Leonard Raskin and Nestor discuss the lofty expectations of local sports fans while the Orioles wallow in first place in the AL East and the Ravens’ expectations are nothing less than a Super Bowl return to New Orleans with Lamar Jackson. No pressure or anything…
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
week, watching, play, lamar, raskin, football, game, orioles, run, people, ticket, pitching, good, ravens, big, season ticket holders, baltimore, preseason, patrick, wife
SPEAKERS
Nestor J. Aparicio, Leonard Raskin
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S T, Towson, Baltimore, Baltimore, positive. We’re positively into another great week where we get one step closer to the Ravens taking on the Kansas City Chiefs of September 5, one day closer to that day, which is also the day we’re going to kick off our 26th anniversary. I’m going to change the cupcake to it’s going to be some oyster crab thing. I’m figuring it out. And we’re going to be doing 26 oysters in 26 days, 26 ways. All of it brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery. But have the Gold Rush seven doubles. Actually, we’re going to have the Raven scratch offs by then. We’re kicking the thing off at Cocos on the fourth. We’re going to be at Faith leaves next Friday the 23rd when the cheatstros come to town. So come on by. It’s all brought to you by friends at Liberty. Pure solutions, keeping your water crystal clear, and you’re a well water, as well as my drinking water and Jiffy Lube. Multi care, putting us out on the road. This guy came on last week, and I must say, Leonard Raskin of Raskin global. He’s also out on the front of Baltimore positive talking about money and the American dream and handling money. A lot of things happened. First off, when you and I were doing our segment last week, it was the beginning of the Japanese sort of collapse. Weird thing that happened in the market took a dump earlier in the week. So that happened, but we did tax free week, and we did a whole we didn’t talk sports, we didn’t talk any ravens talk. This week we’ve got Hamilton, injury, Wiggins, injury, feelings hurt about pitching with the Orioles and all that good stuff. But last week we did tax free, and my wife said to me Saturday morning, she said, Hey, because the weather was beautiful, the storm was over, I had a lot of work to do, because I’m going to Mako next week and trying to get ready for and I’m writing all sorts of letters to you’re wondering why I don’t have an Orioles press pass going to answer that. Mr. Rubenstein, wondering what’s going on with the Ravens? Going to be answering that. So my Labor Day, I’m writing these letters, and my wife’s like, just like, I’m going to go shopping. And we started talking about shopping, and I said, and I said, it’s tax free. She’s like, when to start. And I’m like, I don’t know, this is Saturday. Started Sunday. It’s Sunday. So she went out Sunday, and about two in the afternoon, I’m watching the Orioles and, you know, watching Albert Suarez do his Venezuelan thing, my people, she texts me. She’s like, I’m at Marshalls. Everything’s 6% less, you know, today’s so she was shopping, but I know you were watching baseball like me.
Leonard Raskin 02:23
Absolutely, I was watching the O’s in a tough, tough loss and the Yankees in a squeak out win at the same time. It was crazy. It was,
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:35
did you watch the Olympics? I mean, you seem like would take the television over that. Yeah, it’s different now, because my wife has a pad, an iPad, so she just takes that anywhere she goes. It’s like, right?
Leonard Raskin 02:48
So watch it anywhere she’s, you know,
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:50
she’s not as interested in Brian Robertson, Ben McDonald, as maybe you and I would be. That
Leonard Raskin 02:54
was a they were, that was a good talk, that was an enjoyable broadcast with the two of them. I spent the whole weekend back and forth. Yeah, I enjoyed the back and forth, talking pitching, talking hitting, they didn’t talk management. Look, you take five, you take five out of 10 on the road. You gotta be happy, because it should have taken six. But it’s not. It’s not easy to win a one nothing game when, when nobody’s hitting the ball for some reason, and then your your ace, your ACE is your sixth pitcher. Is that? Right?
Nestor J. Aparicio 03:28
Your manager is on this but, and I could probably, you know, AI this and get the answer, but if you score one run in a baseball game, yeah, I gotta think you lose 90% of the time, absolutely
Leonard Raskin 03:41
gotta be that is what it is, right? Yeah, it’s gotta be high the the pressure’s insane. But you gotta give it to to the rays there they’re pitching shut down the world. And in the last game we had them, we had them through seven, and then our manager strolled out, and actually I was sitting watching the game with mom. I was with my mother, and she’s screaming. It’s so funny to see my I know your that
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:12
makes it even better, screaming, screaming at the
Leonard Raskin 04:15
TV. Why is this dumb manager taking out a guy who hasn’t given up a run. I said, Well, I think he thinks that he’s pitched enough and that the rest of the guys can keep him from scoring a run, but I’m not sure. And then, sure enough, the later in that inning, it’s two to one, she said, sing, I told you. I said, Well, I guess you got to step up and get the owners to hire you as the manager. By
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:47
the way, you want to do a little talk for Baltimore Humane Society. They’re trying to build a wing over there on the dogs in the in the shot here, he
Leonard Raskin 04:54
he came over. He wanted to be involved. He wanted to what’s his name? His name is roll. Roland. Roland. This is Roland. Roland is a two year old, 100 pound Great Pyrenees.
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:06
Gosh, look at how beautiful that dog has got. Yeah, he likes, I haven’t seen him since he’s little.
Leonard Raskin 05:11
Oh, he was little. He was the cutest little furball when we when we found him and thought we would get him
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:18
panting and your mic. It’s kind of hilarious. He’s, you know, what’s
Leonard Raskin 05:22
funny is we look at him now and we think his his eight week old self, when we picked him up, could fit inside of his head.
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:33
How much does he weigh? He’s
Leonard Raskin 05:35
just a little over 100 now. Okay, and
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:37
how big is this? This is, this is him. I
Leonard Raskin 05:40
think this is about as big as he’ll get. Yeah, he, the doctor says he could get a little bigger, but I don’t know he’s he’s pretty steady for the last few months. So there’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:47
nothing more exciting than having a great animal, and my wife and I to be going, uh, you know, way, and getting animals sitting in like all that. Yeah, same. Here I have, um, well, I mean, here’s a guy on your side of the aisle. By the way, I’m doing hope. I mean, I’m having Senator Cardin on this week, Senators Van Hollen on Congressman Sarbanes. They’re all coming off of that and make them whatnot. But Patrick Gonzalez, who’s the Republican pollster, who comes on with us. And I love having Patrick on he I’m like, Hey, you going to make who’s like, my dog sitter canceled, so I’ll be zooming with him. We’ll get the tax free, and we’ll have all of that. But just on the sports side, yes, the Olympics sort of taking up all this oxygen that now peacock NBC will put toward football. Right now, we’re a couple weeks out on Patrick mahomes and Lamar, and it felt like one giant ad for Lamar and and Patrick mahomes as well. If you watch any of the Olympics coverage, absolutely such a successful Olympics the men’s basketball team, Steph Curry sports, the fact that bombs didn’t go off in Paris. I mean, Taylor Swift week last weekend, right? So crazy stuff going on UK, and sort of violence and all this weird stuff happening, not let alone with our election and whatever Trump’s doing today and whatever commonly walls are doing tomorrow with all of that, but sports itself for us here in Baltimore, with depends on what they ask buddy, first place team or a t capable first place that’s in trouble, right the ball best.
Leonard Raskin 07:19
How can you know I was okay? So, so, Saturday night, Saturday night, Cathy, Matthew and I went down to the BSO. Okay. We went down and watched the BSO do John Williams, which is always spectacular. You know, the best music, just greatest. Some Star Wars, some Harry Potter, okay, yeah, some, the Olympic theme. They did the Olympic theme. You know, all the all the greatest. I mean, the guys. I didn’t know this, I don’t know the number, the guy’s been nominated for a million Academy Awards, and the only one more than him nominations was is Walt Disney, which is kind of stunning. But anyway, we went down. We listened to some great music. It was an early evening. We got home, we threw on the end of the O’s game, we watched them win, and at the end of the game, they said, first team to 70 wins. And I’m thinking, Wait a minute, the Dodgers Cleveland, aren’t they ahead of us? Phillies, no, the Orioles are the best team in baseball in the middle of August, have the best in baseball, right but, but watching the local, I’m thinking, Wait a minute, they’re pitching. Is a mess. We got guys hurt everywhere. We shipped a guy out, and then the guy behind him got hurt. We got this guy with a broken hand. Had this guy broke his face.
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:40
Defense defense has been not what it was.
Leonard Raskin 08:43
No, we got some not we got we got the the infant in field, as I call it, yeah, you got the children again, sitting with mom, watching the game, and she says to me, who’s this 12 year old? Who’s this 12 year old at second base? I said, 12 year old. I don’t think he’s 12. I think he’s 20. And she said, looks the same to me. He
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:04
looks 15, though he looks like a child. He is the youngest looking absolutely I mean, Anderson came up. He was young. We’ve had you. Lamar was young, whatever, right? This kid looks young. Man, yeah,
Leonard Raskin 09:19
yeah, holiday looks, looks young. And so you could typecast
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:24
him in a Disney show as a 15 year old girlfriend, you know, and he would look the part. He really would right, like Fox was like 25 playing a 16 year old Right?
Leonard Raskin 09:37
Exactly. Got these kids on the infield and and gunner, who who makes every play to the ball but feels like he has to make every play throw in the ball. And God bless him, he’s thrown a half a dozen away. And, and they, they’re, they’re, I guess you don’t have time in the middle of the season to practice. You know, they’re a little sloppy on the field. But, but then they make it a spectacular play, and he throws a guy out at third. It’s just, oh,
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:06
I mean, this is every now, and I talk about, is they’re capable of winning the World Series, absolutely, they’re absolutely hitting the ball in October. They’re capable of getting seven innings from burns, seven innings from F Yes, now, you know, I don’t know where Rodriguez is. They’re capable of winning now, will they? And I guess that’s really why, like the old Michael Jackson eating the popcorn in the thriller video, that’s I guess that’s why we’re watching a nationals game on a Wednesday night this week and treating like its life or death. Because I do think three weeks from now, once football starts and it gets real tight around here, because it’s going to be tight. They’re going to be up a game or two or back a game or two. They’re going to have a buy, but they’re not going to have a buy. Do you want to buy? Do you not want to buy? Right? Yeah, all that. They’re going to make the playoffs. They’re going to have to work hard to do it, and they’re going to lose some awful game, and the bullpen is going to be what it
Leonard Raskin 10:59
is, and who’s the closer? Now, closer. Now
Nestor J. Aparicio 11:03
the Knights. They score five or six runs, they better win. That’s all they gotta win. Losing nine to six, no
Leonard Raskin 11:08
gotta win. Score four, win the game under four. Tough but, but the good news is, most nights, the bats are reliable, but they just, they, when they play sloppy, they play really sloppy. It’s, it’s crazy to watch what they do. But they didn’t
Nestor J. Aparicio 11:27
have any pedigree for that for a long time. For a year and a half, really, they’ve been great. The one rushman got great. They’ve been really good. And guys that have been good defensive players absolutely making stand out things. Mullins with incredible play last week. I mean, they’re all capable. Leonard Raskin is our guest. He’s Raskin global. He does the American dream, not Dusty Rhodes, the who shows up every time I say that, every time I see American Dream out loud, I get Dusty Rhodes, no filter, dusty and all that. The football side of things. However, it’s certainly when you have a baseball team that’s good. And we haven’t had a lot. You and I are too old to have not had August, as you know, we’ve had five or six of these in our adulthood that we’re not even interested in the football thing so much. Other than injuries, we’re not worried about the football team. They play the championship game. As long as Lamar is upright, we feel like we got to play in this huge game. But the football thing is, if the baseball team were bad, the football thing’s juicy too, whether getting hurt, Wiggins,
Leonard Raskin 12:30
too much. Wiggins. Wiggins scared me just because, I mean, you get a first round pick, he’s, he could be a super stud. I mean, it was preseason, but he shut down the Eagles, the Eagles receivers on what, four straight plays, and then he got hurt, and it was, oh my god. Good news is they don’t think he’s too hurt. Hamilton, I don’t think he was too hurt. It just was a fluke, weird kind of thing, and he’s supposedly fine. But I don’t know, was it the third string offense that started the game because they didn’t look good at all. So, I mean, they didn’t have anybody out there. Let’s face it, Derek, Henry’s not out there. Lamar is not out there. None of the Andrews wasn’t out there. Likely he’s not out there. Nobody’s out there. Zay was. Fans aren’t out there either, by the way. I wasn’t out look, I wasn’t out there. There was no way did you eat the tickets? Or you find no I ate them. Who cares? It’s preseason. Here’s so here’s my proposal to the ravens and the whole NFL. I want
Nestor J. Aparicio 13:30
to hear this because Luke had a really interesting proposal about making them a scrimmage and making it more interesting in that way, but having Lamar actually
Leonard Raskin 13:40
touch the football, right? I’m talking about the financial side of things, 18 games. So, right? It’s coming. It’s coming. But the answer is simple. You know, they have these now new pricing for games, right? So each game is priced according to what I guess, the team, the league, whatever, believes they’re going to be better, higher ticket games. So the individual game tickets are priced higher for the Steelers, for the Bengals, for, you know, whoever
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:11
the Cowboys are charging more for Lamar, if you go down there, right? So,
Leonard Raskin 14:15
so I don’t know what they call it. I guess in the world of pricing, it’s surge pricing, you know the it’s demand, supply, demand pricing, but if they wanted to treat the fans fairly, just give us a season ticket holders the preseason games at zero. Okay, they’re going to make their money no matter what. What’s the difference where they get their gate? I don’t know. Maybe it makes a difference, but if the preseason games for season ticket holders had a zero price on the ticket, then I wouldn’t feel so bad eating it. And if
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:47
they’ll charge you $25 across the board, right, right.
Leonard Raskin 14:50
Charge me 600 for the Steelers instead of 300 and charge me nothing for the preseason, it’ll at least make me feel better. Nobody, when I don’t go and I feel like I threw away 100 bucks or whatever,
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:03
what would make you go or make me go? Players have to play. What will make someone go? Players have to play. I mean, your kids go down there for free to get autographs and like, what? What would make the optics? And, you know, if I had access to I gotta see brand manager. I would ask him, like, this is not good for your brand having an empty plate, it was empty you watching the game or tvers, and they haven’t figured out a way to make it have any value at all to anyone.
Leonard Raskin 15:36
I’m not going. I’m not going. There’s no reason for me to take six hours, five hours out of my evening, afternoon, evening, to go watch people I don’t know play in a game that doesn’t matter, so the coaches can figure out who’s going to start when it matters. That’s fine for them. It’s not worth a dime for me, and so you’re not going to see me there. It’s just useless, and it’s stupid to charge the fans to show up. They should. They should open that stadium to students. Let let students that want to go to the game, go to the game. Just let them walk in and go to the game. My question would
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:17
be, who would show up if the gates were just wide open. Would they? Could they even get 40,000 people? Probably not want to come down and just watch a practice, or whatever they would call
Leonard Raskin 16:29
probably not. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know if there’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:33
nothing they can do to make it attractive. Then I guess you quit on it and move on to whatever you can make,
Leonard Raskin 16:39
make it an eight, make it an 18 game season and have, like you said, Two preseason scrimmages or something, something to make it entertaining, do something at least they they had the stadium practice. I don’t know if they did it this year. I wasn’t really paying much attention, as you said, but couple years ago, they had stadium practice and they had fireworks afterwards. Yeah, so
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:01
they keep score. And hardballs tried to make it something fun. When they’ve done, yeah, they did away with the Annapolis thing. And they’ve done away, right, you know, moving it around.
Leonard Raskin 17:10
So have have fireworks afterwards. Have a decent band at halftime, you know, do something to draw eyes in. So you have some people in the seats. They got to make it on the concessions. It was great. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:22
almost went to the Washington Nationals game on Friday night. You speak of like and you would say, why would you go? Well, Billy wasn’t playing in Springsteen with they had a post game concert with Teddy swims. You familiar with him? He has this Google him. He’s got Teddy swims. He’s a big star. Okay, he got out in front of his skis apparently, like, he’s a too big of a star to be doing this right now. He hit it big, like, back in this in the spring, and had dates booked in these theaters where tickets are $500 now, because he’s, like, a Dell like, it’s just, it’s been this suddenly, yeah, played Friday night after the rainstorm in DC, and my wife wanted to go. And when I went to get the ticket, this John, Angeles didn’t have this problem with these girls he was bringing in from Nashville that were part of wife’s, you know, agency, or whatever it was. This guy’s, like, a star, you couldn’t get a ticket to get on the field after the game. And I said to my wife, like, what’s he gonna play? Nine? 930 playing the angels tickets were $7 right to get into the baseball game, but if you wanted to get on the field, it was like 200 bucks all of a sudden on second, 38 bucks, like two weeks ago, and we bought right to go walk down onto the field. But they figured out a way to make people come to a nationals game on Friday night. There you
Leonard Raskin 18:38
go. That’s what you got to do, right? You got to figure out, what can you draw folks into the building by the concessions and be there because it was worth the struts
Nestor J. Aparicio 18:47
or something to play. So last thing for you, before I let you go and your dog’s been a really good part of this. Leonard raskins here doing the American dream. If you want to hear a bitch about tax free week or praise it. In this case, we still have left. So go out and shop, spend some money, absolutely, uh, get to back to school kids and do all that. I’ll be a maker talking about that. They do it. They’re a maker. So I don’t go up to Delaware and do what you told me to do last week. I get my Fisher’s popcorn in Maryland, not Delaware. Um, do you expect them to win on opening? I mean, do you expect them to beat the chiefs? What do you expect to happen with Brown’s out now,
Leonard Raskin 19:19
I know it’s going to be tough in Kansas City. It’s always tough in Kansas City, but if we run the ball, we win the game and and I think it’s that simple. We showed in the playoffs that we could run on them, and now we got Derek, Henry with Lamar to run on him. I don’t see how you can’t beat him. You got two guys you got to look out for, right? You got to watch Kelsey, who’s getting old and and his his love life might be interfering with his football who knows? I don’t know, but, but we got Kelsey to look
Nestor J. Aparicio 19:52
at his love life.
Leonard Raskin 19:55
I know, but, but we got to run the ball. You can’t call 21 straight. Eight pass plays and beat the chiefs, but if you run on them, that means the offense is on the field and their offense isn’t on the field. And when you do that and put up points, you’ll beat them. Simple, I don’t know. You know, as my mother said, Why aren’t you the coach? Because I’m not, because I would suck at it. That’s why, because I’d be worse than the guy that is the coach that I think makes mistakes, but that’s the way it goes. But I don’t understand, and I’ll never understand, 21 passing plays called in a row just writing
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:29
a letter to Mr. Harbaugh. And we’re going to talk about not calling timeouts in the AFC Championship game with condiv. We’re going to talk about four plays at the one yard line where his brother almost beat him in the game that he actually won. So, like, big play, you know, John doesn’t get much scrutiny around here, because they take people’s press credentials when he’s scrutinized. So now that Mine’s actually gone, I will, I will bring that up, that like, it’s, it’s outrageous, even walk the streets of Baltimore not have people come say, three runs. John really, really, right? And every time I see Bucha Walter, hidden fun goes the other day with my, my old buddy, Harold Reynolds, but, you know, he left Zach Britton on the bench. That was sort of the end for him, right? Like, that’s it. That’s it. You know, they need to manage it better. I know you manage things better. Did you have anybody call you looking to get out of the market? Last week when the Japanese thing tumbled, I had,
Leonard Raskin 21:21
I had one person who sent me an email and said, I’m really scared. And I sent back and said, I understand I expected an email from you, because every time something happens, I get an email from you. And here’s bottom line, after Monday last week, when we had the quote, unquote drop, uh, big drop in the market. If you were invested in the market, your account went from August to May, right, where we were in May, and nobody was calling me in May saying, Oh, my God, the market’s where it is. No because it was at an all time high in May. So it went up from an all time high, and then it went back two and a half percent, and people freaked out, and I told him, calm down. And then by the end of the week, nobody called It was July again or late June? Yeah, it was exactly. We’re back to August. Well, it’s a hell of a way of thinking
Nestor J. Aparicio 22:18
of it, so I will continue to think about it that way. When it happens to me, because it happens to me. You it happens everybody. What happens everybody? Happens everybody. Everybody. So that’s Leonard Raskin is here. He’s here to help folks. He’s at Raskin global. He’s also the front of Baltimore positive. We talked about tax free week. We talked a little football, little baseball. We’re almost caught up, and you’re going over to Europe. So have a great time over there. If I don’t catch you next week or next time I see you might be football time and it might be Labor Day weekend. You might be reading all of my love letters to locals. Here we go, people. There you go. Leon Raskin be found at Raskin global. He is there to help you as a whole wealth of information up at Raskin global.com, I’m Nestor. He’s Leonard. We’re W, N, S T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive, I.
