4-3-26 - *FULL SHOW* Rockies Home Opener; George Will; Mayor Johnston; Gov Polis

Looking for a little Hollywood-style fun? Check out Ryan Seacrest 10K Ways exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10,000 ways to play. Get spending for free at chumpacino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs, 21 Plus, sponsored by Chumba Casino. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best walk away in the world. An undefeated phenom. Batman is a rising star. and a frightening force. What a win for Shamele Musayev. Descend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the silverback jeans. Silverback nation makes some noise. Versus Shemil Mousayev. All it's over! For the PFL well-to-weight world title. On real. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Entertain clients, reward employees, or enjoy a first-class race weekend with VIR's premium MSA hospitality experiences. August 21st through 23rd, enjoy exclusive viewing areas, premium amenities, food and beverage options, and access that puts you close to the action. Whether for business or pleasure, elevate your weekend at Virginia International Raceway. Explore and upgrade your tickets at VIRVIP.net. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Boydware prohibited, visit SpenQuest.com for more details. It's very eerie lighting right now here at Corsefield. It was light, it was dark, and now it's, what do you want to call this? I think it's very fitting that Colorado's morning news started, and all the lights came on, and it was like, oh, and then your show started, and they were like, turn them off. Get out of here. Oh, that hurts. That really hurts. All right, Epic, Gina. Have you seen Planet of the Apes? No. No. Okay. Do you know about Planet of the Age? Do you know much about Planet of the Age? So I'm just sharing this because some, any of them really, but there's, gosh, how many are there? There were maybe a few originally. And then I think there was at least one, maybe two in recent years, kind of remakes. Okay. But anyway, and Dragon, you'll appreciate this too because you're kind of old like me. Now that Art of, this is on Facebook, an account called Dad Jokes. Now that. Artemis 2 has launched. We have nine days to get every person on Earth, a planet of the apes costume, so we can pull off something absolutely hilarious when the astronauts return. Is that what happens? Well, yeah, so these guys come back to Earth, and it's a different time, and apes have taken over. Whoa. Yeah, Charlton Heston? Is that right? In the original? Yes. Yeah. You got to check it out, Gene. I don't know. I don't think it's quite to the level of, you know, take Gina to the movies. Okay. But it's something you should see. Okay. I hear like this is an example of kind of what they look like.

You can see on my phone, right? And they speak and whatever. All right. So I like the idea of get everybody an ape costume, and then we'll mess with the astronauts when they come back. We are here at Coorsfield. It's funny, Gina said they're going to start playing in only eight hours. I'm like, only. It seems like a long time. But here we are as the sun is coming up. It's my first broadcast at this time of day at Coorsfield, and it's pretty neat. It's pretty neat. So we've got lots of guests. We've got lots of baseball to talk about. But let's do a couple other things as well. In the meantime, a little bit of news. And I'm going to follow up on a couple of stories that Gina already covered in Colorado's morning news. But let's just talk briefly about Pam Bondi being fired. And I promise you all I'll get to the Tina Peter's story as well, just a little bit later. But I'd want to talk about Pam Bondi for a minute, so Attorney General of the United States. And, you know, she's a little bit different from Christine Ome. It's easy to sort of put them in the same category, right? Both good-looking women who went on TV a lot. supporting President Trump, and it kind of felt like he picked them for those reasons. He likes good-looking women. He likes people who are on TV championing him and that sort of thing. But I actually think those two, I think these two people are fairly different. Like I think Kristi Noem did a fairly terrible job almost the whole time. And Pam Bondi, I don't know, I'm not going to say she did a great job, but she wasn't as much of a complete failure, at least not in every way. as Christine Elm was. So what's interesting about Pam Bondi, so again, she was on TV constantly going into the presidential election, championing him. But she and a couple of other folks who ended up in the Trump administration, Dan Bongino, who's out now, Kash Patel, who's still in, as head of the FBI. These people made a lot in recent years of the whole Epstein thing. Trump was never super enthusiastic about the whole Epstein story. I remember an interview when he was asked, you know, if it were up to you, would you just make all the so-called Epstein files public? And his answer was something like, sure, I guess. You know, he wasn't really for it. He wasn't really against it. He seemed to think that it was kind of a waste of time, but it also didn't seem like he was really trying to squelch it, which made me think he was a guy who didn't think he had any real risk there, and I never thought that Trump had any real risk there. But what happened was it became a huge political thing with MAGA. They want the Epstein files that MAGA has been obsessed for a long time with this idea of Democrat-run pedophile rings going way back to before Epstein, right? You remember Comet, ping pong, pizzeria in D.C. where they thought the Clintons were doing this same kind of thing. And some MAGA dude with an AR-15 showed up at the pizzeria in Washington, D.C. to free the children. No, the lights are back on.

Can you do that sound again? Oh. That was so good. Dragon, we got to make something of that. Consider it. So anyway, yes. So anyway, then when Pam Bondi got the job. now all of a sudden, especially with Congress, passing a law saying you've got to release the Epstein files. But even before that, she's involved in all the stuff. And you remember, she said, oh, yeah, I've got them on my desk and we're going to be releasing them. So it got all of these people who thought that the Epstein files would be very important. And they haven't really turned. They've actually done more damage. to Englishmen than to any American that I can think of other than, you know, Epstein himself. But in any case, she was deeply involved. She said, I've got these files on my desk. And she gave the people who wanted all this salacious stuff, hope that there was salacious stuff there. And she said, I'll be releasing them. And then they set up this. this PR day and they brought in these conservative social media influencers and handed them a bunch of big white binders and it turned out that most of the stuff that was in the binders was already in the public record and there was almost nothing new one of the stuff that was new approximately nothing was interesting and so a lot of the maga folks the who were really all about this felt very very let down very let down and But what happened then was, since it didn't satisfy people, the stuff stayed in the news. And that led to Congress passing a law with mostly Democrats and a few Republicans, including Thomas Massie leading the way. But Colorado's own Lauren Boebert was on that vote as well to release the stuff. And I think President Trump got very, very frustrated that Pam Bondi seemed to mismanage. this whole thing and not so much that he hated the story he just hated that it was getting any air time and taking away from whatever he thought should be talked about now the other so so that's i think a main reason that Pam Bondi has been fired and let me make something also very clear those two were hanging out together Pam Bondi and trump just the day before yesterday she knew it was coming and they're not on bad terms they're still they're still friends. He still believes that she's loyal. He still likes her. So this, I think, is a better departure than Kristi Noem. The other thing that's interesting to me, you know, if we lived in a more normal country, I would think that maybe Pam Bondi had been fired in part. for making the Department of Justice so political and doing things like going after James Comey with the DOJ. And for the record, I think James Comey is a bad dude. I just don't like using a Justice Department to go after someone's political opponents unless you have serious reason to believe they committed a crime and that you can prove. And they didn't have that with James Comey. They went after Letitia James as well. That fell apart as well.

You know, this is the kind of stuff you do in Banana Republics. And I was, you know, kind of wondering, is Trump thinking maybe Pam Bondi made the DOJ a little bit too political? And just based on some reporting out there right now, it seems like the answer may be the opposite, that Trump thought that she didn't make it political enough and that she didn't go after his enemies enough. So we will see what happens next. Todd Blanche, who... started his career actually as in a U.S. Attorney's Office. I think it was maybe the Southern District of New York. But anyway, he was on that side. Then he went into personal defense stuff, and then he became Trump's personal lawyer and defended Trump in a bunch of different cases. Won some, lost some, mostly one. But he's Trump's personal lawyer. He became Deputy Attorney General. He will now take over temporarily. For Pam Bondi, I do not think that Todd Blanche can get Senate confirmation to be the next attorney general of the United States. So we will see who that will be. But it'll be very interesting in the interim to see if the DOJ becomes more or less political. We'll take a quick pause. Keep it right here on K-O-A. Hey, it is Ryan Seacrest here. Want to bring a little Hollywood excitement to your day? Take a few spins with Chumba Casino's brand new game. Ryan Seacrest's 10K Ways. It's free and features 10,000 ways to play, giving you nonstop action, including thrilling bonus re spins and cascading reels. Every spin brings something new. So step into the spotlight. Enjoy the excitement. And play today at chumbacasino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs, 21 Plus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. Will you experience the PFL live? The hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. There ain't no more stopping these teens and cleans for well on your crime. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated that the silverbacked gene fights to cement his place atop the division. Against the silent assassin, Shemil Musayev, with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Entertain clients, reward employees, or enjoy a first-class race weekend with VIR's premium MSA hospitality experiences. August 21st through 23rd, enjoy exclusive viewing areas, premium amenities, food and beverage options, and access that puts you close to the action. Whether for business or pleasure, elevate your weekend at Virginia International Raceway. Explore and upgrade your tickets at VIRVIP.net.

What's going on, everyone? It's Bluff here, and we're driving through the States in the BluffMobile, and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino-style games on SpinQuest. They have over 1,000 games, including Live Dealer Blackjack and Crops, with tons of slots and unlimited. You can get a $30 coin pack for just $10 for new users. Sign up today. Go to SpinQuest.com right now. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visitspinquest.com for more details. There's a dude out there in center field with, I can't tell if that's a lawnmower or something that's doing something to make the grass look awesome. Well, the best part, whatever it is, I don't know if it's a lawnmower, but I think he is going right along, like Keenan mentioned, the Rockies logo is. in the outfield right in the middle there and to me that seems new i don't remember seeing that in the past but maybe that's something that's been around but it looks like he's outlining i don't know if whatever he's doing is making it a little bit darker so it's really prominent that you can see that rocky yeah and so just so folks understand we're not talking about you know paint or chalk it's they they've cut the grass on a different angle in a C and R overlapping C and R, you know, Colorado Rockies pattern so that it's, the logo was in the grass, but it's not, there's, there's no substance on the grass. It's just how they've like angled the blades of grass. Is that, is that what you said, Dylan? Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's pretty cool how, how they've done that. I want to share a listener. a listener text. Ross, can you mention Mike Rosen, who for decades was synonymous with Rocky's opening day? If it weren't for him who beat the drum every day to encourage the powers that be to bring baseball to Denver, there would be no baseball in Denver. So there you go. All right, my friend Mike Rosen, he is now officially. officially been mentioned. As I mentioned before, we have a ton of stuff to do on today's show, including George Will coming up in just a little bit. You may know him from political writing, but he is actually one of the great... baseball experts and baseball lovers and baseball writers in the United States of America. We've got the mayor, we've got the governor, we've got Jack Corrigan, we've got the Rockies manager, we've got the president of baseball operations, and most importantly we have a chef from Aramark who is hopefully going to bring us free food because that is the only reason I woke up at Gina O'clock. I would also just like to say for those who were listening Wednesday, a couple of things. Some things have changed since Wednesday, and I just would really like listeners to be aware. So, first of all, I was put on, I told you, an experimental antibiotic, and I have had an incredible recovery, and my toe does not need to be amputated, and I will no longer be leaning to the left, and that is not just a political metaphor.

A massive recovery. I could take my shoes off now, and Gina wouldn't smell my feet. So, an amazing recovery. Well, I'm really glad to hear that about your toe. It's not as great for me because Dragon ratted me out on the air talking about Boots, the monkey, my new monkey, pet monkey, that I have in my apartment. But then Dragon asked, is your apartment okay with it? I said, they don't know. Well, of course, now they know. So Boots has to. You got to get rid of boots? Yeah. You're going to donate them to a zoo or something? I think he'll be processed. I think that comes. I think that just comes with the name boots. You can have a little monkey tenderloin and a little monkey sausage. But you're vegetarian, so maybe Kyle will eat them and you won't. Yeah. And then I guess, so there's that. So that's two of the things we talked about on Wednesday. So I still have my toe. Gina, no longer has the monkey. And then... Dragon had said, as far as getting rid of his beard for the first time since he was a teenager, that it was Wednesday or never. And so what happened with that dragon? It turns out it's never. It's never. Nice. Yeah, so all of these things that we thought were going to happen on Wednesday, which was April 1st, I think, when we gave you this news, are apparently not going to happen. I just wanted you to be aware. And if you don't see me limping and you don't see a monkey on Gina's shoulder and you see dragons still with a beard, You'll know why. George will right after this. And right after Gina, yeah, right after Gina tells us what's going on in the world. Keep it here on. Toleretic here from 2311 racing. Game nights fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot. Chalk, breathe, rechalk, still aiming. While they figure it out, I fire up Chumpa Casino. I can spin anywhere, anytime, and there's always a new social casino game every week. Spins happen way faster than that shot. Lay now at ChumbaCasino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VigW Group, voidware prohibited by law, 21 plus, terms and conditions apply. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best wealth away in the world. An undefeated phenom. Bad man is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shamiya! Descend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Fad, the Silverback Gene. Silverback Nation, makes some noise. Versus Camille Musayev. All it's over! For the PFL well-to-weight world title. On Real. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Got plans this summer? A brewery crawl? Another lake trip? The same festival you've been to three times already? Do something different. This August, Virginia International Raceway becomes the ultimate summer destination. Watch Innsa's Michelin GT Challenge at VIR. August 21 through 23rd brings some of the fastest sports cars to battle through VIR's legendary corners. Camp with friends. Enjoy live music and experience a weekend you'll actually be talking about afterward. Start planning now at govir.net. What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky, and America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com.

SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Boydware prohibited, visit SpenQuest.com for more details. K-O.A. What I'm going to do right now is I've got a laptop here. I'm going to try to do this carefully. George Will joins us by Zoom, and we're connected in such a way that he can see my camera laptop. So I'm just going to turn this around, George. Just you can kind of see what I'm dealing with here. It's kind of exciting for you as a baseball fan. What do you think? I think it's beautiful. Tom Boswell, a great Washington Post baseball writer once, published a book title, Life Begins on Opening Day. And it's been well said. There aren't four seasons, they're just two. There's baseball season and the void. And the void is ending in the Rocky Mountains today. Many folks know George for his political writing, but George, George, I do a lot of interviews, as you know, and so I don't tend to remember anything from any one interview. But a couple of years ago, we were talking about political writing versus baseball writing. And it's probably a line you've said many times before, but do you remember what you said to me about political writing versus baseball writing? I don't. Other than my email address is Office at Baseballhabit.com. My theory is that I only write about politics to support my baseball habit. That's it. That was it. Is that it? Yeah, that's it. He writes about politics to support me. My habit is more and more intense as the years go by. I'm 84 years old, and you'd think I'd grow up. I'm never going to. And George has written, I'm not sure how many baseball books. I can think of bunt and men at work and a nice little place on the north side, which is probably my favorite because I'm a Cubs fan having lived in in Chicago for a long time. But I'm not sure how many other baseball books. Those are the three. All right. So how are you feeling about this? They've published 16 books, and men at work has sold more than the other 15 combined. Wow. Which is a sign of national health that people would rather read about baseball than this other stuff I write about. Excellent. Excellent. So last time we talked, I believe, last time we talked about baseball. was when the league was just putting in some of these new rules designed to speed up the game. And now that you've had a little time to think about them and watch the new rules and play, how are you feeling about it? I like all of them. The pitch clock really saved baseball. Baseball was in a downward spiral. There was not enough action. The ball was put in play too rarely. So the shift came in. I know that some of your Rockies didn't like that because left-handed pull-headers.

We're getting murdered by the shift. Groundballs to the right side were simply being gobbled up by an infielder shouldn't have been in shallow right field. I like the ghost runner in the 10th inning because it's an instant rally in baseball's problem, and it still is a problem, is that there's not enough action. There's not enough action because velocity has simply overwhelmed hitting. Ted Williams rightly said that hitting a round ball with a round bat squarely as the ball moves vertically and horizontally is the hardest thing to do with sport. Pitchers throwing 95 and up have made it worse. And worse than that, really, is the fact that we have, human physiology has essentially moved the pitchers mound two feet closer to the plate. Because... These, the teams are stocked with player six four, six five, and more. If you take their stride and the length of their arms, they're releasing the ball two feet closer than say, Whitey Ford did. Whitey Ford's a Hall of Fame pitcher. He was a 510 left hander and no one would draft Whitey Ford today because he's just not big enough. So it's still a problem, and I suspect they're going to have to be sooner or later they may have to think about moving the mound back a foot or two. If you were king of baseball, would you move the mound back a foot or two right now and just be done with it? No, I'd do what baseball has very intelligently done with these other rules. I'd try them out in the minor leagues. I think they have tried in one of the independent leagues moving the mound back a foot or so. I don't know what happened, but I'd think about it because hitting has become just awfully difficult. If you were king of baseball and could change one more rule right now, what would you change? Gosh, I, you know, I'm a conservative. I think all change at any time for any reason is dubious. So I don't have a problem right now. There is a. an attempt, and this will, people who watch their baseball in Coors Field will respond to this, there is a thought that baseball has two few doubles and triples, which are very exciting. And the reason they don't is that outfielders are now playing much deeper. And a lot of those are now just outs, because people are more willing to give up a single than to give up a double or a triple.

There is a move, an idea being brooded about that you should draw a line in the outfield that as the pitch is thrown, the outfield has to be in front of that line, like it more likely that the ball can be hit over their head. I'm really against that. But since Coorsfield has this enormous outfield, it's worth, it's something that Rocky's fan should really think about. Have you been to every MLB stadium? I've not been to what is smiling me called a ballpark in Miami, which makes me like most Miamians. They don't go to the ballpark down there either. I haven't been to the new Texas stadium. Aside from that, I've been to all of them. I've seen football in three different Pirates ballparks. I saw my first major league game in 1950 in Forbes Field. Then Three Rivers Stadium and now PNC Park. I've seen baseball in gosh. Three or four. The three Phillies parks, I'll tell you a story. When I was leaving Oxford after two years studying there in 1964, I applied to Princeton in the Ph.D. program in philosophy and to Harvard Law School. I think I chose to go to Princeton because it was midway between two National League cities. I could go to Shea Stadium as it then was with the Mets and Connie Mack Stadium, originally Shib Park in Philadelphia. So I've seen baseball in three Philadelphia ballparks, several in Cincinnati.

It's a life well spent. Indeed it is. We've just a few seconds left. We're talking with Pulitzer Prize winning columnist George Will. George, if you had to bet an amount of money that mattered to you on who's going to win the World Series this year and you had to make that bet today, who would you bet on and why? I'd been on the Cubs. I think that, A, that's my heart speaking, at least as loud as my head is, but because I grew up in Illinois and grew up a Cubs fan. The Cubs, I think the Cubs added Bregman, and that's, he's a. It brings a winning temperament to a fairly young team still. I know the Dodgers are the favorites, but once you get to the postseason, randomness takes over in a way that it doesn't in 162 games. I'd be surprised if the Dodgers didn't win the National League West, but after that... It's randomness rears its lovely head. And I have a feeling they're not going to consummate the three feet they're talking about. We'll see. Maybe the Rockies will pull it together and beat the Dodgers and win the National League West. Wouldn't that be something? That'd be a good fun, yes. You can catch George Will's writing at The Washington Post. And if you like baseball, go read all of George's books. But like you said, men at work, an enormous bestseller. And if you're a Cubs fan, like I've been for a long time, I mean, got to be a Rockies fan here now. But a nice little place on the north side is a wonderful, wonderful book about Wrigley as well. George, thank you for making time for us. I know you're such a busy guy, and I really appreciate it. I'm on the way to the ballpark to see the Nationals play the Dodgers today. I'm not surprised. Thanks, George. Appreciate it. Glad to be with you. Thanks. All right, that's the great George Will. So glad he was able to make time for us today. We'll have a quick pause here. Genius will update us on other things going on in the world, and we'll keep going with the show. Don't forget we still have the Rockies manager, the Denver mayor, the governor of Colorado, and more. Keep it here on K-O-A. Hey, it is Ryan Seacrest here. If you love great games and a little extra excitement to your day, I got something fun for you. Chumba Casino and I have teamed up to create an exclusive online social casino game. It's called Ryan Seacrest 10K ways. It's fun and free to play. Just like all your favorites from Chumba Casino. And every spin brings 10,000 ways to keep the good times going. Check it out and play for free today at chumbac casino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and C is 21 Plus. Sponsored by...

by Trumpa Casino. When you experienced the PFL live, the hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. There ain't no more stopping these teens and queens for well when you cry. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated that the silverbacked gene fights to cement his place atop the division against the silent assassin Shemil Musayev with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky. And America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Boydware prohibited, visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Epic Gina and Ross, and Keenan is somewhere. Now, somewhere not too far because I saw him here this morning, you know, in the broadcast booth with us. So, Keenan, where are you and who are you with? I am at 19th and market. There's a parking lot here, and I'm with Mike Watson. He is set up for getting set up for another. It's an annual tradition, a big tailgate. I mean, they're taking up a lot of space. They got tents. They have a whole setup. It's almost like a college football Saturday. Mike, what do you have going on today? This is our ninth year for our annual opening day, Rocky's tailgate party. And we come out, man, and it's a bunch of us, and we come out and celebrate and, you know, kick off the season the right way and enjoy the crowd, the people, the game. And, you know, we set it off right. I just posted a video on X that we reposted onto the K-O-A Colorado social media page. And I said he comes out here every year, but there is on one condition. What is that condition? We have a temperature control. Our condition. If it's 50 and above, we're out here. If it's 49 and under, we're not. It's over. We canceled. What about rain? I know rain was in the forecast earlier this week. Wouldn't that have stopped you today? No, if the temperature is the guiding light. And if it was 50 in rain, then we're good. And the expectations for the Rockies this season, obviously it's a new team. You're a big fan. You're out here every year. What are you hoping to see from this team?

More wins than last year. Hallelujah. Do you have a number in mind? Just more. What was the winning record last year? I'll probably go one over. Not a hundred losses. Not a hundred losses. There you go. Hey, man. We take five. 43 and 119. Last year, 43 and 119. Yeah. So let's go 44 and 118. You'll be happy. Perfect. We'll be happy with that. But you know what? We celebrate the biggest crowd in the MLB season. You know, we do pretty good. Are we top five in at home audience? And that's the heck of the thing to be proud of. Yes, that's the support of Colorado, Denver, Aurora, and all the surrounding cities. So you can't beat that. It's Mike Watson. Keenan, what's at the tailgate? What's being grilled? Yeah, what are you cooking us? Serve it up there. Do you have any two-foot odd dogs like they're serving in the stadium? We have beef hot dogs. We have hamburgers. We have chips. We have just, you know, simple foods and stuff like that. You know, anything that you can get in the stadium, you can get here. Anything vegetarian, you can bring Gina? What? We have gluten-free sandwiches coming. Oh, perfect. Great. Not the same, but I'll take it. That's awesome. So they're getting set up right now, and there's a couple other tailgates getting set up here, too. It's a big celebration here in downtown Denver, obviously, for Rocky's opening day, guys. Well, thanks, Keenan. That's awesome. Definitely swipe something from what anyone's grilling out there for sure. And what are you going to do with it? You're not going to eat it, Gina. Well, Keenan can eat it. I'm not going to eat it. You're thinking about Keenan. That's very kind of you. Thanks. Very nice of you. It's never too early in the day for a hot dog. All right. Thanks, Keenan. That's fabulous. And Keenan may well find some other folks around the stadium for us to talk to over the course of the show. We have, like I said, I'll remind you who we still have coming up because it's pretty great. And I'll mention these in order. Okay, so we've got the mayor of Denver coming up in, I don't know, 12 minutes or something. And then at the end, toward the end of the 7 o'clock hour, we're going to have Warren Schaefer, the manager of the Rockies. And then in the 8 o'clock hour, we've got Jack Corrigan, voice of the Rockies. We'll talk about this season. We'll talk about his new broadcast partner who has just announced Zach Goodman, young guy who is just a. natural at sports broadcasting. We've got the Aramark chef, and Aramark does the food and beverage here at Coorsfield, and God willing, they will bring a vegetarian thing for Gina. We've got Governor Jared Polis, who's a huge baseball fan. And if the timing works out, we'll have Paul D. Podesta, who is president of baseball operations.

for the Colorado Rockies. Let me just mention one very quick news follow-up thing here. I'm going to do this real fast, but Gina's talked about the Tina Peters thing, and it is very interesting. decision by the appeals court. They were trying to answer two questions. Should the conviction itself be upheld? And then should the sentence be upheld? And on the first question, they said, yes, the conviction is upheld. There are some people passing around an erroneous headline from the Colorado Sun. And these guys, Colorado Center, usually quite good. This was a pretty egregious mistake. If you're on their email list, they sent out this morning thing called the Sunriser, pretty creative name, the Sunriser, but the Sunriser this morning said Tina Peters' conviction overturned. It is not true. They did not overturn the conviction. What they said was the judge, when going into sentencing... was talking about things that Tina Peters believed that Tina Peters said in addition to talking about things that Tina Peters did. But the fact that he was talking about things she said and things she believed, the appeals court ruled that the judge unfairly considered things that are protected by the First Amendment when sentencing her. And so they sent it back to the lower court for resentencing. The court could, by the way, resentence her to the exact same sentence she had before. I don't think that's most likely, but I just wanted to be really up to speed on all those details. We'll take a quick pause and come back with Denver mayor, Mike Johnston. Hey guys, it's Ryan. I want to tell you about my new pastime, Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has been around for over a decade delivering the most fun you can have online. Play social casino style games for free anytime, anywhere. So sign up at chumbacino.com. No purchase necessary. PGW. Boy, we're prohibited by law. See terms and conditions. 21 plus. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best walk away in the world. An undefeated phenom. Batman is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shemir Shania! Descend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the silverback gene. Silverback nation makes them noise! versus Shemil Musayev. All it's over! For the PFL well-to-weight world title. On Real. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Entertain clients, reward employees, or enjoy a first-class race weekend with VIR's premium MSA hospitality experiences. August 21st through 23rd, enjoy exclusive viewing areas, premium amenities, food and beverage options, and access that puts you close to the action. Whether for business or pleasure, elevate your weekend at Virginia International Raceway. Explore and upgrade your tickets at VIRVIP.net.

Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on SpinQuest. And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love with hundreds of slot games and real cash prizes. That's at SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Denver mayor, Mike Johnston, who I will just simply say, Buenos Aires, Mike. Good morning, man. Thanks for having me. Are we allowed to talk about where you are and what time it is? Yes, it is 6 a.m. and I'm on spring break with my family, so I'm the only one that is awake in Mexico at 6 o'clock in the morning. Now just for you. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Appreciate it. We've got a ton of coming home. Might catch me is about all that you'll see you right now. Mm-hmm. All right, we've got like seven minutes with you and a bunch of stuff I want to get to, and Gina and I will take turns as always. I saw a headline over at the, and we'll get to the Rockies in a second, of course, because that's the big thing today. But I wanted to ask you about this moratorium on data centers. Tell us about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I think for us, we know that we're going to need more data. We want to be able to build data centers in the city to support folks who want to use chat to BT or stream on their phones. And we don't have any system in the city right now to regulate them. And we know they use very large amounts of water. They use large amounts of electricity. We want to make sure we have a place to understand where they're going to go, how they're going to go with community input in a way that will keep them within the parameters of what the city wants. And so we wanted to take a pause. to build some ordinance in the city code with the city council to regulate where these will go and what their requirements will be to make sure they don't drive people's energy costs and use too much water and a drought. And so we think they are a good part of the solution. We want to find a solution that works. We just got to make sure we have regulations for them. Is this year-long moratorium more because of the drought restrictions that we have in Denver, the uncertainty of what data centers can provide or just like a little mix of both right now? You know, we do have data centers in Denver, and we got one in the middle of downtown. You'd walk by and not know that it's there in the old gas and electric building. But these new ones are different, and that the amount of water they use, the amount of electricity they use can really be disruptive to the regulatory environment we have for both of those resources. And so, and we know we need them. So we just want to make sure that we have a path to build. them in places where they can get the water they need, get the electricity they need, and hopefully reduce impact on neighborhood residents. We have one going up in Globillary of Swansea right now, and there are a lot of questions from neighbors. And so before we have them just pop up all over the city, we want to be more thoughtful about where they go and how they keep everyone else's utility bills low.

Mike, I want to mention this thing because I know it's kind of close to your heart, but maybe a week ago-ish, there was a fire in City Park that destroyed something, and I know you want to help kind of recover that a little bit. Can you talk about it? Yeah, it was obviously a tragedy for us. It is one of the most beloved city buildings. It's the pavilion right there in front of City Park. It's that beautiful pavilion in the lake right in front of the Science Museum. And it's one of the most photographed spots of Denver. People, you know, if you go to jazz in the park, you often see it's the bandstands. That's where the bands play. It was burned to the ground. We're working hard to rebuild it fast. We'll put city dollars into rebuilding, but there is a local nonprofit, which is the city park, you know, friends and neighbors organization, which is helping raise money too. So a number of local folks, including a clock over nine news, have run fundraising campaign to do that. We want to get that icon back up as fast as possible. And so people want to pitch in with their help. The city will, of course, put in dollars, too. We want to get that. That icon back fast, the folks can be back and enjoy and jazz in the parts. I'll just mention the listeners real quick. If you go to my blog at roskomminsky.com and go to the guest section where I've got, you know, the mayor listed, one of the links. It might be the first link is a link where you can go to donate to rebuild the city park bandstand. Mr. Mayor, do you have any updates on the investigation if any arrests have been made in that fire? We don't. We have some information about suspects. We have no one arrested. I'm aware that it's been made in the last day or two, but we do have some information on leads, and we're pursuing those right now very actively, and we will certainly hold accountable whoever we find on that. Also in the news this week, Denver City Council approving the Axon license plate reader contract. But it was a tight vote, 7 to 6. Were you surprised by the opposition that you saw from some of the city council members? Do you understand some of their concerns of like looking at wanting some type of ordinance to regulate the technology before moving forward with a new surveillance vendor? I'm mostly grateful to the council members who, you know, have the courage and conviction to vote yes to realize this was the chance to keep the city safe. You know, we're delighted that that went forward, and we understand the concerns that folks had about privacy, and this contract was responsive to that. Just a reminder, this contract will not allow any sharing with data outside of Denver, so no sharing with ICE, no federal agency. no sheriffs or police departments in other states and counties. We don't do any of that sharing, and it has the most secure data protection that you can find. It's the same protection your public health information has. So it would take a million supercomputers a billion years to hack into this data, so people that are worried that the data is breachable. It just is the highest level you could ever have. And so if you didn't trust this data,

You would be asking us to shut off every body-worn camera that every officer in the city uses because that uses the same data encryption, and we've always trusted that. So I think this data is safe. It's just for Denver, and it's a common-sense practice that will allow us to catch people that are stealing cars are involved in violent crimes. We use these technologies to help in 40% of our homicide investigations last year. So Denver has delivered record lows and crimes. We want to keep them low and drive them even lower, and this will be one helpful tool. Mike, last thing for you, as mayor, separately from, you know, sports fan or Rocky's fan or any of that, as mayor, what does Rocky's home opener specifically and Rocky's season more generally mean for Denver? Oh, it is a first. It means that spring has arrived. It's the chance for everyone to come back downtown and come out to a ballgame, and that is great for the city. And, you know, it is just a great way to pass any afternoon or evening in downtown. It's one of the great attractions that bring people back to downtown. They love the experience at Coorsfield. It's great for all of our small businesses downtown if you're a restaurant or a bar or a retail spot. You know, Bob McGregor Square experience is such a wonderful fan experience. It's one of the best baseball stadiums in the country, and people love it. And so we're thrilled about it for downtown. We're thrilled about it for the city, and we're ready for hope to spring eternal on one new rocky season. That's exactly how we're all feeling. Mayor Mike Johnston, much gracias. Oh, my gosh. Can you let me off easy, Ross. Yeah, yeah. I know. You're on vacation. I thought I'd let you off easy. This is your act of grace. Yeah, that's right. It's my only one. Don't get used to it, Mike. Exactly. I got a free pass. Yeah, all right. See you. Enjoy the rest of your vacation. I'll tell you one thing we're going to do when we come back, and it might be like right after we come back, you'll have to listen and find out, but we're going to be giving away to one winner, a pair of tickets for tomorrow's Rockies game and Sunday's Rockies game. Keep it right here on KEO. Hey, this is Ryan Sechrest here. And if you're looking for some serious fun, head over to chumbac casino.com. At Chumba Casino, you can play all your favorite social casino style games for free anytime, anywhere. It's the most fun you can have on your phone or computer. No purchase necessary. VGW. Voidware prohibited by law. See terms and conditions, 21 plus. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best wall to weigh in the world. An undefeated phenom. That man is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shemil Musayev. Ascend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the silverback gene. Silverback Nation makes them noise. Versus Shemil Musayev. All is over! for the PFL well to wait world title. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN.

This is the race fans wait for all year. EMSA returns to Virginia International Raceway, August 21 through 23rd, as the world's top GT teams and drivers battle for championship points on VIR's iconic road course. See Porsche, BMW, Corvette, Mercedes-AmG, Ford, and more competing wheel-to-wheel. Three days of racing, paddock access, and nonstop action. Secure your tickets now at racevIR.com. That's R-A-C-V-I-R.com. Happy birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American-owned SpinQuest.com. What's better than fireworks than American Pie? Hitting a black check in the palm of your hand, and you won't lose your fingers. Over a thousand games, including slots and live dealers. And $30 point packs are on sale for 10. SpinQuest.com. Buy American players for American players. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. We are going to be giving away some Rockies tickets this hour. So make sure you keep listening. And I'll give you a little hint. Starting around 745 or so, we expect to have the Rockies manager, Warren Schaefer, in the booth with us here. And we will not be giving away tickets while he's here. So that probably narrows it down a little bit as to when we will be giving some tickets away. Not right now, but before 745. How about that? And whoever wins these things is actually going to. win a pair of tickets to both tomorrow's game and the next day. But I just want to take two minutes, something that isn't, I don't think you call necessarily headline news, but I just saw this thing being discussed in news somewhere. I thought it was so fascinating. I want to share it with you. And it's a scientific paper. And the title is, sycophantic chatbots cause delusional spiraling. And there's more to the title, but it just gets too nerdy even for me. But what they're talking about here, and I just think this is remarkable. I'll just share a little of the text, actually. So AI psychosis, oh my gosh. Or delusional spiraling. is an emerging phenomenon where people who are using AI chat bots, like chat GPT and some of these other things, find themselves dangerously confident in outlandish beliefs. after extended chatbot conversations. Now, it does feel, you might say, well, that's already going on in the U.S., right? A lot of people believe a lot of dumb things, and they feel real confident about him, even though normal people know these things aren't true. But we're talking about a whole different level with AI, and I haven't heard of this before I saw this paper, and I just thought it's so fascinating, I want to share it with you. The phenomenon is typically attributed to AI chatbot's well-documented bias toward validating users' claims, a property often called

And then in this paper, they talk about this stuff. And let me just skip ahead a little bit to give you a sense of how crazy this is. In early 2025, guy named Eugene Torres began using an AI chatbot for everyday tasks. He had no prior history of mental illness. But within weeks of conversing with the chatbot, he came to believe that he was trapped in a false universe, which he could escape only by unplugging his mind from this reality. And on the chatbot's advice, he started taking more ketamine and cut ties with his family. Now, this guy survived, but other people haven't. And something called the Human Line Project has so far documented about 300 cases of so-called AI psychosis or delusional spiraling where... extended interaction with AI chatbot's lead users to high confidence in outlandish beliefs. One, for example, a guy who was told, I think it was by chat, GPT, that he had made a fundamental discovery of mathematics that nobody had ever discovered before. And he believed it for a while. And sometimes it gets bad enough that people end up committing suicide. There are lawsuits filed against AI companies for stuff like this. And one of the things that happens is that the chatbots The way they work is they want to agree with you. So you say something, it agrees with you, and then you say a next thing, and it agrees with you even harder. And then you think you're talking to a super genius AI, and so it starts convincing you that you must be right. But really, that's not what's going on, and its program is inclined to agree with you just for the sake of agreeing with you, so you keep interacting with it, and then you end up taking people down these crazy, crazy rabbit holes. So that's all I'm going to spend time on as far as... as this article today. But seriously, as a real note of caution, be careful yourself, be careful when other people you know are using these chatbots, because as weird as it seems, because most people are just asking these things questions, but sometimes it can go way too far and it can really mess with people's psychologies to the point that it literally drives them crazy. Keep it right here on K-OA. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. The rush of racing, nothing beats it. But Chumba Casino comes close. Chumba's got fast spins, fun games, daily bonuses, and all the action you can handle. Now that's a run. Ready to hit the throttle? Get in the driver's seat and head to chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group, voidware prohibited by law, 21 plus, terms and conditions apply. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best walk away in the world. An undefeated phenom. Batman is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shemil Musayev. Descend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the silverback gene. Silverback nation makes some noise. Versus Shemil Mousayev. All is over!

for the PFL well-to-weight world title. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. Hey guys, Lady Luck here. Are you going on any road trips this summer? I know I'm going to be going on a bunch of road trips. And being that I'm going to be passenger princess, I love playing on SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest has all of my favorite slot games, live blackjack, live craps. Head on over to SpinQuest right now and get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. We have a lot of guests coming up, including the Rockies manager and the governor of Colorado and more. I'll stop there, but we've got more than that over our next hour and a half or so together. And this is kind of cool, since we are the broadcast home of the Rockies, we get to give away Rockies tickets from time to time. And what we're going to do now, normally we do name that tune at the end of the show, but we're going to have a guest at the end of the show. So we're going to do our Friday, name that tune now. If you want to win this, you can play name that tune even if you don't want it. But the winner will get a pair of tickets to Rocky's opening weekend games both Saturday and Sunday. So it's two tickets for Saturday and two tickets to Sunday to one winner. Hit it, Dragon. All right, I'll tell you what, let's do this thing while Gina is pondering. Gina, can you get this story that you sent me, Gina, about Jackson's Lodo? Sure. Let's do that for like 90 seconds while people are lining up their text messages. So I have to cover this story even though I'm still really caught up on name that tune? That's fine. Yeah. Yeah, that's about right. We'll do it together, though. Gina sent me this story from the Denver Business Journal, popular downtown Denver bar property by Coors Field up for sale. And they're talking about Jackson's, which is pretty iconic. Yeah, you want to buy it? Kind of. I am down. I'd go havesies on it. It's only up for what? 8 million? Yeah. Solid $8 million, that's fine. Jackson's Loto, I mean, you can't miss it because it's right where we'll even be broadcasting here at KOA, 20th, and Blake, right outside Coors Field. Jackson's Loto is that multi-level building that has bars on every single floor of it. Our friends at KTCL have done kegs and eggs there in the past, and it's just a great stopping point for when you're heading to a Rockies game or really anything taking place at course field. Well, now they're looking at it, and it seems like it is up for,

sale at $7.9 million, as we mentioned. But it's kind of interesting when you look at the article from the Denver Business Journal talking a little bit about their expectations of what could go into Jackson's Loto. They say that the property last changed hands in 92, according to public records. However, the person listed as the owner has been dead for 15 years. Wow. And that's Peter Dominic Jr. He was a well-known Denver architect. He really helps revitalize the Loto area in the 60s. But they don't really know what the next steps are of changing hands if somebody wanted to purchase Jackson's. Yeah, like it might not necessarily be the same kind of business. Right. And one of the other things in the article, it says the net operating income of the property is $300,000. Yeah. Which seems like a rather small number. Right. Right. Right now it sounds like they want to sell the building. for more than 25 times the net operating income of the property, which sounds very expensive, which means either the property is too expensive or you'd have to put a business in there that makes more money. Yeah, which I don't know what else can make more money than a bar right next to course fields. Yeah. But clearly it's something that they're saying you got to get higher in the revenue process in order to keep Jackson's the way it is. But it's right outside there. I guarantee people coming to the home opener will be stopping by Jackson's for a quick drink. It's a great place to stop by. 8 million. It could be yours. Dragon, play a longer version of the song now. And maybe we'll play that going into the break, and then we'll tell people what it is if they don't already know. Go ahead. Still not, Gina? Still not. I know the song, but I can't give you anything else. I'm sorry. You think we should ask the Rockies manager when he comes in if he can name that tune? That would be fun. Sure. Let's do that. Why not? Let's do that. Take a quick pause, and with a little luck, we'll be back with Warren Schaefer, the Rockies Manager. Step into the world of power. loyalty and luck. I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. With family, canolies, and spins mean everything. Now, you want to get mixed up in the family business. Introducing the godfather at chumpacasino.com. Test your luck in the shadowy world of the godfather's slot. Someday, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Play the godfather. Now at chumpacasino.com. Welcome to the family.

When you experienced the PFL live, the hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. There ain't no one stopping these teens and queens for well on your crime. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated that the silverbacked gene fights to cement his place atop the division against the silent assassin Shemil Musayev with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Entertain clients, reward employees, or enjoy a first-class race weekend with VIR's premium MSA hospitality experiences. August 21st through 23rd, enjoy exclusive viewing areas, premium amenities, food and beverage options, and access that puts you close to the action. Whether for business or pleasure, elevate your weekend at Virginia International Raceway. Explore and upgrade your tickets at VIRVIP.net. What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky, and America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpendQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. I got it. It's a little windy out here at Coorsfield. Okay. So we are joined in the booth by Warren Schaefer. Manager of the Colorado. Yes. There is. What? You got me? Sorry, we had the wind to blow open the window here at the press box. The wind blew everything open and Nuckina's water on her laptop. It's pretty crazy. Okay. Warren Schaefer joins us in the booth. He is the Colorado Hockey's manager and much younger than I thought he was going to be. And he has agreed to name that tune and see if he can name this tune. So hit it, Dragon. Let's see here. Oh, come on. That's Springsteen glory days. There you go. 1985. There you go. Wow. Just because Warren's here, we won't take more time, but it's got baseball lyrics. So there we go. I'm going to ask you one question, and then I'm going to get out of the way and let Keenan, who knows way more about baseball than I do, jump in and have a conversation with Chena. But I saw an article about you. that one of the terms used to describe you is relationship builder. And I don't know if that, if you think that applies to you, but if it does and if that's a kind of thing that's important to you as a baseball team manager, can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, for me, it's just about giving people respect every day. I mean, in 162 game season, it's every day, monotonous day after day after day. And sometimes it can get, you know, just like that, monotonous. But you have to have respect every day for everybody you work with and make sure that.

They matter on a daily basis. So that's all that boils down to. What does the steps been like becoming a relationship builder, not only with the Rockies team, but with the new leadership, a couple members of new leadership now that you're working with? Yeah, all winter getting to know Paul, getting to know Josh Burns. It's been easy. Walker, we're all in it for the same thing. We all want the same result. We all want this place to be great. And looking out there at course field, it's such a beautiful place. We want to bring winning baseball to this place. It's easy to develop relationships with those guys. And you talk about bringing winning baseball. That starts with the guys on the field, of course. 16 new names in this opening day roster that weren't in that opening day roster season ago. That's a big overhaul. And some of those guys have been players like T.J. Rumfield. What have you seen from him, a guy who's a rookie? You know, making his big league debut last week and he's played very well. Yeah, just the quality of a bat. I mean, it's not an easy thing to step right into the big leagues and take good quality of bats. He did it all spring, but he spurred in the season. He's done it so far in the season, so really happy for him. It just seems like it's who he is. But the turnover is a good thing. I mean, you lose 119 games. You need some new life into the clubhouse, so we like where we're going. How has it been for you transitioning from the interim role to the official role? Did it feel like there was any type of big change in the mix, or was it a pretty fluid process for you? Fluid process for me. The only big change is the ability to run a spring training. And I guess, well, I guess some other big changes, bringing in a whole new staff to work with these players. So it's been great so far. The spring training was great to be able to start the culture of fresh. So other than that, it feels the same managing the game. Changing culture in a program and an organization that has had some struggles over the past few years, three straight 100 lost seasons. How do you... Get that out of players' minds and say, hey, we are a completely different team this season. Obviously, some guys like Kyle Freeland's still leading the way. Hunter Goodman's still leading the way. But really a completely different looking team this year, and it starts front office all the way down to the guys on the field. Well, I think that's the point. I mean, there's so many new people. It's not even close to being the same team. The only thing that's the same is it says Colorado Rockies on our jersey. So with new people comes fresh energy. comes new culture, comes new atmosphere. So that's, I mean, it started in spring training. It's blatantly obvious the new direction that we're going, starting with Walker. So we're all excited about it. Warren, what does the Rocky's home opener mean to you? I mean, Governor Jared Polis always loves to call this an unofficial holiday. He makes a little excuse that people can bring in for their work if they're calling off today and calling playing hooky. What does this mean for you? Yeah, it's just such a unique day. I mean, we always, at least since I've been in the big leagues, we've opened on the road. And when you come back, it just feels like you're coming home to people that love you.

Seeing the fans here in this beautiful ballpark, blue skies today, everybody going to be cheering for us. It's really special. I'm excited for the new guys, like you said, to experience their first home opener. Your relationship with Paul D. Podesta, how is that going? And I will say just observationally, listening to you during spring training, doing interviews, doing press conferences, a lot of focus on guys getting on base in the walk. That was obviously made famous and moneyball and everything. But Paul's approach is very much that. How is that translated to your approach with building this lineup? Yeah, I mean, him and Josh Burns constructing the team that way, where you have Eddie Julian, you have Troy Mike Johnston, you have these new guys that are injected in our team, Kyle Carros, that are going to be on base guys. Listen, you can't lose 119 games and punch out as much as we did and not make a change. And I think that Paul's the perfect guy with what he believes. We get on base here at Coorsfield. anything can happen. So the huge outfield, we need to take that into play for what we're trying to do. So it's been good. What's your biggest motivation or your biggest? words of encouragement to rocky fans we're walking in you know you've you've pretty much said it straight that we're looking at optimism we're looking at a new team but you still have those naysayers you still have those people that are downtrodded what do you say to the they're always going to be there their downtrodden are always going to be there until things change so uh you listen we didn't win a series last year until june 1st we won a series in toronto to start the year against the defending American League champs. It's a good start. Just come out. We're playing exciting baseball. We're going to play hard every day for these fans, and we're looking forward to turning things around. What does winning that series in Toronto do for this team? I mean, for fans, just hearing their reaction seems like a big confidence boost. Hey, we can go out and we can compete with these teams that were, you know, obviously a small sample size, but you took two of three in Toronto. Yeah, that's a big deal. Especially, you know, we talk about building culture and spring training. I mean, it's a lot of talk, a lot of talk, a lot of talk, and then you finally get to play, and then to immediately get results like that after three tough games in Miami, which put us behind the eight ball. I mean, it's huge for the guys to see that they can do it. So, you know, it's just moving in the right direction. I can't say it enough. Rockies manager, Warren Schaefer. We appreciate you joining us in the booth this morning. Best of luck to everything. A beautiful start to the Rocky's Home Opener. Let's see a win here. Yeah, thanks guys for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Looking for a little Hollywood-style fun? Check out Ryan Seekrest 10K Ways exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10,000 ways to play. Get spinning for free at Chumbacasino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs, 21 Plus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best walk away in the world. An undefeated phenom. That man is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shemil Musayev. Ascend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the silverback gene. Silverback Nation makes them noise. Versus Shemil Musayev. All is over! for the PFL well-to-weight world title. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Got plans this summer? A brewery crawl? Another lake trip? The same festival you've been to three times already? Do something different. This August, Virginia International Raceway becomes the ultimate summer destination. Watch Inns's Michelin GT Challenge at VIR. August 21 through 23rd brings some of the fastest sports cars to battle through VIR's legendary corners. Camp with friends. Enjoy live music and experience a weekend you'll actually be talking about afterward. Start planning now at govir.net. Hey, everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just $10. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Thank you. That's radio magic right there. Dragon, it's not fair making us all laugh right before you tell us to start talking. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that is so good. All right. Let's go to the man himself, Jack Corrigan, voice of the Rockies since 2002. Is that right, Jack? Uh, 2003 was the first year. Okay. It's good to talk to you again, my friend. So we had Warren Schaefer in a little bit ago, and Keenan and Gina handled most of that conversation, but a lot of it was about how much turnover there's been on the team, which isn't surprising considering what their record was last year. But how are you feeling about the new lineup and the season over, you know, your big picture view of the upcoming season? Well, first of all, if you had a chance to interact with Warren, you got an idea of what kind of energy that he has. And so often a team reflects the... the get after it, if you will, of their coaches and other sports or managers in baseball. And between the young guys who are back from last year when Warren was the interim guy, and many of them had him as a minor league manager as they were coming up through the system. And then some of the people, the veteran people, they brought in.

who, again, have the same kind of approach as Warren and his staff do, especially as the front office does. You know, let's be honest, they don't have the most talented team in all of baseball, but I think you're going to find a team that's going to maximize what they have much better this year. Jack, I like asking you this question every year for the Rockies home opener on the field. I always call it the Rose and Thorn. The Rose, the positive that you've seen so far with Rockies on the field this season. And then maybe the thing that's still struggling, the thing that we need to address the most. Well, first of all, it would be the pitching, especially the starting pitching. You know, they brought in three veteran guys. You'll see Michael Lorenzen today start for the Rockies, Tomoyuki Sugano and Jose Quintana, and you add them to Kyle Freeland and Ryan Feltoner, and all of a sudden the Rockies. are in games more, if you will. I mean, every one of the losses were close games, and the wins, one was a tight win and one was, you know, the big eruption on Monday. But I think if you get... Somewhat consistent starting pitching because I believe the young bullpen is very good, then you have a chance to compete. The challenge still, the thorns, and it will take time in that regard, Gina, is clutch hitting. You know, the opportunities to drive in a runner with less than two outs or with two outs to. Well, you look at the three games in Miami. They all lost them by one run, and they had three clutch hits in 20 opportunities. That's not a very good ratio, obviously, and that's probably why they lost those three games. So that's an area that has to improve. Well, Jack, you mentioned that the clutch hitting. I know there were one for 12 the other day. I believe it was against Toronto with runners in scoring position, and that game that they lost. To be competitive this season, especially in what's expected to be a very, very competitive National League West, not just with the Dodgers, but the Giants are expected to be back up there. The Diamondbacks have sort of reloaded, and the Padres are always going to be contenders. How do the Rockies contend in this division? I mean, obviously clutch hitting is going to be a huge part of that, but where do they fit in to this conversation of potentially finding a spot in the playoffs? Well, I mean, when you have the second worst one loss record in the history of the game in the major leagues anyway, to suddenly win 45 more games than you won the previous year is probably a little bit unrealistic. It's not probably, it is unrealistic. I think from the Rockies perspective,

What they're looking this year is to find a philosophy, a style of play that gives them the best chance to compete at Coorsfield, but also on the road. I mean, historically for the Rockies, they've, you know, they've bashed the ball around at Coors Field and then struggled to do much on the road. I think a little change in offensive philosophy, if you will, more aggressive base running, more stolen bases, more walks, less strikeouts, those kinds of things. And it's going to be a work in progress with a lot of young players. But I think that's how they find their footing to move forward and start to climb in the standings. Jack, starting tomorrow, you are going to have a new broadcast partner, Zach Goodman. And obviously, you did some preseason with him. Tomorrow will be your first regular season game with him. What do K-OA listeners and Rockies fans need to know about Zach? Well, Zach is, you know, obviously baseball's been in his life since he was born, you know, with his dad working on the TV side, and he was a fine high school player at Arapaho High School in town. He played college baseball at Webster in St. Louis, so he brings, obviously... a baseball knowledge base that is good. I think... You know, any young broadcaster, Ross, think back to when all of us started. And, you know, you're, you believe you're ready to go and you go. And then you find out there are things you need to learn, things you have to get better at. And that'll be part of the process with Zach. But like I said, he's knowledgeable. He's enthusiastic. He's going to work his tail off in that regard. And, you know, Jesse Thomas and I are. anxious to help guide him along. You know, I'll let Jesse have the whip, and then I'll pull on the reins once in a while, but we'll get through it. Jack, I'll be honest. Zach is young. You may be not so young, but I feel like Ross and I have a similar dynamic on our show as well. Ross is as old as dirt, and I'm young. So what is the dynamic that you expect you'll see in the booth? Well, if Ross is as old as dirt, then I must have invented dirt. I think, you know, it's evolving. There's a chemistry. You know, the first month for you two together was, I'm sure, bumpy in various moments. But, you know, this...

This business, when you're in a partnership, you develop a rhythm just like so many other enterprises that require that. And I think Zach's eagerness to learn and to get better will help in building that rhythm, finding some chemistry. I hate saying chemistry because everybody uses that now. I like rhythm better because baseball has a rhythm that you. that you get into, not only the rhythm of a single game, but the rhythm of a homestand, the rhythm of six months of sitting side by side, basically seven days a week. You know, that's something that has to develop. And, you know, I'm anxious to see how it plays. Jack, obviously, the season has already started, and you've done an opening day in Miami. But what is the... energy for you like when you wake up in your own bed and it's opening day in your home stadium is there a little extra juice as you come in for today's broadcast oh yeah no no question about it i mean you You never get, if you're in the business as long as I have, and opening day doesn't really fire you up, well, then it's probably time to go do something else. You know, I remember for opening days going with my dad and my older brother as kids, and of course now, I mean, this is my... 41st home opener, and I'm just as excited as I was for that first one back in 1985. So, yeah, you'll see me have a little extra spring in my step because it is the home opener. Jack Corrigan, voice of the Rockies, and as we learned today, inventor of dirt. Jack, thanks as always. Have a great game and have a great season. I mean, I already started, but a great season here at home, and we'll talk with you soon. Good. Hey, don't mess up our boot there, all right? Oh, the wind may have already blown over our coffee. I'm so sorry. Be prepared for a windy day at Coorsfield, Jack. All right, thanks, guys. All right, coming up next on the show, we're going to learn a little bit about the food and drink here at Coorsfield. When Al Wolf from Aramark joins us right after Gina tells us what's going on in the world. Hey, it is Ryan Sechrest here. Want to bring a little Hollywood excitement to your day? Take a few spins with Chumba Casino's brand new game. Ryan Seacrest's 10K Ways. It's free and features 10,000 ways to play, giving you nonstop action, including thrilling bonus re spins and cascading reels. Every spin brings something new. So step into the spotlight. Enjoy the excitement. And play today at chumbacasino.com.

to Chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs 21 Plus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best welterweight in the world. An undefeated phenom. Batman is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shemil Moussia! Descend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the Silverback James. Silverback Nation makes some noise. Versus Shemil Mousayev. All it's over! For the PFL welterweight world title. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. This is the race fans wait for all year. EMSA returns to Virginia International Raceway, August 21 through 23rd, as the world's top GT teams and drivers battle for championship points on VIR's iconic road course. See Porsche, BMW, Corvette, Mercedes-AmG, Ford, and more competing wheel-to-wheel. Three days of racing, paddock access, and non-stop action. Secure your tickets now at racevIR.com. That's R-A-C-V-I-R.com. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Ross, you proceed to bring in a two-foot-long hot dog and nine mini beers and nine mini hot dogs and the 999 challenge here at Coorsfield. It's just surrounded by food right now. Tina Kotek and Ross Kovinsky here, broadcasting live from Coors Field today for the Rockies Home Opener and joining us in the booth as he does every year as Al-Wolf, resident district manager at Coorsfield with Airmark. Al, appreciate your time as always and appreciate you bringing in all of these crazy options this year. Thanks a lot, Gina. Happy to be here. So the first thing that I noticed, and Ross is already eating the mac and cheese, which we'll get to in a second. But before I talk about the mac and cheese, the first thing that I noticed this year is the size of a lot of these new options. Is this a trend that we're seeing at ballparks nowadays where people are almost looking for those fun fads, the things that they can Instagram a two-foot-long hot dog because it's going to get a ton of hits and a ton of likes on social media?

That's exactly what it's all about, and that's what we're targeting this year. So talk about some of the ones that you brought in. Let's start with the hot dog, because this, I've never seen one that comes in its own little carrying case here with the Rockies logo and everything. Yeah, two foot's a little bit long to carry in your two hands there, so we got a nice little box for it. But yeah, it's a two-foot all beef hot dog. It's one pound, and we can pick that up at Section 159 at the fanfare. I mentioned the 999 challenge as we've been talking about here on K-OA for quite some time because this is something that's been offered at a number of different ballparks. But we should mention because a lot of people were like nine giant beers and nine giant hot talks. That's not what we're talking about here. No, no. We want to make it responsible, but we also want to make it fun and something that everybody can partake in. So it even comes in its own carrying like. set up and it's it's fun it's a good display with it yeah yeah you can keep score on the side have you seen this jean have you seen the scoreboard on the front that's amazing if you haven't seen some of the food options that are being offered here at course field this year head to kway's instagram page keenan took an awesome video before uh ross started eating all the mac and cheese and everything like yeah and i i swallowed my last mouthful of that very delicious mac and cheese uh so is this more of a push toward things that people can share as part of the whole like this what's the name of that enormous taco thing that's bigger than my head yeah the mamalona taco okay that's i mean i guess a person could eat that but this even the nine nine nine even though it's a challenge and whatever you and the huge hot dog seem like sharing things absolutely definitely sharing and the mamelona taco is it's really a taco bowl you know, size it, you know, for two, three people that family could partake in. Who invents this stuff? Are you part of that process? Yeah, me, the chefs, the concessions department, we all start October and really start brainstorming, come up with a bunch of different items, and then by January time frame we narrow it down. Put it together and put it out for opening day. All right. Tell me one thing that you were thinking about for this year that didn't make it. Oh. We actually had quite a few. That's a good one. I'm going to punt on that one. I was going to say. You can't share something. We all go, but that sounds great. I'm eating more mac and cheese now. You go, Gina. I appreciate that every year you bring in some vegetarian options for me. This mac and cheese does look amazing. And I'm curious about if Rocky's fans are showing up and they do have dietary restrictions. What's their best option, their best go-to when they're looking for places where they can eat? Really, we have a lot of different vegetarian options, and I'll get that to you a little bit later. Maybe you can share that with fans, but, you know, Mac on Deck at Section 115's got veggie mac and cheese. We've got a full solid cart at Section 120.

Those are a couple of our most popular items, but we do have other vegetarian items in the park. And I think the one that you're mentioning that you said you could make vegetarian is the pizza donut, which has gained so much social media attention right now because it looks amazing. But have you seen some people maybe be skeptical of like? It's not sweet. It's a savory donut, correct? That's correct. Yeah, you would think it'd be super sweet when you bite into it, but it's more pizza than it is donut. Ross, you're going to have to try that one because that looks out. Oh, that's my veggie one? It's got pepperonies on it, I think. Is that the one they brought? That's okay. Don't worry about it. We've got another one. I've got a sort of businessy logistical kind of question for you. You're providing food for many, many, many thousands of people every game. How do you know how much food to buy for your own supply here so that you have enough to supply everyone, but not so much that you end up like having to throw food away or let it go to waste? Yeah, no, that's a great question. We've been very fortunate to be with the Rocky since day one. We've got a great history. We use a lot of our analytics. We do everything from how many people are coming. Who are we playing? Is it a night game? Is it a day game? So a lot of that analytics plays into how we. Give me an example of who are we playing and how that figures into your decision as to what to have at the stadium. So it really depends on, you know, we get a big Dodgers fan. base here as well, right? So we know that Dodgers like hot dogs. It's Dodger dog, right? So between that, we got Phillies coming in, right? So we got the Phillies cheese steak, which is our new wit-love concept we got going on this year. That's awesome. I like that we cater even to people that are just showing up to Coorsfield for the first time. It's like, no, you could still find a food option you like as well. And then we should mention, Al, that you have all the basics, your go-to ballpark hot dog. If you're not looking for the two-foot long one, you can find plenty of other options here at Coorsfield as well. Oh, absolutely. We definitely have all the staples and, you know, a lot of specialty locations as well. So pretty much something for everybody. Are you going to taste us that savory donut? Yeah, I'm going to try the pizza donut. It looks so good. Is that Pesto or what? That's Pesto. I love Pesto. The pizza donut is in Section 109 for those who are interested. And I believe you have all this on your website as well, correct? We do. It can find all the information because if you're looking, it's called the Glyzilla, which I think is hilarious for the two-foot-long hot dog. Okay. And there's pizza sauce inside the pizza donut. Out of a one out of 6.5, what would you give it? From 1 to 6.5, I'm going to give it a,

I'm going to give it a five and a quarter. I think it's really, really good. And I think it's been sitting here in front of the window. So it cooled down a lot. I think it would be better if it were actually at the temperature that you will get it at when you come by it here at the stadium. So probably even more than it's really good. Savory donuts. I think that needs to be more of a thing. It's a savory donut. It's sweet, which I actually think is an awesome blend with the whole pizza gestalt. Yeah, I'm impressed. Amazing. Al Wolf, resident district manager, Coorsfield with Aramark. Al, we appreciate you coming in and just bringing all these awesome food options for us every year. Happy Rocky's Home Opener. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you. Appreciate it. Looking for a little Hollywood-style fun? Check out Ryan Seacrest's 10K Ways exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10,000 ways to play. Get spending for free at chumpacasino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group, voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs, 24, sponsored by Chumba Casino. When you experienced the PFL live, the hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. There ain't no more stopping these keys he cleans for well when you cry. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated Thad, the silverbacked jean, fights to cement his place atop the division. Against the silent assassin, Shemil Musayev, with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Boydware prohibited, visit SpenQuest.com for more to tells. I don't think that was Jared Polis's walk-up song last year. I remember different walk-up music, Jared. You know, I don't know. Usually when somebody asks me, that's what it is, but not enough people ask me. They need to bring me up to Batonore, I guess. What would be your walk-up music? Well, that was it. That was it? That's your walk-up music? Times they aren't changing. That's what you would walk out to when you're about to bat? Oh, yeah. Times are changing, baby. That's right. Okay. That's Governor Jared Polis, by the way. Governor of the great state of Colorado and a huge baseball fan and a huge Rockies fan and the all-time greatest player in the history of congressional baseball, at least if you ask him. So go ahead. You look like you're going to say something.

Well, a lifetime RBI leader for a congressional baseball team. But I'm ready to cheer on the Rockies today. I'm coming down. You're there a little bit early, Ross. You got there. You didn't get the memo. You're about seven hours early. Yeah, I tried to get you to come join us in studio, but you were a little bit of a slacker today. I was like, you're doing what? When? The game's not joke, too. Well, don't worry. I think he's keeping your seat warm because I heard you'll be joining Jack. for some play calling later today as well. That's going to be fun. Yeah, I love doing that. And, of course, I'm going to get there early, not as early as you too, but hoping to get there, you know, maybe 12, 30 or 1, have some of the fun pregame activities. And yes, looking forward to calling it and inning. I've done that several times during my governorship, and it's always a lot of fun. Take a look at this, Jared. I'm showing Jared on the Zoom. This is their new pizza donut. They made a vegetarian. version with no pepperoni for you know you guys are early for that too i see you like pizza donuts and beer and hot dogs and i'm like it's 8 30 in the morning man i think this will be the first time i can say i'm i'm drinking a beer while speaking with the governor that doesn't feel right at all So, Jerry, as a huge baseball fan, and we're here for Rocky's opening day, you know well that there's been lots of turnover on the Rockies team, which is probably a good thing. We had the manager on the show earlier. Warren Schaefer was on the show talking about that. How are you feeling about the Rocky season in these early days? Look, brand new, brand new season. Obviously, we were already tied with the Padres, which is exciting. But, you know, look, it's early on. We have some great young talent, Ronefield. We, you know, want to see where Chase Dullender winds up. We have some, you know, things break our way. we can be a contender. So it's always fun to be optimistic early on and we'll see what happens. Governor, I'll ask you our social media poll question for this morning. I haven't talked about it enough today. Your expectations for the Rocky season this year. The options on X, another 100 lost season, winning record, World Series are bust or make it to the playoffs. Well, I mean, look, this is early in the season and we're always hopeful on home opening day. So, I mean, we're going to say World Series are bust, right? Love it. Good answer. Let me ask you one non-baseball question at the risk of... annoying Shelby. So I think one of the biggest things going on as far as state government overall right now is trying to figure out the budget. And I know that you're not necessarily, you know, your office will be involved talking with the legislature. What do we do? But how are you looking at that right now as kind of the top things that might be kind of difficult that you think the state needs to do to close this budget hole?

Well, first of all, if the Rockies had the budget of the state of Colorado, we would be in first place because we have about a $30 billion budget. So if the Rockies had that, you know, we'd have Otani, we'd have everybody, man, you know. So the state budget, the way that works, Ross, as you know, is that'll be the joint budget committee, which is both the senators and the members of the state house. Dave. finished their work they've submitted a budget it'll be considered next week in the house week after in the senate here's what people should know unlike the national government colorado balances our budget every year And so we, I submitted a balanced budget months ago. And of course the legislature has prerogative. They change things. They add here. They take away there. But they also have produced a balanced budget. It can be amended on the floor. But if people add to one line, they have to subtract from another. So I will sign a balanced budget. Pretty much ironclad prediction should be about three weeks from now. And we should be good to go. And, you know, always there's tough decisions every year and priorities. But we balance the budget. Just one quick follow up on that. How involved are you personally in trying to balance this priority versus that priority, or do you really just leave it to JBC? We, you know, so in Washington, when a president submits a budget, It's largely ignored by Congress, and Congress does not even adopt a budget at all. That's why we have enormous deficit spending. Colorado is different. It's better. The governor submits a budget. I do, and it was how we would balance the budget. And then the legislature uses that as a basis and makes changes to it and, you know, not happy with all the changes. There's things I wanted to cut. They didn't cut. But overall, you know, it's a reasonable product that's, you know, Republicans, Democrats, House, Senate, me as governor, working together. to make sure that we can have a fiscal responsibility and keep Colorado in a strong fiscal condition. Can't ignore the news from yesterday. Just your overall reaction to the Colorado Court of Appeals upholding Tina Peters' conviction, tossing out her nine-year sentence, ordering her to be resentenced. I know you've said in the past that her nine-year sentence was too harsh. Is there something that you'd like to see or an actual timeline of what you'd like to see instead of that nine-year sentence? Yeah, there was a lot in that decision, and I agree with it. First of all, they upheld the conviction first and foremost, which I strongly agree with she violated the law. She deserves to do time. Second, they rejected this very bizarre and illegal attempted pardon from President Trump for a state-level crime. That's not a power the president has. He tried to execute it. The court said no. A lot of this will continue to work its way through the courts and appeals. courts are not always the fastest. But I was glad that they kind of looked at that free speech issue as well. Jared, what time are you doing the play-by-play with Jack Corrigan here on K-O-H? I've been told I'm doing fourth inning, but we'll see. I think that's what I'm doing. Hey, I'll be there the whole game if they have me. But somewhere in the middle of the game, I'll be coming in for an inning and a half, something like that.

The boss has confirmed fourth inning. Yeah. So you've got their approval. Let's go. They'll see if they keep you for the fifth, not sure. Well, and you know, you're term limited, so you got another, what, a little less than two years in the job. So, you know, who knows, maybe baseball has a calling for you. Well, yeah, you know, I'm probably a little bit too old to play at this point. I'm no Ricky Henderson, but, you know, we'll see how the Rockies are doing, and maybe they'll call me up. Maybe. Or Cal Ripkin, maybe. Talk about Jared Polis in the same sentence. Jared, thanks so much for making time for us. Appreciate it. Next year, we'll make sure you wake up extra early and come see us in person. There you go. Take care. Go Rockies. All right. It is Ryan Seacrest here. There was a recent social media trend which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment. But a better trend would be going to chumba casino.com. It's like having a mini social casino in your pocket. Chumba Casino has over 100 online casino style games all absolutely free. It's the most fun you can have online and on a plane. So grab your free. Welcome bonus now at chumbacasino.com. Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best welterweight in the world. An undefeated phenom. Batman is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shemiel Musayev. Ascend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Thad, the silverback jeans. Silverback nation makes them noise. Versus Shemil Musayev. All it's over! For the PFL welterweight world title. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. Hey guys, Lady Luck here. Are you going on any road trips this summer? I know I'm going to be going on a bunch of road trips. And being that I'm going to be passenger princess, I love playing on SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest has all of my favorite slot games, live blackjack, live craps. Head on over to SpinQuest right now and get yourself a $30 coin pack for just $10.00. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Go Rockies. All right, that's Governor Jared Polis. Fantastic. He's a huge baseball fan. The guy really, really is. All right, we've got one more segment together, and if all goes according to plan, we're going to be joined by the... Rockies president of baseball operations, and I'm looking forward to that conversation, in part because Paul D. Podesta has spent plenty of time in baseball, but he also spent time in football. It should be a really fascinating chat. Keep it right here on K-OA. And we are really happy to be joined by Paul D. Podesta, who is director or president of baseball operations here for the Colorado Rockies. Good to meet you in person. Thanks so much for spending some time with us. And we're all going to have questions for you, but why don't we start with Gina? So I'm curious, Paul, you've talked a lot about baseball at altitude. In fact, when we were walking into Coorsfield, I loved how literally the signs this year. A lot of the signage is baseball at altitude. How are you working with the players to find a way to make it more of an advantage? Because some people always look at it as a disadvantage here at Coorsfield. Right. I mean, it is a very different brand of baseball. is we need to figure out what winning looks like here for us. Not as a visitor where you come in for three days, but for the home team where you're here 81 days. I've been here as a visitor. It's not pleasant at times. And we need to recreate that here from the home side and do it each and every day. So part of it is about how we play the game. I mean, there's just more acreage on this field than anywhere else in baseball. So we have to defend better than other teams, especially in the outfield. And then we need to take advantage of that offensively.

to put the ball and play more. We need to run the bases really aggressively. If anyone's watched our games in the first week, they've probably seen that. You know, we've been very aggressive on the bases. So. There are a lot of other things, too, that we're talking about and that we're starting to implement that I probably won't be as forthright about. But no, I think we're going to have what you would consider a Rockies way. You seem like a glass half-full kind of guy. You walked into this with a little bit of optimism when a lot of people might have walked into it being like, what am I getting myself into? I think we all have to. You know, I think not just me or even some of the other people we brought in the front office, but also a lot of our major league coaches and then even our players, this was a challenge they all. sort of ran toward, you know, as opposed to trying to run away from. You know, we signed three free agent starting pitchers. And I think that surprised a lot of people and said, geez, you know, the Rockies haven't signed a starting pitcher in a long time. How did you convince them to come here? And we didn't try to convince anybody. Like, we basically tried to make it self-selecting. Like, who wants this challenge? And those were the guys who, you know, of the guys we wanted. Those are the guys who stepped up and wanted that challenge. And it was a pretty short list, but we were thrilled to have them. So you've worked in both football and baseball, and I wanted to ask you, what is something that you learned in football that you have brought to baseball that you think maybe people who have only worked in baseball maybe might not have thought of? Sure. I mean, I think football really is probably the ultimate team game. You know, if one guy doesn't do his job, if the left guard misses his block. it really doesn't matter what everybody else does right the play breaks down right so everyone has to be truly accountable to everybody else a lot of other sports feel even though their team sports can feel more individualized right baseball you have the the pitcher-confrontation the hitters up there by himself you know etc but i do think there's room for that that sort of team a team idea, you know, of team offense, especially in baseball or team defense. I just talked about some of the things already, like, you know, the way we have to play the outfield, the way we have to run the bases. Those are things that are really pretty selfless and that they really are about the team, and they should get the team ultimately excited, you know, and I think we saw that in the first week in our games, you know, especially in Toronto, you guys taking an extra base, guys stealing a base in a big spot, and then getting a two-out base hit. Like those are... Yeah, that's team baseball. It's not just one guy going up there and hitting a homer, you know, and trotting around the bases. It's really about everybody doing what they can to help the team. Well, we saw it last year. I mean, you mentioned Toronto in Toronto in the World Series last year. The Blue Jays team, they called it, I think, the fast break offense when they would go out and they would get two, three hits in an inning. Obviously, if you can string a couple of hits together, you're going to score a run, maybe even more. Is that similar to what you guys are trying to instill here with that? team style approach because like you mentioned baseball is a very individual sport yeah we've tried to create a lot of uh sort of team based metrics you know for our guys to focus on what we need to do as a team every day to win a game and to win a game here at cores you know again baseball so individualized everyone gets all their individualized statistics you know what your batting average what you're on base how many home runs have you hit etc well we're looking at it okay well what do we need to do each game as a team to go out and win

And we've made all of our players aware that, again, I said this earlier, what does winning look like at Coors Field? We've tried to break that down for them and make it very clear so they know what they have to do. And then they then know what they have to do individually to contribute to that team. You know, you mentioned the Blue Jays. You know, both think the Blue Jays and the Dodgers last year in the World Series. I think those were great examples of team baseball. Like the way those guys played offense, the way they passed the baton to the next hitter, if they don't get the pitch they want, or just doing whatever it is they have to do at the plate in that moment for the team to be successful. And it's certainly something we're trying to, you know, adopt. Got time for one more question. We're talking with Paul D. Potesta, president of baseball operations for the Colorado Rockies. So you come in here bringing this new vision. But you also got a new manager. You got lots of new players. It really is probably as close to a clean slate as I've seen in any sport in quite some time. So how do you think about that? Yeah, I think what we wanted to do when we first came in was not to clean everything out. We really wanted to see what our capabilities were as an organization and then just build on top of them. You know, figure out what was missing, where we could add. And that's really what we've done. So you mentioned, you know, Shafe is our manager. You know, he was the interim manager at the end of last year. We made him the permanent one. We did keep some of our coaches from last year. But then we brought in some coaches from different organizations just to bring in new perspectives. You know, we brought in coaches from... Detroit and Miami and Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, guys who've been in all sorts of different places, the Dodgers. Because we want a little bit of taste from each of those different organizations. Hey, what do they do well that we can do here or that we can make our own here in Colorado? And we did that also with some of the players that we brought in. So that was the idea. How can we just build on top of what we thought was already a really strong foundation here? Keenan, if you want one last quick question, go ahead. T.J. Rumfield has played superb baseball this year. He was a guy off-season acquisition in January. Any other prospects that you see right now that are playing in maybe AA or AAA that you're keeping an eye on who could make an appearance this season? Yeah, I think we had some guys that had really good camps. I mean, Charlie Condon was first round pick a couple years ago. He had a tremendous camp, and he's off to a really good start so far in AAA. A couple pitchers are doing well. Tanner Gordon, who pitched up here last year and did a nice job. He had a great spring and is pitching well in AAA. Sean Dan Sullivan, off to a really good start in AAA, a left-handed pitcher. There are a bunch more eyes. I don't want to leave guys out, but no, we were really encouraged by what we saw down in Arizona. Paul D. Podesta, President of Baseball Operations here at the Colorado Rockies. Thanks for joining us. Great to meet you. And person have a great home opener. And go Rockies. Thanks so much. Yeah, go Rockies. All right, that's it for us, for me and Gina and Keenan and producer Dylan here with us. In the booth, you're going to have Mandy and Michael Brown coming up next from 20th and Blake. So if you're going to be near the stadium, stop by and say hi. Gina, any final words? And how is your food? Yeah, I haven't even gotten to eat it yet. I've been doing too much work here. Special vegetarian food for Gina. My veggie pizza donut. I'm looking forward to it.

Epic Gina and Keenan and everybody listening. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Go Rockies. I'm epic. Looking for a little Hollywood-style fun? Check out Ryan Seacrest, 10K Ways, exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10,000 ways to play. Get spinning for free at Chumbacasino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs, 24. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. When you experienced the PFL live, the hits are harder. The crowd is louder. The action unmatched. There ain't no more stopping these teens and cleans for well when you cry. July 25th in Washington, D.C., undefeated that the silverbacked gene fights to cement his place atop the division against the silent assassin Shemil Musayev with PFL gold on the line. The tension is building. Be there. Saturday, July 25th, live from Care First Arena. For tickets, visit pfell. info slash DC. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky. And America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details.