller on, they’re like, whoa, the voice of the San Francisco Giants who was picking on the Oakland A’s last week, the Sacramento A’s to you, this is John Miller with the H and the W, the author of The Last manager. You’re more relevant than that, John Miller, because you got brought up to me at Jim Henneman funeral last week, and the other John Miller did not get brought up because people are reading your book, how Earl Weaver trick tormented and reinvented baseball and how are you i? I feel like the books five or six years old, because you’ve been calling me about that long about the book, and I did the same thing with Joe poorly. I’ll promote him. I thought his Tom Matty book had been out for years. He’s like, No, I just came out last August. And I’m like, I feel like I’ve been talking to you for years that you made the baby, but your book’s doing well, dude. Lot of people came up to me and talked to me about how much they love it. I haven’t broken it yet. It’s a vacation book for me. And I’m thinking, the islands in August for me got a last place baseball team here. Plenty of time on your hands to get this for five this for Father’s Day, right? John,
John Miller 02:03
yeah, great to see you. Nestor, the book is out three months now. Since March 4, made the New York Times bestseller list the first two weeks. It’s been quite a journey. I have a five month old son that’s pretty intense right now, and I also coach a high school baseball team. So it’s been a very busy spring for me. I am going to be in Baltimore, June 14, the Babe Ruth Museum at noon, doing a book reading and signing. And I’ll close by saying John Miller. The other John Miller is my hero from when I was a little boy listening to baseball games in Belgium, my grandfather would send me audio tapes, recordings of John Miller’s books and radio and John Miller read my book and send me a text message. Told me to call him. I called him. We talked for half an hour. Huge thrill. I love that guy. Everybody
Nestor Aparicio 02:48
loves SEAN MILLER. You know, he get off topic, but after the whole Angelo thing, he came and did my show, when he had a book to sell, when he was in Philadelphia as the Giants broadcaster, and just, I mean, it’s been three decades. And when you see John Miller here, they don’t think of you, you know, but they do now, and you’re going to beat the paper. So, I mean, I’m doing the show, fade these on that Friday. Open invitation to get a delicious crap cake. Come down. It’s, it’s a baseball weekend. The angels in town, like all of that. I, you know, last place baseball, and how much this sucks. You know what I mean for all of us who wanted more. But I would just say this, it’s really a tribute to Earl Weaver how hard it is to do. What are Weaver did, what the old Orioles did, and this is a challenge to Mr. Rubenstein and Katie Griggs and Mike Elias and all of that, because you can draft up the Adley ruchmans and the gunner Hendersons and like all that, but turning it in to Frank and Brooks and Boog and Louie and Palmer, and then turning that into Boulanger and gritsch and Baylor and then, and then turning that into the senses, and then Eddie Murray, and then Cal rip, like it’s really hard to Do, and you get books written about you when you’ve done it for as long as Earl Weaver did it. And now, all these years later, a guy like you comes along and says, What made Earl tick? And I guess the beginning of our relationship was I did the last ever interview with Earl Weaver. He did, yeah, passed away. Ask him what made him tick. And like, you really went into what made me chick? Well,
John Miller 04:25
I was looking enough. I have a copy of the book. You have it. But, you know, look at, look at the early pages of the book. I have a chart where I say, you know, before Earl, the Orioles average like 77 wins a year a season. After Earl, like, you know, 79 and 80 during Earl was like 95 wins this season. I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 04:41
Page seven here, here it is. Page seven is that? There you go. It’s incredible. Which one right? Here, right?
John Miller 04:46
Yep, yep, yep. Incredible leap under Earl. I mean, what made him so great? That’s really the central question of the book. What makes a manager great? Because he won with all kinds of teams, like you just said, like he won with Frank and Brooks Robinson and Bucha and Jim Palmer. He won with rich. Hoggins now, bummer. He won with John Lowenstein and Tim Stoddard. He went with anybody and everybody. He was a winner, and that’s what makes him a folk hero in Baltimore. And I think they missed that kind of leadership. I mean, look at all the comments after Brandon Hi was fired. People saying, Can’t we get another Earl Weaver? Because he was clearly this great leader. And for all the analytics, people still need that great human leadership. They need somebody saying, you know, you’re not playing well enough. You gotta play better. Come on. Play Better. They need that raspy little guy in the dugout shouting at
Nestor Aparicio 05:28
them the book itself, and the story is a run folks through that that have not listened to you and me blather on for years about what this book was going to become, and I’ve really only had you on one time since you finished the book, where you knew what it was, not just a bunch of stories and a tapestry, the book is now its own thing. What would you say is the synopsis and thesis of it? Other than I, and I’m thinking from the outside, after hours of speaking to you about this, that it really is looking at what made him think the way he thought. Right
John Miller 06:06
so earlier was an underdog hero, which made Baltimore fall in love with him. He grew up in the streets of St Louis, rough and tumble. Childhood. His uncle, his mentor, was a mobster, a bookie who ran illegal baseball betting operations. He grew up with a kind of street hustlers wit about him, a way of always looking for an edge, always looking for a hustle, taking the trolley to baseball games, living in the city, walking to baseball games. He was a much better player than people remember. He signed at 17 with the Cardinals, played four years in the minors, and was a team MVP three of the four seasons, earned a spring training invite to Major League Baseball spring training in 52 played with Sam usual, with his childhood heroes on the Cardinals. Did really well, hit 260, a couple home runs, good defense, but was a cut by his own manager, Eddie stanky, who wanted himself to be the backup infielder. And that that rejection really drove Earl to despair, to drinking, to this kind of chip on the shoulder that people came to know in Baltimore. He then spent 16 years in the minor league, 16 years before he got to the big leagues as a first base coach for the Orioles, took over in the All Star break at 68 and immediately one they had a winning season. The rest of the year, they won 108 games, or 109 and 60 860, 908, and 70, still the only team in baseball history with back to back 108 or more win seasons, won five of the first six American League Championship Series or al East title, sorry, and then she kept on winning. And again, this kind of chip on the shoulder, underdog hero. That’s what makes ear Weaver famous. That’s what made him a winner? You know, fought with everybody, but just kept on winning. And you know, when he retired, you know, regarded as still maybe the greatest manager of all time, by some reckonings. You know, he’s still has the highest winning percentage of any manager, with over 1000 wins since divisional plays started in 69 and he’s in the Hall of Fame for a reason, and he’s a Baltimore folk hero for that reason too. You
Nestor Aparicio 08:02
know, I got Barry Trotz coming on right after you and, you know, and I’ve known Barry since you were kids. And I started to look up, like, yeah, he’s going the Hall of Fame. I you know that they won the Stanley Cup. I was there, did all of that, and I looked him up. He’s like, number four on the wins list in the history of the National Hockey League. So kind of like, wow, that’s, you know, and you talk about Earl in that rarefied air of all the championships and the lost ones and the funny videos and all of that, is there a place archivally that you found him in his voice, talking about these issues of what made a great baseball player, and even anything introspective into what made him successful in his own mind. What if you could channel him, even in his own voice, and say, What would if you say, or what made you a Hall of Famer? What he’d say Good ball players, I can hear that right. But what, what made him in his own mind, good or different or belong as this little guy who was smarter and better and tougher than anybody?
John Miller 09:07
That’s a great question. That’s sort of where I started my reporting. My first phone call was to his stepdaughter, Kim, who still lives near Baltimore. You probably know Kim Benson. And I thought maybe Earl has like a diary or a journal or letters. He had none of that. So I had to look at newspaper clippings. You know, he would give press conferences, interviews a lot. Mike Gibbons at the Babe Ruth museum had this old collection of interviews that they had done within the Orioles that never been published, never been heard, where Earl talks about
Nestor Aparicio 09:39
like the tomar Norfolk and Alex that’s been well heard? Yes, yeah, by the way, that one made it to me. I was on the radio 1991 by 1992 somebody had dropped that tape off at the radio station.
John Miller 09:54
Yeah. Well, that’s an I tell the backstory of that famous interview in the book, as well as the bill haylor Hot Mike. Incident. So, you know, a lot of little things here and there, and then, of course, Nestor, your interviews with Earl were great, as he was dying basically last year of his life, and had a sort of this, you know, lost the filter of what he should say, and was just kind of speaking from the heart. But he was a complicated guy, as, you know, and he wouldn’t always tell the truth about himself or about what had happened, he never really told the story of how great a prospect he had been. He was always said, you know, I wasn’t a great player, and I really wanted to be a player, but wasn’t good enough. Well, it turns out, he probably was good enough, but he probably drank too much and probably dug his own grave as a player in the 50s with the Cardinals and wore out his welcome and made some mistakes. He never really owned up to that. And you know, his story was told. I mean, he wrote three books in the 70s and 80s. He never told the story of his mobster uncle, who was his favorite uncle, but was kind of a mean and violent guy who shot his wife during an argument in the hip, whose first wife died of gas asphyxiation. He told the cops it was a suicide. This was kind of a nasty guy, and he was kind of the darker part of Earl’s childhood. I mean, Earl’s dad was a good guy, was a business owner, was somebody who Earl could look up to. His uncle was, was not but that’s who Earl spent a lot of time with. So Earl’s, you know, the more violent side, when he would say, the umpire, I’m gonna knock you right on your ass. I think that came from Uncle bud, and Earl never really revealed that that was always that was something for me to dig up and newspaper clippings and family interviews and to tell the story that he was not willing to tell.
Nestor Aparicio 11:29
Why are you obsessed with Earl Weaver writing this because he was
John Miller 11:33
a winner, and because I’m an Orioles fan, and I became a fan in the late 80s, when they sucked, and so I wanted to know what made them so great in the 70s and or else seemed to have something to do with it. And then he was just so much fun and funny. I read his memoir when I was 10 years old. It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts, and the stories of the fighting and the just read
Nestor Aparicio 11:51
Earl’s books or humor. I held one of them. I think I took a picture and sent it to you, because it was signed. I was, I’m a little bit of a thrift and not a Thrifter, but, like, a second hand, yeah, I collect Pacifica belt buckles. I collect old NFL belt buckles and stuff. So by the way, yeah, silly stuff, you know, if,
John Miller 12:11
if people don’t like to read on the page, the audiobook version. This is a actor from Chicago. Johnny Heller, did an incredible job. He has like, a 1930s like crime noir voice. And if you have Spotify, it’s free on Spotify, so
Nestor Aparicio 12:24
listen. So listening to your books also possible. It’s incredible.
John Miller 12:26
It’s a great audio book, yeah? So if you have Spotify, just put it on your car trip. Listen to the last manager. You don’t have to pay anything extra, and it’s also audible or whatever. However, it’s a podcast,
Nestor Aparicio 12:36
essentially, it’s a podcast, exactly, yeah?
John Miller 12:39
So you you can do it.
Nestor Aparicio 12:42
But these other books that that were written by him or CO written, they’re a little like of the air, you know, like of the era. They’re not like the same. It’s not about them. Ball four, right
John Miller 12:56
now, he’s not confessional. I mean, he, mean, I guess he tells stories about he corked his own bats, you know, but it was only like the Playboy interview. He talks about how the Orioles used amphetamines in the 70s, and in his books, he doesn’t talk about so there’s a famous Playboy interview with Earl from 83 and there he dishes a little more, but in the memoirs now, he’s mostly about baseball strategy and about his own apprenticeship in the minor leagues and his own baseball philosophies,
Nestor Aparicio 13:23
would Earl hate the book?
John Miller 13:27
You know Earl’s answer to that question with a story, which is, I got to know Earl’s family, his grandson in St Louis is a character who goes by clown. This you will love him, Nestor. He’s a singer. He’s act as half clown, half Elvis impersonator. And so I went to a clown this show with Earl’s daughter. And by the way, clown this was on America’s Got Talent, and got into a shouting match with Piers Morgan, one of the judges, and was kicked off the stage, and he was yelling at Piers Morgan. And when Earl died, clown this wrote this piece saying I was channeling you grandpa. And I used to fight with umpires. So Earl’s daughter, Terry and I were at this clown this show at this club in St Louis in February 2023, and we both having a few drinks. And at one point, Earl’s daughter turns to me, and she jabs me in the chest, and she’s like, I’ve been thinking about what my dad would think about what you’re doing with your book. And I thought, Oh, my God, she’s gonna, like, you know, this is Earl’s Earl’s a ghost. Gonna talk to me here? And I said, Okay, Terry, what would he say? And she said, You know, I think he would say, if you feel that this is something that you need to do for you, then you go ahead and do it, but you just make sure that it’s good. And I was like, Oh, my God, Earl, even from the grave, is pushing people to be better. Is coaching me to be a better writer. You know, that’s the power of Earl Weaver’s, you know, obsession with quality and his coaching. And so I think he would respect the work that went into the book. I think he cared about quality, and I think he cared about hard work, and I think he would respect that I did my best and that it turned out to be a pretty
Nestor Aparicio 14:53
good book. I miss Earl, so the fact that you have this book, and it will be a gift to me at some point. Going, you’ll see my toes in the book and blue water, and hopefully some sand, because I don’t really do pools so much. I don’t like sand, but I like beaches. I don’t, you know what I mean, so, but I’m going to take this to a beach the last manager, how Earl Weaver, trick tormented and reinvented baseball. John W Miller, the old Wall Street Journal. Them journalists. They always looking into things, getting to the backstory, things that are going on out there. Uh, he’ll also be down at the Babe Ruth museum on the 14th Father’s Day weekend. Um, is there anything you want to say about the I mean, you, you’re, you’re dying with the Orioles, like, everyone. I mean, can we put the book down for a minute and, like, get to, like, What the hell is going on here?
John Miller 15:42
Yeah, I mean, I’m disappointed this year. I thought they’d have a much better season. It’s not rocket science that they needed more starting pitching to start the year and had a bunch of injuries and were not able to cope. I mean, the real story really, is these young players like Adley Rachman and Ryan malcastle, and why they’re not playing better. And I think, you know, a good manager might help unlock that. And so I think, you know, Brandon Hyde is obviously very smart and was very respected and beloved by his players, but you know, maybe they needed a little more fire and a little more tough love. And you know, somebody to tell them that they stunk when they stunk,
Nestor Aparicio 16:18
that’s what we were for. That’s what the reporters are for, right? Am I right or am I wrong?
John Miller 16:21
Right? Now, reporters are there to tell the truth and to figure out what’s going on, but players, you know, don’t really tell them anything anymore. So it’s pretty hard to be a baseball writer these days.
Nestor Aparicio 16:30
Yeah, I got out of that business, you know, get back into that business. Here. John Miller is here. The book is out. And so I want to ask you this that the book comes out. You’re a New York Times bestseller. I don’t know. I want to pay whoever you’re paying to get on that list, you know, I mean, but this obviously has been a real serious passion project for a number of years. Baseball season, doing it at the right time the Orioles were doing. Well, there is a point where baseball managers to your point, even Brandon Hyde, you say, Well, how much does he really manage? And how much is the philosophy of the structure of the analytics of the situation, managing it in the same way. You don’t really play blackjack. You play the hand that you play the hand and whatever the book tells you to play a blackjack. Since the book came out, you’re getting a lot of feedback in a lot of ways. I’m seeing you doing these kinds of interviews and different stuff. What are you hearing from industry people? Because I was at Jim Adams funeral last week, like three, three or four different people came up to me, my, my, one of my old editors, the son. First thing he said to me, I heard you had John Miller on, and I bought the book, and I booked straight the books, unbelievable. So you’re getting a lot of that, that when people go into this, even people thought they knew a lot about Earl old school Oriole fans that, I guess that’s why people were buzzing about it last week. What are they feeding back to you that they’re shocked by when they read it?
John Miller 17:49
Well, I got, you know, some calls from people are in front offices now saying, you know, we’re having everybody in the organization read your book, because there’s still some insight, some wisdom. I think people missed how fundamentally sound, or, I guess, what his actual baseball strategy was. You know, Earl Weaver is famous for the pitching defense and three win homers and famous for hating the bunt. Well, it turns out the first half of his career, the Orioles actually bunted more than league average because they had Mark belonger, who was a terrible hitter, and he budgeted a lot, and they had this team in the 7374 with rich Coggins and Al Bunbury, that I know that that’s a team that you fell in love with Nestor, and that team, you know, ran still a lot of bases. And so these are these don’t fit the cliche of waiting around for the three run homer that people believe about Earl, and that, in my book, really makes clear that he was a lot more nuanced about baseball strategy than people give him credit for, particularly, you know, it comes to throwing strikes. I mean, he really believed in throwing the ball down the middle, and the ball probably ended up on the corners anyway, and then changing speeds, and that’s kind of where baseball philosophy is today. And so he was very much a prophet ahead of his time. And I think his leadership qualities are qualities that still carry over today, that he was a great leader of men, because he really cared about the things that mattered, and that’s what leadership is. And he didn’t hold grudges. And even if he was kind of a mess and he struggled with alcohol, and he would pass out in the lobbies of hotels and be picked up by his players, and even though they had to deal with that next day, he was always there, ready for the game, and he really cared about the outcome of the game. Mike Flanagan said he made you feel like the game was important. And I think that’s what a great leader. Does he make you feel it makes you feel like your work is important. And that’s why the Orioles played so well under him, because he gave every game this sense of importance, of of motivation for the players to do the best, because the games mattered.
Nestor Aparicio 19:38
Thing I took out of that something you said kind of early on, about putting people in a position of their strength and weakness, and identifying that, and not having your ego held to that. And that would be in the case of, in my era, rich dower and Billy Smith sharing second base and Frank Baker being a left. Leftover guy, sort of that they needed sometimes when Mark Belanger couldn’t go into senses and Brooks was getting old, and all of that period of time. And then there’s Renick and Lowenstein. And then there’s the bullpen in general, where Palmer is going to throw a complete game, but you don’t want certain nights guys only had six, seven innings in them. It was going to be a bullpen effort. It wasn’t about how many at bats you were getting, how many runs you drove in, whether you’re Pat Kelly coming off the bench or Terry Crowley, who usually joins me when I see him up at Greenmount station. I’ll be there this week, because He lives up in Carroll County, and he still lives here in the area. Incredible pinch hitter that Earl could identify roles for Jim Dwyers and Benny ayalas And whomever to be productive, to be the best they can be, and help the team win, even if they only got 214 at bats a year. Everybody couldn’t be Frank Robinson. Everybody wasn’t going to be, you know, Brooks Robinson or Eddie Murray, but you could be, you could have a role on the team and feel a part of it. I guess as a kid, I felt that. But managing all of this in an era where you’re managing money and salaries and egos and free agency, and you know it, it’s a lot more complicated, and I guess, to Earl’s point and to people reading your book and saying, How can I bring that to my organization? He all together over two decades in a way where the mike Elias era here is sort of teetering in modern day baseball. It’s just a really, really hard thing to do, win for long stretches of time and manage as much as going on, and try to not have and he didn’t mind hurting people’s feelings, though, right different era in that way that I don’t know that Earl could come back and do I once interviewed Frank Cush and and the first thing he said to me was, they got to fear you. They don’t fear you. They’re not going to play. And I’m thinking, Man, that wouldn’t play. Would Earl’s management play today, things would have to be a little he couldn’t be drunk in a lobby. Let’s start with
John Miller 22:06
that. He’d have to get he’d have to get sober, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think he’d still be good at some important parts of the current job, and one of those is triaging information. I mean, front office has produced all this data and analytics, and, you know, some of it’s useful, some of it’s not, and it takes somebody with a smart IQ for, you know, sorting out information that Earl had. Earl had a Gambler’s mindset where you take a lot of data information, and you put it all together, and you make a decision that’s, you know, a simple decision, yes or no. Basically, is this guy going to pinch hit or not? And he could use that information, I think, really well these days. You know, he was the first manager to use a radar gun. He was not afraid of innovation, he was not afraid of change. He was not afraid of taking a new approach to something. And so I think he would have been really good at helping young athletes come up or understand how to use information to their advantage
Nestor Aparicio 22:55
that way. Was that? What made him that way? It was it because sigma Adele would say growth mindset, like an astro ball. Yeah, was growth mindset for him? Winning a bat? Was it corking a bat? Was it just, sort of like, just winning, like, gotta be, like, even in Trump’s case, cheating, right? You know, like, just sort of like, obsessed with the only way I’m gonna win is to get better, that, even if I have to cheat, even if after whatever I have to do, but I gotta get better. I gotta be working on it. I gotta be thinking about it. He there’s an obsession about that that I don’t know, that’s very modern, you know, in that way. Yeah, I
John Miller 23:33
think gambling. I think he loved cards. He loved poker. You know, he used to take his teammates money at poker until three or four in the morning. And when he became a manager, he said the first thing I’d do is give up poker, because I figured I couldn’t inspire people if I was just taking their money all the time, because he was such a good poker player. And he, yeah, he just was obsessed with competitiveness. He loved, you know, ping pong, ping pong on the cruise ships or whatever. He just loved to win. And he also, you know, in his younger days, he cheated. You know, he had court bats in the minor leagues. He had Pat santaron experiment with putting mercury in bats to see if that could give the Orioles an advantage. And the Orioles were never caught cheating under Earl. But Pat center on did experiment with cork bats at Earl’s orders. So yeah, always looking for an edge, always looking for a way to beat you, to hustle, you to take your money. And you’re right, it’s kind of old fashioned, but that’s the culture he grew up in, I mean, but now you have like Draft Kings and FanDuel, you know, taking people’s money out in the open. I mean, I would submit to you that they’re probably not any better.
Nestor Aparicio 24:32
On our next conversation, John Miller will join us about whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. John Miller’s book is out. It is. There’s been a lot of advanced praise. Will Will George Will Ken Burns, you got some. Didn’t ask me for a cover, but, but I, you know, at least I feel like I contributed in some way. And I am indebted to not just Earl for spending time with me, but DICK GORDON, who was also Luis Aparicio agent. As well as tion and nestremsky and a whole bunch of other people as well. Dick set up that last interview with Earl Weaver. If you want to see Me and Earl and my wife holding a camera down at the harbor court hotel on the weekend of the final statues. It was late in that summer. Was like in August, and Earl gave me 10 minutes. It turned into a half an hour, and it turned into my relationship with John Miller and his obsession with this crazy book. Go get it for Father’s Day, or there or after how Earl Weaver tricked it tormented and reinvented baseball. I honestly, man, I’ve been doing this a long time. I have not had a lot of authors come on over the course of time like you that we’ve Genesis this relationship from Pittsburgh to here as you’ve birthed this book, but how many people have come up to me and told me how universally they’ve loved the book? And so I’m really happy for you. I’m thrilled for you. I hope a million people buy it. And thank you. And you know, and this is fun coming down to Baltimore and like, Bs in with people, even though the team’s in last place. But yeah, there is a guiding light here to say what it could look like, right? This is what, yeah, I’m
John Miller 26:03
not giving up hope on the mike Elias Orioles, I think they can still turn it around. Maybe not this year, but they still have a lot
Nestor Aparicio 26:08
of talent. Any fact that Elias is reading the book here and trying to channel it was in a rural or No,
John Miller 26:14
I was in touch with SIG made down in reporting. I don’t know. I imagine that they’ve all at least looked at it. We’ve sent copies to David Rubenstein, and he’s a Simon and Schuster author too, you know? And I’m sure they’ve looked at it, yeah. So
Nestor Aparicio 26:27
if you want to do really good theater, man, you and I could get on a stage somewhere promote your book. I could ask questions. You could answer them as Earl, and it would just be Earl. I know you’re coming back from the dead, but there’s a
John Miller 26:40
guy, there’s a guy who has a great, you know, Twitter, blue sky handle, Earl effing Weaver, and I’m in touch with him, and let’s
Nestor Aparicio 26:48
keep it in on it. Let’s be great. Yeah, totally. Do stick with this for charity. But like Earl, there was a team in Houston that won a World Series beating trash cans in their dugout, cheating. You know? What would Earl make of that? You know? I mean, that would be something, right? I think
John Miller 27:05
he would say they they were dumb and getting caught. I think Earl would have approved of sign stealing, hmm,
Nestor Aparicio 27:11
the unwritten rules we now find John, good luck with the book. Keep doing great work, and you doing anything else other than coaching Little League, promoting the book, and like being a father of five, Mom, you worked in another book, I’m asking
John Miller 27:23
No, just doing magazine writing. I’m starting a beer column for the local paper here soon. Just doing, doing journalism
Nestor Aparicio 27:32
in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, yep, yepsen, that you’re gonna have some better than I see. I see
John Miller 27:39
light. I’m from, you know, I grew up in Belgium, so I have high standards for beer. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 27:43
some people grew up in Latrobe, they have different standards for beer. John Miller, the author of The Last manager, go check it out. Always a great guest, always insightful. And the Oriole way and the Earl Weaver way. And a summer where got plenty of time on your hands, especially with the Orioles on the West Coast. This week, I am Nestor. We are WNS, the am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, Happy Father’s Day. Everybody out there celebrating. Give them a good book for dad. You.