Mid-story about how Barry Bonds hit a baseball into outer space during the 2002 World Series, Eckstein’s audio cuts out. “Fuck,” Dallas and I said. The call must’ve dropped. Oh wait! He’s back! Okay, let’s just pretend that didn’t happen, as Eckstein continued to tell his story, not knowing that we didn’t hear 60% of it. He finishes his story, and I ask another question.

Fucking Smitty. So, here’s what happened — Dallas Braden and I were recording the newest episode of Starting 9 , and we had a guest on. David Eckestein, a two-time World Series champion and World Series MVP. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

As Eckstein begins his answer, his audio cuts out again. “FUCK!” we both say. How is his connection this shitty? He comes back, and we just continue with the interview as if nothing had happened. Our producer, Justin Havens, begins jotting down time stamps for which parts of the interview were completely ruined so that they could later be edited out.

At the end of the podcast, we find out that dumb fuckin’ blockhead Smitty was doing his dumb fuckin’ Philly podcast, which was a TEST SHOW, that he took callers for and thought that some guy named David was calling in to talk about Starting 9. He thought this David guy was so passionate about Starting 9 that he called in multiple times to talk about the show with Smitty, so Smitty kept accepting his call.

Turns out, Smitty, from the other studio, kept pulling the Eckstein call from our studio and piping it into his dumb fuckin’ show and then hanging up on him because he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to talk to him about Starting 9. Unbelievable. Dallas, as you can imagine, was not pleased. I asked Smitty if he would like to release a statement to defend his dumb fuckin’ idiot brain, and this is what he submitted.

“David Eckstein was a wonderful addition to mine and Rone’s second test Philly sports show, First Time, Long Time. We thank him for his time and would welcome him on again.”

If he did this during the Alex Cora interview, then I’d finish this blog by saying something like, “I hope 20 Dollar Chef caves your face in,” but it wasn’t, so I won’t say that. Instead, I’ll just say that he is so goddamn stupid that I’m not even sure that I can be mad at him for this. The same cannot be said for Dallas Braden, who might actually murder Smitty the next time that he sees him.