Greg Baty: The More You Can Do

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Speaker 1: You're now diving.

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Speaker 2: Bet who.

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Speaker 3: Down with Seth living?

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Speaker 4: Oh?

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Speaker 2: Jay je Well, and this is strictly but I'm a.

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Speaker 5: True fan number one of course, y'all this and the other nevers boys do that.

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Speaker 4: Welcome back to the Fish Tank presented by iHeartRadio right here on the Miami Dolphins Podcast Network, Seth Levitt and the man with the best hands in the podcast business. He is O J McDuffie juice. How are you doing today?

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Speaker 2: My man? Man?

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Speaker 3: You know how I'm doing, Seth? You know how I'm doing?

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Speaker 1: Man?

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Speaker 5: Why do you ask when you know he's got a former teammate on yeah, a former correct side of the football and you know one of my one of my favorite teammates, bro, So what do you why do you ask that question all the time when you know my answer?

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Speaker 3: Big Seth?

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Speaker 4: Well, I feel it's like it's the polite thing to do. You're my co hosting this thing for the last six years, right on.

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Speaker 2: How you doing?

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Speaker 4: It's agreed, I'm just it's pleasantries. But I'll cut all that out.

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Speaker 3: For the next one if you'd like not keep it going? All right? Okay, sounds good. It gets me pumped up, bro.

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Speaker 2: Well, one of your former teammates.

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Speaker 4: One of the guys who was on the right side of the ball and all of the things you just mentioned is Greg Baby, And we're very excited because Greg had you know, the personal calendar. You know, we got in touch with you, Greg, and then it was like, hey, we got we're celebrating this and we're doing that. But you followed back up with us and here you are. You're in the tank. So we're excited to have this conversation.

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Speaker 1: I'm very happy to be here. And I'll start it off by saying that, yes, the correct side of the ball. And you know what linebackers are juice right, No, their tight ends that can't catch exactly.

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Speaker 5: Right, say dvs DB's, and the same things wide receivers that.

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Speaker 1: Every time I see a linebacker, that's all I have to do is to shut them up. And then they're like, okay, you got me. They all admit it too, that's.

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Speaker 2: Right because they did both in high school.

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Speaker 5: And then you know, right, that's the craziest part of it. I did everything in high school, you know, both sides of the ball. They were the best athletes of their high schools or whatever it is. But you know, they get to a certain It mights me Greg a lot of times of pitchers in baseball, whereas we know, they were the starting pitcher, the shortstop, batten, third or fourth in the lineup, and then they get to the major leagues and they can't hit it anymore, so they go straight to the for everybody, that's it, right, picture only right right.

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Speaker 1: That's a very good analogy.

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Speaker 5: So great, Seth and I we debated on the best way to, you know, to start this episode, and we landed on what we think was the moment that most Dolphins will probably remember most when they hear the name Greg Baty, and that came on September fifth. And I know, Seth, Seth loved this part about it all except September.

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Speaker 3: Fifth, nineteen ninety three.

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Speaker 5: This was the ninety three season opener, and it was also the first regular season game of my career.

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Speaker 3: It's my rookie year.

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Speaker 5: We were at the Hoosier Dome facing the Coat and it was really, you know, a back and forth game all day, and Big Seth, I really don't need you to jump in on here right now. I don't I don't want you to jump in right here because I know I know the game actually started with the cold scoring a touchdown on a fumble return on a muff punt that I had. They scooped and scored it. But this isn't about me, Big Seth, this isn't about me. We're here to talk about Greg. All right, you got this, all right, We're here to talk about Greg. So, as I was saying, it was back and forth all day, and with five minutes left, the plan the game d NBA Succi. You know, he puts in the up by three, and now it's time for Dan Marino to beat Damn Marino. Seventy nine yards and twelve plays and here we are at the one yard line with thirty eight seconds left on the clock, and we need a hero.

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Speaker 3: We need a hero Greg. Now that day, it wasn't Irban Friar.

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Speaker 5: It wasn't Keith Jackson, it wasn't Tony Martin, it wasn't Keith Biers, it wasn't Oj mcduffy.

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Speaker 3: No, our hero in that moment was none other than Greg. Baby.

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Speaker 5: Let's go talk about what you remember from that next play in that game as a whole talk.

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Speaker 1: About Yeah, you know, I remember that play very well, you know, and at that point in my career, I became kind of that guy that catches one you know, has has five catches in a year, all our touchdowns in one yard, right, So, uh, you know, but you have to be ready, you know. So you know, despite the fact that I wanted to be in there all the time, you know, I knew that I had to be ready. And one of the best parts about the story is that the guy everybody asks, who's the best guy you ever played against? And I always tell them it was Dwayne Bickett. And I don't know if you remember him, but he was. He was an outside linebacker for the Colts. The guy was the biggest, strongest, fastest guy. You know. Usually when you're a tight end, you know, if you're playing against a linebacker, you can out physical him or you can outrun him. You usually have an advantage. And that's the one guy that I kind of never felt I had an advantage, Cass. So I don't remember on that specific play if if he had it, if I had anything to do with Dwayne, but I was If I did, I'm glad I tricked him. But uh, you know, I I just remember you know, needing the needing to score that touchdown. It you know, the first game of the season is always such a big momentum swing for a team, and when you come in with aspirations like we always had the Dolphins. Uh, you know, to leave Indianapolis with the loss and in our division would have been terrible. So I'm just happy that you know that I got opened and Dan had the faith and throwing me the ball, and uh I was able to score.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 5: That's that's the funny part about the whole Indianapolis. There's a lot of people that might listen to our podcast. Great, they don't realize that they were in our division, you know what I mean, And I still hate them because they were in our division, right, and that is that is huge right there. So that to think about Indianapolis, like why Indianapolis and the division? Hell, that opened the season up within the division. That's always the most important thing because the number one thing we have to do is win our division. That's right, That's right. And it starts they started an Indie in the Hoosi your Dome. Then there's been it's been a whole bunch of names from short since then. But yeah, but playing in that place was it was tough. It was electric man matter of fact, if we were just talking about indoor stadiums this past week and too different energy. It's a different energy in those in those indoor places.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you another funny this. I mean, if if it's okay, I'll tell you a funny story about mine. This goes This goes back to my rookie year when I was playing with New England and uh, you know, I was just starting tight end for them, and but I played on all the special teams and and I was on the sidelines and we had a punt return uh team, you know, we were getting ready to and and somebody from my high school was in the Hoosier Dome and they yelled out, hey, Greg, Greg Baty, I know you from start to high school. And I never listened to anybody in the stands, but I did that one time. And I looked up and and the person said, he, I'll see after the game. I'm like, yeah, I'll see after the game. And I turn around and the play is that the punk returns happen, and so I go running in as the play had already started, and the guy, I don't remember who it was, but the guy that I was supposed to block the guy that I've been blocking all day. You know, he's running down thinking he's got a free shot on the on the on the kick returner, and I come out of nowhere and just blow him up. I mean like light him up. And and so the next day in film, you know, we all just dread film when you do something stupid like I just done. And my my coach, who's one of my favorite coaches of all time, Dante Scarnakia, who was there a long, long time Special Teams coach and the tight end coach. So we're watching Special Teams film and I'm going I'm getting to the play and I'm kind of have my head in my hands, and lo and behold, it starts after the play. He had he had framed it up so that we didn't see the beginning of the play. We just saw me coming in and blowing this guy up. And he goes after the film, after the film, he goes Greg, he said, you're a rookie. I said, you know, I'm only doing that for you once. And he said, I got you this time, but if you ever do that again. So it was it was just a funny, funny story.

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Speaker 5: Hey Greg, you know how special teams film is it's tough. The whole team is in there. So if they were to circle some things and we'll talk, of course about your next special.

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Speaker 3: Teams coach, you know a little bit later and we'll get into it.

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Speaker 1: But I'm in my favorite I have two favorite coaches, and and Dante Scernakia and and you got you got the other one.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so many. I'm with you on that, man.

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Speaker 5: Great job though, man, because what you did right there is probably legal today.

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Speaker 1: Right Oh are you wait? Are you allowed? Are you allowed? Hitting? The league?

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Speaker 3: These years.

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Speaker 2: Start with that, right just hitting a guy?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my gosh, I would have been I would have It would have been an illegal blindside block, even though I was coming from the who the heck knows?

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Speaker 2: You know too good?

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Speaker 4: Well, it was an awesome moment. And I think I saw when you were showing us there it is because he just leaned over to the right.

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Speaker 2: There.

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Speaker 4: I think that's the dolphin I just cover from that game winning touchdown.

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Speaker 1: You know what? Actually actually yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I could picture it, but I was like, I don't need to picture it because there it is right behind your head. So yeah, that was a super cool, super cool moment and we're going to discuss more of your dolphins experience. Of course, it's what we do here. And even though you spent let's see, you had a nine year career, five of those years, the bulk of those years were here with the dolphins, there was a life prior to you being a Miami dolphin and donning the aquan orange. I say orange and aqua. He gets all in his feelings about it. So the aqua and orange juice. We said, we'll get it right. But there were interesting moments along the way. And so I want to go back a little further. And I was gonna start with some Stanford questions, but I was listening to a story that you told, and it was about how you actually ended up at Stanford. And so for those who don't know, your father, Donald played for Michigan in the sixties, right, And so I think there was this speculation and probably you, you know, looked at as you were growing up in developing into this athlete, that that Michigan was probably on the horizon. But from what I understand, it came down to Michigan and Notre Dame. You were trying to make this decision and you had this experience with a Notre Dame coach that just you got to hear this story because it's a classic.

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Speaker 1: Well it wasn't it. It didn't come down to Stanford and Notre Dame.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: What happened was I was I was being recruited by Notre Dame and by Michigan and not by Stanford at all as of as of this time. So I had an official visit scheduled to go to Notre Dame and it was that weekend, and so I'm talking to the coach and I don't remember his name. He was a linebacker coach, and he was a fiery he was an ex marine, I know that. And so I'm talking to him on the phone and and somehow the Michigan game came up from the previous year. He started talking about it, and I said, yeah, you know, they beat you pretty bad. And that year Michigan beat them twenty five nothing. I think that was the final score. And he just starts you. He starts swearing at me, going I knew I've been wasting I wasted a year of my life recruiting you, and you're just going to go to Michigan, And oh my god, I can't believe you did this, and he berated me for minutes. So I hung up the phone. And then the Jerry Fauss was the coach of Notre Dame, the head coach of Notre Dame at the time, and he calls me immediately afterwards. He goes, hey, Greg, I think something just went wrong, but you know, I don't know. And I'm like, dude, I'm not visiting. He said, I'm canceling my visit for this weekend. I do not want I do not want to. I don't want to be around that dude. Right, And so I ironically, about five minutes later, I get a call from Stanford and Stanford you know, I'm in New Jersey at that time. It's in middle of January. I remember it was the weekend my visit to Stanford was the weekend that that Dwight Clark made his catch in the end zone to propel them to I think, to the Super Bowl. Yeah right, yeah, yeah. So I you know it's cold in New Jersey, Stanford's in California. I'm like, you know what, and and so they said, look, we really wanted to come out and visit. Sorry, we haven't been in touch, but we saw your grades, and you know, we think you have a good shot at getting in and and uh, I'm like, hey, I'd love to visit, and they said, well when can you come out? I said how about this weekend? And they said the plane tickets waiting for you. So uh so that that was ironically how I ended up even visiting at Stanford, And ironically I chose not to go to Michigan although I had an offer. I went to Stanford. So Notre Dame could have been in the mix, who knows.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, you know, you know I had a Notre Dame. Notre Dame was in my mix too, and yeah, I didn't like them either.

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Speaker 5: So I think I think Greg and I on the same because yeah, I didn't get cursed out, man, But I went to actually went to Tim Browns hising party and it was it was awful. So that's like, if this school can't party, I'm not going there, you know what I mean?

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Speaker 3: Right? So, right, so he makes his decisions. Yeah, that's how that's how you based it.

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Speaker 5: You got a basic decision on what you're gonna do, not going to school or not playing.

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Speaker 1: For that's right, that's part of some time you make it on who's going to give you the biggest check.

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Speaker 3: Now it's like, yeah, who's got the bag? Right, who's got the bag?

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Speaker 1: You know we could we could talk for well, I'm gonna.

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Speaker 5: Tell you this, Greg, I'm tell you this. If it was about the bag, Stanford might not have been your choice. You might have gone to Mischig. They got a big bag and got a big bag.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. But if Stanford wanted to give you a bag, if they, if they, if their administration allows you to give you a bag, nobody's gonna compete with Stanford. Yeah, I'm telling you the alums from Stanford.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: You've got a lot of billionaires.

00:14:03
Speaker 1: The second second biggest you know, endowment they have. They have a lot to offer.

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Speaker 5: So now you're a Stanford guy. I mean we get this here, Stanford man. And now there are two things that we have to ask you about. You know, your your Stanford experience and you know I imagine that you want to.

00:14:21
Speaker 3: Ask you.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: Know, you're a football player. Let's set seth, seth, you asked me about this question because because you know what, it's painful.

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Speaker 5: It's still painful, man, right right, and everything everything is tied to your freshman year.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: I get it.

00:14:40
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty two. The big game. Let's talk about the big game. Stanford versus Cow was always the big game for you guys. You think you have the game one. I mean, we get that part. And Greg, I told you see, Saith, I told, great, this is gonna be fun. So maybe this might not be the fun part of what we're doing. But I told him it's gonna be fun.

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Speaker 2: But it's history, it's historical. He was there.

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Speaker 1: All we did is learn about it to read. People always say that to me, They said, you know, and you don't give it. We're part of history. You were there, what do you you know? And as if that's supposed to bring a smile.

00:15:11
Speaker 4: So we want to bring a smile to your face, and I think we're going to do that more often than not here. But at the same time, we want to offer a unique perspective to our listeners. And there's only so many people. A lot of people probably say.

00:15:22
Speaker 2: They were there, but only a few people.

00:15:24
Speaker 5: Had view they're there. Big set that actually in that perspective. So so where were you any of it? Let's get into it. Let's get into where were you when this play? When this unfold?

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Speaker 1: I was I was and so what we're talking about everybody is is the lateral that the lateral on the band, the band on the field play that where we lost to Cal in the last seconds of the game. And so I was on this I was. I started on every special team my freshman year except for the kickoff team. I wasn't on the kickoff team, and and so I was on the sideline. But when they wrote up the story the next day in all the papers, number ninety four, I was number eighty four, number ninety four. A guy named Mike Noble was the last guy that kind of might have had a chance to tackle the guy, and he didn't. So but they got it wrong. Yeah, yeah, not only so it's like Greg Bay number eighty four, you know. So, but so, you know, my perspective on the play is that if that had happened, if that play had happened today, there were five different reasons that it would have been overturned, you know, because with instant replay, you know, I mean, the guy was on his knees when he the first guy was down on his knees pitching the ball, the referees blew the whistle. That's why you see all the Stanford guys kind of backing off. The last thing. You just you know this, you don't want to commit a fifteen yard unsports like penalty and give them a freak kick at a at a at a uh you know, field goal. So all that, you see all the Stanford guys starting to back, you know, like back and off, like wait a second, the ref's blew the whistle and you can see the official runner right there to the spot going like this and uh, and then they're you know, not to mention fourd laterals. Uh, you know, not to mention they had twelve guys on the field and not to mention, you know, So there were there were so many things.

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Speaker 3: But you know, if.

00:17:25
Speaker 1: If if a program like cal if that's what they have to hang out there their biggest moment beating Stanford on b s. You know, we met, we made all these mistakes play. Then you know that shows you what cal is all about.

00:17:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, I love how you hate them.

00:17:46
Speaker 1: I'll tell I'll tell Joe Rose the same.

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Speaker 3: Thing over not great.

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Speaker 5: In all fairness, you know, there was more than twelve minute a field when you considered the band, right, So it's like they on the field right, So they had a lot of defenders out there in college football. If somebody, somebody w a trumpet should have tripped somebody, know when you think.

00:18:04
Speaker 1: Hey, I I hey if the band. You know, the thing about the Stanford band was that they're you know, they're irreverent and there they don't wear uniforms and they just kind of run around do all their own things. But as a player back in those days, the band thought they were more important than us. Yeah, I mean yeah. We went to play Oklahoma my freshman year I think it was, I think it was freshman year, and the band like sent a letter to the student body there and they said, you know, we know our football team sucks and we know this, but you know, but come and watch us because we're the real shot, you know. I mean that's and that's what they really felt. So, but that's Stanford. That's like, that's a unique place.

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Speaker 5: My son went to a private school down here in South Florida, and you get ten guys at the at the at the baseball or football game.

00:18:53
Speaker 3: But you go to a.

00:18:55
Speaker 5: Musical or anything like that and it's like it's sold out. You get you get a recital, you get a band performance. Yeah, it's it's sold out, man. So I get it when you go to schools like that. All right, So let's get to my second question.

00:19:07
Speaker 1: Then.

00:19:08
Speaker 5: My second question is that when you arrived at Stanford, they had a pretty good quarterback by the name of John Elwick. All right, Yeah, what was it like being a freshman on the team where the big men on campus was an absolute rock star?

00:19:23
Speaker 3: What was that like?

00:19:25
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know what, John made it really easy because he was just such a good guy. You know. I always you know, quarterbacks are always going to be the star of the team, right, we know that, And so what's really great is when they're also a great guy, you know, and and when the linemen want to hang out with him, and when he wants to hang out with the lineman and it's not you know, it's not. He wasn't a pretty boy. John was never a pretty boy. He was just he was just a really good teammate. And he when he went you know, when he was drafted by Denver, not drafted, but traded.

00:20:01
Speaker 3: Right when he decided to go to Denver, when he made.

00:20:04
Speaker 1: It, when he decided that I.

00:20:07
Speaker 3: Want to go there, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:09
Speaker 1: I actually have a funny story about John that I'll tell you in a second. But when when he ended up in Denver, part of his initial contract, this was before the salary cap, so you could structure things however you wanted, and there's no salary cap. And so part of his contract was he had he was allowed to bring two of his college buddies in for every game of his contract they had the Denver Broncos had to fly them in, put them up in a five star hotel, pay for all their meals, do for the length of his contract. You know, So that was important to him back, you know, back then, you know so, and and I think that's you know, that's the kind of guy he is. And you know, not to bring up a sad subject, but the news involving John and uh Spurback, you know, Spurback was a friend and and somebody that I've known for a long time and I recently launched helped launch a winery and Jeff and Spurbeck and John Elway have a winery called Seven Sellars that and so I talked to Jeff about strategy and about you know, things that things that I should do as I was as we were launching our company. So just a shout out to their families and uh and the pain they're going through. And to see best friends like that. They've been best friends for forty five years, right right, forty years, so to see that is just a horrific, horrific event. But anyway, so I'm a big I'm a big John Alway fan. And I'll tell you a story about John at Stanford. So my my senior year, after the after football season, it's in the spring. And have you ever heard of a game called over the Line. It's a baseball game where you play and there's only three people per team and you have one you have somebody on your own team kind of underhand toss to you right, and you have If you hit a ground ball, it's an automatic outre if it gets by, if it's a line drive, it goes over the infielder's head, whatever it's it's a single. So you keep track of like ghost runners. And the idea is you want to put on base kind of went back in the old wiffleball.

00:22:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to run back.

00:22:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So the football coaches John Jimmy Walsh, who was who was John always I guess brother in law. He married John's sister, but he was our running backs coach, and so they challenged myself and two of my teammates who were seniors. We're all twenty one and you know, so they're like, okay, let's play over the line. I got my coach, and we're going to play the three of you, and it's going to be for a case of beer, you know, a piece, and let's go. And we're playing in sunken diamond Stanford Baseball Stadium, which is gorgeous. And and we said, who's your third guy? You know, they didn't say, And and we show up and they brought out John who was a first round draft baseball four of the Yankees and was probably better baseball player that he was a football player, which is saying, oh fan. So yeah, we lost, I think twenty five to twenty four. And John, who had to bat he was batting lefty and had to go to left field, so he was going APO and he's batting lefty, putting home and he probably had twenty home runs and accounter for twenty four of their runs, you know. So and we lost. So I had to buy them a case of beer.

00:23:29
Speaker 3: So good. Anyway, it was a.

00:23:30
Speaker 2: Good but it's a story for the Ages.

00:23:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, good investments.

00:23:34
Speaker 2: It was a good investment.

00:23:35
Speaker 4: So I'm going to fast forward to your rookie year. You indicated a little earlier that you you know, that that took place with the Patriots. My goal here is not to go step by step journey through your life, but I think there was a really interesting dynamic that took place, especially if people are learning about the business of sport.

00:23:52
Speaker 2: And so as you said you were with the Patriots.

00:23:54
Speaker 4: You were an eighth round draft choice nineteen eighty six draft, and you made an immediate impact.

00:23:58
Speaker 2: I didn't realize.

00:23:59
Speaker 4: Just it's funny to hear you describe kind of what your role had become with the Dolphins towards the tail end of your career, and that's, you know, my familiarity with with your career. But when you got to the Patriots's played in all sixteen games, you started seven of the me had thirty seven catches, two touchdowns.

00:24:15
Speaker 2: You were all rookie team.

00:24:16
Speaker 4: You were doing your thing, and I called juice, I said, I said, IRV only had six more catches than Greg did. A year like that says something for sure. But then the following year there's a there's a strike nineteen eighty seven strike.

00:24:30
Speaker 2: It's well documented.

00:24:32
Speaker 4: You become one of the player reps for the team and as soon as the strike is resolved, like I don't know how quickly, I guess you could shed some light on us. But but your released, yes, crazy, And I was blown away by this because, look, I understand you were an eighth round pick and not a first round pick, and so it's not like you know now you know, certain levels of players like an O. J. McDuffie's got the benefit of the doubt because when you're the first round pick right there, that nobody wants to have egg.

00:24:59
Speaker 5: Balls Paul's sense. You can't gloss over that. Man, You threw that in there like it was nothing.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: Man. You always do to sit in man.

00:25:08
Speaker 2: But it's real, it's real.

00:25:09
Speaker 4: The first round pick typically has more leeway that they don't even have an eight round anymore. Jus so the first round pick is gonna have more leeway than a guy drafted in the eighth round. But once you become once you play for a season and you are productive and you contribute and you are starting gains, doesn't matter where you're drafted anymore. It's just what your value to the team is. So my question, my long winded question, is what the hell happened? Do you think that the labor dispute was held against you?

00:25:35
Speaker 1: There's absolutely there's absolutely no doubt. You know, I go back, and there's certain things that you decisions you make in your life that you could and there are very few that I would undo. You know, I went through a horrible divorce and I'm married to a great gal now, so but I wouldn't go back, even though that my first marriage wasn't great and the opposite are great. But I wouldn't go back because I have my three boys. I mean, that's so I don't I don't regret that decision, because there's no way I would have the three boys if I didn't do that. But that's one. You know, what what happened was and I'll make a long story. I'll make a very long story, probably longer, but yeah, well, no, what what what happened was the day before the strike began, they traded away our player rep who was also the vice president of the player Union, and that was Brian Holloway. Are all pro left tackle, So I should have been smart enough to say, okay, they're trading our all pro left tackle, right, we don't have a backup man. They're trading him because he's involved in the union and involved in this potentially a strike. So if I had been smart Greg Baty and Stanford, Greg Batty and you know they, I would have said, you know what, I'm going to do this. But the problem is, and I read a lot of Ann Ran back in those days. And I don't know if either of you have read Ann Ran and Atla Shrugged and The Fountain Head. But it's all about the power of the individual and about if you do your best, good things are going to happen for everybody around you. And it's about it's uh, you know, it's it's it's a philosophy. And and so I was in the midst of that kind of stuff thinking, Okay, twenty one or twenty two year old guy is going to be able to take on these billionaire owners, right, and and it's you know, and and it's a little bit unrealistic.

00:27:24
Speaker 2: So for Greg Baiby, just not the right.

00:27:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, not the right way I should have I should have thought, you know, I was, I was, I was still playing checkers. I should have been playing right, you know, but so anyway, you know, the other thing Seth is that if you if you go back and look, I was a leading receiver on the team my second year going into you know, because I was an eighth round pick, I only made I made seventy five thousand dollars my rookie year. Yeah. And and so in that off season, the Patriots offered to rip up my two year deal, and they they offered to make me the highest paid tie in the league. I had an offer to be the highest paid tight end in the league. They were trying to maybe, I mean, it was significantly more than what I was going to make. And I said no, you know, because I said, I tried to extrapolate, you know, thirty seven catches over sixteen games, because I knew I was going to start my second year, and I knew that I was, you know, Tony Easton's guy that he liked to throw to on third down. And and I'm like, okay, I'm going to catch ninety balls next year, and I'm going to back then ninety balls for a tight end unheard of. Thirty seven was you know, was a lot. And so I said, no, it's fine, I'll play out my contract. And anyway, so the strike happens. I'm the and and when I got called into Raymond Berry, our coach, Hall of Famer. I get called into his office and he said, Greg and I wasn't the only player we had. You know, Lynn Dawson the other tight end. So I thought I was a little bit protected because you know, he was my backup back then, or you know, he had been hurt in the Super Bowl, so I kind of had a chance to fill in when he was hurt. So anyway, he was the other player up. I'm like, okay, that's that's good. We're both player ups. But we get called in and the coach says to me, he said, look, whatever you do, just keep everybody together. I don't care. Just take a vote. Every time you have a meeting, take a vote, and either everybody comes back or nobody comes back, you know. And he said, just keep the team together. What ended up happening is we would have these votes and everybody said, okay, we're staying out, we're going on a strike, and then these guys start trickling back in and crossing the quote picket line, and they it really felt like they were stabbing us in the back. You know, everybody has their own personal decisions, and I get that, but when you're sitting in our meetings listening to our strategy talking, and then you know, half an hour later, you go and you go back and I'm making this decision for my family. You know, it just it was very hard. So when we came back from the strike, we're having a team meeting or whatever, he calls me in again and says, you have to respect they made their own personal decisions. And I said, what about the fact that these guys weren't my They didn't have my back, they weren't my teammates because they crossed when you said we need to do things as a team. So so I was getting kind of a double message from coach Barry, and so I was given like the cold shoulder to to all these guys. I was like, I'm not going to be buddy buddy with this guy who just stabbed me in the back, you know, just not. So we go into the game that year, that that week we're playing the Giants on Sunday Night football and I can't remember the exacts, but you know, so I'm the starting tight end in practice. You know how it goes it's you're you know, you know, I'm like back and and so we we go out and I think the Giants had the ball first, so they punted to us. We're out in the huddle TV timeout, they start whining the clock, you know, to start the game, and Lynn Dawson comes running in and he goes, hey, you're in. I'm in, and I'm so I run out. I don't know what's going on. It's first play of the game or first offensive play of the game. And I go running out and I'm like, what's going on here? And I go up to coach Barry and he Coach Barry says, Lin's playing tonight. You're not going to play. So it wasn't that they did this on Tuesday or Wednesday in practice and said Greg, you know what, you know you're not playing. They did it to embarrass me. I truly believe they did it to embarrass me. And so in that game, and I don't remember exactly, but I think I had two touchdown catches and six catches. Every time it was third and eight, third and ten, they put me in. So if I, once again, if I had been smart Greg Baty, not ego, Greg Batty, I would have said, Oh, you only want me to go on and catch balls on third down and I'm going to get all the glory and I don't have to bust my ass blocking and doing all that stuff. I'm like, Okay, that's pretty good, but that's not how I was, and my ego got really involved. So I went into my tight end coach the next day, who I love, and I said, what's going on? He goes, Greg, not my decision, have nothing to do with it. I go into the offensive coordinator, less Steckel at the time, and Les Uh says to me, he said, Greg, you're the guy that never comes out of the game. He said, I have you in the entire game. I never take you out on third down, first down, second dome. He said, you're the only guy that plays all the time. He said, it's not my decision. So I went in and talked to the head coach and he probably said the one thing that you can't say to a ego driven, you know, young twenty three year old. He said, I'm the head coach and I don't owe you an explanation. He told me he didn't have to explain it to me. And I'm like, if he had said, hey, this guy's better than you, or or if he's or if even if he had said, hey, Greg, you know what, you shouldn't have done it. You shouldn't have said some a little things you say, or you know what and just let it blow over or or you know what, ride it out. And so when he said that to me, I said, well, coach, if you can't explain to me why I'm not playing, or at least if you don't think you owe me an explanation, then I can't play for it. And so the next day I go into practice and we're in our meetings and we're getting ready to go down to out on the practice field, and he pulls me aside and he says, Greg, we just released you. And I was like, you just real? Oh okay. So I went into my tight end coach's office said hey, can I use your phone? I need to call my agent. He goes, what do you mean? He said, get down to practice. I said, they just cut me. And then less Stecke came in and they start throwing stuff around the office. They're like, oh, they couldn't They couldn't believe it because they had already talked about it and and and and so something happened. So obviously it was you know, ownership and and so I I went from being kind of the Robbie family's favorite guy because I was an eighth round draft pick from Stanford and in a Harvard town, you know, like this Boston town that values education and and and uh so I went from being there favorite player to there too persona non grado because I was involved in vocal during the strike.

00:34:06
Speaker 3: Greg's so funny. Great, No, go ahead.

00:34:09
Speaker 1: No, I I know, I've been on it.

00:34:11
Speaker 5: I was going I was going to say, it was so so funny to say that because we had some guys on that were involved in a strike, you know, the same time. And I think Shula cut the guys that didn't back. He didn't hit that didn't back the players that were doing it, you know what I mean. And it's amazing when we hear your side of s told what they were doing New England. There were some guys that didn't back the players and stay with the players, stay with the guys that you had, you know, convened together, and you know, he cut those guys that didn't stay together like they told you to do.

00:34:42
Speaker 3: Keep everybody together.

00:34:43
Speaker 1: That's that's what we tried to do. I mean, you know, look, I look back on it was a crazy time. It was a it was a crazy time. And and and as a former player now, juice, and you know, I just wish that the current players would value us for doing for going out there and laying our next on them. I can tell you this honestly. And this is one thing. When Irving came to the Dolphins and he saw me in the locker room, I mean he couldn't he could not believe that I wasn't starting, you know, that I wasn't the starting tight end. He came up to me and he goes, Greg, you're the only guy that I've I've ever played with that has better hands than me, you know, I mean, he that's how Irving thought of me. Unfortunately, no, she will let nobody else thought of that thought of me that way. You know, like by the time I was with the Dolphins, I was probably a beaten man. I was just I was just trying not to get cut. You know, I was playing not to lose instead of playing to win. And you know, my rookie year, my second year, my senior year at Stanford, I was just so footloose, and I was just playing. And you're a much better player when you're when you feel that confidence and that energy, and the coaches know it, and the quarterback knows it, and you know that the quarterback wants to go to you on third down. You know that, and and that gives you so much confidence. Unfortunately, I think Shula just looked at me as a good smart player that he could plug in if I had to play wide receivery, I'll plug him in there if it. I mean, I don't know if you remember this, Juice, but I played a play offensive guard because we we were down to like six players and two got hurt and they're like, great, can you go in at guard. I'm like, where was well he got hurt or something. I can't remember. So I played a couple of plays.

00:36:27
Speaker 3: Do you have to reports as an age, you have to report?

00:36:30
Speaker 2: Would right? Yeah?

00:36:32
Speaker 1: And this is another funny story, but so when you remember when were you on the team when, uh, when Marino got hurt and then and then Scott Mitchell got hurt, and then then then we brought in Steve de Berg, remember, and and they brought him in like on Friday before the game, and he was going to start on Sunday on Sunday and we're like, how are we that's before you had radio communications, and they're like, how are we gonna signal the plays? And we can't teach them all the signals and he said, nobody else knows the signals. And I said, well, I know the signals. And they're like, but you're a tight end. You don't know the signals. And I said, I know the signals. I've been watching and I can steal the signals from the other sideline and any time you want. And they're like, really, you know the signals. So there were plays that they would send me in for in that game so that they could signal the play in and I would call the play and then he would say ready, but you know so because they couldn't get the play into them, you know, then they could run a player in and stuff like that. But but that was a that was kind of a funny thing for my back.

00:37:33
Speaker 5: Oh my god, that's too good man. I mean, honestly, Greg, those are some those times, especially down here. Man, We're just special for us, you know what I mean?

00:37:44
Speaker 3: For me?

00:37:45
Speaker 5: And I didn't know all the ins and outs. I was a dumb rookie too. When you ninety three, I was just I was just a you know, a bright eyed like not knowing what the hell is going on, rookie. But you you've been through so much even even before that. Wait, man, So it was like, man, that was that was great. And I'm gonna tell you this. I don't know if you know this, big Stef, but I was so jealous of Greg Baby, so jealous of Greg baby because you know why, Greg, Because I wanted I wanted eighty four. Oh, I were twenty four in college. I wanted eighty four if I could. But I was so happy just getting the eighty number back.

00:38:22
Speaker 1: Then should have come back, you should have.

00:38:25
Speaker 3: I didn't have the money everything. Yeah right, I.

00:38:29
Speaker 5: Didn't have the money for a step I'd have money for a stamp for Brad, I didn't have it.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: I didn't have the money for a Stanford grad.

00:38:35
Speaker 1: Big, it would have.

00:38:36
Speaker 2: Been made, an offer, juice would be you could have had I got us.

00:38:42
Speaker 3: That is too good. That's good.

00:38:44
Speaker 2: That is too good.

00:38:45
Speaker 4: So all right, So nineteen ninety in a lot of ways, it's interesting to hear you say you were just trying not to get cut because there was I think there was a stretch of like sevent teams in a three year period, including five three Yeah, like a five days with the Dolphins before you finally land back on. So ninety becomes this resurrection of your career. The Dolphins have Farrell Edmonds as a starting tight end. You do play in twelve games. You also become the long snapper, which we're going to talk about because I have a specific question about long snapping. We are but one of the most fascinating moments, and ju just knows I love that word. But one of the most fascinating moments to me happened away from the field. And I want to start with this call you made to a local entrepreneur who by the name of Wayne Heyzinger. And so for folks who are listening, this is nineteen ninety ninety one. You'll fill in the blanks here. This was before Wayne was the majority owner of the Miami Dolphins. At this point, I think Joe Robbie had just passed away. Maybe Wayne had invested. I think he was like a fifteen percent owner of the team. But he's really known for waste management and he's known for blockbuster Talk about what compelled you to pick up the phone and get a phone conversation with Wayne Heysinger and to forge a relationship with this billionaire that just kind of came more and more interesting as he got more involved with the team.

00:40:02
Speaker 1: Well, by that point in my career, I was thinking, you know that I didn't know if I'd ever be a starting tight end. Again, I didn't know. You know, I knew I was. I always thought I had the talent and the ability, but I didn't know if it would ever happen. So I thought, what can I do. I'm in this unique position as a professional athlete. I get invited to great charity events all the time, and CEOs of companies wanted me to sit at their table, and and and so I said, you know, the best thing I can do is be in business development for myself and just go find out them, you know. And so I figured that I and I tell this to Stanford tight Ends. I try to mentor Stanford tight Ends to this day, and I say, look, while you're playing at Stanford, you can get to any Stanford alum in the country by saying, hey, I call you up and I'm interested in becoming a doctor. You're a doctor, you know, can you tell me how you got there? What you did? Do you like it? So, but when as soon as you're not a Stanford player and you're somebody out there, you're just a guy looking for a job, right, and then they may or may not take your call. You know, if you have a good alumni network, maybe they do. While you're playing, you have unique access to unique people. So I just thought I would call. So I picked up the mine and called Blockbuster headquarters. And it's amazing. When you say, you know, it's Greg Baty from Miami Dolphins. They're like, that's kind of unique, that's kind of interesting. And so you get by, you know, four levels of people, and next thing you know, you're talking to their personal assistant and he gets on the line. He's like, you know, why are you calling me? I said, look, I just really want to know about how you got to where you do. I mean, I don't know what I'm gonna do when I'm done, and I'd really like to understand your career path and how you thought about it. And he's like, wow, Okay, I'm having a little foot surgery on Friday. Can you come by after practice on Saturday? So I went invited me to his house on a Saturday before a Sunday game, wow, because we have practices early in the morning. And I went there and I probably spent five hours with him on a Saturday afternoon at his house over off a loss Solos and I just really liked the guy. And so so I'm leaving and he says, he goes to me, I'm leaving, and you know, we have Hey, I was going to do some Blockbuster. I was in commercial real estate in the off season at that time out in California, and we agreed that if he was going to if he was going to open a new Blockbuster, he would allow me to take a look at being the developer, you know, to develop the site. And so I'm leaving and he goes, hey, I got a question for you, one question I haven't asked. And he said, what do you think of coach Sula? And I'm like, that's a loaded question, you know, because coach Shula has good and bad quality or did have good qualities and bad qualities. And so if I just praised this guy and say, oh, he's the greatest guy in the world, you know, and the guy knows that he has another side to him, you know he's going to be like, this guy has no credibility. So I told him a story about Coach Sula that I think sums him up, I think pretty well. And I said, we put in a play one time install on a Thursday in the game in practice, and we're watching film of it afterwards, and he stops the film and he says, hey, why is this play You know with underball handling, and under ballhandling for people out there means that the quarterback is handing the ball off between the quarterback and the line of scrimmage. Overball handling would be behind the quarterback, and it was a little misdirection play to Tony Page or fullback, and so Tony, you know, the or the running back. Coach gives about ten reasons why, and then Tony Page says, well, my footsteps are better, and you know, it works better. And Shula listens to all of it and he says, I put that play in in nineteen sixty eight and it was underball handling, and it's going to be underball handling now. So after listening to all these reasons, and he's like, you know, so, so Coach Shula had his way of doing things and so Wayne looks at me and he just smiles, and he goes, I think we're going to be really good friends. Because I told him, I didn't throw him under the bus. I didn't say he's a bad guy. I didn't say he's a great guy. I said I gave him a story that gave him color that shows that Coach Shula was a nuanced guy, not a you know, he wasn't you know, if people say they didn't like him, I wouldn't doubt it. If people say they loved him, I wouldn't doubt it. He was a very complex guy that did things in a certain way.

00:44:31
Speaker 6: You know.

00:44:31
Speaker 1: Now, having coached all my kids in Pop Warner football, I went back to coach Shula when he was in ill health, and I went back to see him and I apologized to him, and I said, you know, I had no idea that being a coach was so hard. I thought I thought you were stupid. You never saw that I was a starting guy end and you know, you're just a stupid guy, you know. But when you become a coach yourself and you're coaching your kids, or you're coaching high school or coaching whatever, it's hard. It's a hard job. It's a hard job to to be able to do that. So I went back to a lot of my coaches and said, I apologize if I never said that you were an asshole. I said, I've probably thought it, and so I just want you to know that I'm taking those thoughts back because it was really it was really hard.

00:45:15
Speaker 4: So I feel like I had that same experience with parenthood. I apologized. I call my mom a number of occasions, so I am sorry if I ever did this. Do you But then you become a franchise right didn't you become a franchise e in Blockbuster?

00:45:31
Speaker 2: And at some point he becomes your.

00:45:32
Speaker 4: Boss because he becomes you know, I was it ninety three where Wayne bought one hundred percent of the team, and so I think you had a year or two working under him.

00:45:42
Speaker 2: It's just an interesting dynamic to me all the way around.

00:45:45
Speaker 4: Like some people, the Dan Marino has become close with the Wayne Heisingas because of the status and where they are. But this is not I think the standard story that you hear where a player becomes connected with an owner, because he wasn't even the own at that time.

00:46:01
Speaker 1: We did. We developed a good relationship. And I consider him a big influence on my life and my mentor and so forth. And I remember he never crossed the line when when he became the owner. He never called me in and said, Greg, what's going on behind the scenes, what's you know what? What's going on? But I remember, and Juice, you'll remember this when we uh we we had just beaten the Kansas City Chiefs like forty nine nothing in the playoffs. It was Joe Montana's I think it was his last game of his career in the playoffs. It was at our place. And and so we're going out to play the Chargers afterwards, right, and and so we're going out there to play them, and I remember coming on the plane and Wayne and Steve Barrard his right hand man, they're sitting in first class, you know, talking and they're like they pulled me aside and they said, they said, great, you know, how are we going to do? What's what's going on? First time he'd ever asked me anything really football? And and I said, you know, I said, we're the better team. I said, I have no doubt that we're better than the than the Chargers. I said, but we just had the hardest we could practice we've had all year. And I don't know if you remember that, Juice, but I mean we hit like three full days and Fridays were usually and just shoulder pads, and we were in pat you know, going full contact for three days.

00:47:21
Speaker 3: We had to go and we we had to go all the way out well and we had to go all the way out.

00:47:24
Speaker 1: To cant to San Diego. And I said, I said, you know, I said, I'm just a little worried. I said, we're better, but I'm just a little worried that we're tired. And and uh, I said, you know it was we had a really tough week of practice. And if you remember, we we go we have the we're winning and the defense just defense just got tired, man, and they just in the second half and then they they drove on us and then we had a chance to win. And I think we missed the field goal.

00:47:52
Speaker 5: That was like, you know, we missed the field goal. We talk about Pete. We've had Pete on already.

00:48:01
Speaker 1: Know I'm sure that's probably his his big game moment was that moment, but uh, you know so and then unfortunately that was the last play, that was the last play of my career, and so Wayne called me and I had hurt my neck pretty bad against Pittsburgh that year, and h I was laying on the field and Juicy you, I guarantee you don't remember this. But it was at the end of the half. It was a kickoff return and they squibbed it and it hit my shin and kind of bounced back. So I dove for the ball to get the ball, and you never want to hit with the top of your head. Well, I'm looking down at the ball and half of Pittsburgh's team dives and they hit me on the top of my head, so the ball's underneath me and I don't have when the when the doctors came out, I had no feeling, like I couldn't feel anything. And and I don't know how long it lasted. It was a couple of minutes. And they were pinching me and touching me, and then can you feel this? And I'm starting to get really scared and uh and and then all of a sudden, every nerve just came back on. You know, they called burning, but everything in my whole body, like every nerve started firing again. It was the most painful thing in my life. And I cried tears of joy because I'm like, okay, I can see it.

00:49:13
Speaker 6: So I was.

00:49:14
Speaker 1: I was pretty banged up for the rest of the year. Every time i'd hit somebody, I'd get jolts of electricity, and you know, and and so I was considering not playing and most likely not playing. And I remember he said, well, Gregor, are you sure you don't want to play? And I, at that time, I was, I was pretty bummed still that I wasn't the starting tight end. I know we had Keith Jackson, but I you know, in my mind, you know, I think everybody has to feel this way my mind, I should have been playing in front of him. You know, I'd say that to Keith in front of his face, you know. I so it's not but I think you have to feel that way if you if you are going to be successful in the NFL. And so I said, well, you know, coach probably doesn't want me as a starting tight end. And I said, well, coach going to be back, and he goes, yeah, I'm gonna give him one more year. And I said, well, then I'm not going to play. And he says, are you sure, And I said no, So the next day, he sent a limo to my house and he said, I want you to come in, and he just I came into his office and I spent six hours in the office with him, and he asked me every question about every coach on the staff and equipment manager. And he didn't He never wanted to break that. He never wanted to break that bond that I had with the Dolphins. He didn't want to misuse that until a friendship, until I said I'm not playing and then, you know, so he just spent and I told him everything that I felt and thought and whatever. And I remember he asked me about the defensive coordinator. He goes, what do you think about him? I said, you know, I really don't know, and he goes, why do Why don't you know? And I said, well, because I I'm pretty sure that coach Eula tells him that you're allowed to blitz three times this game, you know, like he Coach Eule wanted to have control of everything. And so I never knew coaches, you know, kind of we're able to call their own shots or not.

00:51:06
Speaker 5: And so, you know, anyway, I say that all the time. Great people don't know what the hell is going on. They're like, why they do that? Why they call that? People have no idea why certain guys are playing, why this is going on. We don't know what's going on Monday through Saturday when it comes to situations, you know, and they only see Sunday, but they don't know what happened all week long. It drives me crazy sometimes when people like I had season tickets after the dollars in the end zone, people like that, it's a terrible throw, it's a terrible route.

00:51:33
Speaker 3: I'm like, you guys have no idea what the hell you're talking about until you go that the other.

00:51:38
Speaker 5: Six days when shit's going on, you have no idea what's going on in that deal or juice.

00:51:43
Speaker 1: In a game, you run and I'm not calling out quarterbacks here, but you run the right route and the quarterback makes the wrong read, but it ends up being an interception or whatever, and the announcers are assuming that you're the one that did the wrong thing, like, oh my gosh, Dan's really mad at Craig this time, because you know, he must have screwed up his route. I'm like, no, I think I did the right thing, but I got thrown under the bus. I'm so glad you said that.

00:52:11
Speaker 5: Great because I telled the story all the time about you know, I watched a copy of a game back one time and they were like, saying, you remember Big said I've said before. They were like, yo, I watched a copy of the game back, and then on the TV copy like, well, Dan's been in the league for so long, it has to be j McDuffie's fault.

00:52:30
Speaker 3: So you know what I mean.

00:52:31
Speaker 5: And then on Monday in the meeting, Dan was like, oh my bad. But the rest of the world doesn't know that. I know, they don't know that was that.

00:52:40
Speaker 1: And believe me, we're not throwing Dan under the buck. We're throwing the announcers under the bus. And I don't know what's going on. They just assume that.

00:52:50
Speaker 5: He's not making even so, so honestly great when all this is going on, Greg, this let's not forget that you're on the team, like you talked about with with you know, with Don Shot was your head coach. Dan Marino is the quarterback, and Mark Clayton and Mark Duper, you know, established the stars on his team and they're living their best lives.

00:53:07
Speaker 3: Talk about the personalities you had to deal with on that team.

00:53:10
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, you know, I just look back on those days and I cannot believe that in those five years that I was there, that we didn't that we didn't go in the chief in the chief.

00:53:21
Speaker 3: We were just we were just we you know, we lost good. We weren't great, yeah, really good, but we we.

00:53:29
Speaker 1: When the game I remember specifically is when we had the AFC Championship game at our place against the Bills. We had beaten them. They were yeah, they they had I think it was their third season that they were going, and we were just a better team. I mean, we were better. We beat them in the regular season. We have the AFC Championship game in our place and I was counting the ring man, I was putting it on my on my finger already. Yeah, and I remember, I don't It was just the weirdest circumstances. In the first five minutes of that game, we they they scored on a flukey play. They kick off to us and we fumbled and they run it in for a touchdown and then pick six. We're down twenty one nothing. If I might get the numbers wrong, but it felt like we were down twenty one nothing. Five minutes into the game.

00:54:15
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he's Steve Tasker and Dermot Thomas game right there in that place.

00:54:21
Speaker 3: And I wasn't even a dolphin. Then great, I'll tell you that because I wasn't.

00:54:25
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't. I didn't know where the hell I was gonna because I wasn't drafted yet. So that was in ninety two, and man, hell yeah, I feel you on that, bro.

00:54:33
Speaker 3: It was it was that was.

00:54:35
Speaker 1: That was a tough one. So I got a question for you, just so I and I talked to players all the time about this, and it's most of them are going to be on one side of this. So I was with the forty nine ers. I'm into reserve for I think four games, and later that year they won the Super Bowl. Okay, I never asked for a ring because I was on the team during this and you know, I was on injured reserve. But I never asked for a ring. But by the rules of the game, you're supposed to give every guy that if they've spent three three games on the team, you're supposed to get a ring. Even though later that season I went somewhere else. And now fast forward all these years later and I'm like because I didn't play in the game. I didn't play in the super Bowl. So would you ask for the ring or would you damn right? Right, that's what most people are saying. So I'm.

00:55:32
Speaker 5: Because there wasn't just that one game. It's all those other games that you were part of the team that led up. Man, it was a season that leads.

00:55:38
Speaker 3: Up to a ring.

00:55:39
Speaker 6: Man.

00:55:39
Speaker 3: You you you earned a ring. Everybody earned a part of that damn ring.

00:55:43
Speaker 1: Damn right.

00:55:43
Speaker 5: You know it's interesting if they're gonna give it to everybody else in the building, right, what I mean, how many everybody else in the building.

00:55:49
Speaker 3: How many tackles they make or catches they made, the blocks they make?

00:55:52
Speaker 1: Man, you not not to mention that rings worth thirty grand or something? Right?

00:55:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's that's that part.

00:56:00
Speaker 1: So as the older I get, the more I'm leaning towards, you know, trying trying to get trying to get the ring.

00:56:07
Speaker 3: Were trying to get it. Now you're trying to get some get a back ring, like you know, I mean, they can make a copy of it.

00:56:13
Speaker 6: I don't.

00:56:16
Speaker 3: Too good.

00:56:17
Speaker 1: Too good?

00:56:18
Speaker 4: All right, Greg, Well, you've been fantastic with your time in the story. But we're got We've just got one last segment for you. We end every episode of the podcast the same way. It's our fish Tank two minute drill. So you've got two minutes on the clock. We're gonna ask you, well, if you need timeouts, let us know and then we'll just take this thing home and let.

00:56:36
Speaker 2: You get on with you today.

00:56:37
Speaker 1: Is that cool? Sounds good? Sounds great? All right?

00:56:38
Speaker 3: Juicy you want to kick it into it? How's your dad?

00:56:42
Speaker 1: You know, my dad is recovering in the hospital. He's over in Cleveland Clinic about five minutes away from us here in Southwest Ranches, So feeling good and uh, you know, one of the stories I want to tell you know before we get into two minute drill. Yeah, one of my favorite stories in football my whole football career thinking about my dad was and we go back to Dave Cross, who was our team photographer. So my dad lived in Dallas, Texas. So we were playing in Dallas on Thanksgiving Day and I asked Dave Cross, I said, hey, do you need somebody to help you carry your cameras whatever? So he got a feeld pass for my dad and my dad was carrying the cameras around helping Dave Cross, and it was the game that we won on you know, the the leon Lett play where we were down. We missed the field goal. It was personally blocked and we got him to you know, we're all running after him saying get it, get it, get it, and he kicks it off his leg. We get it. We kicked the field goal to win the game. And were you on the team. I don't remember what year that was, were you on the team? Juice year?

00:57:46
Speaker 5: That the best record in football at that point, and we lost the rest of our games, didn't make the playoffs.

00:57:52
Speaker 3: I remember a lost another game after never lost another game.

00:57:55
Speaker 1: Well, so we you know, so we're partying like rock stars in the locker room and my dad is in there with me, you know, so like he's on the sidelines with us, and I'm high five and my dad, I mean, my dad was like my biggest fan, my biggest critic, my biggest coach. Uh my, you know, love him to death and and he uh to celebrate that with you know, your old man was just awesome. So that's what is so Anyway, so he is, he's in the hospital. He's doing much better, and we're hoping for a good, pro awesome story.

00:58:28
Speaker 3: Bro, I love it.

00:58:29
Speaker 2: It is.

00:58:29
Speaker 3: Well.

00:58:29
Speaker 4: First of all, I am glad to hear that about your dad because I know we were emailing back and forth and so so I wish him a speedy recovery than you. I'm so glad you shared that story because I think one of the things that Juice and I love about this podcast. Everybody likes hearing from guys that they watched play. But it's just the stories that you don't get to hear and we have. So look, we've had gosh, we've had how many people talk about that game? Juice certainly Deli talked about it because he recovered the ball we had soil Well, he did recover it, but.

00:59:02
Speaker 2: He claims he recovered it in the end zone town. I think that's story.

00:59:07
Speaker 4: You know Stoyanovich obviously, and how he knew he wasn't going to miss that next kick, and and so we're hearing all these different Keith byers, right, yeah, we woke up and so he's gonna do a snow Angel. We heard all these different stories, but like you know, that's if you're not on the show, we.

00:59:21
Speaker 2: Don't know that story. So thank you for sharing that.

00:59:25
Speaker 3: That's great stuff.

00:59:27
Speaker 2: All right, all right, let's throw this.

00:59:30
Speaker 5: You got the clock ready to make let's go. All right, Greg, did you ask for a timeout or no? Do you need to time out?

00:59:36
Speaker 1: Time?

00:59:37
Speaker 5: I love it most most you know, most defensive guys. They don't want to time out. Most offense guys they want one or two to get three.

00:59:44
Speaker 2: All our quarterbacks want to know down and distance. They want to how much time is.

00:59:48
Speaker 1: On the how much we're down by right now before?

00:59:51
Speaker 2: They want to know all that.

00:59:52
Speaker 3: All right, so here we go, Here we go, Greg.

00:59:54
Speaker 5: All right, So the Sparta High School motto is it takes a little more to be a Did you ever say this to an opponent?

01:00:03
Speaker 3: And what the hell does it really mean?

01:00:05
Speaker 1: Well, you know the Spartans. You know you saw the movie The three hundred, right of course. Okay, Well that's that's what it means. It means it takes a little more to be a Spartan, and some of us can beat all of you.

01:00:16
Speaker 3: It is there, it is. I love it. I love it.

01:00:20
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll keep it moving.

01:00:22
Speaker 4: You were recruited out of spart Of High School for basketball almost as heavily as you were football, so we know you've got some skills. If you had to put together the best team that you could using only your former Dolphins teammates, who would be your starting five?

01:00:36
Speaker 2: Wow?

01:00:37
Speaker 1: You know I never I don't think I ever played basketball with any of my Dolphin guys. I played, I'd moved to the Bay Area.

01:00:43
Speaker 5: You never played with Doug. You never played with Doug. You never one of those tours with Doug to play those?

01:00:47
Speaker 1: No, I didn't. I never did.

01:00:48
Speaker 2: So, you know, I don't know.

01:00:50
Speaker 1: I heard. I think Lewis Oliver was a pretty good player, pretty good player. I think Farrell was a pretty good player.

01:00:57
Speaker 2: Was he seems like a safe?

01:00:58
Speaker 3: I didn't play with Ferris?

01:00:59
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, you know, so I'm sorry. I will, I will, I'll take a time out, time out. I will say that. You know I talked about one of my biggest regrets was being the player rep during the strike, or one of the player reps. My other biggest regret was not playing when I was at Stanford, not playing basketball. So the coach at Stanford at the time was a guy named doctor Tom Davis who had been a longtime coach at Iowa and then he was at Boston College. Well, he offered me at Boston College my senior year, and then he took the job at Stanford. So when I told him, no, I'm not gonna I'm going to play football in college. So when he took the Stanford job, the first call he made was to me. He said, you're You're a Stanford tight end. He said, you know, I want you to play on the team this year. So I asked the football coaches, I said, can I play? And they said, sure, you know, you can play. They didn't really want me to. So I go out for the team and they didn't think I was going to make the team. And it's like I was going to make the team, you know. And then a couple of plays, a couple of practices in, you know, I might play as a freshman, you know whatever, And so very early on they said the football coaches came back to me and said, if you want to start next year in football, you got to put the basketball.

01:02:17
Speaker 2: The reality.

01:02:18
Speaker 1: I'm three thousand miles from home, I'm a freshman, eighteen years old, and I'm like, okay.

01:02:24
Speaker 3: How about that, you know great, I put it.

01:02:27
Speaker 5: I put it in my deal going to Penn State that I was gonna play both baseball and football. And if Joe would have nigged on that, then that had been a problem. So you should have put it in your damn when you were visiting. You're like, look, I'm playing both, and they would have been all right, we're back.

01:02:41
Speaker 2: By the way, I would have put Clayton on that team too.

01:02:42
Speaker 3: I heard he was pretty good, uh, pretty good basket the athlete. Alright, he's probably the black hole on once you give him the basketball.

01:02:49
Speaker 4: I have a good there's probably a good chance that you're never going to see the ball again once you get out.

01:02:53
Speaker 5: All right, all right, Greg, So we've already been back in time, back in time, back in all right, So we've already established the show that you know, you played with Elway in college. Of course you played Marino down here in Miami. You also had to stop in San Francisco in ninety eight when you you know, you practice with you know, had Joe Montana and of course Steve Young. Make you perhaps one of the only people on the planet who has caught pass from all four of these Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Now, this is a two minute drill, right, so time is very limited. But tell us something unique or that stands out about each of these these legends right here.

01:03:27
Speaker 1: Wow. You know, I think each of those legends made the most of their ability for their given situation. So I like to think of football as a you know, you know, you need to be in the right spot at the right time, not get hurt. You know, there's a lot of luck to our careers just to absolutely it plays into it. And you know, we talked about ego before, and I think I could have played, but there are a lot of guys that never made it in the NFL that were probably a lot better than me and had a lot more atilty. So I I I'm very thankful for my NFL career, even though it didn't go exactly as I wanted to. So what I would say is that Dan was perfect for the Miami Dolphin offense that you know, relied on the eighteen yard comeback and having that arm and released in time and knowing where it's going to go. And Joe Montana was great in his offense where he had to move a little bit more and he had to make multiple reads and got the ball to his guys to run with the ball afterwards. And John Elway was just a phenomenal athlete and smart, and you know, he was a much better athlete than anybody ever really knew he was right, and also had the strongest arm of any of those but could take them off too. And then Steve Young, he really made his career by being such a running threat that you could you had to change your defensive philosophy, so it allowed guys to get open because his arm was not as good as any of the other those three. So he used his ability to threaten them with the run to loosen up the defense to allow him to take advantage of the passing game. That's what So that's what I would say. So that what I admire about each of them is that they all used what they were really good at and maximize it in their situation to make them Hall of Famer.

01:05:20
Speaker 2: It's a great answer. It's a great answer. And so now you're we're in the red zone here. We got to punch this thing in.

01:05:25
Speaker 4: So the question is going to get a little bit harder, building upon what you just told us. You're gonna walk into the huddle for one final drive to win the most important game of your life. There's eighty yards between where the ball is and the end zone. Which one of those four guys do you.

01:05:40
Speaker 2: Want in that whole.

01:05:43
Speaker 3: Touchdown? A field goal? Touchdown? Here?

01:05:46
Speaker 2: Oh you gotta, I mean you gotta score a touchdown? Answer that question?

01:05:50
Speaker 6: You know what?

01:05:51
Speaker 1: I because I consider myself friends with each of those four. Maybe I am not going to answer that. I would say that I would take I would take any one of those four. I would be happy to go to battle with any one of those four, and I don't think you'd lose.

01:06:08
Speaker 3: He said, did I tell you it's gonna be a tough one? A it was gonna be.

01:06:13
Speaker 1: I may have I may have one of them slightly above the others.

01:06:17
Speaker 6: In my head, but we just don't get to know. You know what, readers get My wife Brenda knows, but nobody else. You might throw me under the bus.

01:06:31
Speaker 2: That's the hey, that's a two minute drill.

01:06:33
Speaker 4: He's the GM of a lifetime because he's got all four quarterbacks on his roster, so he can he can just decide what.

01:06:39
Speaker 1: And I will say that that that's you know, you guys brought up because most people I say that I caught passes from four Hall of Fame quarterbacks, and they can think they look at my NFL career, and they think of three of them, but they can't think of the fourth, and they forget that I played with John and college.

01:06:57
Speaker 2: We did some research, we did a.

01:06:58
Speaker 3: Little work work here. Good stuff, great man, great, that's so good man.

01:07:03
Speaker 1: Thank you, Juice. We got to have a beer. I I you know, I'll say this too, Seth, is that you know, I had been in the league for seven or eight years when when Juice came in the league, and I like to try to get to know the young guys on the team and try, you know, not that I'm some know it all, but but try to give them a little bit of advice every once in a while. But Juice is one of the guys that came in and probably would actually listen, you know. And and and I'm not I'm not reflecting on anything, you know, specific story. But I always really appreciated you as a teammate, and you're always a good teammate to me. And and I'm glad that you're doing this for the Dolphins and to keep some of these stories going on in the legacy. And so I appreciate you for for doing this, and I appreciate really being on the show Man great.

01:07:51
Speaker 3: Thank you.

01:07:52
Speaker 5: You know, it's so crazy to me because I talk about guys like yourself and Scott Miller all the time. I don't talk about, you know, some of the other guys because you guys honestly taught me. Greg you were like, you're like Scott. You every single position on the field, you know, And that was that was key for everything when we're playing. You know, if you know every single position and what they're doing, you're gonna Scott told me, you're gonna dress out.

01:08:15
Speaker 3: Every game, juice, you know what I mean. And that was and that knowledge alone.

01:08:19
Speaker 5: Man, that's always like I was trying to be as big as Sponge as I could be because it's a young guy. You have to humble yourself. No matter how great people thought I was at Penn State. You get to the next level. As we both know, you got to your low or as a high man. And the totem Pole now said, well, it depends.

01:08:39
Speaker 6: You.

01:08:39
Speaker 5: I'm talking about in general, totem Pole, love is higher loans a better spot, you know, That's what I'm saying. We had this whole convers conversation. We always not low man to pole was a bad position. But people say that's a strong position.

01:08:53
Speaker 1: I don't know so any you know, they there's a model in the NFL said the more you can do, the more you can do you can do, the longer they're going to keep you around it. And I that's why we talked. We didn't talk about this. We don't have time. But but that's why I learned how a long snap. I didn't long snap until my ar.

01:09:10
Speaker 3: That's a point.

01:09:11
Speaker 2: So I do have a question.

01:09:16
Speaker 4: And you know what, who cares if we're breaking all four meat? So everything I read in the media guides was they said you long snapped for punts?

01:09:24
Speaker 1: Yes, did you?

01:09:25
Speaker 3: So?

01:09:25
Speaker 2: Did you not long snap for field goals and or extra point?

01:09:30
Speaker 1: I was the backup for that, but so they wanted me to snap for the punts. It was a lot harder to long snap. I thought, to the long snap instead of the short snapping, you know, because it was it's a lot easier to do it on a field goal, I think. But they also wanted me to to be in coverage, so I think our centers, I think Delhi was the short snapper. He might have even long snapped after I was there. But there's a difference between a tight end running down the field trying to make tackles on a punt returner and an offensive lineman. So but I didn't learn how to well. Actually, Dante Scarnakia and we didn't talk about we didn't talk about our other special teams coach that miss. But so Dante, when I first got there is an eighth round pick. He's like, hey, let me show you something, and he just brought me over to the side. He goes more he can do, and he taught me how to long snap. So I was always the backup long snapper. I always knew how to do it, but I had never done it in a game. And then nineteen ninety when I made the Dolphins, I remember that we were playing the Jets up up in New York and it was like the third game of the season or something, and west Off comes up to me after the special teams meeting on Saturday night and he says, hey, Reggie wants you to long snamp. He thinks you're better. He wants you to long stap for us tomorrow. And I was like, it's the only night before a game that I've never I mean, you know, you tell me, you tell me the night the day before a game. Hey, Greg, you know it's it's we're coming to you on every third down. I mean, that's something that I've done my whole life. I've caught balls. I feel comfortable. I know I can do it. Confidence. I had never long snapped in a game before, and and so you know, and I remember that. I remember the first snap. I was so nervous and I bounced it back to Reggie and he got the punt off fine, And I kind of went to the sidelines, going was it okay? He goes, no, it bounced, He said, I picked it up. He said, you owe me. Now, I never want to do that again. Right, And I became a decent long snapper. So, but then another funny thing. Years later, I had retired. I've been retired for three years, and uh, gosh, what's this? Uh coach coach for the Green Bay Packers, had been at the forty nine ers. I can't believe I'm blanking on. So Mike Holmgren owns a house in the off seat is in a place where I owned a Blockbuster video store called Scott's Valley, California. He comes in there and he gets my manager. He knew that I owned a.

01:12:10
Speaker 2: Store, came in a Blockbuster, came into.

01:12:11
Speaker 1: My Blockbuster store, talks to my manager. My manager gets me on the line. He's like, Greg, I know you've been retired for three years, but I need a long snapper this year. Wow, will you come? And he said, I just want you to long snap. I promise you don't have to play tight end, you don't have to do anything else. And I was in good shape. I mean, you know, I still worked out every day, but I thought, is this really worth it to run down the field and get a cheap sideline shot and lose my knee for you know? He said, I'm in good health. I said, I'm not going to do that.

01:12:42
Speaker 3: Was crazy? Now, Greg, is that it's kart blots for long snappers.

01:12:46
Speaker 5: Now they don't nobody's lining up over you, nobody's to make any tackles. Just make a perfect, perfect spin, right, Nobody's for fifteen years, I know, and and and west Off.

01:12:58
Speaker 1: He's like, Greg, I know I usually wouldn't ask you for somebody to do this, but I know I had a man blocking responsibility from my long snapping position where I had to block a guy and they'd always put the fastest dB and they put him in the in the gap there, and I'd have to reach to him and try to get him and and uh, but it's a totally different league now.

01:13:18
Speaker 4: But we just glossed over the fact that Mike Holmgren, the head coach of the Packers at the time, walks into a Blockbuster juice.

01:13:25
Speaker 2: I wonder if he dropped a couple of tapes.

01:13:26
Speaker 3: In the slot.

01:13:27
Speaker 4: Rewinded the rewinder tapes coach and he's like, Hey, can somebody find Greg baby for me?

01:13:33
Speaker 2: Because I mean a long snapper, I'm going to Blockbuster.

01:13:36
Speaker 1: It goes back to my relationship. It goes back to my relationship with Wayne Iyzinga. So you know, it's a full story.

01:13:42
Speaker 2: How good is that? Greg? This was awesome, A lot of fun, man.

01:13:46
Speaker 1: I appreciate appreciate the juice. We need to have a beer sometime.

01:13:49
Speaker 3: Yes, I'll be in touch. Hey, thanks for diving, Greg.

01:13:53
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you you're now diving.

01:13:58
Speaker 4: Just like Jew said, Thanks for diving into the fish tank presented by iHeartRadio. Be sure to follow us on whatever streaming platform you're using, and don't be afraid to rate the show or leave us a comment. We love your feedback, and remember You can find us, as well as Drive Time with Travis Wingfield and all of our international partners on Miami Dolphins dot com this time