--:-- Pablo Torre: Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
--:-- [Audio clip plays: "Happy birthday. Sending best wishes and hoping all is well. Have you no shame?"]
--:-- Pablo Torre: Right after this ad.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Hey, buddy.
--:-- David Samson: Oh, man.
--:-- Pablo Torre: So you have — I want to be very clear with our audience what's happening here today. You're going to be out of here in an hour, almost literally. You got places to be. It is not lost on me that you made time to do this, and I have really missed you.
--:-- David Samson: Thank you. I was at a deli and I lost track of days. I was asked by my daughter's mother, my ex Cindy, to get a sandwich — a bagel, a bagel with nova and cream cheese — and I wanted one too. So I went to Sable's and I completely didn't understand why there was a line out the door because I had forgotten that it was Yom Kippur.
--:-- So I am online. I get to fourth — it's my turn, almost fourth — and a doctor calls. And that's my life now. So when the doctor calls, that's it, whatever you're doing. It's happened during the taping of Nothing Personal. That's it. You take the call because I'm on their time. I'm on everybody else's time but mine.
--:-- So I get offline. I do the call, get back online, get to the front. And before I can make an order, the guy looks right at me and says, "Do you know Pablo Torre?"
--:-- Pablo Torre: Oh, no.
--:-- David Samson: And I said, "Yeah, why?" He said, "Oh, I've seen you on a show." I said, "Thank you so much. Can I get you anything?" I said, "Yeah, I wouldn't mind a schmear."
--:-- Pablo Torre: Oh, God. You went to Sable's. Yes. Was it an Asian guy who asked you that?
--:-- David Samson: Yes, it was.
--:-- Pablo Torre: I met that guy probably two weeks before you had that encounter.
--:-- David Samson: It was all octogenarian Jewish women getting ready for Yom Kippur. Then it was me with a backpack because that's my new thing. I have shoes that I bike with because I bike all over the city now because I won't sit in traffic like I did today. And I have comfortable shoes. And I'm getting food because I'm trying to have my family eat because we're not eating. We're not sleeping.
--:-- And the first thing I'm ready to order — I'm late because my daughter has certain times that I can see her in between therapies — and the delay is, "Do you know Pablo Torre?"
--:-- Pablo Torre: There's a variety of ways that I need people to understand and appreciate what it is that your life is now. One of them, I hope, is informed by the fact that you're the person for whom normal everyday is fascinating through the lens of how you see the world.
--:-- We've done episodes with you about losing your senses of smell and taste. We've done episodes with you in which you bring us inside baseball arbitration against your former employees. We do episodes with you with John Skipper typically sitting right here in between us. He is not here today. He was supposed to be. Then we said we should just do this, me and you, because the thing that you always bring to the table is a level of candid strangeness that reads as foreign, even alien, to so many of our mutual friends.
--:-- And now, in what you're dealing with in the present, which only begins to explain why you haven't been on the shows people have expected you to be on — your own show, Nothing Personal.
--:-- David Samson: I've been gone for two weeks as my family has been dealing with a critical situation. I have a daughter who is seriously ill, and it came out of nowhere. And I have been spending the last two weeks trying to figure out how to do the only thing that matters, which is to take care of her and my other children and my family.
--:-- And I've made a promise to you all that you've been with me for all these years that I would not in any way lie to you. I would not in any way mislead you. I would not in any way do anything to break the trust that we built together over all these years where you know you're going to get it from me straight.
--:-- And I wasn't ready. That's the bottom line. I wasn't ready to talk about it. I wasn't ready to think about it other than to do what was in front of me, which was to figure out how to deal with something that is unthinkable, unimaginable, can't be happening. And you open your eyes 24 hours a day and it happens. It's in front of you. There's nothing you can do. There's no escape from the nightmare of a life changing in the blink of an eye.
--:-- My struggle is that I can't find the meaning right now. It doesn't serve as a distraction to me right now. And on September 12th, when I got the call about my daughter, out of nowhere — it was out of nowhere, Pablo. There is no way to describe what it is when the phone rings and it's someone calling you who you speak to often, but you knew that was a strange time to call because my brain is keeping track of where people are and what people are doing because I thought that I would always want to be ready for whatever particular call could come at a particular time because I always try to plan for any possible outcome that could possibly happen.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You and me eating at a restaurant, you're already — if you haven't listened to David on this show before, you should know that he's already planning the exit strategies. You have as a function of your foremost desire, control.
--:-- David Samson: The irony — I don't have control over anything. Nothing. I can't control. I can't make my daughter better. I can't put my family back together. I can't put our lives back together. I can't do anything. I can't control when the doctors call me back. I can't control when test results come. I can't control one thing.
--:-- And that's why I'm biking back and forth to the hospital every day from where I live because — and I've got — this isn't for the air. You've shown your feet before. So I have cuts all over. You've shown toe. I'm bleeding everywhere.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You have bandages under your blue dress socks.
--:-- David Samson: I can't deal with the fact that I can't control the outcome. I've never entered a fight that I know I'm going to lose.
--:-- Pablo Torre: So that's that.
--:-- David Samson: So biking in New York is a problem because people are idiots.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You're somebody for whom — again, the piece of tape on the side of the table, whether the water bottle has a label on it, whether this thing got breathed on by somebody else — you're someone for whom the small things have always been comically frustrating.
--:-- David Samson: No, but they're easy. Look, there's a yellow sticker here that says "control." Has that always been here?
--:-- Pablo Torre: I have a yellow button. I didn't ever notice it, but you are tracing it back and forth with your finger.
--:-- David Samson: You called me on September 12th. And it was one of the scarier calls that I've received from someone that I care about. Because I was almost immediately informed, not with words, but with tone of voice, that something really scary had just happened to you.
--:-- And look, man, in the attempt to respect and abide by the boundaries that are protecting your family and your daughter, I don't want to say more than you want me to say. So I want to focus in frankly on just you as a person that I think we as a show — certainly our audience, but we as friends of yours — have just really been worried about and thinking about. I just wonder if there is any degree of zooming out, or is it all very zoomed in right now?
--:-- David Samson: I'm trying to gain back some sort of control over something. So I find myself doing things. My life has changed in a way. I don't know how it'll change back, and it manifests itself in ways I can't — I haven't watched a movie since September 12th. And I watched a movie every day for decades before that. And I can't — it's not a time issue because there's 24 hours in a day because I can't sleep because waking up brings you back into the nightmare in which I find myself. So I'm not sleeping.
--:-- I thought maybe doing the show would be a distraction. So I started doing that on September 29th, after taking two weeks off.
--:-- Pablo Torre: To which — the scare — the part of what was scary is that I remember talking to Coca. Coca calls me and he's like, "Hey, here's what I think my approach is going to be with David because our assumption would be he's going to want to work day one because that's just his constitution. That's what he will want to do, and it'll be our job to push back."
--:-- When word came that in fact you could not, would not, did not want to do the thing that has always been your comfort zone, the thing that you do for fun — that provided you, by the way, in the decision to become a media person, some establishment of control over your life. "I'm going to do this shit that makes me happy now. I'm going to find out what that is." When you didn't want to do that, it became very unsettling. Were you surprised about how you personally responded?
--:-- David Samson: When I got the phone call, the first thing I thought of was that I tried to fast forward to everything. I tried to do what I do in my brain, which is to go through every pathway. Where does that end? Where does that end? What do I do now? How does this work now? What calls do I need to make? What do I need to do?
--:-- And every single pathway led to just another nightmare, led to another maze where I didn't know how to get out of that state I was in after that phone call came. And I've never had that before because there's always been an exit. There's always been a strategy that I've been able to go through my mind faster. And it's the reason why I have trouble with relationships because I go through all of it way faster. And all of a sudden, Le Batard will say, "Slow down, David. I'm not there yet."
--:-- Pablo Torre: That you see how the story is going to go.
--:-- David Samson: I have it. And you've sped there because time is also something that you are measuring constantly, dude.
--:-- Pablo Torre: The ultimate irony of my measuring of time and understanding that time runs out and then thinking about that now.
--:-- David Samson: I've thought a little bit about God because I struggle with that — I always have — but now I'm struggling way more. I sort of imagine God, whatever entity that is, laughing at me because this is the hell that I would have someone choose for me. And I never had it. I've gotten away with everything my whole life because I've been able to talk my way out of it. I've been able to maneuver my way out of it. And I have no play. It is checkmate.
--:-- And the humor in that that I want to see — and I thought if I got back on camera that I'd be able to pull back and enjoy the irony of the fact that everything that I've been able to do, I don't know how to do anymore. I don't have it yet. I don't have it yet.
--:-- And so my thought was I'd start doing the show immediately. I said to Coca, it was Friday night, "I'll be back Monday." And then it just became obvious that I didn't have the pathways projected right. I had them all wrong. And I'm still getting them wrong.
--:-- Pablo Torre: The desire to even see the humor in a cruel and cosmic joke that you — by the way, I want to make this clear too. The story of you as I have best understood it is not of a man who's never experienced tragedy. It's of a man who has always found ways to shed the inefficient waste of time that attends the rituals of human emotion. It's not like you don't feel it. It's just that you're recognizing when it's a waste, when it's not.
--:-- David Samson: It's always been a waste. It's always been a waste. And it's not that I feel it's still a waste. And I'm stuck in that waste. And I've always been able to dismiss the waste. Maybe now I'm beginning to understand how to say it. The things I feel right now, they don't help. They don't move forward anything. They don't make her better. They don't make me better. They don't make my two other kids better. They don't make my Cindy better. I don't even know what I — it sounds so harsh to say "my ex-wife." The mother of the daughter makes it sound weird. The mother of my children. We are a team.
--:-- Pablo Torre: The reason I focus on you as opposed to your daughter is not merely because of the privacy and the confidence that I want to protect. Dude, it's just like — so for people who don't know how close we've become — I was explaining to Liz what happened.
--:-- David Samson: That was a gut-wrenching text she sent me.
--:-- Pablo Torre: But we had stayed with you and your daughter how many weeks before September 12th? There was nothing wrong. We were in the same house together, watching movies. The earthquake that destabilizes everything that isn't stopping yet.
--:-- The reason I turn my focus to you is because I genuinely haven't talked to you enough. And my hope is that there is something here, as people who live in front of a microphone, to think out loud about. And I just don't really know what's okay to poke you about.
--:-- David Samson: You're never at a loss for words. You can poke all you want. I think I'm sharp enough to not allow the pokes in the place I don't want them. Just tell me, please. But I may not be. That's the other thing.
--:-- What scared me about doing the show is my respect for the audience. And I've always — that's been the thing since the first time I did Nothing Personal. There was one person listening to my first show in October of '19, and Coke and I have been together ever since. I just respect people's time because I want my time to be respected. So how can I ask for that if I won't give it? And I've always been willing to give it.
--:-- And I don't want to sit in a waiting room at a doctor's office for 45 minutes. I just can't handle that. And there is no more on my time. It's done.
--:-- Pablo Torre: What's done?
--:-- David Samson: The ability to have someone respect my time the way that I'm willing to respect theirs. It's done. Because now I'm on somebody else's schedule. All day. Every day. No matter what happens. No matter what plan I have.
--:-- What's unbelievable to me is that all I'm asking for is communication. It's what we do for a living. We communicate. You don't have to lie to me. You don't have to mislead me. You can not like me. You cannot love me, but just tell me what's happening. And I've had to learn a new language because it's a new language when you're in the world of doctors. They don't speak English.
--:-- And then of course, the first thing is don't Google anything. Well, hold on. I need to teach myself because otherwise I'm at a disadvantage and I don't go into conversations at a disadvantage. I won't do it because then there's an opportunity to lose. There's an opportunity for me to get something wrong. The doctors don't sit and teach you all of this language.
--:-- The healthcare — I got a call from the insurance company. "Hey, it's the complex case manager calling to just — anything you need." Yeah, there's a lot I need. "All right, well, thank you for the time." Like that was the call. So it was a check-the-box call. And I'm not impugning the insurance company. It is what it is.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Big picture, I just feel like you're on a journey through the American healthcare system, of course, with various advantages that you are trying to leverage that are not nearly helpful enough, even with those advantages.
--:-- David Samson: I have so many advantages. I have so many things that other people in my position don't have, which is another source of guilt that weighs on me like a 2,000-pound weight. And it doesn't even matter. That's the irony. That's the thing.
--:-- You're somebody for whom you've collected real bonds and relationships with people who in the nightmare scenario that you're living, ostensibly, you would absolutely draft in the first round of people who might let me cash in a favor right now. And you've been doing that. And yet it's life.
--:-- Jeff and Fred Wilpon — people I competed against for almost two decades, the Mets owners, tooth and nail, the former Mets owners. We were in the NL East. I'm talking in the owner's room, on the committees, on the field. You want to talk about two different ways to look at the same sport? You're in the Mets and the Marlins are opposite. There was barely anything we could agree on because they're in a different situation than we were in. But you live with people and you work with them. And my show is based on truth telling off the subject. Anyway, thank you to Jeff and Fred who were great, of course.
--:-- But what I was thinking with my show is I can't talk about Jerry Jones anymore. I don't even know if I can mention his name. What if I need Jerry Jones to help with something in Texas? And I was thinking about, well, I can't call Stevie Cohen because all I do is refer to the chop shops and the fact that he's figuratively — I don't want to use literal anymore — incompetent, but may have great connections to the possibility of the thread of a chance to make something better that I have to see if I can make better.
--:-- So what am I going to go on Nothing Personal and talk about? The Mets offseason and the fact that Pete Alonso — I just can't come to grips with it. That's part of the process that I'm trying to do right now, and I don't have an answer to it right now.
--:-- My son said to me, "You're not going to call Jerry Reinsdorf, right?"
--:-- Pablo Torre: I was in Chicago. Oh, God.
--:-- David Samson: My son was with me when Jerry Reinsdorf in Cooperstown approached and said, "Oh, it must not be pleasant having him as your father." That's what Jerry Reinsdorf said to my son. And it became memorable. It was the same day that —
--:-- Pablo Torre: That's pretty funny.
--:-- David Samson: — Derek Jeter and I had a shouting match in the Hall of Fame Museum.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Wait, wait, wait. What was that? What happened?
--:-- David Samson: Derek Jeter has a problem. That's the bottom line. He has a problem of aptitude. He has a problem in everything other than being a shortstop. And I hadn't seen him since the transaction. So he took over the Marlins. He got Bruce Sherman to buy the Marlins for a price that Bruce Sherman shouldn't have paid him. Bruce knows it. And Derek got Bruce to do it because Derek Jeter was the player and the idol. And he took over the team. And it turns out that he's a shortstop, not a president. So he got fired, of course. And that was the end of Derek Jeter.
--:-- And I had not seen him. And I saw him in Cooperstown. And I approached him with my son. And I just said, "Good to see you," and extended my hand. And he just looked at me — and he's much taller than I am, which so are you — and he said, "Oh, you brought your camera crew, I'm sure." And I said, "Actually, that's my son." He said, "Sure it is." And my son was just standing there, jaw open.
--:-- And then Derek started talking about how angry he was about everything. And I said, "Derek, I'm happy I live rent-free in your head. And thank you for watching the show every day." He had people listen to our show every day. Every day while he was still employed with the Marlins. And I then just said, "Okay." And he started walking away. I started walking away. And then he yelled across the Hall of Fame store some terrible thing toward me. And my son was standing right there.
--:-- And this is Derek. I have to understand from a kid's perspective who was with his friend who was a huge Yankee fan. As am I. There's Derek Jeter yelling at Caleb's dad. It was ridiculous.
--:-- Pablo Torre: To recap, this was recent. Because the last time we were just talking about in this studio how Ichiro had to do out at Cooperstown. You were there as part of the delegation. And you had taken Caleb. I remember you telling me this. You had taken your son and his friend to go basically live a dream that any baseball fan would have.
--:-- David Samson: It was a dream.
--:-- Pablo Torre: And part of the dream that I don't think I ever considered was Derek Jeter basically motherfucking your dad, which is so good.
--:-- David Samson: Which, of course, and then Caleb's response — hey, what was the highlight of the weekend? As we're driving the four hours back because I didn't want to miss a show. So Sunday after the ceremony, I get right in the car to make it back because I have a show Monday morning. And highlight: when Jerry Reinsdorf and Derek Jeter put you in your place.
--:-- For him to think about, oh, I guess Jerry Reinsdorf is not on the list of people who you can count on now. But the fact is, if I called Jerry Reinsdorf today and we were in Chicago — my daughter got sick in Chicago. She was there for work. She doesn't live there. And we were in Chicago for longer than I've ever been in Chicago without winning a playoff series. And I would have called Jerry. And I would have called whoever. Anybody. Who could help. Anybody. And Jerry would have taken the call.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Well, no, I would have had to leave a message. And I would have had to say why I was calling because otherwise he wouldn't have taken the call.
--:-- David Samson: I think my last text from Jerry was, "You have some nerve wishing me a happy birthday."
--:-- Pablo Torre: That is another favorite thing you do. I remind — because I don't want — anyway, I'm a birthday person. I like saying happy birthday. And his birthday is the same as my late sister who passed away way too young, and they have the same birthday. So I've always known Jerry's birthday. So I always text him on his birthday. And I have it here. Please read it because I just feel like it's one of the funnier things about just how you do human interaction. You are also just cheerily out of the ether wishing people happy birthday when the last memory they have of you is "I fucking hate that guy."
--:-- David Samson: "Happy birthday. Sending best wishes and hoping all is well. Have you no shame?"
--:-- Pablo Torre: Telling you, it's right there. It's literally right there. "Have you no shame?" in response to that specific birthday message. I'd like to tell you I'm making it up, but as you know, with me, it's right there.
--:-- David Samson: So I had not seen Jerry and I saw him in Cooperstown. And the first thing he did when I said, "Jerry, I'd like you to meet my son" — his first comment was, "I'm sorry."
--:-- Pablo Torre: Can you imagine hearing that as your son? I have two thoughts. One is that Caleb is used to it.
--:-- David Samson: True.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Second thought is, why does Jerry Reinsdorf hate you?
--:-- David Samson: He's very unhappy about Nothing Personal.
--:-- Pablo Torre: So your show is listened to by the executive class across all sports, but baseball is particularly interested. A lot of people listen. For those who are just meeting David for the first time, former president of the Marlins. But the member of the C-suite, the executive class, a guy whose home I stayed in with your daughter, with Liz, with Violet — you have a World Series trophy, the real thing, because you are the president of a team. And so you talking about all of this in the way that you do with me, on your show with Dan, with Le Batard — yeah, people don't love it. Although they must listen.
--:-- David Samson: Hate listen or love listen to me is the same. I just want you to listen.
--:-- And the background with Jerry goes all the way back to 2014 at a hotel in Baltimore when he did not want Rob to be the commissioner. And I did. And we went at it with votes. We were trying to collect votes. I was secretly meeting with the Washington Nationals owners while I had someone telling Jerry that the Nationals owners were out of the room. Because Jerry thought he had the votes to block Rob, and he did, and there were three or four votes.
--:-- And actually, the way my life has changed before September 12th, I had gone to the framing store because I had a piece of my life that I wanted to have framed.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You're a collector of things, by the way. That's the other thing you learn when you visit your home, is that you frame and collect and honor the various cool experiences.
--:-- David Samson: I do because to me, it shows me. I don't do it for others. An interesting thing is people think that I do it to charge admission, but that's not. I do it for me. If you watch Nothing Personal, you'll see David sitting inside of a giant baseball glove and behind him are various artifacts in the way that many people have artifacts. The stuff I'm referring to is the stuff that's off camera that you don't actually talk about, that I was blown away by, because you take the time to frame it and put it up, and it is for you and those you love.
--:-- So I have here a picture. I wonder what date. Jeez, September 9th. Everything was great September 9th. I was at a framing store, and I happened to have taken very copious notes during the vote for the commissioner to replace Bud Selig. This was back in 2014. And I kept all the notes. And what I have is me counting votes. And the first vote was Rob 20, Tom Werner 10.
--:-- Pablo Torre: And that means that there's no commissioner. Is it white smoke or black smoke?
--:-- David Samson: The one when there's a pope. Oh, white smoke.
--:-- Pablo Torre: So black smoke is when there's not. I believe so. I'm Jewish, so I don't remember.
--:-- David Samson: Oh, and you don't know the color of the smoke? Which is the most Catholic thing.
--:-- Pablo Torre: White smoke is what is released when they pick a new pope. But don't they do smoke at the end of every day?
--:-- David Samson: I believe so. I think it's the black smoke, meaning we're still going. We're still in the conclave. That's what the movie said.
--:-- So it was 20 to 10. So then there had to be another vote. And I have second ballot with a list of the teams circled who voted against Rob.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You have — this is it.
--:-- David Samson: And then the second vote was 21-9.
--:-- Pablo Torre: A screenshot of handwriting of you just keeping — again, measuring.
--:-- David Samson: I have it. And then the final one is seventh ballot. Rob wins 23 to 7.
--:-- Pablo Torre: What you're showing me is the political process for how to elect the commissioner. And I was right there.
--:-- David Samson: And Jerry Reinsdorf was sitting directly across from me. And Jerry Reinsdorf wanted Tom Werner because Jerry Reinsdorf didn't think that Bud Selig or anyone Bud Selig wanted would be hard enough in labor.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Owner of the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf. And the Bulls.
--:-- David Samson: Right. And so during the course of this process, Jerry Reinsdorf is counting to eight because you need eight votes to block in baseball. You need a final score of 23 to seven with the 30 owners. And so Jerry and I were counting votes. I had a count to 23 and Rob's not in the room. He's up in a suite in the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Does Rob Manfred know that you are doing this?
--:-- David Samson: I'm on the phone with Rob talking about the different teams and which teams, how we're going to get the teams.
--:-- Pablo Torre: What a thing to have you, David Samson, doing all of this.
--:-- David Samson: The final, final — we had to convert Ted Lerner, the late Ted Lerner. And to do it, Jerry —
--:-- Pablo Torre: Owner of the Nationals.
--:-- David Samson: Owner of the Nationals. Jerry Reinsdorf had gotten to him. And Ted Lerner had said that he won't vote for Rob because of some MASN deals, which is the regional sports network that he and the Orioles have been fighting over for years. And we found a solution, which is — Ted Lerner is one of my mentors — and we got Ted Lerner to agree not to vote. We got him to give his son Mark the vote. So Ted Lerner could say he never voted for Rob, but Mark Lerner agreed to vote for Rob. Ted Lerner allowed for Mark Lerner to vote for Rob and Bud Selig didn't know. Rob knew because I called Rob. I said, "We got the 23rd." Rob said, "Get Bud to call a vote."
--:-- Reinsdorf said, "Call a vote, call a vote. You don't have the votes. I know you don't have the votes because Jerry was with Ted Lerner." And we had Ted Lerner stay with Jerry because let Jerry keep thinking. So when we call for the vote, Jerry was like, "Hey, you're calling for a vote. You have no chance." He's sitting two feet from me. And I said, "Call the vote, Bud. Call it right now."
--:-- So Bud calls the vote, and then it's announced 23 to 7. Rob wins. And Reinsdorf could not understand. His look to me — I've never been looked at that way by anyone in my life, in my life, the way he looked at me.
--:-- Pablo Torre: That's the story of how Rob became commissioner.
--:-- David Samson: That's what happened with Jerry.
--:-- Pablo Torre: "Have you no shame."
--:-- David Samson: That's what it was. Apparently I don't.
--:-- Pablo Torre: One of the reasons why we have become close friends is because your stories are not merely, "here's a war story from a thing that happened." It's the strategy. We're talking franchise swaps. We're talking power plays that catch people by surprise. Everyone is surprised except for you. You found the way to play by the rules and get the outcome that you were fighting for.
--:-- David Samson: I learned it from George Steinbrenner, by the way. George Steinbrenner told me, and this is one of his mantras, is don't be upset with me for what the Yankees do because I don't break any rules. It's like what Balmer tries to say, except Steinbrenner — other than when he got suspended and when he hired people and all that. Other than the stuff that enabled me a fruitful childhood as a Yankee fan. Outside of all the things that got him famously punished and suspended from the game. I would say, other than that, he's nothing like Balmer. But the point being, he always said, "Listen, I'm going to play by the rules." And you take your revenue sharing — he was so angry when we beat his team in the World Series because he felt like the players beating him were the players he paid. He would sit in the suite at Pro Player or Yankee Stadium and we would spend time, and the players he paid because of the luxury tax.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Revenue sharing.
--:-- David Samson: Revenue sharing. One of the letters that I have framed that I don't talk about much was the letter of congratulations from George when we won. And I felt like it got signed with blood.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Did it also end with, "Have you no shame?"
--:-- Pablo Torre: It might as well, though. By the way, so I'm like — we're taping this before Game Three of Yankees-Red Sox. And I've been watching the Yankees towards the end of the season, especially, closely. And one of the things that you told me when we were just on the phone, one of the rare times we've been on the phone — like the only time actually before this sit down that we've been on the phone talking. And I forced you to talk to me because...
--:-- David Samson: Thank you.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Dude, it's just — what I told you is what is now clear, I think, to everybody, which is that I genuinely love talking to you and I love hearing about what's in your head. And this has been a chapter of your life in which I think you lost confidence in that, and that I would feel that way. So you don't need to thank me. It's just, frankly, as always, a mixture of total self-interest for me because I think it's good, but also I was worried that you were behaving so differently. This is my very long way of saying that you were telling me about Giancarlo Stanton, your former employee, or in this case, according to George Steinbrenner's framework, one of his also.
--:-- David Samson: I love Giancarlo, and we go back a long way. He's a Yankee, and he wants a ring, and I want him to get a ring very, very badly. He's known my kids. He met my daughter when she was young, 12 years old maybe, and he's known Caleb since he was, I don't know, first grade. We drafted him, I want to say '09, and I want to say he was in the big leagues in '11, but I may have it — I probably have my years wrong. You forget as the years pass.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Yeah, he made the bigs in 2010.
--:-- David Samson: 2010, so yeah, he was sick. Caleb was seven years old. Anyway, I was speaking to him the way we do right before the playoffs start, where we have the same conversation each year: "All right, let's go. It's ring time right now." And this conversation was very different when I spoke to him about what was going on in my life. Some things are just more — all of a sudden things are more important. And it was the day where Stanton hit his 450th home run against the Orioles.
--:-- [Sound of a home run call: "The 2-2. Fly ball deep right. Jackson back on the track. At the wall. See ya! A three-run home run over the high scoreboard. And the Yankees are on the board 3-0."]
--:-- David Samson: He hit a home run in the first inning, and my daughter and I were watching. It was from the hospital.
--:-- David Samson: And she smiled at the home run, which was amazing. Because she doesn't even like baseball. She hates that I'm in baseball, hated it growing up, hated the attention.
--:-- Pablo Torre: It took you from them.
--:-- David Samson: It took me from them, always. So it's always associated with that. And I just texted Giancarlo: "Hey, why can't you hit like 162 home runs? Because if you're thinking of people and sending love and hitting a home run, can't you think of someone different every night?" To explain what happened: Giancarlo Stanton does the Babe Ruth thing. He does the thing in the movie where a sick young person has inspired him to win one for the Gipper. And I just thought to myself, as president of the team, why didn't I line up 162 sick people? Forget worrying about sliders down and away and a one-two count. Just line them up.
--:-- Pablo Torre: [Laughs]
--:-- David Samson: He laughed. I get it. It's so ridiculous. But you think — now I went back into my president's mode for a hot second. And you're like, wait a minute. What if I held Giancarlo Stanton emotionally hostage with an unending series of sick children? Could this be the new Moneyball?
--:-- Pablo Torre: It can't be. It can't be that that was in your head. It just can't.
--:-- David Samson: But of course it is.
--:-- Pablo Torre: That story in a nutshell is a reminder of two things. One is that you are always you. But the second thing is that who you are, we've really pressure tested. And the thing that I keep thinking to myself as you sit there and fiddle with the labels that say "control" on them — has that always been there?
--:-- David Samson: I don't know. I'm sure it has been.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Is that you are, for those who are wondering, at your core — Levinhard likes to say you're a bunch of wires and circuitry and all that stuff. You're a f***ing dad.
--:-- David Samson: I'm a dad. And I never thought — am I that cliche that it takes something bad to be... I mean, am I the guy who on my deathbed is going to say I shouldn't have worked so much? I don't think I'm going to be that. But I'll tell you, it's control. It keeps coming back to that, and I don't want this to sound wrong.
--:-- Pablo Torre: No, no, no.
--:-- David Samson: I can't make it better. And when I make things bad, it's on purpose. When I am stirring it or when I am trying to accomplish something that people may not realize that I'm trying to accomplish, I get that I'm that way and I'm fine with being that way. It doesn't bother me. You can call me whatever names you want. The situation I'm in now that I can't wrap my arms around is when I'm in the hospital, I want to be out of the hospital. When I'm not in the hospital, I want to be in the hospital. And I've always been someone who's so happy and comfortable where I am. Always. I've just always loved whatever I'm doing because that is the ultimate in how selfish I am. I'm always doing what I want to be doing.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You get to choose.
--:-- David Samson: That has been my principle. You working to get to the point at which your life is one way and now on September 12th, it's another. 6:42 p.m. God. That was that. And there's no other "that" to be had. You have tried for your entire life to transcend and optimize, avoid, account for, deliberately win the game against the human condition. And you are stuck not in control of what happens to one of the people that you would give everything to help.
--:-- Pablo Torre: It doesn't mean I'm going to stop.
--:-- David Samson: So that's the other issue I have is I'm not giving up the thought. My assumption is that I have no control because I haven't found the right path. So what I spend my days and nights doing is figuring out, "Okay, that's not it. Dead end. Next. Okay, that wasn't it." And so I'm going to keep going and I can't stop. So it's causing me to be tired and grumpy and to transfer anger that I have towards something that I shouldn't be angry about because what can I do?
--:-- Pablo Torre: The guy that's just trying to sell you some smoked fish, man.
--:-- David Samson: Right. And also like and subscribe.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Do you know Pablo Torre? If you would have seen me at Sables that day, you would not have believed what happened that day.
--:-- David Samson: Oh, man. 20 people online fighting over the last bit of herring. Ahead of the holiest day of the year.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Do you know Pablo Torre? [Laughs]
--:-- Pablo Torre: John Skipper just texted: "Are we taping yet?"
--:-- David Samson: Oh, no.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Did you not qualify? Wait, does anyone work for you?
--:-- David Samson: Dude. I can't with you. You tell me you do things. I don't want to, whatever.
--:-- Pablo Torre: John, I am — sources close to the situation tell me that John Skipper has been informed that we're doing a very different episode than the one originally planned.
--:-- David Samson: Can I give you one more thing to think about?
--:-- Pablo Torre: What you got?
--:-- David Samson: Do you know I didn't know the number of episodes you had done on Balmer until our friend at Sable said, "Wait, are you recording number six?" And I paused by saying, "I'm sorry." He said, "Well, there's been five episodes, and now are you taping a sixth?" Think about that for a minute when he's surrounded by lunatic people trying to get food before the fast. So I was thinking about the way you are with Balmer, the way you are with investigations, the way you've built this show. And I need you to teach me because you have to, as an investigative journalist, run into dead ends. You have to run into, "Okay, that wasn't right. That's not right." What happens? Do you ever run out of the path?
--:-- Pablo Torre: Of course. I think the thing—
--:-- David Samson: Do you drop the story then?
--:-- Pablo Torre: Well, this is — I'll tell you, it's such a good question. And my staff sometimes laughs, I think, at what my solution tends to be, which is when you try really, really, really, really hard at something, and it's a dead end, the question I ask is: is that attempt to try really, really, really hard that doesn't come up with the thing you want — is that attempt now part of the story?
--:-- David Samson: To you, everything's part of the story, though, no?
--:-- Pablo Torre: I've come to realize that that's my way of making peace with this.
--:-- David Samson: I'm not at peace, Pablo.
--:-- Pablo Torre: No, and you shouldn't be. You really shouldn't be. And the way that — look, as far as I can tell, as someone who loves you, the way to think about this, and not that I've ever gained the credibility to talk or advise on this — but the way that I see you intuitively living your life in the way that unsettled me and jarred me and made me afraid is I think exactly what you should be doing, which is inefficiently and hellishly and unrelentingly stopping the other shit that you prefer to do to be a dad.
--:-- David Samson: It's the — can you imagine the failures I've had as a dad? This is the monster of all failures.
--:-- Pablo Torre: I mean, I'm going to be the person who says the obvious, which is that of course this isn't your failure. I mean, it's — but that's if you're a consequentialist. You're a consequentialist. So we had dinner — you, me, Liz, Cara — in August or whenever it was that we were together, and we talked about consequentialism and how for you, drunk driving is something that you don't grade on a curve. What was the outcome? Someone dies. That to me is it. It's not manslaughter. I mean, the legal code doesn't agree with me, but I'm a consequentialist in that way. But there's a concept in law called the eggshell skull, which you may be familiar with.
--:-- David Samson: I am not, although this feels like a thing that I should be.
--:-- Pablo Torre: Yeah. So if I tap you on the head and it crushes your head, but I didn't realize that it would crush your head — it crushed your head. It's called the eggshell skull. I'm still liable for that. That is still a crime of a different level. Even if I argue, "Well, wait a minute. When I touch everybody like that, they're all fine." You find your victims as they are. You're somebody who thinks that the eggshell skull defense is not a defense.
--:-- David Samson: I am. The people who drop stuff off overpasses on a highway is the example that I often use. It's fun. Just kids having stupid fun. You drop a little stone, you drop a penny, it goes through a windshield, and the car crashes and the person dies. That to me should be the end of your freedom.
--:-- Pablo Torre: And so when you think about your daughter now, all I want is for her to have health and freedom.
--:-- David Samson: I just want for her what I've had. That's the train I want to make. I want to take it from her because if we were doing a show because I was sick, I tip my cap and say, "My God, I've done a lot. I've had the most fortunate, amazing life." And I just don't want — I want her and I want my kids. I want people I love. I want you. I want people to have the opportunity to do everything they want to do. And I've had that opportunity. And the harsh reality is that opportunity ended September 12th. It just ended. And I don't have the path yet to have that return. As a matter of fact, I'm almost positive that there is no going back ever. There will always be a new path, but this path — it's so dark to me, triple entendre — that I can't see around the corner. I can't manufacture how to maneuver through it. I can't control the result of it. And it's so unsettling that I just have a permanent stomach ache. Anyway, I don't know what we were talking about.
--:-- Pablo Torre: No, we were talking about eggshell skulls.
--:-- David Samson: Yeah.
--:-- Pablo Torre: The consequences that you wish to prevent. The last thought I have is that how you do this, how you've been doing this, how you've been doing your career — strategizing, scheming, finding the ways to win — it just makes me think that even if the consequences are not controllable, guaranteed, any of that — it's hard to think of someone better to have leading their team. Your daughter has you doing your best. And I don't know if there's a better draft pick than David Samson. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, you're going to try everything. Every path.
--:-- David Samson: You're right.
--:-- Pablo Torre: It's not going to be because you didn't f***ing try.
--:-- David Samson: Thanks. I gotta go.
--:-- Pablo Torre: You gotta go. Alright, thanks. I love you.
--:-- David Samson: Love you too.
--:-- [Credits roll: "Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tuminello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bursick and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you."]
