 300,000 on the phone. On the phone. To a million in person in New York. Million in person. To three million as a 23 year old. You literally had a ball out game your senior year. First game. My first game. If I don't pitch that game, or I don't pitch well, someone looks at me, they never see me again and I just go on my way and I go to BYU as a student. I was told three times, if I don't sign right now, I'll never get drafted again. And I got drafted again all three times. The time serving as a missionary, and really when you dedicate yourself to anything, I think number one, you learn a lot more because you become, you're asked to be selfless. Football, soccer, golf, baseball, softball, lacrosse. And that's what custom cleats answers the question. How do you play your favorite sport and your favorite shoe? Right. You come to us. When we're not out there buying crazy things, except shoes. Shoes. But those are good, we can justify that. We ended up putting most of our money in real estate. Okay. And that's, I think that's a good investment. You need to be wise still. You can't just be careless. Oh my gosh. These right here, I mean, Tell them what it is. Tell them what it is for the podcast. These are the Sager ones. Craig Sager, Spike Lee came to a couple of games in which I pitched. Fire. And I got a chance to meet him and talk to him. Oh, that's fire. He signed this baseball for me. To my man, Jeremy Spike Lee. I love to let everybody introduce themselves, how they would like to. And then we're gonna get into all the details of everything and really break down the story. And you got a crazy collection, you got a good history. So go ahead. Cool. I'm Gregory Guthrie. I am from Ashland, Oregon. It's a youngster here from Oregon, back in my roots here in Portland. I'm married, been married 22 years. I have four children, 19 all the way down to two and a half, DJ, imagine that. Oh, we. So we run the gamut and family, love my kids, love my wife, so grateful for them. I was fortunate enough to play three sports in high school. I was a football, basketball and baseball player. Okay. Baseball was the one I was given a chance to play beyond high school. Okay. Pitched collegiately at BYU and at Stanford. Okay. And then I was eventually drafted and signed by the Cleveland Indians at the time in 2002. And I began on a 15 year professional baseball career. Okay. Retired in 2017. A couple highlights was pitching for Team USA in 2009 alongside Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones. And then winning the World Series in Kansas City as a member of the Royals in 2015. So, okay. Since then I've been retired. I do a lot of traveling. I get to go out and teach baseball throughout the world. And me and my good friend from college were business partners in a business called Custom Cleats. And we just stay busy. We hustle and enjoy life. But kind of that's me. That's things that I enjoy, things that are important to me. And I think another thing too, you didn't mention the church and all the other things that you do in a community. Absolutely, yeah. Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been a missionary twice, two years in Spain when I was 19. And then three more years in Houston from 2018 to 2021. And always continue to try to live your faith and share the goodness that is Jesus with everybody you come in contact with and build on common beliefs for those who maybe aren't Christians or have different beliefs. That's been something that's been very important to me throughout my life as well. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about everything because you have a lot of different elements to your life and success in different platforms, different areas. So I'm excited to hear all of it. But we always got to take it back to the OG times. So, Ashlyn Oregon, I went to Southern Oregon. Yeah, that's why I threw it out there. I knew you got the root stone. I went to Southern Oregon. I played college football there for a couple of years. But tell me, I'll paint that picture. What was it like growing up in little Ashlyn Oregon as a young grade school kid? Were you in the sneakers? What was the family lifestyle like? Did you know about finances? Like where did everything kind of lamp for you? Yeah, that's a great question. So I was actually born in Roseburg and I would say my love for sneakers began when I was about seven years old. My oldest brother, who's eight and a half years older than me was playing for Joe Lane Junior High School. So shout out to the Joe Lane pioneers, I think is their name. Although, forgetting already, I'm getting too old now. Forgetting details, but he was a freshman. They're red, white, and black. And their team rolled out on day one all wearing the Chicago colorway of the Jordan one. It was insane how much that is. I'd never seen this sneaker. I knew nothing about Michael Jordan probably to that moment. But I'm like, well, where'd you get those sneakers? And they all matched and they looked just beautiful on the court. And so within a couple of weeks, you better believe that I got my first pair of Air Jordan ones. Is this the pair? No, I wish it were. I was about to say that's cool. Sky Jordan though, which was dope. You know, you look at the Sky Jordan and you're like, man, someday I'll be big enough to wear an Air Jordan one. Wait, wait, okay. So tell them the difference between the Sky Jordans and the Air Jordan. Well, the Sky Jordan were the GS sizes. And I've talked to numerous people, as I'm sure you have over the years, like how do we not retro in the GS sizes, Sky Jordan? Like how are we rolling out Air Jordans and all the small sizes? But that's it. I mean, as far as I know, the only difference was it said Sky Jordan and like little kid like me is like, what kind of want the Air Jordan? Right, exactly. And you had to get big enough to get an Air Jordan. And I never owned an Air Jordan one until geez, but 2012, 2013 retro probably was the first time I ever actually owned an Air Jordan Chicago Callaway. But that's kind of where my love for sneakers started with my older brother playing that freshman year with the Air Jordan one. I ended up moving to Ashland and that was a great move for my family and I. My brother and I both played quarterback for the Ashland Grizzlies. And Ashland was a powerhouse in football in the 80s and 90s. At one point, this is crazy, DJ. When we were in Roseburg, the high school team went to the state championship in 1988, lost to Benson. 1989, my brother played on both these state, the state championship contending teams. 89, they lost to Lake Ridge. Okay. Shout out to Mike Miata's quarterback that dominated the Roseburg Indians that year. 1989 was the year between my two brothers. We played in the championship again, lost to Ashland. What? Next year, my brother's a sophomore. He punts for the team backup quarterback. They tie Tigard in the championship in 1914. 14, so they're co-champions? Yes, they're running ties. In the championship, how you do that? It was crazy. Tigard scored with like no time left. That's crazy. And the coach, legendary coach there, they met together and decided what he felt was best for his players was to get a share of the championship. And of course, no guarantee. You guys still gotta kick the field goal, but they made it. So we move in 1991 to Ashland from Roseburg. Same conference. We go to Ashland that year. They win the state championship against South Salem. Okay. My brother's a junior. Now he's a senior. They go to the state championship again. They lose to Marshfield in his senior year. They're up 21-70, throws a pick six before the half, 21-14 into the half, and Marshfield scores 28 unanswered and beats them. The next year is between my brother and myself. I know this gets crazy. Ashland plays North Medford in the state championship. Loses to North Medford. So now eight consecutive years, the city we've lived in has played in the state championship for football. I get to be a sophomore. We lose in the first round. My junior, we lose in the second round. My senior, we lose in the second round. And I never get to see the championship game. But football was kind of our life. My dad played college football at Southern Oregon College as it was back in the day. Now Southern Oregon University. My oldest brother was an all state safety and punter. My other brother was a second team all state quarterback. I was, I don't even know what I was. I was probably an honorable mention quarterback. Joey Harrington was the same year as me. Okay. You know, friend of the show, friend of DJ. And so- Did y'all know each other then? No. The first time I ever met Joey was in 2002 at Stanford. He was playing in the college Shriners All-Star game. Okay, okay. And I had, you know, I obviously knew all about him. At this time, like he's big dog. Oh yeah, he was. He was Joey Heisman. Now he wasn't Joey Harrington. He was Joey Heisman. He was number three pick overall to the Titans that is. And so I went up and introduced myself and got a chance to meet him. And he had that same kind of passion that you're used to seeing when he does an interview. Like, what's up? That raspy voice. I was like, my buddy was like, did you just talk to Joey Heisman? How was it? They said it just like he is on camera. Like it was awesome. Right. And so, yeah, football, the point is is football was kind of the story of my youth. I played basketball. I love it. I played baseball. And basketball, I just, our team was not very good. Hiko Hoop a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. We played together. That's right. But that's kind of, my life as a youngster was pretty much football. And I loved it. It made me better. You know, young kids today, I feel like they should play all sports. Being a football player definitely helped me be a better basketball player, a better teammate, a better athlete just in general. And both of those made me a better baseball player. And baseball was the career that I was able to pursue later on in life. But without what I learned in basketball and football and just the strength I gained from doing different exercises and different movements. And then the camaraderie and the things you learn about being a good teammate and just a good elite athlete in other sports, I think I know without football, without basketball, I would have never played professional baseball. Okay. You're a pro baseball player. You played for 15 years. Besides that part, what sport is harder? Football, basketball, or baseball? Cause there's always the great debate. I feel like some people say it's harder because baseball is more like a specialty sport. Football is more physical or basketball is like a finesse. So I want to hear what you think. Well, it just depends. I mean, football, it's more hard to survive. It's hard. People say, do you wish you played college football? And the answer, of course, is yes. The idea of running out in front of 75, 100,000 fans is unlike really anything you experience in baseball for the most part. But at the same time being six foot, I'm like, I probably would have died the first week I played college football. Wait, what position did you play? I was a quarterback, some six foot five guy running like a four, two, 40 was going to just clobber me and sit on me and smash me and break me in half. And so the more I think about college football, the more I'm kind of semi-grateful that I didn't get a chance to play because I still have all my limbs intact. And then I had like 100 concussions. And then basketball, I mean, you're just competing against the greatest athletes in the world and millions of them. And so is the sport of basketball necessarily difficult by itself? No, I mean, clearly you can be much better at the sport, but it's not terribly difficult. And you can be pretty good. And there's a ton of really good players. But to be elite, to be a division one player and then an NBA player, that's extremely difficult. I think that the percentage of that happening is so low. It's like, you know, so what's more difficult? Football is probably more physically challenging. Basketball is probably more statistically challenging. Like, can you make it as you compete against people from all over the world than just the elite of the elite athletes? People are taller than you, run faster, jump higher. And then, you know, baseball, as you said, is more specialty in some ways. But baseball is just fun. Baseball is American. Like you go out there and you do it in the summertime. It's warm. That's the thing about football, like you don't see people just like playing football for fun. Like you can see some people going around, like swinging the bat for fun or like definitely hitting the basketball court. The basketball court is the easiest thing for people to get together and go do even like unorganized, you know? So it's kind of interesting like here in the different perspectives when people talk about the different sports because I played them all as well. And I'm like thinking about it like, man, which one would be the one? But so, okay. Pitching during that time. You're now in high school. Okay. So you started, when did you start baseball? I started baseball like most kids, T-ball age. Okay. So you were playing the whole time. Five, six years old. Yeah, I played all three of them really my whole life. Okay. And then you got to high school and you still played all three sports? I did. Okay. So at what point did you like get to the point where you're like, okay, I'm good at baseball. Like I got scouts reaching out. I might be going to a college now. Yeah, super late bloomer. Okay. So I think throughout my young childhood I could always throw the baseball hard. And I was one of those kids that generally was, you know, the top two or three hard throwers, which, you know, when you're young means everything. If you throw the ball hard, you know, people are scared of you and they can't hit you as well. Yeah. But when I got to high school, my sophomore year, I didn't pitch a whole bunch. We had upperclassmen who were really good pitchers. I was a third baseman and my coach didn't even want me to pitch on JV. So I just was more of a backup pitcher on varsity. Okay. And maybe start a few games here and there at third base. And then junior year I hurt my back. And so I didn't pitch very much junior year either. So what happened during that time? Like how'd you hurt your back? I would just, you know, it was a weird freak accident. I don't even remember exactly. I think I was, I don't know if I was hitting or pitching but just kind of a, you know, a tweak in the lower back. And it hurt all through the summer. And my biggest concern was I was going to miss my football season because I couldn't put any weight on my shoulders. I couldn't do any squats. I could run. That was about the only movement I could do. But the moment I put weight on or did sharp movements laterally, it would shoot a sharp pain in my back. And I went to a lot of different people to try to figure out what it was. It just kind of disappeared. Like just a lot of prayers and a lot of faith. And just hoping that somehow like the healing hand of God would come and bless me before I could, before my senior year would start. It literally happened to me. Like one morning I woke up and I felt better. I got out of bed without pain. I'm like, I think it's gone. And so I, you know, kind of eased into the day. And by the end I was kind of like jumping a little bit and doing things like that otherwise would have caused a lot of pain coming down out of the air. Would always kind of shock my back and it was gone. And I haven't felt it since. So when you first got hurt, did you have like that? It's all over type feeling? Like how did you feel? No, I actually thought it was going to pass fast. You know, cause I'd never been hurt in any way before. So I just thought, oh, this is just a little back pain, no problem. And that it persisted that whole junior year of baseball my spring and it never went away. And my bats got fewer and farther between. I never pitched again the rest of the year. And then I'm like, okay, well baseball's over. So hopefully it'll go away now. Cause I'm just going to start doing some football activity and a little bit less aggressive. So you're kind of more passionate about football at that time? Yeah, oh yeah. Cause that's what our high school is known for. We were, as you heard, right? We were in the state championship regularly and we had a great coach, Jim Nagel, who was the most legendary coach, you know, for me in Oregon high school football, sure there's a lot of people that combat that, but that was our, that was just our school. Like our little town of 17,000 people who would just rally around the Ashland Grizzly from September until November. Like right now we're in the thick of it, right? Yeah. I don't know when this will air, but it's November here in Oregon, playoff football everywhere. Yeah. They pushed the season up earlier or something, didn't they? Did they really? I heard the championship was like way sooner than it was. I know it's about on schedule this year. This week is semifinals. Okay. And so next week will be. I heard they like cut a week or something like that. No, they didn't. This is exactly, cause it was always right around Thanksgiving. Cause we were always like, we were always battling between all we got Thanksgiving, but we also have the state championship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. I was going to the same day playing football and they were like having to go to winter practices and everything. And you went to. I went to Grant. Grant, that's right. Okay. Yeah. It was kind of nice. We were solid. We should have won a state, but we didn't. So it's all good. Who'd you lose to? Who was your last game? We ended up losing to Jesuit. Okay. So when I played Jesuit, it still wasn't like a powerhouse. Right. They were, you know, they would make the playoffs most years, but never, never really advanced super far. And then I came back in the early 2000s. That's when they started turning into it. All of a sudden they were the school, right? Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. Cause I graduated in 2010. So I was like that 06 to 2010 era of like athletes and sports. So yeah, I was just wondering because I remember I tore my ACL my sophomore year and I kind of went downhill a little bit when it came to like academics and stuff. I was really focused on sports. And I was like, man, I'm not even going to be able to play sports. And I started messing up like in school a little bit. And then cause I had to have the surgery, do all the things with the whole process. And it was just messing me up a little bit. And then I had to get my mind back right. Like, hey, once I get through the surgery and recover and all this stuff. So it took me like a cup, I guess I would say about half of the school year, the first half of the school year I just messed up my grades. Then I had to like recover my junior year. Well, I think that goes a little bit back to what I talked to the kids a lot about is, you know, as much as I loved baseball and played baseball my entire life really, even today I still play baseball. I still pitch with the Savannah bananas when we come back to that. But I don't know that I ever really identified myself as a baseball or a football or a basketball player. I was Jeremy and maybe more importantly, above all, I was, you know, my faith taught me that I was a son of God and that was my identity. And the things that I enjoy doing, the talents that I had to be able to play sports or do other things in my life, those were just parts of who I was, but they weren't me. And so I think what you may have experienced or a lot of people experience is when the one thing that you identify as, whether that's a football player or a musician or whatever it might be, if that thing gets taken away from you due to injury or otherwise, then yeah, life is really hard. And there's a lot of mental anxiety and stress and emotion that can go into it. And naturally when we have stressful situations, we respond a little bit differently. And we learn through those experiences as you did, like, okay, I reacted a certain way. I don't want to be self-destructive. Something that I love was taken away, but I can learn from this. And the next time I go through something hard, hopefully I don't make decisions that cause either regression or even pain or mistakes. But I think that's one thing that is important to me is help athletes, hopefully recognize they're more than just an athlete. And that's not to take away, that doesn't mean they're gonna work less or they're not gonna dedicate themselves as much to what they're doing. But it does mean that there's a balance in their life or maybe better said, a harmony. Cause balance is a unique word, right? You can never really balance life. Like you're never gonna be able to give the same amount to everything. But find the harmony where you're not just sleep, eat and the third thing. There has to be something more to you. And I believe that's a really healthy lifestyle and that will help one navigate life much better than to just identify as one particular thing because inevitably that one thing will be taken away at some point in your life and it can be really, really hard. Yeah, yeah. That was definitely like a little moment for me. I was like, man, all right. I think, I guess I would say like the kind of like saddest time during high school, during that window, just cause I'm like, man, everybody get to go out. Like I'm stuck at the house, like trying to get my knee to go 90 degrees. Like I can't even do the, you know, all the basics. Like this stuff is, I had got my license. I was 16, like I had just got my license. I had to have surgery next week. So I'm like, I can't even drive. Like just everything was just like getting taken away. It was just like, it was just bad. That's rough. And that's every, you know, any young man, young woman that's 16 has that taken away would go through the same exact thing you were saying. Yeah, but I don't know, I learned a lot from it. Okay, so during this time, was you getting fresh in school or what? Or was you kind of still trying to figure it out when it came to sneakers and everything? Cause this was like, what? This for you would be in the 80s? No, this was the 90s. Oh yeah, yeah. No, you tried that. You tried to date me like an 80 year old here. Cause I was thinking it would be like 89 or something like that. But that would be like 90, like two or something. Yeah, so my earliest sneaker memories, I've already shared the first one, right? Was all about the year of Jordan one and it ended up getting the sky Jordan. The next pair of J's I got was a five. I got a black metallic five, had the pictures from sports illustrated put on my wall. I used to sit there and smell that kind of that glue smell on the clear outsole. I mean, that was, you know, I mean, if you are my age and you saw the air Jordan five for the first time, that clear outsole just blew your mind. No, for sure. And it had a different smell. And I think I was licking them even before fat Joe was licking shoes, like, like, what is this all about? And so that was my second pair. And I was now in seventh grade. Those tour and I did with every young kid back in the day at least in Oregon did was what happened when your J's tour. You sent those bad boys in and you got yourself a new pair. So my fives tour, I sent them and I got a pair of Raptor sevens. I bawled out in seventh grade and Raptor sevens, which by far are the worst basketball shoe ever made on this earth. Like, I don't know how Michael Jordan won a championship in the seven, but those little circles on the bottom provided zero traction. I would just slide all over the court. But I was the kid that at time outs was getting the water bottle or a towel and wiping my shoes off where people had been stepping on my shoes. If a cat stepped on my shoe in the middle of a play, like I almost would stop the play and like clean the shoe before I went back down. So I would be cleaning my shoes and doing all that. And then I really didn't get another Jordan until the 11. So I went five, seven, four years off, bought the 11. My last ever basketball game in high school. I wore the Concord 11. I actually wore two different pair of shoes. That's so crazy. That's what I wore. I would love it. I wore five points and two rebounds and got beat by 40. But I went out in style looking good. That's so funny. I remember when that just made me think of the time. Remember on the football fields, it was like astroturfing stuff back in the day? Oh yeah. Like them terrible. Oh yeah. You guys were playing at Civic Stadium. Yeah, like all that stuff. So we would be playing in those different stadiums and you would see like on TV, like guys wearing like basketball shoes, like in football games. Oh yeah. I remember I wore like OG bread 11's. Like in one of my football games as a kid. Like it was like the little championship game. That's funny thinking about that. Okay, so you getting any kicks? What's up with like money? Did you have a job? Was you kind of just trying to figure it out? I did have a job, but not a whole bunch of time for it. So that's why I didn't have a bunch of shoes. I think my parents bought me the fives. I flipped the fives into seven. So that was, you know, no cost to me. The 11's I actually got at a value village. My best friend, Matt at the time calls me down and he's like, hey, I'm in Medford at the value village. And I think those shiny Air Jordans you like so much, they're here on sale, like 70 bucks. I said, grab every pair there is. I was just one. I said, grab it. Guard it with your life. I'll be there in like 35 minutes. And it happened to be your size. It was a 12, but I squeezed it in, of course. Yep. So I ran down to the store, picked up the Jays. So even those were pretty inexpensive. But I was the kid, you know, my older brothers had had a couple pair of Jordans. So I would borrow them. My oldest brother had those ones that he wore in junior high. And so I would wear those every now and again. But honestly, I was the kid, the funniest part about my whole youth is, as much as I like sneakers, I was the kid wearing flip flops every day to school. My mom's from Hawaii, Papa Holly. Like I literally just wore flip flops every single day. So I would randomly shock the little, you know, wearing an Air Jordan 4. My brother had an OG pair of fours. The OG ones, I'd wear some of the other stuff. I picked up the 11s, but most of the time you just saw me in flip flops. So T-shirt shorts and flip flops was my skit all the way till the day I graduated. So as much as I love sneakers, admittedly, like I was not even, I was not bringing my sneaker games on. Yeah, because shoes are all when you got to BYU though. I did. It was cold there. It was cold at BYU. I was not a very good representative of a sneaker head in the high school. Just on the court, I was decent. Off the court, I was terrible. Right, right, right. Okay, so you got scholarship offers for just baseball? Yeah, just for baseball. Senior year? Yep. And was it multiple schools or was it just BYU? That's a good question. So, you know, I said I didn't pitch much before. So I didn't get on the radar for baseball until my senior year, my very first game. There was a scout there to watch a teammate of mine. Okay. And he had had a great high school career up into that point. So they thought he was gonna go, you know, maybe in the first five to 10 rounds, maybe even higher, I guess. And they came to watch him and they saw me. And they're like, oh, we like this guy too. You know, I threw 92 miles an hour, all because of football. You know, you throw the football all day long, you develop a really good arm strength. And so they saw me pitching and they said, well, we should watch you too. And so my interest or interest in me as a baseball player began in March of my senior year, which is really late. And you tell a kid today who might be watching this, like, yeah, I didn't give, no one even knew who I was until I was 18 years old, my senior year. They would say, you got no chance to go to college, no chance to ever get drafted. Well, both happened to me. And so last minute I was offered a scholarship to go, I was already gonna go to BYU. I was now offered a scholarship to play baseball. Oh, that's close. In August. So yeah, I just was like, oh, here we'll give you money. I said, well, I'm coming anyway. August right before the school year. August, literally like weeks before school was when I was offered a scholarship. Wow. How did that go? Like, you already packed up and like about to be ready to go out there. Yeah. Well, they just kept calling me. The thing that was on their mind was I had been drafted by the New York Mets. And so that whole summer, the Mets, I was. Okay. So you got drafted by the Mets out of high school. Yeah. Okay. When I was, so three months after that whole first time that someone saw me. You literally had a ball out game your senior year. First game. My first game. If I don't pitch that game or I don't pitch well, someone looks at me, they never see me again. And I just go on my way and I go to BYU as a student. So that game basically kind of like changed the trajectory of everything. Oh, absolutely. So you had a ball out game. Now you got drafted by the Mets. How does it, how do you even like prepare yourself mentally for all that? You're like, yo, I'm getting drafted. I'll go to the MLP like, what's going on? You know, I think ideally I was still really focused on school. So that was important to me. I had a couple of goals I wanted to be. I wanted to be a valedictorian of my class and I was able to do that. There was eight of us who had 4.0 GPAs. And so kind of that's what I was talking about earlier, right? Like don't just become one thing. Like I remember the surprise on some of my classmates faces when I showed up to the meeting, they call, you know, they sent us all a letter saying, hey, you're a valedictorian. Congratulations on all the hard work you've put into. We'd like to invite you to speak at graduation. We're gonna invite all of our valedictorians to speak. Will you please come to a meeting? We'll talk about it. And so I remember I showed up to that meeting and the other seven students, I think maybe one of them had an idea, a good friend of mine, Jessica, she probably knew. But I think the other six had no idea, right? To them, I was just, I was just the guy wearing flip-flops, playing football, basketball, baseball, and acting the fool all around campus all the time, right? But I showed up and that was one of the more kind of fulfilling moments of my youth. I walked into that meeting and just sat down, didn't say a word and like, you know, they're kind of chatting and they kind of looked at me as though I was in the wrong place. And I remember to sit and I was gonna play this out. And so I sit there for a few minutes and I started asking them questions, like, hey, how's everything going? What's your plans next year? You know, what are you gonna do this summer after you graduate? And they'd kind of answer it and then they'd kind of like go back to themselves. And I could tell they were like uncomfortable because I was there. And finally one of them had the guts, like, hey, Jeremy, like, we're gonna have a meeting here in a couple of minutes. And I'm like, oh, that's cool, that's cool. And I could just tell us like, you know, you need to get out of here. I said, what's the meeting for? And they said, well, it's for graduation. We're gonna talk about a few things that we're gonna be doing at graduation ceremony. I said, that's cool. And so I just stayed there like, well, yeah, like this meeting is just for valedictorians. I said, perfect, man, I'm in the right spot then. And they're like, what, what? You're a valedictorian? I said, yeah, you mean like straight A's? Yeah, I'm in the right place. And I was wondering if I was in the right place. And they just started kind of like shaking their head at that point, you know, then came the teacher and she's like, okay, thanks, you all for coming. And she knew I belonged in that moment. And so that was fun. Like that's what I remember. That's one of my highlights of high school when it's all about not just being one thing. Try to be more than, try to be well-rounded. Try to be engaged in everything and recognize that everything leads to another opportunity. Like if I didn't get good grades in high school, I would have never ended up as we'll talk about later on at Stanford. But because I worked hard and got good grades, I was able to have a chance to pitch at one of the best universities, both academically and baseball-wise in the entire country. And that only was a result of the hard work I put in high school in the classroom. So you get a call and they're like, we think you could be drafted. This is all about to happen. Like how did the process go? Like with your family and everything. Your brothers had already been off to like college. Yeah, brothers were already in college. One was playing football right there for the Raiders. Today's partner is Sneaker Throne. They have multiple options when it comes to durable and high-quality display cases. One of my personal favorites is the Dropside Display Case. I'm a size 13 and I can easily fit my shoes inside of here and have hundreds of these stacked throughout my rooms to display my sneakers. When it comes to the cases in particular, you have four different color options, clear, black, white, and red. So if you're looking at grabbing one of these for yourself or for someone else, make sure you guys check out sneakerthrone.com and don't forget to use the discount code DNASHOW at checkout for 10% off for all your orders. All right, let's get back to this podcast. In Ashland, we were actually seniors. I think we were both seniors at the same time. And he played with coach Helfridge. Mark, who was the head coach for the Oregon Ducks. Mark and my brother actually split time as quarterbacks. One would start the first half, the other would start the second half. But yeah, I got drafted actually while I was in English class my senior year. My dad had a cell phone back in 97, which was pretty rare that anyone had a cell phone. He sent me to school with it. The thing rang in the middle of English class. I walked out and a team was trying to draft me. It was the pod raise. I actually said, no. They said, hey, we'll sign you right now. You have to agree to a 300,000 or $325,000 contract. If we draft you, we need an assurance that you'll sign for that. I'm like, man, I'm in English class right now. My English class teacher is about to kill me because I just walked out of her class with a cell phone. She's never even seen the cell phone. She's way too old to know what these things are. So I just like, hey, I'll give you a 300,000 right now. I need an answer right now. I said, my answer right now is like, no. Click, they hung right up on me and I'm like, shoot. I guess I'm not playing professional baseball. What? I walked back into class and my teacher took the phone and she actually threatened and she's like, I'm not gonna give you an A. I know your goal is to be a valedictorian. I'm taking that A away. Did you tell her what happened? I told her and I think she's a good friend now, a good family friend. We went to the same church and after a few years, I've kind of figured out what it was because she had no idea. No one really had any idea really. Especially like coming out of there like, what's going on? So I ended up getting drafted by the Mets that afternoon and they didn't call me. Same day. Yeah, the same day. So they actually just drafted me without telling me. The pod race, because it was a higher, it was the third round. I guess they wanted to talk to players first and get the assurances like, hey, if we use this pick, will you sign with us? Whereas at 15th round, Ryan ended up getting drafted, the Mets are like, listen, at 15, we hope he signs, but if he doesn't, it's not going to kill our draft. And so they didn't call ahead of time. It has called me and left a message like, hey, New York Mets, Jim Reeves of the Mets, we selected you as our 15th pick in the draft this year. We'll talk to you later and begin negotiating. So what did they offer you? They offered me. Well, when it all came down to it's a great story. They flew me to New York and... School's not over yet. Like you still got classes. No, now school's over. Okay, so you graduated. The draft happened like one week before graduation. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, so now I've played my whole summer up in Washington. I played for a team called US Bank in Edmunds, Washington just north of Seattle. And the Mets are talking to me, BYU baseball is now talking to me. And then kind of going back to what I said earlier, like the scholarship was offered because there was an alternative on the table. So BYU baseball knew that if I didn't, that if I was being offered a contract, maybe that would be more enticing. And so they felt like, oh, we got offered him as a good scholarship. So that he feels like if he comes here, it's also beneficial. And in reality, it didn't come down to the money. Necessarily it was what I felt was right in my heart. And I had had experiences that had just let me know kind of what my path in life should be and decisions and things that should be important to me. And one of those things was being a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ in the blood of the saints. And I felt that without any doubt in my mind that I had felt a confirmation from the spirit that that's something I should do, that that would be pleasing to God that I believe in and that it would bless people's lives and ultimately help me in different aspects of my life. Probably not baseball, but I didn't know what it was. I just knew that's what was right for me. And so when I flew to New York, I sat there with Steve Phillips. He was the general manager at the time he now works for MLB Network. And he knew a little bit about me and about my faith. And he asked questions like, what's it gonna take? What are your goals in life? What do you wanna do? And we were having a conversation. And at one point he's like, well, listen, what is it gonna take for you to pass up the time as a missionary that you wanna do when you're 19 to start your baseball career now at 18? And I'm like, man, I don't know. I kind of told him a story about a guy that had signed a million dollar contract a year before me and had been permitted to go serve his mission. And he was in Japan at the time. His name was McKay Christensen. He was out of Southern California. He was also a baller football player. But I'm like, That's funny. Sorry, I'm talking real quick. I see a lot of baseball players that are like really good in either basketball or football. Like they'd be sleepers and you go hoop with them or play football with them, they're nice. But backwards never, right? Like you never find like football players in baseball. Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. They're a basketball player. I mean, you throw the best basketball players in the world out there on a baseball field and 99 out of a hardware be looking terrible. Yeah, but I think that's true. You're right. I knew in my heart that I was being called or asked or inspired to go be a missionary. And so I had kind of made up my mind, like, that's what I'm doing. And there's no amount of money. But I told him the story about how this one guy did both. And I said, I would like to do both. And he kind of shook his head. And he was aware of who the player was. Like, you know, that's just not possible. We're not going to be able to have you do both. But I had thrown out that number of million, I guess, because he had signed for literally one million dollars. And they said, go be a missionary for two years and come back to us at age 21. So the team signed it for a million dollars. Let him go. It's like, we'll see you in two years. Yes, exactly. And so I'm like, that's what I want to do. And the number doesn't have to be a million, but that's the idea. Right. And so I remember vividly Steve Phillips kind of paused and said, listen, we can't offer that deal. You're a pitcher. He's an outfielder. Like, you need to choose one or the other. Because if you don't play baseball right now, you're not going to get another chance to play. And so he looked at me across the table and he says, if we offered you a million dollars, would you pass up the chance to be a missionary and sign a contract with us and begin your professional career? OK. I sat there for a minute. I knew again, I had that kind of confirmation in my heart and in my mind, there was no price tag on passing up what I knew what I was supposed to do. And so I said, for a million bucks, I wouldn't pass it up. There's really no amount that I would pass it up. I want to go to college and I want to go be a missionary. So this all happens within a single year, months? Months. I go from a nobody who wants to maybe try to walk on for football to somebody who's recognized to a high draft pick, to a million dollar offer, to then saying no and going to college, all within three, four months. So I'm sure you had a lot of thought and that went into that process. Did you have people already at BYU that you had known? Or were you just kind of blindly just pulling up? No, I was blindly pulling up. I mean, my brother had gone to BYU and my dad and my mom were fantastic. Like they never put pressure on me. They would just kind of ask what I was feeling. But I mean, I'm a parent now. I don't even know how they did that because I would be all up in my kid's dish talking like, hey, you need to be doing this or that. I don't know how my parents did it. But credit to them, they're amazing in every way and that was just another evidence of that. But I was just doing this. I mean, I was asking for a lot of opinions and help from local leaders, coaches. I talked to my coaches. I talked to teachers. I talked to people from church who are really important to me. And obviously the advice was all over the map. Sometimes someone would be like, oh, maybe this, maybe that. And more than anything, it just was more confusing. The more people I talked to, that's why I tell kids all the time, listen, you can get a lot of advice from people. And it's important to listen and be humble and seek advice from mentors, parents, people you respect. But at the end of the day, like, you gotta believe it yourself. And you gotta know the answer for yourself. And whether that's you believe in a God or you believe in some other higher power or a spirit, like that's who needs to answer it for you. So for me, that definitely sounds like you learned a lot when it comes to like building a business and being organized and having a lot of things in line when it comes to that. You lock in and you become like just the master of a craft when it comes to something like that. So what would you say you, what'd you got from that? Yeah, no, I think the time serving as a missionary and really when you dedicate yourself to anything, I think number one is you learn a lot more because you become, you're asked to be selfless. You're asked to put other people ahead of you and other people's interest ahead of yours. And that's one of the biggest sacrifices of missionary service. But it doesn't require that you be a missionary to do that. Like each of us can work on being more selfless and thinking about other people first. And so I think that clearly is a breeding ground for learning and growing. And like you're saying, your time, my time serving as a missionary helped me in every aspect of my life. But I think really big takeaways that I take away from my time in Spain. Number one is I grew in my understanding of who I am in a faith and a God that I believe created me and has a plan for me. That's first and foremost. Beyond that, you learn a lot about organization. You set goals every single day on how you're gonna really run your day from even 30 minute increments. We had this little piece of paper we would print out and it would have every 30 minutes what we were gonna do. Like we're gonna go to this guy's house but on the way we're gonna stop by this person. We're gonna talk to 10 people on the way by just small things like that. So you learn about planning, goal setting which is extremely vital to be successful in any aspect of life. What I really feel though I learned the most about was that I learned about success. What you do as a missionary is try to connect with people, share with them messages of God that you believe in mutually and try to build one another's faith. And we were always inviting people to do things like maybe come and read their scriptures more or maybe pray more, go to church. Whatever it was, we wanted them to make decisions that would kind of ignite their faith. Exercise faith that they could grow and learn but it didn't always happen. But you wanted it to happen. And so I learned through service as a missionary how to better define success. Success John Wooden says is the peace of mind that is a direct result of the self satisfaction that comes in knowing you've done your best to become the best you are capable of becoming. And short of words it's do your very best to be the best you can be in that success. Regardless of the outcome and the world measures success typically by championships or amount of points scored or the amount of sales made or whatever it might be. The number of tickets sold to your concert, whatever field you might be in, that's success. But success I learned was doing what I could do the things I could control. And I could not control what people did. Everybody has their own agency or their own ability to choose. I could try to teach, I could try to inspire but at the end of the day it was their decision. And that was huge for me because as I got home and got into baseball, I learned quickly that I could do a lot of things and I could work hard but it didn't mean I could strike everybody out. Those guys had a bat in their hand and if they were better than me and they hit a home run off me, I had looked back did I prepare the best I could? Did I do all that I could do? And that helped me in my toughest moments and that's perhaps one of the greatest lessons I learned that's helped me as an individual, as an athlete, as a business owner, as a father, as a friend was that lesson about what success is. Yeah, I think learning to measure success in different ways has been a big thing for me over the past couple of years, especially like we're having the channel because I'd be like making videos just trying to get subscribers. That's what you do when you start, you know? You like want the monetary, oh, I'm gonna make X amount of dollars a month or like any for the money type thing. And then once I started seeing the impact of like meeting people in person and then telling me thank you for stuff, I was like, oh, this is like why I'm making these videos. Like let me measure my success differently. So now I don't even like care nearly as much as about the views, but I'm like, what is the impact? Like what are people saying in the comment sections? How is this helping people? What, you know, I should, I don't know if it's expect but I plan to see certain type of comments in certain types of videos, knowing like this is the type of impact I want to have and this is the results I was to see because of it. And then that's how I can measure like my success, seeing like, oh, when they say like, oh, this helped me so much or whatever, or like thanks for this or, oh, you just helped me do whatever, whatever may be on the topic, but that's kind of like how I have my new measurement now over the past couple of years. When I think that kind of authenticity that you're demonstrating now is, is what attracts people. Like the other stuff will come because you're that type of person that wants to just inspire people. And I see it all the time, like I see your work and it does. Number one, you have passion and number two, you're trying to really give people a broad look on life, not just one thing, just not just about all sneakers only, but you try to help people recognize other things. And so that's cool that you recognized early on in, in your career, like, listen, this isn't just about followers and this isn't just about dollars, likes, follows, whatever subscribers, it's about impact on people are impacted one by one. As much as we would like to impact a million people at once, if you impact just one person, that should be worth it to you. You should feel satisfied that you made a difference in one person's life and rest assured you're impacting a whole lot more than one, but really all it takes is one for it to be worth your time, my time, or anyone's time. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's just so much more satisfying too. Like, because like you said, being self is like, when you see other people thrive off of things that you know and you were able to teach that to somebody, not only is it that you're like becoming better at that craft, because once you can teach something, you know that you're good enough to do it. If you can teach it at a high level or teach it in multiple ways, because, and basically everything in life, you have like, somebody teaches somebody something, whether it's a lesson or whatever, but when you can like do that and say, hey, this is how you do it, okay, that didn't work for you, okay, I'll say it in a different way. And then this works and it like starts to stick with people, like that's when you feel like confident in your own craft at the same time too. So it's fun like making different videos and everything like that. Yeah, amen to that. So, okay, you come back to the States, you, what you doing? You haven't played ball yet, like what's going on? Yeah, so I got a really awesome opportunity because of my dad and my high school coach, they had reached out to Stanford University who had just lost in the championship game in the college world series to LSU, but they're like, listen, give this, give my son, give this player of mine a chance to come pitch for you. And so when I got home, I suddenly had this choice, am I gonna go back to BYU and pitch or am I gonna go to Stanford? And I think deep down inside, I knew what I wanted to do and that was to go to Stanford, but I went and visited both schools. I met the new coach at BYU since I had left, met the coach at Stanford and it was new. I knew within minutes where I was supposed to be. And so I transferred to go to school at Stanford not knowing what I had in the tank. Was that your first time like being down there in Cali? In California, no, but in that Bay Area right there. Yeah, I mean, by the way, if you've ever been to Stanford, it's amazing. Well, so I went to Foothill, like which is like right outside of San Jose. Of course. So like, yeah, I've been around areas. Cause yeah, I like it. It's an amazing place. So yeah, you get there and you're like, this is the place I want to be here. This weather is unbelievable. The baseball field was unbelievable. The program was incredible. And so I didn't know what I had in the tank, right? And I don't think they knew either. They just talked to Scouts who had seen me three years previous like, yeah, the guy was good back in 1997. We're now in 2000, but give him a chance. And so they did, thankfully. And I got back started hitting the weights as soon as I got home. I started running. I started playing catch for the first time in 22 months. And within just a couple of months, like, you know, nothing because of me. Just whatever reason, like all of a sudden blessings came down and I was able to throw the ball as hard if not harder. I remember the coaches one day said, hey, what pitches do you throw? I'm like, honestly, like a fastball. Beyond that, like I got nothing, I got nothing for you. Like I threw some other pitches three years ago, but they were garbage. And so they said, try your curve ball like this, try your slider like this, try to change it like that. I threw all three of them. They were all unbelievable. They're like, okay, use those pitches. I'm like, perfect. And so here I am, fresh off of two years being gone. I'm on a top 10 team in the country. I'm pitching well enough to be named a starter. I become the Friday starter over the next two years. I'm an all American twice. I'm a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award, which is the baseball Heisman Award, if you will. We play in the college world series both years. We lose to Miami and the championship in 01. We lose to Texas and the semifinals in 02. And after all of that, I get a great education. I meet incredible teammates and friends, many of which are doing amazing things right now. One of my teammates, Sam Fould, is the GM of the Philadelphia Phillies. Ryan Garco is a farm director for the Detroit Tigers right now. I'm probably forgetting others, but guys that have done big things, Carlos Quinton was an all star in the big leagues. These are teammates I had and other guys that are making these big, big impacts. Jed Lowry played, why didn't play with Jeb, but he came after me and he's from Oregon. So just incredible people. But what was I going with that? That eventually I just had this chance to be with all these great guys and to be able to get an education. And after all of that, I get drafted in the first round by Cleveland in 2002. So now that's five years after I was originally drafted by the New York Mets in 1997. So you went from like 300,000 offer. 300,000 on the phone. On the phone. To a million in person in New York. Million in person. To three million as a 23 year old. And I just tell kids all the time, listen, whatever someone in baseball tells you you can or can't do, they're wrong. Like only you know what you can accomplish. If you have your priorities straight, I was told three times if I don't sign right now, I'll never get drafted again. And I got drafted again all three times. And so granted, it's not the normal path. It's the road less taken than what I chose. But if you're good at something, if you have a passion for something and if it's God's will for you and you put him first, rest assured, I believe without a doubt that the right thing in your life will happen. And I'm grateful it did. And I don't think the story ends the same way for everybody that puts certain things first in their life. But I know it can. And so that hope that experience I had is what I share with people all the time and sign the contract in O2 and move on. But that was kind of how the whole returning back from Spain translated into a professional career. So again, this is like in months. Yeah. Like just like it was before, same thing again. Everything is just kind of fast. It's miracles. The day of miracles has not ceased. You can see a miracle in your life every single day. I think more importantly, you can be the miracle in someone's life. And so don't dare to dream big, dare to follow what you know is right and just trust in what happens. So, okay, you got back. What's up with the shoes though? You still rocking kicks? Oh yeah, the shoes. I'm not about the shoes. Funny you ask. When I got back to Oregon, or back to the United States better, said I ended up transferring to Stanford. I don't think I really picked up a shoe for about a year. I wasn't thinking about shoes so much. I was now dedicated. I had a ton of homework. And I'm dating my soon to be wife and I'm trying to catch up in baseball. But I do remember. Oh yeah, did you guys meet at Stanford? We met at BYU. BYU. Yeah, so we wrote letters for two years. When I got back, we dated for a new year. Oh, she's a real one. Yeah, absolutely. She's a real one. Jenny is the real deal in every sense. If you know her, you know she's my better three quarters. So it's amazing. I was at the mall, Stanford mall, athletes foot, and I walk into a store and I'll go check out the sneaker scene right now. And I think it was early 2002. And I don't know about for you, but when I was in high school, one of the shoes I dreamed of having was the Air Force, the Air Max Force. The Barclay shoe that he wore in the finals and that the Fab Five wore. I'll probably put on the mat more even than Barclay if that's possible. And I had never had this shoe. My buddy's brother had this shoe in high school and I tried to buy it from him. And then I walk in the store and boom, perfect retro of this Air Max. This is when it was way easier to capture you back in the day. Oh, so easy to walk right in. So I got to have that shoe. I bought it. To this day, I still have never worn it. Really? It's like a trophy to me. It was so nice. I should have bought like two pair. What? But... You still got it though. I got other ones I wear. But that exact one, I never wore that one. That's fire. That was the first sneaker I bought after, geez, almost probably like a three and a half year hiatus because even the year at BYU, I didn't buy any sneaker. That was just busy with life in school. But I bought that shoe and I was so happy. Isn't it so funny how like a shoe like that, like some people would be like, what is this? Who cares, right? But like, you can have all these samples and PEs and crazy rare limited shoes and be like, but you see that one and you're like, wow, that shoe changed the world. If you don't believe us, just go watch the Fab Five, the USPN films, Fab Five. Like that movie, I still watch that movie once a month. It just gets me going. Like seeing those images from Jimmy King and Jalen Rose. Man, I just, when you win Jimmy King, I think it's Jimmy is telling the story about how he has his hand on the heart of Chris Weber right there in the championship game in New Orleans at the Superdome, right after he's called the time on it. It's silent and I can just feel his heart beating. Right, right, right, right. And just trying to console him. He says, you know, at that point, it wasn't about winning championships. It was what Jalen Rose said. It was about helping out a brother, you know, a brother who was in pain. Like that, that film just gets me all kinds of emotional and it really teaches me what sport is all about and the impact that an athlete can have. I mean, those five guys and the credit of Coach Fisher, Coach Dutcher, like those dudes changed, I feel like they changed the world. Right, yeah. Those five people, those five athletes literally changed the game. So that sneaker is more than just a sneaker. That sneaker for me is cultural. It is evolutionary, it's everything. And on top of that, it looks amazing. No, for sure. Great design. For sure. So I don't even know who designed it. I probably should know who designed that shoe, but it's amazing. Okay, so you go to Cleveland? Mm-hmm. What's that like at the time, girlfriend? Is she coming with you, like, to go by yourself? By the time I got drafted and signed, we're married now. Okay, so you're got married. Yeah, we got married right after the College World Series in 2001, so this upcoming year we will celebrate 23 years. Fire, congrats. That's an important anniversary, right? Congrats, yeah. 23 is big in all aspects of life. And we're now married and baseball career begins in 2002, it starts in Winterhaven, Florida. It's a grind, like people, you know, young players that say, I want to play a professional baseball, like good for you, but like, it's not easy. Right. Go to these small little towns and a lot of games and you're with people from all over the world with different cultures and languages and you know, you're just thrown into the fire. And on top of that, you're competing for the same jobs. And so, you know, it's very much a dog eat dog world. The five guys next to you, the 10 pitchers on your team, all want the same job in the big leagues that you were. And so, it's a grind. My first four years were very, very up and down. Some really good highlights and some really, really tough low lights to the point where I think every player in his first couple of years probably thinks about quitting. I was no different, like this is, you know, is this worth it? The emotional stress, the time away, the grind and just getting beat up mentally and emotionally all the time. But Major League Baseball, like any sport, it weeds out the ones that aren't gonna make it and hopefully the cream rises to the top. But that was my experience. And I really was, I was in the minor leagues for the better part of four seasons before I ever really made it to the big leagues. Okay, so that's all I was about to ask you. Minor leagues, big leagues, all the different parts. I understand football contracts and everything. How does that work? Like you said, so you got drafted in the first round as a $3 million contract. How does that go? Like X amount of years, you started in a smaller team and you work way up, like how's it all go? For 99% of players, you sign a get a bonus when you sign to play baseball. And you are under the control of that team for about six years. Oh, okay. Yep, where they can do whatever they want with you. They can demote you, promote you. Okay. And then when you get to the major leagues there's six more years that you're in control of the team. Okay. And so in reality, a team can control you for around 10 to 12 years without you having any say where you go. So you could get $3 million and never play like in the major leagues. Oh yeah, oh geez, definitely. And there's a lot of us out there that that's the case. You know, given a big signing bonus and you never once make it to the big leagues but there is rookie ball, there is A ball, double A ball and triple A ball. And you have to get through all those levels to get to the big leagues. And once you get to the big leagues, you gotta stick. Right. Because it's much easier, right? Than it is in football. There's nowhere really to send anywhere other than practice squad or something. In baseball, if you're not good enough for a week or two they just send you back to the minor leagues and they call someone else up. And if that guy plays well, guess what? You may have missed your chance. At least with that team in that moment. And so baseball is really a grind that way. And the difference is, you know, the guys you see playing in the final four and on Saturdays in college football are the ones you're gonna see playing in the NFL. They're gonna get drafted and the first rounders are probably gonna start. We're gonna be right there in the cusp of starting. Whereas the best players in college baseball are going right to the minor leagues and some of them will be there for a lot of years before you ever see them. Really? Yep. Okay, okay. That's interesting. So how does the pay structure work for that? Cause I know like they switched it even with the NFL. How they go like the weekly and you could do like a whole year now and get paid every month. Baseball, you get paid bi-weekly, so twice a month. And pay has gone up in the past few years. There's been a lot of great baseball players and others who have fought for better pay for minor league players. Cause in the old days, a minor league player could make as little as 850 bucks a month, which is well below. That's like arena football. Well, it's even like, it's like lower than if you just went to any job and got paid by the hour. Because in theory, you're at the baseball field every single day from one o'clock until 11 a.m. So you're working 10 hour days. And you can't even Times 30. I have time to work another job. Yeah. So, you know, you're getting paid well below even minimum wage at times. You have to rely on that bonus that you got, which for some players is a few thousand bucks. Others it's a few million bucks. So, okay. So that's at the beginning. Yep. You get a bonus. The bonus is just a bonus. It's not really a contract. It's just a bonus. And then you get minor league pay. I don't know what the minor league pay is today, but it's much better than what it was when I played. Okay. And really the real money comes in the big leagues. Big league minimum is $750,000, I think this year. Okay. The average salary is probably in that two to $4 million range. So once you make it to the big leagues, yeah, you get compensated well. Gotcha. But until then, you know, you are more or less kind of fighting for a better life. So how many, you said you did four years before you got to the big leagues? Four years in the minor leagues. Okay. And then I broke in with the Baltimore Orioles in 2007 and pitched five years with the Orioles. Okay. Had a great time there. I love Baltimore. The fans there are amazing. One of the best stadiums in all of major league baseball. Incredible teammates. We were not a good team. We lost about nine. We were about 60 and 90 almost every single year, but it was a chance for me to make it into the major leagues, establish myself as a, you know, as a pitcher in the big leagues. And I'm super grateful that the Baltimore Orioles was my second team saw me as a pitcher that could help in the major leagues and gave me that opportunity. So, okay. So when you got that chance, what was like the new deal? What was the new contract? Well, I was released by the Indians after four years. And so I was picked up by the Orioles. I needed to make the major league team. If I did, I was gonna make a good major league salary. If I didn't, I was gonna be stuck in the minor leagues again. Gotcha. And so fortunately enough, I pitched well in spring training. They awarded me with the 25th roster spot, which is the last one. There's only 25 roster at those times. I got the last roster spot. And from there, pitched well and earned my spot on the team for those next five years before I was traded to my next team. Gotcha. Okay, so you were there for five years. Yeah, five seasons. Baltimore. Seven through 2011. Baltimore. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so the whole family is moving around as everything is going. Yeah, exactly. Family's getting bigger at the same time. We lived in Buffalo, New York. We lived in Akron, Ohio. We had my first. Sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I had a quick question. Are you guys interested in taking your shoe game to another level, but you just don't know where to start? I built a full program just for somebody like you. The six-figure sneaker head. It's an eight-week program that takes you through all the steps that you need to know. We have a full community where you can engage with everybody else that's going through the same program as you. Have monthly live meetups where you can connect with me and other members on the inside. And we set goals for each other and held each other accountable. Also, we give away a free pair of shoes every single month with different challenges. If this is something that's for you or you're looking to take your game to the next level or even flip your sneakers to turn that into real estate, this is the place where you need to be. I can help you with finding loans and remodeling properties and getting yourself on the right path to become a millionaire if that's something that you desire. If this sounds like something for you, hit the link down below in the description and get signed up today. This is more than just sneakers. I wanna see people grow and succeed in all aspects of life. Let's get back to the podcast. Child Avery, our daughter, when we were in spring training in central Florida back in 2004, our second son was born in the off season of 2006. And so he spent most of his life with the Orioles. And then our third child was born in Baltimore mid season. I actually delivered him after a game. Went into the hospital and my wife was induced and then our fourth child was born after I was retired. Okay, got you. So, what's I gonna ask you? I'll just start thinking about just being a father and a pro athlete with multiple children that have just made my mind run into another place. I guess you could talk about that more too. How did you go? Oh, yeah, yeah. I got the question now, but I asked you about the kids. So how did you balance being a father in and playing professionally, worried about your craft, but also still worried about your family and everything? Cause you could easily, you could put them to the side and just worry about sports or you could diminish your sports and worry about your family more and then lose your contract. And then now you gotta go find something else to do. Yeah, everyone does a little bit different. It's extremely challenging because your job is every single day for six months. What is unique about baseball is you have most of the day at home when you're there. So I would be with my kids until two in the afternoon and I would go to the field. So you had to, you know, things I did well sometimes, other times I didn't do well is you need to invest the time that you are there and being present. I think that's probably one of the big keys no matter what you do as a father or as a friend is try to be present when you're there. And like I said, for me, that's still something I'm trying to learn how to do, how to be there and not on a screen, not distracted by all the other millions of things that can take your time and energy away. That was one of my focuses, trying to do that. And then you try to engage and allow them to have the experiences with you. I think today, kids are welcomed to the field all the time. It was a little bit different as I was going, but I see players today have their kids at the stadium all the time all afternoon. That's really cool. And I pick and chose my moments to do that. But overall, if you're just aware of your family and try to make time for them and be present, I think that's the biggest key that I would ever share with anyone and something I hope to do better myself, even still today. Cause just cause I don't play baseball, doesn't mean I don't have a lot of things going on and it can still be distracted. And so you got to really think about what am I doing? Am I there with them? Am I talking to them and listening to them and not just like, you know, doing my own thing? Right, okay. So the other part is, like you said, young receive a lot of money. How did you get your crash course on what to do with the money? You know, cause everybody always has their opinions. Everybody can tell you what to do. But at the same time, it's like, you got to listen to it, but then you got to make your own decision. Like, bro, you ain't even making this type of money. So I can't listen to everything you tell of me. Like, you know what I'm saying? So how did you go about that? And what were some, your good decisions that you made and what are some bad decisions that you made? I think number one is, you got to surround yourself with good people. And I had a lot of good veterans around you that would talk about things like, how do you use your money? Where is a good investment? Where is not a good investment to be aware of? And I think when you first start in professional sports, or when you have a big kind of windfall of money in your life, if it's through some other avenue, you can have a lot of people that approach you. And they're gonna say, hey, do this, do that. Let me take your money. Let me manage it. Right, right, right. I think what I, you have to find what's most comfortable for you. I found what was most comfortable for me and my wife was real estate. We really appreciated the fact that if you bought real estate, you could touch it, you could feel it. I could even understand it. I understood like, okay, rent cost me $1,400 a month to rent an apartment. A house is 2,000. I can understand that. Okay, if I buy a house for 200 grand, I rent it for 2,000 bucks a month. And on top of that, the home increases in value over time. Like that pencils for me. And so I made a few investments with some money managers that I just didn't like. I didn't understand what was going on. I'm not the biggest fan of it. Yeah, I didn't love it either. They spoke a different language and talked about this and this and that. Well, this you can't really see it right now, but eventually it's gonna be worth a lot. And I'm like, how much are they making off of my money? Correct. To tell me like, oh yeah, we're gonna get you that 7% or whatever. And I'm like, okay, but what are you like, you know what I'm saying? Like let me see the whole breakdown. So I didn't love that. So we ended up putting most of our money in real estate. Okay. And that's, I think that's a good investment. You need to be wise still. You can't just be careless. But that's where we chose to park money that I earned from day one. All the way until now. And it, you know, pays us something monthly that we can live off of. So it's just a really good safe investment. Is it like single family, multi-unit, multiple options? Yeah, a little bit of both. Okay. What do you think is your favorite out of all that? And are you in like different cities and states and everything? Most of it is done in Utah. Okay. That's where we lived at the time and have great business partners that helped me find opportunities that made sense at the time when we purchased them. So all of our doors are there with the exception of one or two. And, you know, just it's real straightforward. Like if you have a air conditioner that blows out, it's going to cost you a couple of grand to fix it. But aside from that, you know, we know what we're going to get every month. We can budget it. It provides kind of a safe, consistent paid for us to live off of. And on top of that, you know, the thing you forget about is you just think about the money it's spitting out every month. But on top of that, the property itself is increasing in value, right? Imagine something I bought 20 years ago, probably has a significantly higher value. And I don't even think about that part. All I think about is the monthly income that comes from it. Like cash flow. Yeah, the cash flow. But now all of a sudden, oh, on top of that, geez, the property is actually worth double. So I like that. That to me makes sense. I can understand it when problems go. I understand the problems. And the problems are, listen, we had a big issue with the apartment. We have to empty someone out for a couple of months until we fix the carpet. Like that makes sense to me. Whereas when stocks go down and up, it's because one person said one thing. Right, right, right. The report wasn't great. Like I don't get why that makes you lose all this money really quickly. And so that's just where I'm safe. I know the stock market provides a lot of wealth for a lot of people and a lot of stability, but I like to sleep well at night and I sleep a lot better when I understand what's going on. I feel that. So those are some good things. What are some of the hurdles or mistakes that you might have when it comes to money management or investing or whatever it may have been over the years? Yeah, you know, by nature, I'm pretty cautious with my money. Okay. I'm not out there buying crazy things except shoes. Shoes. But those are good and that's what I'm saying. We can justify that. My wife always says that. You always buying this and you're buying these shoes and that, she has that. But at the end of the day, if we ever need to sell them or get rid of them, they're all worth way more than the way it paid. Yeah, but you'll never sell them, which is probably true. Like you'll never sell them, I said, but. It's an option. But it's an option. Exactly. Some Gucci shoe that anyone can buy for 500 bucks and just breaking it and throwing it away at them. Like this $500 shoe might be worth 1,500 down the road. So I think just naturally, I wasn't inclined to blow all my money, but I think if you're a young athlete, like treat yourself, like identify what you want to get, but don't just be crazy. Like don't go from someone that lived pretty normal and humbly for a lot of years to getting a little bit of a contract. And now everything you own is Gucci, Louis Vuitton and your car, you're getting a new car every two or three years and you're buying a brand new Range Rover and a brand new Porsche or whatever else, Mercedes. Like you need to, I think you just need to recognize that especially as an athlete, but no matter what field you're in, your earning lifetime is not super long. So you might be making three, four, five, maybe even $10 million. Like you might only be doing that for a couple of years. The dudes that build, the people that build a ton of wealth are the ones that are CEOs and presidents and have earned that $2, $3 million every single year for 50, 60 years. Athletes have a really short window to earn. And so I think it's wiser to temper what you spend early on, make it through your career and then see what you got. And how are those investments working for you? And then find a budget and say, okay, now I know what I'm really making and I know I can afford to go buy this, that and the other. But I think just to think that that kind of money is going to pour in for the next 20 years of your life as a young athlete, when you get that $1 million, $2 million, $10 million contract, you put yourself in a really risky situation. And then additionally, you got to be cautious with where you, how you spend your money and how you spread it around. If you have a big family or just a group of friends, like that can get real haywire real quickly. Yeah, I was about to say. Just go watch some 30 for 30s, right? I hear a lot of people of different levels of success monetarily talk about, it's not like survivor's remorse or whatever they call it, but it's essentially like, I made it and I felt like I'm obligated to bring people along with me. So I need to cover this, pay for that, help them out for this. And then the list gets bigger and the people do this and the things get longer. Like, you know, classic like- It's a great thing that they want to help. Right. But to be able to do, to help people for the long term is more valuable than to help them just in the short term. Right. And if you blow it all and you end up with nothing left, you know, what can you do later on to help people? Right, because you hear the classic like, I'm about to go to the league, I'm about to buy my own house, I'm about to get a car, like that's always the thing. And then like all the homies and all that stuff is not, again, like they've been a part of your journey too, but at the same time it's like kind of hard to- And I'm less concerned about kind of those big one-time purchases. It's when your entire identity and how you operate completely flips on its head, right? Yeah, like you want to pay off your parents' mortgage as a thank you and you spend 250 grand or whatever it is. That's a really expensive one-time expenditure, but that's a lot better or a lot more manageable than when you just be like, I'm just going to buy everything now. I'm going to buy cars for everyone and I'm going to buy cars for myself. And you kind of have this consistent leakage from your financials going into stuff that's really wasteful. And so I think that's what it's more about for me is like recognizing, yeah, a couple of one-time purchases are good, but otherwise I need to live within reason, within my means and kind of figure out what I have even after the career is over. I love, okay too, just talk about, like you said, identity and all those other things. You have the ability to, in the right spaces, people, oh yeah, glorify you all those things, right? But you can just go to the grocery store and nobody can know who you are. And be in this place where it's like, I'm having success, I built my wealth, I'm doing my thing, taking care of my family, I had a great career, but I could just be a regular person. What does that feel like from your side? That's one of the great blessings. Being a non-superstar like myself, you can live that way, right? You can have a good career, but at the same time, I'm not some mega star. So I appreciate that. It's nice to be able to live your life. I can only imagine for the mega stars, the difference, right? Like the quality of life, to be able to go out and do whatever you want, whenever you want, and not always have this expectation that you're a high roller, big baller, and or that you have to get suffocated by fans who want photos and pictures. I think I appreciate that. So it's nice to be here, just a humble kid living here in Oregon and get to live just like everyone else, even though I've had some really cool experiences and some really unique opportunities in my life. Okay, so with that, I don't want to say the custom cleats was your first business, but that's a newer business that you got going on right now. So you're in the shoes, play baseball, you make baseball cleats, turn into shoes. Well, that's, yeah, that's how it all started, right? I remember, I want, early in my career, there was only a few Jordan athletes, Derek Jeter, Andrew Jones, maybe another one I'm forgetting. Cece was even a little bit later. Yeah, he was a little bit later himself. But I'm like, man, I want to pitch in some J's. And so I tell my agent, how do I pitch in Jordans? And they do some homework like, hey, there's a company here in New York that will put cleats on the bottom of any shoe. I'm like, done, let's do it. And so my first pair of Jordan cleats was a pair of Jordan one, Max Orange and Black. And I wore them with the Orioles. I'm like, this is dope. I'm like a Jordan athlete. So this is like a long time ago. Yeah, I think it was just 2008 or nine. Okay. And then I did a few more pairs over my career and got to know Anthony, the owner of custom cleats. And so at one point he said, hey, listen, you're a guy that I see as a, you know, involved in the sneaker world, a sneakerhead, you understand shoes and the way what makes people kind of, what kind of makes people go, you know, would you want to be a part owner of the company? And so I invested in about 25% of the company back in 2015. And then just this past year, my good friend and business partner is like, hey, let's do this together. And so we bought custom cleats in April of 2023. Now we run it, I own it, we own it together 100%. We're running the business and trying to just figure out ways to get, you know, more of what athletes want. And what does an athlete want? They want their favorite shoe because of the color or feel or both. And they want to be able to wear it on any sport. Football, soccer, golf, baseball, softball, and that's what custom cleats answers the question. How do you play your favorite sport and your favorite shoe? You come to us and that's what we do. And also we've got all kinds of athletes that are wearing shoes with cleats. And I brought a pair actually to show you a couple that I really like. These are some trainer here, the Bo Jackson broken bats, which are fun because they, you know, if you look. No, I used to have those, I used to have those. You're from higher, you know, Nintendo, but what you do is we carve out a little bit of the bottom of the shoe. And then we have a special glue that's been developed over a lot of years and doing a lot of homework and we attach the bottom to the shoe. Also you don't have to drill through the bottom. No, we don't gotta drill through anything. The shoe feels exactly like it did before, but now it's got traction. Fire. Yep. So that's our business model. We do all different sports. I brought the vans because we have a pitcher, Michael Lorenzen, who's been wearing custom cleats now for five, six years. Wearing the vans? Yes. He wears the vans and this year he threw a no-hitter and a pair of EXO Ultra Range vans. Really? And they're in the Hall of Fame. And so Michael Lorenzen, because of his accomplishments, has helped vans and custom cleats arrive to the Hall of Fame. That's the place I'll never get. I'll never get there on my own, but because of Michael Lorenzen. It's like Cleese got there. But because of Michael Lorenzen, the company's there, which is really kind of cool. That's crazy. Yep. Okay, so, I mean, this is essentially for all levels of sports. All levels of athletes. When we bought the company, we asked Anthony, the original owner who continues to work for us. Anthony is an absolute artist in his craft. He's amazing. We said, who are the majority of our customers? And he said, you know, a lot of high school kids, college kids, some adults, especially ones that play golf and or softball. We've been most surprised with the amount of youth customers we have. Interesting. And I feel like a third of our orders come from kids that are ordering in that size, one Y to six Y. And we charge only 150 bucks for youth conversions. Okay. Dude, kids, parents are buying all kinds of incredible kicks for their kids. And they're left and right. We get orders every single day from little ballers. Majority of them play baseball, but geez, we got some fun, fun shoes for kids that are really killing it out there across the country. So what's the plans with the business moving forward? And now like, essentially that's what I'm saying. Is this like the first like business that you're like dealing with that you want to grow? That you want to scale? Yeah, this is definitely the first business I've ever been involved in directly, right? Where I'm in charge and we're reaping the benefits and or suffering the consequences of that decision. So yeah, it's, we're learning together. Neither of us, I didn't go to school for business. I studied sociology. So you learn different aspects of it. My dad was a business owner. And so I'm talking to him and learning a little bit from him, but it's just exciting. You know, it's a, it's a great company. I don't think it's going anywhere. We have all kinds of athletes. The more they find out about us, the more they share the word and that's what we're trying to do is just grow it that way first and foremost, but we have different strategies we've been trying to use and doing different things that we haven't done before in the past. And it's fun, a lot of fun. What is your, what's your take on like TikTok and all the other different stuff? We're trying to learn TikTok. Like, I don't speak TikTok very well. We have a page for Instagram for custom cleats that is. We have a few posts. You can check us out. It's at custom cleats. Yeah, I'm gonna link everything. Yeah, it's at custom cleats. That's the same for our Instagram where we do 95% of our work. We have a Twitter as well. I'll admit, I'm not paying as much attention to the Twitter. We need to get better at TikTok that we know that's an untapped potential for us. We just need to find. I wonder if it's like a challenge or like some type of, I don't know, like some type of creative show on before and after type thing in a quick series. Anna Bruni, she plays professional softball for a team down in Texas, The Smoke. And she's an incredible athlete, center fielder, slap hitter, super fast. She reached out to us. We partnered with her and she got the, she has the TikTok thing down really good as well as the Instagrams. We're like, you know what, if we don't know how to do it, let's find someone who does. And so she's been an awesome spokesperson for us or we're just getting started together. Big things are gonna happen with what she does and what the company can do. Fire. Okay, so what's it been like on the collection side? Collection side, you know, I'm just, what started off as completely Air Jordan, Air Jordan, Air Jordan has kind of evolved over the years, but like right now I'm just super hyped on Kobe Sixes which is cool because now we're gonna start releasing them again. But I'm all about the PEs like PJ Tucker, I got his four pair that he did for the Yeezy too. Okay. You know, he did the Cheetah, a Red Octovers, the Solars and the Platinum's. I was able to get each of those, his PEs. I'm just loving Kobe Sixes. But when it comes to Jays, like, you know, some of my maybe more recent pickups that I just love that are just absolute must that everyone has to see. These two are crazy. Oh my gosh. These right here. I mean, the Craigs. Tell them what it is. Tell them what it is for the podcast. These are the Sager ones, Craig Sager, you know, rest in peace, but one of the greatest ever to do it on the sidelines of the NBA for, I don't know how many years, 40 years he probably worked for the NBA. Legendary shoe, bro. But this was a shoe made for him and his family. He lost the battle with Cancer. He fought the battle really well. I don't think he lost, but his time was up. And this is just one of those legendary pieces that just reminds me of him and his passion. That's why I love it. He just was so passionate about what he did. And so the sneakers, obviously incredible. The design is amazing. Explain it to the people on the podcast. Yeah. So Craig Sager was known in his days for having just outlandish suits for the most part. And it didn't start early on, but later on, he would just wear some of the craziest, most colorful, loud suits. And so when this was designed by the Jordan brand, they're like, let's bring in some of his, you know, let's make a tribute to him. And so they brought all these different fabrics that might have been featured on his suits over the years. And it's almost like a what the design, you know, like a different elements. Yeah, what the Sager. So super incredible shoe, well-designed in every which way imaginable. And one of my favorites. That's the 13th? 12 and a half. Oh, okay. What are you trying to steal my shoes? No, I was just wondering, you know. Nah, but it's funny because I never see like the bigger sizes, man, it'd be hard to find. Like every time I see a pair, it's always like a small pair, bro. Yeah, that's why I was super. When I, that's all like, when I'm looking at those right now, I'm like, bro, you probably went through some stuff to find that pair. Cause that's the thing about him too. He'd be having like some crazy stuff. His collection is super low key, which eventually we still got to do the collection video. We'd be talking about it, but we both feel busy. Yeah, too busy, too busy. And then this one right here, I was going to bring, when I was playing in Baltimore, Spike Lee came to a couple of games in which I pitched. Fire. And I got a chance to meet him and talk to him. Oh, that's fire. I played in this baseball for me, to my man, Jeremy Spike Lee. That's fire. And it was, it was amazing. So Spike's always been someone that I think, you know, growing up watching the commercials, one of the most influential kind of entertainers in the industry. Do you know, do you know? Do you know, do you know? I mean, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan. So Spike's had a few J's over the years. This one is by far my favorite tribute to him. And 40 acres when they won, when he won as Oscar. This was a shoe made for him by Jordan Brand for him to wear. I think this is one of the most beautifully designed shoes. Yeah, I was just about to say beautiful was the word. I was just thinking. There's a lot of gold J3s, right? You got Usher 3s, Drake 3s, maybe a couple others. I'm not sure. But this one for me is, is the cream of the crop. Colorway, color blocking. So for those that are listening as well, you got a translucent outsole, black pods, you got a black and white midsole. And then you got a gold print, the gold elephant print on the front and the back end. Kind of like a foil gold on the mudguard. Kind of got like this satin inner liner here, which is ridiculous with the tinker and the Spike way signature on the inside. And then it's like the tinker 3 with the swoosh on the side, Nike branding. And it's got like a cracked like distress foil type of material on the eye area and on the tongue and around the collar. You got the shiny gold. And it's a mixture of kind of textures too on the eye stay areas. One is like more textured, one is more smooth. Great shoe. And then those are like rope laces too on those ones, right? Yeah, they are rope laces. It's kind of like a flat rope lace, I guess. Yeah, good call. Great shoe. I've seen these one time before and it's always an amazing shoe to look at. This is a shoe that a lot of people will never see in person. Yeah, probably not. Like it's actually a great, great shoe. You got to come to the DNA show to check it out. That's where you got to vote. Oh, I'm sure people are going to be asking, what is the, like what was somebody value these shoes at? Who knows? Shoes only worth what someone's willing to pay, but I know what I was willing to pay. These shoes are definitely like figures. Multiple thousands of dollars of sneakers or trades or whatever. In my world, we call these nice vehicles. Yes. You can have a nice vehicle or you can have a nice pair of shoes. Right, right. Definitely good display. So you did a video like way back showing your collection like how many years ago? It was like 10 years ago? Over 10, jeez, it's been forever. That was when I lived in Utah and I had the vault door down the basement. Everyone always asked me, do I still have the vault? The answer is no. I wish I did, but yeah, it's been forever ago. So I saw that video. Hundreds of shoes ago, if you will. Yeah, I saw that video. We never even got into the other part of like how we even know each other and everything. I saw the video. I reached out to you when I was young and then I think I didn't hear back from you for awhile. Then I reached out again on something else or you might have seen something. I don't remember, it was something, but we had like messaged and we were like classic like sneaker heads, we're the same size. You see each other over something. You're like internet friends or something. Yeah, exactly. Like one of those type of scenarios. And then years go by, we communicate a little bit more. You know, might see an Instagram story post or something and then we first saw each other at the Chiefs game, right? Yes, down in Oakland. Yeah, so I'm going, this is like what, 2018? No, jeez, well before that. This was like 2012. It was a while ago. Yeah, this was like 2013, 12, 14, that range. Something like that. So we go to the game. I mean, like, so when you go to games, typically as if you get tickets from like a player, like you're in like the same section, like the friends and family section. So they usually put you like in a hundred section depending on if you're away or home team and they'll put you like close to like behind the team or like in the end zone corner or something like that. So you go in there, you'll see a lot of people's aunts, cousins, uncles, friends, whoever, right? That's just kind of how it goes. So my friend played for the Chiefs, your friend played for the Chiefs, two different friends, two different athletes. We end up there, I'm walking down and I just like see you and I'm like, what is going on? He's like, yeah, I started tying it all back through Kansas City, different things like makes sense. But yeah, that's where we had originally met. That's right, that's right. And it was like, we're just like hitting it off at the game, we're like talking about shoes. We're not even watching the game no more. That was a good time for sure. So we're doing all that, it was all good. And then yeah, over the time, we just kind of like started to connect, started doing more stuff. And then I did, I feel like I saw you somewhere else too. We saw each other at the Les Schwab last year. Oh yeah, like a random thing. I'm like, where did I see you at? Les Schwab basketball tournament. Yeah, we were at the little basketball tournament. But yeah, it's been a- I see you everywhere on Instagram. On the internet. I mean, ever since we first met, you're the mega star. Right. Somewhat of an athlete star before, now you're the mega star. No, I remember, I remember too, like, remember when you came over here? Yeah. Before you left on your mission? Oh yeah. Like however many years ago. We did a podcast, we were just talking sneakers. Huh? Were we just talking sneakers? You just came over, you brought like a box of shoes and we were just, we were just talking shoes for like two hours in the living room on some random stuff. Yeah. And I'm like trying to explain to my wife like who you are, who's coming over and everything. Cause I'm like, that was a, that might have been, I think that was the first time we had definitely like been together in a place like on, I guess, more intimate level that way. Just like kicking it, talking kicks and stuff. And it was just like a weird moment. Cause normally like a lot of my other friends were like pros and stuff. I'm thinking like, I'd have known you for years. We didn't hoopt or play whatever together or something. Like this dude's randomly coming over to my house. I don't know what's going on. Like this is kind of weird, but at the same time. Thanks for trusting me. It was, it was like definitely like awkward at the beginning for me cause I was like, I don't even know how to, this is going to go. But it was great though. Like I was like, I rock with you bro. And now we play basketball again. Yeah, yeah. That's my guy. I love it. So, okay. You got anything else you want to tell us? No, shoot. This has been so great. Okay. I love that you invited me. I'm, I'm sitting on the same couch as legends like Aaron Cooper and Gentry Humphrey. And we have Stephen Smith on. Dee Toliver. Yep. You know Stephen Smith? Who's Stephen Smith? Stephen A? No, for sure. Yeah. I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. I got, I got some good episodes coming. That's why you got all these secret Yeezy samples back here. Showing anybody. What's up? Yeah, no, it's been good. And I'm excited bro to have y'all tell y'all stories. Like I got to learn a lot more about you. I got to learn things too about, like you said, to me, my biggest takeaway so far was like, really doubling down on like how you measure success, how you have an impact on people, what your purpose is, all those things. Like that was the biggest thing from my takeaway from the conversation. I'm sure everybody has their own nuggets that they might have pulled from it. But we got a final round. We always do like the questions and then everybody asks me. So I got to ask you the questions. Okay. What is the most you spent on a pair of shoes? 15,000. And what was it? Can't disclose that. Can't disclose? Okay. That pair of the cleats that Michael Jordan wore when he was a baseball player. Oh. The original nines that he wore. Why is it the one with the special diamond thing? Remember how they came, they had a one, they had a Jordan nine that came with the diamond. And it was like a case that goes over it. Mine doesn't have that. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I have seen that. Mine doesn't have that. Okay. Either way, that's crazy. That's a great one right there. Wow. Okay. How many pairs of shoes do you have in your collection? 450. 450. Okay. That's solid. It's humble. Humble collection. It's a banger though, that's the thing. Tell him we need to do this collection video and tell me to open up my schedule too because obviously it's like December. You don't want to get deep in there. Some real gems are gonna come out. We gotta do it. What you doing in December? Who knows? Maybe. Christmas? Maybe. I got like a two week window. We're gonna go build some houses down in Mexico. I do that. Oh, for real? Now with the family, we're taking them down to Mexico. That's dope. How's that go? It's going well except my 13 year old doesn't think that forgoing gifts is the best idea for Christmas this year. Right. Forgo gifts and go build houses. That's dope. He's loving the house party. He's not liking the forgoing gifts. He's like, come on man, he's so dope. Exactly. That is dope. Man, that's fire. How do you guys set that up? Do you just like find an organization and then contact them? Yeah, we did. That's exactly right. We asked a number of friends who we'd seen either put pictures up or talk about it in the past if we want to do that. Sometimes a family. Dope. You gotta be excited. We're really grateful. What was the last question? Oh, what is the greatest shoe of all time? Are you talking about a single, a silhouette or a cutaway? What's the greatest sneaker of all time? That's what people ask me. I just asked that broad question. The greatest Jordan of all time is here, Jordan 11. Okay. Hands down. Okay. The greatest sneaker of all time for me is the Ergo LWP. What is that? I know I should have brought it, man. Let me look this up. Go look it up, folks. Ergo LWP and just think one thing. Baby Jordan. LWP. Ergo LWP. Yeah, I see it, I see it. Ergo L... And when we do the sneaker, when we do the sneaker closet preview, whatever you call it, I will show you some stuff in the Ergo LWP that you've never seen before. Customized directly for yours truly. I like it. It's amazing. Oh yeah, because you had your own PE too with the Revis? Yeah. That's fire. Greatest shoe of all time for me. Dang. I play basketball and those shoes, I average another 10, 15 points a game, jump five inches higher. No way. You know, you've seen it. Give me a... Shoot the J. Okay. What's that, what's that, what's the other one? There's one more. Greatest shoe. Oh, if you could have one shoe for the rest of your life, what would it be? I brought it. I brought it. If I could have one shoe the rest of my life. Oh! Got a shout out to the man, Justin Timberlake. Legend of Summer 3. Love it. Legend of Summer 3. The whole collection's incredible, but this bad boy right here had to hunt this one down for a minute. It's so hard to find our size. It's so nice. Size 13. I know. Bang, bang, bang, bang. I'm so jealous. I'm keeping this one. It's right up there with the Red October, but I think this one just because... It's better. To me, it's better than Red October. It's what's Timberlake too. I love Timberlake. If you know me, you know I love boy bands. I love pop music. Okay. And so when I think of just what this one was. Okay, my bad. You have to explain it for the podcast too real quick. So, Translucosal. You got to describe it. I can't do it like you're an artist. Okay, Red Translucosal, also Red Midsole. You have a shinier red on the toe, more metallic. And then on the midsole, you have a red patent leather. And then on the elephant print, instead of an elephant print, it's more of like a scale. Snakey scale. Yeah, you have a scale and it's like a matte kind of like suede with like a more metallic finish on the ends. And then on the upper, you have an all red suede. You have a stingray on the back around the collar and around the eye stay area in the middle of the foot, red suede on the tongue and Boss Jump Man, flat wax laces, and then a white premium leather tongue and sock liner, crazy fire. With the suit and tie on the. And a suit and tie on the insole. Is that a quick breakdown for you? It is. That sounds pretty good. The only thing it would do for me even better is if this outsole glowed in the dark. Oh. If they would have done red October glow in the dark outsole, that would have just taught me. This whole set is honestly, the twos are far too. The twos are slept on, but out of the whole set, this three is definitely the best one. Yeah, they made four ones, a two and a three. So there's six total in the Legend of Summer series. I got all six. You the goat, bro. You got a chill, man. I love them. You got it. Okay. Well, I appreciate it, bro. Let them know where they can find you, where let them know where they can find custom cleats and then we can get out of here. Absolutely. You can find me at the Real J Guts on Instagram and Twitter. And you can find custom cleats at custom cleats. Perfect. Simple enough. Come visit us. Think about what shoe you want to ball in. Golf is where it's at. Okay. Golf. Oh, yeah. I got some mean, what the KD6 is in golf shoes. Really? Those mismatched uppers, you know, like that. Those are crazy. And on top of that, they kind of got a waterproof field to them. That Kobe six. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's perfect for golf. Oh, man. I still shoot 104 when I play, but man, do I look good doing that? And that is definitely our note to get out of here. All right. Subscribe, hit the download button, five star reviews on all the platforms. Hit the like button on YouTube. You know all the fancy things. I'm learning a little bit more about the podcast and tell people what to do now. All right, you guys, we're out. I see you. Appreciate it, bro. We'll see you. Yes, sir.