What's your favorite live sporting event you've ever been to? I don't know if it counts, but I was at a rodeo. Oh, this counts. Whatever happened.
I mean, I'm just going to puncture the pressure right now. It counts. Okay. I was at a rodeo and I don't know if rodeos have a half time per se, but this was like a in between, I don't know, the barrel racing and the bowls or something like that.
All right. And they got these sheep out. So they heard a bunch of sheep in the little, I don't know, their arena there. All right.
And if you get a little close, you're like, there's something on that sheep. No, no, no, it wasn't the sheep. It was the dogs that had something on the back. Anyway, there was a couple sheep that came out.
And then there were these dogs. They let these dogs loose out on the sheep, like sheep heard in dogs. Okay. But if you look really, really close, there was a saddle on the dogs.
And if you look a bit closer yet, you could see each dog had a tiny monkey. Yes. It's been a long time since I've wanted you to say a thing as bad as I wanted you to say the word monkey right there. Come on, monkey.
Yeah. And so these dogs were running around the arena and they were hurting the sheep and they had monkeys and I can't remember they had hats on them or not. I just, of course they had hats. Well, let's just put hats on by memory even if they were.
What kind of hats were they wearing? Little cowboy hat, little monkey hat. Well, why weren't they wearing a little fez? What's a fez hat?
Well, a fez is that little like kind of flat-topped cone hat that you wear with like a vest if you were a clapping symbol monkey because you'd have the little fez, like a shrine or a fair is where fez is. Yeah, because it's a rodeo and they were like little cowboys hurting cows only. They were monkeys hurting sheep on dogs. I just remember seeing that as I got 10 gallon hats.
Well, like 10 teaspoon hats on. Okay. Yeah, exactly. It was just incredible.
And I remember thinking I don't know that this is probably the coolest thing I'll ever see. It was amazing. It wasn't the coolest thing I've ever seen, but it was one of the cooler things. Okay, you're bright on your wedding day, the birth of your children.
Monkey's on. Monkey's on. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty far up there.
What about you? What was the best sporting event you've ever seen? I saw the Denver Broncos win the AFC Championship. I saw them punch their ticket to the Super Bowl.
You were there? Yeah. Yeah, I went to the game with a buddy from college. Also a longtime Broncos fan, Peyton Manning, outdueled Tom Brady.
Oh, wow. Von Miller was in his prime. That was the Pats. Yeah, they beat the New England Patriots and a nail biter at Mile High Stadium or whatever stupid corporate name they had slapped on it at that point.
It's a Mile High Stadium. Yeah. Dude, it was bonkers. No, no, no, come on.
But that is the most synergy that I think I've ever felt with a stadium or an audience ever. That's cool. Yeah, and I'm a little ashamed to say that because I've been to some pretty cool church things where it's like a bunch of dudes and men's event and everybody singing the historic Christian creeds echoing the language handed down to us from a thousand years of history, like the kind of songs that span all Christian traditions and all of time. So maybe I should say that was better.
But now I was a pretty crazy moment watching the Broncos win that in dramatic fashion. There was a lot of screaming. I participated in the screaming. My face melted when those monkeys were just darting around.
Yeah, let's do go back to the monkey. Yeah. So, okay, yeah, blah, blah, blah. I went to a football game or whatever.
But we went to a game. Yeah, it was really fun. It was not my favorite sporting event I've ever been to in my entire life. It was not.
But it was really good. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, the trash panda versus the Birmingham Barons. Yeah.
The Birmingham Barons and a little bit of trivia that most people aren't going to know a lot of names of minor league baseball teams, but a lot of people are going to know that one. Why? Because they had a very famous athlete who played baseball for them at the double A level back in the day. You remember?
He played a couple of games in Huntsville as well against the Huntsville Stars. Really? Yeah. The Huntsville Stars played against, well, not who they played against.
They had a bunch of people that played there. I remember Mark McGuire played there. Really? Jose Conseco.
Jose Conseco had a brother. What was his name? Who's Conseco? Am I making this up?
I think we did. Yeah. There's a pretty big steroid market going on then. And Huntsville Barons.
Yeah. Yeah. We get together and stick needles in each other's butt. I don't know.
It's a rocket fuel or something. I mean, that's what they called it. Yeah. I like that a lot.
Let's see. Yeah. I played there. Todd Van Poppel was going to be a big deal.
I had his rookie card. I didn't pan out for Todd Van Poppel. I don't know why. It was interesting.
I actually end up, I don't know. I really enjoyed loving those games. We used to go to them. And I remember the players would be there after the game.
If there was a broken bat, all those kids would be groveling like little beggars. Let's just have your back. You know. And then one kid would get the bat and then they'd take it home and it would just sit in the corner of their room and do nothing.
Tell Mom sells it in a garage sale. Exactly. That's what happens to everything related to baseball. It is.
Eventually your mom is coming for it. College or something. You come back all that memorabilia is just gone. I don't know what the problem is that Mom's have with your baseball stuff.
But that's a thing. My mom's done a pretty good job keeping up with mine. I still have my baseball cards and stuff like that. Why does your mom still have your baseball cards?
Oh, I have them now. Okay. That's coming back to me. Yeah.
That was good. She held them. Yeah. To make sure you finished college.
Some of them got like some mildew on them because they were in the basement for a while. Yeah. They're pretty good. Yeah.
That's pretty good. Yeah. That's pretty good. Somebody was clamoring for souvenir.
There was a foul ball hit over our direction. There's a little grassy area. I don't know what the game is. They're playing but it's how loud can we scream.
They just get in a circle and they're like, I'm going to do that. And then they scream. I can answer the question. What?
It loud. Yeah. The answer is very loud. I just don't understand what they were doing.
Anyway, go ahead. There's a big fly ball down the right field line toward the grassy hole. And there's a kid. I saw him down there.
He was more attentive than all the other kids who were goofing around and wrestling and being idiots. He's got his ball glove on. It's broken in. It's clearly the glove with which he plays actual baseball.
Big towering fly ball. Here it comes. Everybody else doesn't even notice there's a foul ball coming their way. But this kid, he's been looking and he's got his glove up.
But the grassy hole is sloped. It'd be tough to feel the ball. Yeah. He's backing up on the burned catch a foul ball from the Birmingham Barons.
He puts his glove up in the air and he just shanks it. It rattles around kind of out of the end of the webbing and it rolls out and he immediately goes to pounce on it. But now the other little urchins have figured it out and they're all wrestling and grappling and somebody else comes away with the ball dancing and celebrating that poor kid laid there on his back with his hand and his glove over his eyes in the middle of that grassy hole for quite some time. Did he really?
I didn't see that. Yeah, there will be no prize. That's hard. There's a great vibe at that ball field.
There's a whole atmosphere. Everything about it. I'm so impressed. They do don't purpose the guy that runs the whole trash man is out fits names Garrett.
And I was talking to him about it. He's like, yeah, we're optimizing this ballpark for families and for just good clean fun. Good past time kind of stuff. You can show up have fun.
You don't have to worry about anybody getting belligerent or weird. They got ushers everywhere. They have trash cans everywhere. Yeah, they just do a good job out there.
Great. Now it's impressive. There were some moments where you could tell it was middle level minor league baseball just couple mistakes big leaguers don't make. But I mean, these are young kids playing ball.
I probably all early twenties. You're going to couple kids out there in their late teens. So a question that I'm embarrassed to ask that I was just talking to you off mics about. So triple AA double A major leagues, right?
Major leagues is like the top. And then you've got just like the top. It is the top. It's best made small in the world.
Is it? Okay. They play pretty good ball in Japan. They too actually.
Yeah. So just below that is a double A or triple A? That's triple A. Okay.
So triple A seems like smaller to me because triple A batteries are smaller than double A batteries. Oh, that's how you got there. Yeah. I was wondering.
Yeah. See, and triple A seems bigger than double A to me because it's more A's. Oh, is it? Okay.
So I'm going to go next to the bigs and then double A is below that. Yeah. And so right below that interesting. So why do they need two different theater teams?
Oh, that's a great question. Well, what the professional baseball people discovered over time was you can't just throw a single A level player into triple A level baseball and expect them to grow. They can't the talent, the spirit is. Oh, it's developmental.
Yes. Oh, okay. It's developmental. Is there an equivalent of that on the testing range or in things that you do where if you throw somebody into the deep water too quickly, they're just wrecked?
I mean, what you're saying is studied. I want to say it's called. I've heard it referred to as matrix theory. I don't know what that means.
I'm not sure what that term in conversation, but the way it was discussed with me is if you have somebody that's trying to find, you're trying to persuade them. So intellectually, you're trying to bring them to your way of thinking and you know they think like, let's say we have a scale zero to 10. You know they think like a three. Okay.
And you feel like they should think like a five. Like five is where you want them. Okay. You think like a seven.
Okay. So you got the number line before you. Wait, is this individual persuasion? You're talking about like a CIA psychological operation.
Whatever. It's whatever. Okay. Humans.
Okay. So we're talking about the three times and the misinformation stuff. And so let's say you want to pull people from that three to five. Well, if they put in a keyword, for example, in search and you serve them up a seven, well, they won't go for it.
They're three. They can't mentally make the jump from a three to a seven, but they can easily make a jump from a three to a four. And so you can serve them up at four and you can shift them just a little bit. They can't make the jump from a three to a six either, but you may be able to serve them up a five and they might go for it every once in a while and you might be able to gradually influence them.
This is how this was explained to me. I don't know. So there's there's a distance that people can cover and that's we're learning or growth or, I don't know, it's like the direction towards something can happen. I'm assuming you can make somebody worse like this as well.
It follows, I think that the same applies to learning. Like I remember my wife was talking about she did really, really well on her AP calculus tests in high school. And so when she went to college, they just dropped her right into Cal three. She's like, what?
I didn't do that. I didn't do good on my calculus AP test when I was in school. I think I got a two maybe. I don't know.
No, maybe I passed. I don't remember. I knew calculus fine, but I started lower and I started Cal two and I was able to just jump up pretty quick. So I've seen this again where I know somebody they did fine on their placement tests for Spanish.
They end up in the university in Texas and they jump in and they're taking Spanish in Texas, like Spanish two or Spanish three in Texas, which is not the same as Spanish in Alabama. Yeah, thanks. And so in both of these cases, the people dropped out. Tara said, I'm out.
I don't have to take this. I'm out. And so she dropped it and then she turned out she didn't even need that for her degree. So I think there's a lot to be said for putting people in something that they can easily handle and then pull them up.
I think that's pretty smart. There's got to be a word for this. I mean, it's just development is all it is, but yeah, I suppose that's it, but it's not just instructional in this case. Obviously the trash pandas have coaches at the double A level and all that.
But also it's about being around the right competition. These are your peers. You're going to be better than some of them. So you're going to learn how to win.
You're going to close out games. You're going to be worse than some of them. And that's going to really stick in your craw and you're going to figure out, all right, sure, the most vicious big league cut fastball is going to come in at 98 miles an hour and it's going to move across the plate. I don't have to worry about that right now.
Here, the meanest one I saw is that guy from Birmingham who's thrown at 94 with movement. How do I defeat that? You're competitive. Like you said, yeah, you're naturally competitive.
People may not know this about you, but if you and I are doing anything at the same time, there's a sneaky competitiveness to you. You don't have to think it. But I am more competitive than you. I guarantee you that.
This tennis thing. It matters to you where you place in the league there in South Dakota, doesn't it? Well, of course I want to win. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I most want to have good relationships with other people and improve and use tennis as an excuse to get better at something and meet people and invest in people's lives and relationships. Yeah.
But at that level of tennis, everybody who's out there is doing it because they want to win. And if you're the guy who comes out and you don't play tennis and you're like, it doesn't matter. Well, okay. Well, that's fine.
Because you're going to be a little bit more than you. If you're the guy who comes out and you don't play tennis and you're like, it doesn't matter. Well, okay. Well, that's fine because it can't matter.
You won't beat any of these people. Who cares? And so that's a different gear. You just hit and have fun if in the course of feeding you balls in the grand scheme of things, if you'd gotten 30 points banging the ball around and you did hit several good shots.
And when we added it all up, I had 20. Well, that's fine. I'm hit with my friend. That's absolutely fine.
I want to play something. But when I play against people who have agreed we've made a social contract, we're both going to try to win and the game only works if we both try to win. Well, then you have to try to win or you're practicing and then it's a different activity. The game only functions.
You only get to enjoy the rhythm and the pace and the speed and the improvement and the full joy of it. If both parties are fully invested in, I'm going to try to win. But you also want to be fully invested in. I know what to do when I lose, which is congratulate the person who beat me and acknowledge that was super fun and just try to win next time.
I think that's healthy, right? I think it is. I think it is. And that's true.
You do take it like that. But I do see every so and so long. Hey, Matt, how's it going? I just got back from the tennis ball facility or whatever you call it.
That's what it's called. The Nailed It. Tennis ball. Tennis ball facility.
Welcome to tennis ball facility. It's a rapid city tennis ball facility. Whatever it's called. And so you, like your mood is directly affected by how you did it.
It just is. It comes through. It does because it is. It's true.
But I always try to fake it. What's that noise? I don't hear your noise. Oh, you don't?
What is that? You don't hear that? What? What's that noise?
Oh, come on. What is that? Oh, I know exactly what that is. That's a sound signature that's unmissable.
That is the hollow, vacuous, soulless, miserable, grading sound of pickle ball. Well, what's wrong with pickle ball? A sport so bad it has pickle in the name. What's wrong with pickle ball, man?
You're hearing it? Yeah. Listen. Yeah.
Do you hear that sound? Yeah. You just hit a wiffle ball back and forth with wood. What's wrong with pickle ball, man?
Are you going to keep playing it probably while we talk about it? You're not going to be able to do that. Are you? No, I'm fine.
I'm absolutely fine. Your face is changing. I don't know, man. I've been working out and stretching.
I'm really limber. I think I could deprive you of that phone. Okay. All right.
You didn't take me off the offer. Okay. I got it off. I don't want to break your attractive artifacts in this room.
But I've thought some scrapping might just be time. You're a tennis guy. And for the sake of our friendship, I'm just going to disclose what I'm going to do before I do it. I'm going to be harsh and I'm going to say things to try to get you riled up.
Okay. Some of the stuff I kind of believe some of it I don't. But like, you imagine yourself to be a pretty good tennis player. What?
So go ahead. Yeah. Okay. Be clear.
Is this like the gentle warm-up or are we into full swing of things? No, I was just pretty assertive. Well, you put that ball in play with spin. You imagine yourself to be pretty good at tennis, right?
I imagine myself to be pretty good at tennis for somebody who's only been meaningfully playing for three years. Okay. Yeah. Like my first real scored match.
What's that injury that you've had that you've been working on with your elbow? No, your elbow there. Oh, the other one. Well, that's called tennis elbow.
Oh, what does that mean? It's an elbow injury. You get from tennis right there in the name of the other. Sorry.
Sorry. But you go out there to the tennis ball center. You'll get. What happens if the tennis ball center with you?
We were playing and then everything was cool. We showed up. It was a cold day and we were just hitting the back and forth. And then these people start showing up to play.
Am I going to ruin your friendships with people if I say this? Other people? Yeah, with people like in the people there in the tennis ball center. Like, oh, no, no, no, I'm nice to pickleball players.
Your demeanor changed when pickleball players came into that facility. It just changed me. Hold up the mirror. Tell me what you see.
I will. I don't like it, but I'm listening. We're playing tennis. Boom.
Boom. It's a great sound. It's a great sound. It's like a weird like the felt on the ball and then the vibration of the racket.
It's it's acoustically a pleasing to hit that thing back and forth. Thank you. When the tennis ball center location that we were at became invaded by these pickleball people and they went over to the far court. Yeah.
Suddenly the entire. This one, the entire facility, it's hard for me to process speech in like really loud environments. Yes. It became more difficult to think about what you were talking about when that pickleball was just, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
Yeah. You can see it in your eyes. They changed when background noise is wrecking stuff for you. Yeah.
I can see it. It's like, oh, Dustin had been having a good day. Well, hey, buddy. Hey, it's Matt.
Well, that's why the freaking the street girls on the long days. They were so hard for me. Yeah. Yeah.
No, and it's true, though. That is very disruptive for you. And that's not even a joke or anything. Yeah.
Your thought processes are focused and you really death star laser the things you were thinking about, not in the murderous way, but in the. I funnel all eight mini lasers into single thought laser of listening, of thinking, of solving a problem. You're very good at targeting your thought and if people come along and shriek or distract or echo, I don't like it. Yeah.
It's like a couple of those lasers can't quite hit that focal point and create the mega beam and instead you kind of get like the scatter spray, like after you go swimming. Yeah. And then it's you're disrupted. Yeah.
I saw it. So this is episode of the podcast brought to you by the patrons of Notum questions. We support at patreon.com slash notum questions, also known as the wing to SARS. Can I ask you another question, please?
You can. Would this episode exist if they were not supporting the program? No, I'm just going to tell everybody what we do. So we know that we've kind of set it up so that we release two episodes per month and we do that because we know that the patrons will support twice a month.
And so that's how we do it. We normally do one somewhere in the middle of the month somewhere in the end, but we don't we don't ever like, it's not a schedule. It's just what we do because the patrons kind of hold us accountable and also give us the fuel that we need to do it because they're like, Hey, we will support an episode if you make it and that's what we're doing right now. So you're dragging your heels pretty hard here.
Like if they weren't kicking in, you'd be like, I would never want to do this. This is a relational nightmare. No, obviously. No, no, this is awful.
This isn't genuine friendship and I'm privileged and excited to get together twice a month. That's certainly not what's happening. Your ability to fame that over the course of a 70 minute conversation is remarkable. No, I mean, we do this when microphones aren't on when we have windshield time all the time.
This is just this is actually the kind of stuff that we talk about. And the fun thing about recording it and sharing it is that we try to be a little bit more conscious of the fact that there's third chair there and that it's there's more people involved in the conversation. But no, I want to talk about stuff like this and I want to hang out with you just because it's fun and I enjoy it and I look forward to it. But it really does keep us on task and on schedule to know that there are people who like it and they're looking forward to it and invested in it.
And so we're just super grateful to everybody who supports and that way. I was actually just talking to my professor, my advisor, Dr. Gasbury, and I was talking to him about moving forward in the program. And I said, can we just have a time that we meet up and like, so he's holding me accountable to every every two weeks, you know, and the patrons do the same thing for us really and like, hey, we're just holding you accountable.
It's going to happen. And it does. And so instead of picking on phone and calling you and being like, dude, I have to talk about the blah, blah, blah. I'm looking at a list on my phone right now.
I just write it down in a list. How long was your Indie Q ideas list right now? It's pretty long right now. We have, yeah, it's pretty long.
Mine is too. So I look forward to going through that with you. But I appreciate the accountability. Thank you to everybody that supports patreon.com slash no questions.
I'm grateful. Matt, I know you're grateful too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Okay. First of all, what is pickleball? I have no idea. It's a thing that people at the other end of the courts do.
They've got these flat paddle things, you remember that time we went and played paddleball on the beach and you kept you kept hitting me in the Netherlands. Just once we once said, Hey, what we said, hey, let's get to see was at least three times. We said let's get to 100, we just got hit back up for 50 points and we wouldn't drop in. Now we work in a mess.
And so I decided just to hit it real hard, I'm thinking about this you're growing now. I mean, that happened, wow, that I hit that order. And then to make this offer. Actually, I may have injured my friend, but the pickle balls, the paddles like that.
It's a wooden pattern. It's not a taught string, like a tennis racket. No, I think it's got some kind of polymer coat or some synthetic over the top of it, it looks like. I think it was originally a wood core.
Now I get the impression that it's some kind of carbon fiber core. Are you serious? You know, for the added ability to really strike that wiffle ball. Well, the ball is, you're saying wiffle ball, but it pretty much is a wiffle ball.
Yeah, it's a wiffle ball. It's a plastic ball that's got holes in it. And a wiffle ball, like a true wiffle ball, has holes in one side of it, like a wiffle ball, brand wiffle ball. Yeah.
It's a golf ball, like a thing only instead of the dimples, it's got really big holes. Yeah. And maybe there is a brand called Wiffle ball that has holes around the one side of it. I don't really know for sure how that works.
But I think of this as just being your standard issue, backyard, go play with them all. You got the wiffle balls, you got the no holes version. Those are really easy to curve. And those are cheap.
Those are like a buck at King's Super's. You can buy them at a grocery store. And that was dancin' up and they were awful. Then you've got the harder ones where you got holes on half of the ball and the other half is full.
And then you had the holes all around all of the ball version. And that's what a pickle ball is. Yeah. I mean, if there was another sport that you played with a baseball, but you like kicked it with odd shaped boots and you called it pumpkin ball, it would still have a baseball.
Yeah. So it's a wiffle ball. Yeah. Okay.
So then you hit the wiffle ball over a shorter, easier to clear net than tennis. It's like a badminton net pulled down to the ground. Oh, that's a good description. Okay.
Yeah. Or a volleyball net for babies. Yeah. Yes.
Like that. Then it looks like, and I don't know for sure because on principle I've never played it, but it looks like there's some kind of area you're not allowed to walk into. It's called the kitchen. I've heard that term.
Yeah. And so that's the area you can't walk into. It's like it's an attempt to make the old paddle ball on the beach thing. Like, let's see how many times we can click it back and forth.
But then at some point, just whack it. Yeah. And you don't have to run real far or anything because it's a real small court. And that's it.
It looks great. Is it a single player sport or doubles? Like you can play singles, but I always see people playing doubles. Yeah.
I don't think I've ever seen people playing singles. So getting back to our discussion earlier, you said, well, you've got this developmental league and you don't want to jump too far. I've held the pickle ball, racquet paddle, whatever it's called. Why'd you do that?
It was better. Yeah. Dare. And then, you know, I decided Tara and I, we pick up the paddles and we're like, let's just beat these kids so that they know that we still got it.
So we beat them. And so I feel like the difference in skill level required between like a really good pickle ball player and a okay pickle ball player, like the skill level difference doesn't show up as much as in tennis because in tennis, I remember table tennis one time in Germany. I think I've told you this story, maybe even on the podcast. I ever tell you about going to the German guys basement where he had, yeah.
Okay. That's not a bell. Yeah. Continue though.
So basically I went and visited a guy in Germany and we were doing work stuff and then we went to this house one night and we went down and in the space and he was, this is the table tennis. I don't know if that wasn't German. You know, I'm trying to do that. I said, oh, this is awesome.
Klaus, what's your going on here? He's, oh, you look around and he's got these posters to all these table tennis great. They're like, you play ping pong down here. He goes, oh, no.
Oh, no. It is table tennis. I was like, okay. I was like, yeah, I used to play table tennis.
Is you call it? You know, I used to do that. My grandfather had one of the basement and he had to knock it around and he goes, oh, that's great. I was like, uh, so you're pretty good.
He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm good. He's on way. You know, he said it humbly, but you know, he didn't, he didn't English in my German, you know, it just came up pretty directly. And I said, uh, well, do you want to play?
And he laughed. He just laughed. He said, well, I mean, we, we probably couldn't play. I was like, well, why can't we play Klaus?
He goes, well, let's put this this way. I will serve the ball 20 times and you will not return it once. And I said, is that so? It'll pick up the paddle.
Yeah, I didn't return one of them. Okay, not a single one. Why didn't you return any? Because he put crazy spin on it.
Crazy spin. How much was he holding back? Did he give you all of it? No, he didn't give me all of it.
No, he had so much left in the tank. I guess my point is the difference in skill and, and you know, that's from coming from just, you know, high school plan and, you know, whatever youth group with a bunch of people and you can beat everybody in your little friend group and you're like, well, I must be pretty good at table tennis, right? You are pretty good at table tennis then. But then relative, right?
Then you go up and you play this guy who's not even playing at the top levels. He's just, you know, playing at the local community center, but he's really serious about it. So my point is the difference in skill in me and him were huge and it was to the point where we couldn't even play together. He could get back to your earlier point about, you know, putting somebody up in the big instantly.
What he could have throttled it back. Yeah, he could have. But pickleball, I feel, just from what I've seen. I don't know if you can forget.
Yeah. From what I can tell, a person can go play pickleball, not having a clue what's going on and they can get a respectable game out of, you know, their first time showing up on the court like, oh, you know, they'll score a few points or whatever they do in pickleball. That's the impression I get. Whereas tennis, you're really putting that topspin on it and you're trying to clear the net by just a couple of inches.
And if you can keep it level versus if you're rainbow in it over there, that's a big difference. So I guess pickleball seems to me to be a better entry level sport or, I don't know, it's just more of a how tree level sport. What do you, what do you call it when something is more inclusive of everybody around? Smart accessible.
Accessible. Yeah. There you go. Okay.
Let me finish my rant about pickleball and I'll get it over with and I'll tell you why I actually think it's a pretty cool thing. Okay. Really? I do.
Okay. It's not for me. I don't want to play. I don't want to play.
I don't want to share a court with it. Okay. But I get it. I respect it.
I'm really glad people are playing and having fun. I like racquet sports a whole bunch. I like the sports where you hit a moving thing with an item is huge. What a hockey player can do with a puck and experience hockey player.
It's ludicrous and you just can't be on the ice with them. I mean, especially because you can't even skate with them. You can't hit a quality pitcher. Even if you're a good contact hitter, you go up out of your league, you just can't put the bat on the ball.
You can't do it. They're just too dang good. You go and play racquetball. Dude, I was a really solid competitive racquetball player in community leagues and better than community leagues for a long time.
I won all the time just on run around athleticism. I went and played your buddy from church. I haven't lost like that in a sport, Dan. He annihilated me.
I did not belong in the room with him. I didn't know there was that much of a next level. I knew there was a next level and I didn't belong. I didn't know it was that much of a next level.
He murdered me. It was so nice the whole time. Someone made a fool of me at racquetball one time and he was an older guy and his name was Jim. We used to always joke, but you still play in racquetball?
They're not an old man sport. And then we went and played. He stayed in one position and he made me run all around him and he didn't have to move his feet. He was like, hmm, his brain was working so much faster than mine.
If I hit it here, he's going to go there and then he's going to hit it there and I'm going to go there. He just made me look like a fool. That's what happened to me. And it was so nice.
It was so nice. No gloat. No nothing. I genuinely thought I'd give him a run for his money.
Really? I did not. I didn't give him a run for anything. You and I played once, right?
You destroyed me, if I recall. I think you and I played. Yeah, we did. It was a long time ago.
You tattooed me with a ball in that too. On purpose. Did I? Yes, you did.
I have that on video. No, we filmed that. Did we? Yes.
Will it go pro? Dude, I just want to compliment you on huge personal growth because we played paddleball. You ended with you drilling with the ball. You played racquetball.
Yeah. I was a little less ended when you inexplicably just drilled me with the ball on a dead play. I don't know why you hit me with that ball. Did I do that?
Heck yeah. I've got a video. I'll show you. You just, yes, I've seen it.
You just walk up and you just drilled me. And you're like, hey, that's a jerk move. What did you do that? That's just don't do that at all.
That's a jerk move. They wouldn't play tennis. Yeah. You didn't hit me with any tennis balls.
Anyway, it certainly wasn't because of lack of skill or ability to do so. That's fun. Oh, that's fun. The point is there's something about the sports where you use a racquet or an extension of some sort where the disparity seems to get really huge between you've just seen it a lot and you haven't seen it much.
And I think this is why the racquet as I'm going to butcher simple mechanical language, you can fix it for me if you want. It's another pivot point. It's another lever. It accentuates the power of the body.
It extends your ability to hit things hard or move things hard. And if you don't know how to use it, it actually handicaps what you could probably do just using your bare hand. If you do know how to use it, it extends your natural ability to hit or move that ball so much more. So then the disparity is even bigger between just don't know what to do with the racquet yet and have a ton of experience with the racquet because there's a tool involved.
Have you ever played lacrosse? No, I mean, I've tossed it around with a couple of friends who enjoy lacrosse but I didn't understand it or know what I was doing. A buddy of mine AJ was super big into it. He had a whole company built around this world.
It was a big deal. It's pretty big up north. He was showing me how to do it and he gave me, I don't even know what it's called. So a cross ball?
Yeah, the ball. But what do you call the stick with the basket in it? Was it a racquet? It feels stupid.
No, it's not a racquet. I'm like a cross shuttle lacrosse poker. I don't know. Stick, it's a dipper.
It's a dipper. I like that a lot. I just made it go. Dude, I got no idea.
You know how in baseball sometimes when you're trying to develop the league players, you've got one of those bouncy nets and you throw the ball into the net and you throw the lacrosse ball into the net and you catch it with the basket. What's unbelievable is how much leverage you can get with that stick in that basket. You can hurl the thing like an incredible speed because you think about the tennis racket and what are you serving when you serve miles per hour? I don't know.