 Hey everybody, welcome to Yes, We're Here, Michael K here along with my broadcast partner and friend David Cohn and David, today we would be packing and tomorrow we would be leaving to head to Baltimore for opening day and it seems so weird, what are your thoughts on this? It almost seems surreal. Boy, it really does seem surreal. It's almost as if baseball has taken a back seat and rightly so over the health of our fans, of our citizens, of everybody. So yeah, it's kind of hard to predict or to look forward when you're just day-to-day as we all are right now collectively trying to figure out what the next move is going to be. Now obviously, when we talk about baseball, we put it in the context of what it is. It's a distraction and as David said, the most important thing obviously is the health of our nation, the health of the planet. But we will talk about baseball a little bit so please don't take that the wrong way. If you do a part of a work stoppage in 1995 and obviously the World Series was called off in 1994, you had that second spring training after the replacement players. How long did it take you guys to ramp up and be ready to play the season if in fact they play a season this year? You know, I sort of equated to 1995, once the strike was over, we did about a three-week spring training camp. It was an abbreviated spring training. I would imagine that's what we're looking at right now, you know, depending on how this shakes down and, you know, it's so unpredictable as we mentioned before, but just for argument's sake, if you said, you know, May 1st, June 1st, July 1st, no matter what, once you get into that territory, the players are going to need at least three weeks of spring training to get back up to speed and get the pitching staffs where they need to be to pitch normal games. If the pitchers, they were close to getting ready, they were two weeks away from the season starting, so if they're out two months, are they back to zero or do they still retain some of what they built up in spring training? I think that you retain a little bit, you know, a normal spring training is six weeks and that's mainly for the pitchers. The hitters are usually ready to go by about the month point, about four weeks. So, you know, I would say yes, you know, you do retain a little bit of what was going on. The players are probably throwing on their own somewhere, although that's questionable as a lot of the players have dispersed and gone back home. Some have stayed in Tampa, so it's hard to get a read on, you know, the physical health of the arms of the pitchers right now, but you would need at least three weeks in my opinion to get those, especially the starting pitchers back up to speed. All right, let's say that you were playing at this point and you decided to go home. Could you get a workout in because, you know, social distancing, you're holding a baseball, you don't want somebody else to hold it. Could you get a workout thrown against the wall? Could you get your arm in shape just doing that or stay in shape? To a certain degree, yes. I mean, you know, I did that myself, you know, when I came back from my aneurysm, the doctors didn't okay me to throw and I just wouldn't wait. So I actually took a baseball and started throwing it against the side of a brick wall on my own, kind of hiding, doing it against doctors' orders. You know, I think you remember, Michael, when I, you know, I came back from that aneurysm, you know, I made two minor league rehab appearances and then started that game in Oprah in the second of September. So, yeah, you can, but it's not the same. You know, there's no simulation for game type situations, the in-between innings, the up and the down, the stress innings, the runners-on base. Everything that happened during the game just cannot be simulated in practice. I had Mario Rivera on my radio show the other day and he said, you can't have a 60-game season. He said, that's not real legitimate champion to find a team. What would you say is the minimum amount of games that you feel comfortable that they played? You know, I think that takes a back seat. You know, that is the least of my worries, you know, and if you look at the history of baseball, whether it was wartime back in the 40s when you saw a lot of our major league players joining the service and lose a lot of their careers or whether it was on into more recent history in 9-11, you know, baseball should come back for the sake of the fan base, for the sake of the country. Whenever that is, it doesn't matter how long the season is. When we're ready to play baseball, when fans are ready to see baseball, we should play baseball just for the health of it all, for people that need a distraction, for people that need to see baseball or some sort of the sense of back to normalcy or at least baseball is trying to help lead us back to normalcy. I could care less how many games we play. When it's time to play baseball, we go out on that field, we play baseball for the nation and we do it like we always have throughout the course of history. Now you are very active in the union and a player rep as well, David. So I'm wondering if they have to squeeze half the season but they want to get as many games because the players want to get paid and the owners want to get paid. You think the players would agree to a double header every week? I think the players would be very amenable at this point. I think that there's a shared burden that's going on here by everybody. We're all in this together as the overriding message that what this crisis has sent throughout the world. So yeah, I mean, now is the time to come to the table and then do what needs to be done and to be compatible, to be, you know, to compromise, I guess, is the right word. If you need to compromise and do whatever is necessary to get the product back on the field at the right time, if that means double headers every weekend, then so be it. There's some smart people out there that can come up with some pretty good schedules. The problem they don't have is what date this starts. And until you have that date, all of this is just kind of speculation. All right. So we're both obviously quarantined like they're asking everybody to do social distancing. I know that you're a sports fan and there's no sports to watch. Absolutely nothing. So how do you spend your time? What are you doing for 24 hours? Well, it's, you know, I'm doing a lot of cleaning around the house. I'm doing the floors. I'm doing the doorknobs. I'm definitely, you know, Mr. Clean around the house. So I've got some some products that I've researched and doing for cleaning right now today. So it's really the simplest of things. We really all are in this vote together. It's a day to day activity. What do we need to do to get by today? I know you have kids that have an eight year old trying to entertain him thinking about school projects, connecting him with his classmates to try to ease the burden and the anxiety that these young children are having right now, you know, overall mental health. I think you've seen me, Michael, I'm involved with a group called the Mosaic Mental Health Group in the Bronx that is a phone call away. Look up Mosaic Mental Health in the Bronx, MosaicMH.org. If you need somebody to talk to, they're there. They have a hotline you can call. So yeah, I mean, that's where we are is kind of just getting through this from a mental health standpoint, making sure our children are okay. And, you know, writing this thing out is trying to be as good a citizen as you can be and do the right thing. I'll tell you what, David, I know that there's always been a stigma attached if you say, you know what, I'm hurting mentally. You could have a bad arm, but you can also have a bad brain. And I'm going to tell you, I'm filled with anxiety during these times and nervous and fearful. I don't know what's going to happen. I wonder if you're feeling the same way. Absolutely. You know, I worry about my son, you know, who's eight years old. How do you explain this? You know, and you as well, Michael, with your children, how do you talk to Charlie about this situation? You know, what is this? What is happening? Why do we need to do these things differently now? Why do we have to stay home? Why can't he go to school and, you know, trying to figure out ways to connect these kids with their classmates? And, you know, we're doing this right now on Zoom. That's exactly what I'm doing with my son, getting him on Zoom with some of his classmates on a daily basis, trying to line up tutors or trying to line up some way to ease his anxiety and continue with his learning curve and trying to keep him entertained and going in the right direction, but also at the same time, ease in the anxiety because you see it come out of your kids every now and then when they don't understand what's going on, they kind of lash out. You can tell, you can see it in them and that's probably my biggest worry right now. Now, I know you're also very close with your dad who's up there in years. Do you worry about him? Because that's why we all have to stay in because hopefully people of our age that are in decent shape, you could survive it if God forbid you got it. You got to keep it away from older people. So how much is that a concern for you? Well, it's a huge concern for me because my dad has rheumatoid arthritis, which is kind of an immune deficiency disease in and of itself. So he's one of those guys. He's in his mid-80s and his immune system is compromised. He was at the highest risk level for this sort of a thing because of his immune system. So yeah, I mean, you talk about the sweet spot of worry. I mean, he checks all the boxes as far as that goes, but so far so good. You know, he has stayed inside and when he does go outside, it's all by himself to get some sunshine and take a walk and just finding that right balance of how you're supposed to live your life. This has become so difficult for a lot of people, but so far, so good. He's doing fine. Thanks for asking, Mike. So my best to him. He's such a great guy. So let's talk a little sports. The sports that's keeping my radio show alive right now is Tom Brady. So obviously you've done the team-to-team bit and you were traded a lot and signed as a free agent. Can you understand Tom Brady actually saying I'm going to leave New England a comfort zone for 20 years? You know, I really can. Sometimes your judgment gets clouded and sometimes ego gets in the way. I'm no Tom Brady, but you know, Michael, my last year with the Yankees in 2000, I really fell on my face and had a really rough year and during the offseason, if I would have bitten my pride a little bit, I probably could have come back to the Yankees on a much lower deal and with no guarantee to even make the team or have a shot to be the fifth starter. And I kind of let my ego get in the way and in negotiations, I had a couple of chances with Texas and Boston and they came pretty hard and made me feel pretty good about myself. So I ended up signing with Boston and in retrospect, all these years later, more than 20 years later, I kind of missed not staying with the Yankees and maybe I could have stayed and swallowed my pride just a little bit. You know, it's a blip on the screen now as I say, as I tell the story, all these years later, but I can certainly empathize with Tom Brady and what he's going through and a lot of times players at that point in their career, you just really want to be wanted and you want to hear a team or a front office talk to you that way and say, hey, we need you, we want you. And it sounds like that wasn't what he was hearing from his own coach and his own organization which led him to that decision. Now you're the perfect guy to ask this because, you know, all the people that we spoke to on the radio show about Brady former teammates, they said that Damian Woody for one guy said, you know, he, you don't have fun into it. It's all about winning. That's all it's about. Now you probably had more fun with the Mets, but you won so much more with the Yankees. Do you understand the dichotomy there and is winning something that makes all the hard work pay off? Well, I think so. I think Rup and Sierra said something similar back in the 80s or mid 90s, you know, they don't care about anything but winning. So yeah, I mean, that Yankee group of the 90s was very professional and maybe even a little bit boring at times. You know, we were a product of our era and how we were raised. It's a different time nowadays. Certainly having fun means something. And yeah, it's more entertaining for the fans, you know, and hence why we have the back flips now and certain liberties are taken now that were kind of frowned upon years ago. I think it's all good for the game, but there is nothing better, nothing more fun than winning, you know, at the end, being the last team standing. I mean, you know, Michael, I'm so thankful for the championships that I had with the Yankees and the one I had with the Blue Jays. Every year I get further removed from those championship years, the more I appreciated is people remember those championship teams. People remember that 98 Yankees team. People remember that 96 Yankees team that broke through and I'm so thankful to be a part of that. So I still think, you know, at the end of the day, yeah, I'll take all business and let's be all about winning over, you know what, let's have a family fun that this year and let's all, you know, let's all get a trophy. It's interesting though, because the Yankees obviously are all business and George Steinbrenner always felt that if you didn't win a World Series, you would fail back here. But Joe Torrey, I thought, took some of the edge off because he wasn't a dictator. He doesn't seem like he was Bill Belichick. Did that take some of the edge off of having to win? Yeah, I think it did. Joe Torrey was the right guy at the right time and he handled everything so well and acted as the buffer. I mean, there were a lot of situations with our owner, George Steinbrenner, that never got to the clubhouse because Joe Torrey would cut it off at the pass and keep it from us. He also allowed us to police ourselves in the clubhouse. We had a good dynamic of veteran players that kind of ran that clubhouse together. So it was the perfect dynamic. You had an owner that would stop at nothing to win and would give us all the resources we needed. You had a manager who knew how to deal with a very tough and very stringent owner and you had a clubhouse who were veterans and you had to police themselves. It was kind of the perfect storm there where we had fun, maybe behind the scenes. That team had a lot of fun. You know, maybe we're a little bit more guarded in public and a little more professional but don't think that we didn't have fun behind the scenes because we certainly did. All right, let's do our public service, David. Obviously, everybody who's watching this should know this but please wash your hands. I tell you, David, I've never been a great hand washer. I've washed my hands more in the last two weeks as I have my entire life and obviously the social distancing is important. You got to listen to what people are telling you with the doctors, what the science says. Please, in order to flatten this curve, that's the only thing to do, David. Well, I could not agree more. You know, you get a sense that moving forward that forever our lives are changed because we're so tuned into this right now and whether there's another coronavirus that comes down the pike in a few years or whatnot or this is our future. This has helped us prepare on how we move forward and how we collectively can make a dent in this thing if we're all in together, we all buy into the plan that we can really impact how we deal with this as not only as a country but globally as a world together that we all are in this together and much. Certainly, I agree, Michael, it's moving forward. The way we interact with people, the way we view hygiene certainly I think has changed forever. Well, I wish I was with you Thursday in Baltimore, but soon enough we will be. Let me give you a Zoom elbow because that's the new thing. Nice. I'll talk to you real soon, buddy. Stay safe. All right, Michael. Good talking to you. All right.