We are gonna take a delve inside the gray area
because Greg Anderson has found his way into the studio,
the busiest 98Q employee of the last couple of weeks.
Took me a little longer than I promised,
but I did get here.
You made it.
We made it at a good weekend.
Saturday was a lot of fun visiting with listeners
and just getting to meet some of the people
we've talked to on the phone and stuff.
So it's just kind of cool.
It was just a fun social gathering at the home show.
It was, and we had a good time broadcasting live,
popping around.
It's interesting looking around those booths
with broadcast eyes.
If I'm going around there, I'm looking for baked goods.
I'm looking for somebody with a neat deal
on Stormy Kromer from Bader Sports Center,
but going around with a microphone in my hand,
I feel like, I feel like, well, it's not the right word,
but I feel like a little demon.
It's just like, all right, what kind of fun
can we have at the Philip Sports Home and Graph Show,
but on the radio?
It's just a little bit of,
it's a Gremlin or a goblin.
Those are the right kind of words,
like the little radio goblin at the show.
And there's always a certain people
where you walk up to the booth
and you describe what on the air you heard it
where we'd say what the business is
and we would say you want to come on the radio
and if you could look at the look on the person's face,
if they could jump right into my head
and just rip my face off and say, no!
There's two things in common with those people.
First of all, they don't say the word, no.
They just, they don't use words.
Second of all, they don't need to say no.
You can feel it in the air.
It's electric, just no!
Exactly, like you said, just like the discovery
of a bee's nest when you're outside.
You look around and you're like,
I'm suddenly tempted to be that creepy jerk I saw
in Willy Wonka, just, you're alive with 10,000 people.
You really have nothing to say?
Come on, poke poke.
No, no, I would hate that if it were me.
It's like, that's gotta be right there
with having people sing happy birthday to you in a restaurant.
It's just like, you know what?
I'd cease to exist rather than do this right now.
If I could just pop, there I go.
I'm gone.
And a Willy Wonka reference from Monday Morning Life is good.
Crayola, today is, what is, what did I say?
I wanted to talk Crayon to you.
It's Crayon, apparently, Crayola.
Today is National Crayon Day, Crayola Crayons, of course,
were the original, I don't know if they were the original,
but kind of what you think about when you think of Crayon.
They've got enough money to say so.
So what are you, first thing you think,
when I say Crayons, where does that take you in your youth?
Where does it take you?
Kindergarten, you know, just the easy associations.
Kinderg, I'm a bad artist when it comes to drawing
and those kinds of media, so I know, I know, Mrs. Miller,
you were so nice, but when you saw my grand drawings,
she must have thought, oh boy,
I'm gonna have to work a little extra with this one.
I could never stay within the lines, I just couldn't do it.
And it's just, I was just absolutely horrible
at anything artistic.
You know, that might be the better measure
of how bad I was was that staying in the lines was like,
I remember feeling really good that I stayed really well
in the lines on this picture.
Like, man, there's some kids out there making real art
and I wasn't.
And Crayons, I'm old enough where Crayons
became a status symbol because I was in school
when the 64 box of Crayola Crayons came out with,
with the sharpener.
I knew right where you were going.
I was like, I didn't have the sharpener.
That was the sentence that came into my Kindergarten self
is still there.
Do you have the sharpener?
It was unspoken, but when someone showed up
to the first day of school with a 64 box of crayons
and a sharpener, it was just assumed
that that family was wealthy.
See, I was from, I was in grade school
before the middle class ceased to exist.
So I was from the group of kids whose parents had a choice.
You know, like we could have been the Rose Art Kids
or the Crayola kids and there was a difference
because those Rose Art, that was more wax than dye.
Those weren't good crayons, but you didn't talk about it.
We all just knew that the Rose Art was,
you know, they spent a little less on the label
on the Crayon.
So my parents though, like they could have gone either way.
There was, you know, we had, we went out on Fridays
but didn't live in the big mansion.
We were right in that middle ground,
but my parents didn't know what would have done
the best for me when it came to street cred.
So I had the Rose Art because they cost less,
less on the shelf label.
And it's like, you know what,
mom, you didn't have to save that dollar.
I could have used the cred that it would have bought me
that I still, you know, it's like compounding interest.
If I had started with that nest egg of street cred,
I'd have built so much more.
I'd have an empire by now.
But nope, nope, I had Rose Art crayons
and so I'm back in my hometown.
You see, because speaking of the 64 box of crayons,
back then you brought crayons to school.
There wasn't like a trough of crayons there.
At the school, there wasn't a trough of pencils.
There wasn't even clinics as I don't think.
You just, you brought, you brought what you needed.
And if you had the crayons, you had them.
And if you didn't, well, the teacher might have
a little stash and would help people out a little bit.
But it was definitely no doubt about it, a status symbol.
If you had that crayon sharpener with,
with your entourage of, and then all the colors.
Oh my, the discussion of the colors of the 64,
that looks like blue, that's not blue.
You know, that's aqua lake or whatever.
I think I'm about to have a therapy moment
because I'm thinking back to first grade,
Jess Herbs, shout out to you for putting up
with my first grade self when you were there at St. A's.
Do you want to kick back and relax a little bit
because of therapy?
I need a fainting couch.
Tell me about it, great.
I just want to put out an apology to a guy named Tanner Dixon,
who is one of my classmates.
I think he left after like second grade.
And he's out there somewhere live in life.
He has no idea I'm talking about him.
You're a part and false radio.
But Tanner, I ruined your color changing markers.
And you were really cool about it.
You were disappointed, I remember it.
But you didn't say anything to me that a kid might have said
if another kid goofed and like, you're really cool for that.
So thank you, Tanner Dixon, for letting me,
you didn't let me ruin them, but like,
you could have done things that you didn't do
that would have been fair.
So like, yeah, though, he had these really cool things
where you took this clear marker
and you colored in the place you were going to color.
And then you put the colored one down.
And when you thought you were going to get blue,
you get orange or something like that.
But I did it backwards.
I put the blue down.
And then I took the magic clear marker
and colored over the blue, which did in fact make it orange,
but it also made the magic clear marker blue.
Yeah.
So from then on, the magic, basically I just,
I took all the magic and I poured it onto my paper
and Tanner never got it again.
Hope for Tanner Dixon.
Yeah, that's like, that's an emblematic thing.
Like I learned, I look back at that day
and I do things differently because of it.
To this day, he wakes up in the middle
that I, great Gunders.
You know, I've shared this, Joel,
and I think I feel worse somehow.
This hasn't helped.
Tanner, I hope you feel better.
Well, let's move on to opening day
because today is opening day and maybe Tanner Dixon
will be watching the opening game today or listening.
He was an athletic young man.
I bet he's probably in a baseball.
All right.
Was he the son of John who coach football?
Probably.
Okay.
You got to remember, like I said, he left in second grade,
which meant that he vanished from the universe
as far as my sense of his mind was concerned.
Gotcha.
And I wasn't cool enough to be friends
with the ones who circled back after high school.
So it's like, yeah.
So baseball opener, today the home opener
for the Brewers at Ampham Field.
This is the 24th year of brewer baseball.
24 years at stadiums been around.
And I was reminiscing about the fact
that DJ Rick and I were at Ampham Miller Park opening day.
And it was, I was trying to figure out
if opening day happened before or after 9-11.
And it happened April 6th of 2001.
So it happened before the 9-11 attack in our country.
But I remember that day so very clearly
because just like this year, the Brewers had played
three games previously on the road
and lost all three.
They were all in three.
And Davey Lopes was the manager of the Brewers.
And he was a kind of a surly type anyway.
He wasn't Mr. Congeniality by any means.
So DJ Rick and I are on the field.
I remember very clearly standing between the first
and third baseline.
And there's a pool of reporters, eight or 10 people
with microphones that are talking to Davey Lopes
about the opening, about this beautiful stadium.
Oh, everybody's seeing it for the first time.
And everybody's just feeling the joy.
And Davey Lopes was like a wild cat in a cage.
He was just mad that the Brewers had started 0-1-3.
He was not buying into the joy of opening day at all.
He was not in a good mood.
And I remember we all walked away
from that short press conference saying, wow.
Yeah, he was not happy at all.
Well, I mean, not like it was going to happen,
but I know if I'm him and I've got that pressure,
I'm picturing losing four in a row,
including the opener at this new stadium and thinking,
yeah, you guys are all having fun.
I'm about to get fired.
Like my job security is on the line
in a way that a new stadium just doesn't touch.
So I think I'd be Davey Lopes too in that scenario.
I've over your right shoulder.
I've got the media pass and a photo of me standing
behind home plate at Miller Park on opening day
when Rick and I went there.
And we went back the following year also post 9-11.
And I remember that even more so
than I remember opening day
because the security was so heavy
and George W. Bush for some reason was at that game.
The second year of the stadium opened.
And I just remember all the security
and having to go through scans and everything
at the ballpark itself.
But it was so much, it was so exciting walking around
on the field.
And still to this day, Miller Park I think has kept,
it's kept that newness.
It feels new to me still.
I don't go to Miller Park and think,
man, they gotta start replacing the same pretty soon
as 25 year.
It still feels new to me.
Well, don't forget, nobody goes to Miller Park anymore.
Yeah, it'll always be Miller Park.
Well, so I'm looking at that and I'm thinking,
if you think about that, Joel, I'm willing to bet
that that was, you know, and maybe this is,
maybe this is pulling the curtain back too far.
But if you think about it, that was just over six months
after the attack after 9-11.
So I'm thinking, you know, it's been six months.
It would look pretty normal for President Bush
to attend a baseball game, who's having their home opener,
which one's getting a little extra attention.
So it's pretty easy to imagine if you're the PR team,
like, yeah, this is good for the country right now.
And truly, I agree.
I mean, like I said, maybe it's looking a little more
analytically than we should at an emotional moment.
But no, I'm betting that was, that was a,
somebody's smart PR move.
Yeah, let's get out to Milwaukee.
Let's, let's show the president at a baseball game.
I think April of 2020 or 2002, that was probably just right.
Exactly.
Well, hopefully the Brewers can figure out
how to get somebody out 30, 36 runs in the first three games
and just hang on just a second here.
Hang on, the Yankees just hit another home run.
There it is.
We had people stopping by the booth on Saturday.
Did they break the record on us?
Like, people who are Brewers fans gave up their fandom
and were rooting for, rooting for that home run record
because it was the most bad.
They had nine home runs, like in the sixth or seventh inning.
Didn't they have a couple of innings left to get it, I think?
Yeah, it was, they had room and then they just tapered off.
Well, I mean, once you get the win and you tap the breaks,
you know, that momentum starts to decrease
and you start to coast towards the victory as a team.
Yeah.
And I'm thinking one of the first things
that goes is that little extra pop
that puts them over the fence.
Yeah, and then you're betting against a position player too,
which takes a little bit to adjust to
because it's like adjusting from a major league baseball swing
to a softball swing now,
where you're trying to create a launch angle
whereas with a regular, a major league baseball picture,
you're just making contact and it's just doing it all by yourself.
So you got South Freilich, whoever out there on the mound
throwing 68 miles an hour or whatever they are.
And that we had more position players
throw innings this past weekend.
I think that we may have all last year for the Brewers.
That's the thing about good players.
That's something that you take for granted
without ever realizing it.
I think a lot of people don't even think about bad players
can be very difficult to play against for good players
because bad players are unpredictable.
You know what that good player is going to do.
He's going to do the smart thing.
So I as another smart player,
I'm expecting you to do the smart thing.
Well, if you do something dumb,
I might not be ready for it and because of that, it might work.
So it's even more than just a speed change.
You'll hear people who play video games or who play chess.
It's like, yeah, playing against bad players
is awful once you're at that high skill rating
because they're just unpredictable.
It's like playing a madman.
Just like, that was a dumb idea and it might work
because I couldn't, why would I plan
for you to do something that stupid?
Yeah, you don't know whether self-right looks
going to throw you an 80 mile fastball or a 45 mile
an hour knuckleball.
You don't know what it's what's coming
until it's in the air.
It's least sports out there all of a sudden.
Anything is fair game in that six-year-old
who just throws it at the wall might win, man.
You might win.
So that's why we play 162 games.
It seems pretty bleak right now.
The brewers are on three.
But you know what, he got the royals come in.
You win a couple on our own, you know what, here, you're fine.
We could be 160 and three.
It's not going to happen, but it's possible.
There are 159 and three.
Sorry, bad math, close it up.
You get the point.
All right, Gray.
Thank you much.
Thank you, Gray Gundersen.
He'll be in this afternoon from two until, no, actually,
from four 30ish until seven.
Gray Gundersen, the afternoon.
All right.