Wrecking the Toy Department
By Jake Williams
This podcast is about wrecking the toy department – the name derisively foisted on sports – where it’s supposedly all fun and games. It’s not and never has been.
There’s no shut up and dribble here. We want to hear what athletes, and people from all walks of sports – have to say, because they’re public figures with a platform. What they say and do, or don’t say and do, matters whether we agree with them or not. And it matters a lot.
We use sports to pull back the covers on society - culture, politics, race, civi
Wrecking the Toy DepartmentJul 24, 2020
From Winning Ugly to Ugly as Sin: Part 3 of 3
As if 2021 weren't bad enough, the White Sox experience was about to get exponentially worse. As the team makes its heel turn, we'll explore the real time experience a fandom's divorce from their team. It's ugliness in full bloom, and there's nothing winning about it.
From Winning Ugly to Ugly as Sin: Part 2 of 3
They were contenders, and likable ones at that. Until...
In this episode, we'll explore how owner Jerry Reinsdorf went rogue on his organization by attempting to rectify what he considered a nearly 35-year-old personnel mistake. We'll examine the error of attempting to turn back time, and its fallout - not only what it cost the team's chances to be perennial World Series contenders, but what Reinsdorf himself thought of both the fans and the players they had been rooting for.
From Winning Ugly to Ugly as Sin: Part 1 of 3
Want to know why men, women, boys and girls are madly cheering for their team and all you see is laundry? This is how I fell in love, not just with baseball, but with the Chicago White Sox. For two decades, I lived the ups and downs, glory and tragedy, and saw someone step into immortality, it allowed me to smile, to hope, to dream.
But how do you deal with your first love doing something irredeemable?
In part one of this three-part love story, the boy who falls in love with the team, making it all the more difficult for the man to divorce himself from the fan/team marriage decades down the road.
The Drama King of Green Bay
On this episode, we'll take a deep dive into how and why Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback who's arguably the best player in Green Bay Packer history, is the same guy the team can't wait to let go.
Listen as we take a look at his 18-year one-man dramatic production-slash-revenge tour to prove that everyone who overlooked or passed him by was actively, egregiously wrong in their judgment, and how that has led him to commit the sins of the elder he hated most.
Thank you for listening. Please leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
The transcript is available here.
If you have any feedback or suggestions, please contact me at jgwilliams99@gmail.com, and follow me on LinkedIn.
Djoker's Wild
Rules? Where we're going there are no rules. For world number one men's tennis player Novak Djokovic, it has been as startling a descent over the past three years as it was an ascent for the previous decade-plus. How did such a great sportsman, once a poor kid who grew up in a a war-torn nation hitting tennis balls or shrapnel blasted tennis courts become a caricature of the worst kind of self-obsessed, sanctimonious, hypocritical, rules don't apply to me, sports celebrity?
We'll take a look at his high-speed plummet from athlete to admire to the unfortunate non-role model he's become, and examine how his Big Four contemporaries stack up by comparison. For Novak Djokovic, it's a bad look all around even if he may well currently be the best men's tennis player ever.
If you have any feedback or suggestions, please contact me at jgwilliams99@gmail.com. Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
To read the background material and research for this episode, go to:
BBC - Novak Djokovic: Doubts over timing of Covid test
The Guardian - The unapologetic feminism that turned Andy Murray into a global icon
San Francisco Chronicle - Novak Djokovic's Olympic meltdown shows hypocrisy of his Simone Biles criticism
The Best People Money Can Buy
You can't walk through this world without stepping on a few feet. You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.
If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Okay, but what if there's nothing left in the kitchen but the bad apples that spoil the whole bunch?
On this season, a look at those bad apples in sports, why they're rotten to the core, and what to do about them.
When Charles Barkley made a Nike ad saying athletes shouldn't be role models, he took heat from all sides. But maybe he had a point. Not all athletes are or should be role models, and when we're looking for stars to emulate, we should always be operating with an attitude of buyer beware.
That's this season on Wrecking the Toy Department. Please follow us, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.
The Ultimate Model Employee
The last shoe dropped on the relationship between Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn Nets, as Kyrie forced his way out of Brooklyn. The first time he was introduced at Barclay Center after the trade request, he was roundly booed. It is everything he deserved on the way out, and actually, he let the Nets off the hook. They no longer have to strike the balance between on court wizardry and off court behavior that hits on every example of what you should avoid when making an expensive hire.
In this episode, we'll look at Kyrie Irving's super-speed transformation from shooting supernova to stardust ash, the guy who tells you this is where he wants to be, and that he's going to give you his all, until he decides he wants to no longer. And an examination of the lesson of buyer beware, that stature, charisma and good deeds can and will be easily undone.
Content warning: this episode contains graphic audio of a man put in an ultimately fatal chokehold by a police officer.
Our Faltering War on Drugs
Why is the War on Drugs constantly faltering or stalling out? In this episode, we'll explore why've let so many opportunities to gain the upper hand against drugs, be it cocaine in the 1980s or fentanyl and opioids over the past decade, slip through our fingers. And take a look at how Major League Baseball continues to miss the moment when national crisis and national pastime collide.
Content warning: there will be some description of a death by drug overdose
Trailer: Our Faltering War on Drugs
Remember when we were told drugs would cook your brain as fast as it takes to fry an egg? And then the commercial ended, almost on a dare, with, "Any questions?" Well, here we are 35 years later and there are news headlines about fentanyl and opium deaths nearly every day. In this episode of Wrecking the Toy Department, we'll examine the questions we should have asked long ago and why we continually go to so much effort to avoid a conversation that's been at the forefront of our nation for more than half a century.
Add to Resume: I'm a Dad
How do sports talk radio people react when they find out an afternoon drive host won't be going on a work trip to Las Vegas because of the possible impending birth of his child? The answer might surprise you.
This episode will explore why even though the United States is one of just two nations in the world that doesn't provide federally mandated paid parental leave, there's still hope it will happen. And, impossible though it might seem, sports talk radio is providing that beacon of hope that men will no longer be belittled or disparaged for wanting to be dads from the moment their child is born.
Add to Resume: I'm a Dad Trailer
Professional sports have shown us why the United States still has yet to enact federally mandated paid parental leave. But, could sports talk radio - known for the most lowbrow of Cro-Magnon guy talk - end up being the beacon we follow to eventually enacting just that into federal law? It's a question we'll examine as we learn why one Chicago sports talk radio host won't be joining the rest of his show's cast in Law Vegas, and see how both his colleagues and listeners react to the news.
Billionaires Lives Matter trailer
His ousting came at the end of a near year-and-a-half long investigation into the Washington Football Team. In the end, Gruden became the scapegoat the NFL could use to salvage the reputation and the team control of billionaire WFT majority owner Dan Snyder.
Listen as this episode explores the how and why in the NFL's sleight of hand.
Billionaires Lives Matter
The NFL can laud itself for doing the right thing in forcing Jon Gruden to resign as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders because of his racist, homophobic and mysoginistic emails. But, in this episode, we'll look at how and why the NFL did the right thing - partially - for entirely the wrong reasons - to protect a billionaire team owner. Because, in the NFL, their reputations, desires, problems must be catered to above all else. In the NFL, it's truly the billionaires' lives that matter most.
Field of White Dreams Trailer
Should Major League Baseball be using Field of Dreams to celebrate its sport? On top of not being a good movie, it revels in the nostalgia of a time when Blacks couldn't play baseball and women couldn't vote. Despite that, MLB's Field of Dreams game between the White Sox and Yankees was a box office smash with a pure Hollywood ending. So then, why afterwards did MLB decide to promote the 2022 Field of Dreams game rather than the man who delivered the silver screen walk-off and should be the face of baseball - White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson.
Field of White Dreams
Why is Field of Dreams the movie Major League Baseball has chosen to celebrate its sport? Sure, August's Field of Dreams game between the White Sox and Yankees was a dream game - a ratings bonanza with a Hollywood ending - but it could have been so much more. It was a moment baseball could have capitalized on to expand its fan base by putting its full marketing machine behind the sport's biggest Black star, who's perhaps its biggest current star, period.
Instead, Major League Baseball chose to revel in the nostalgia of a time when it banned Black and brown people from playing the sport professionally and women, regardless of color, couldn't vote. Why? The answer to question of how to make baseball America's pastime again, without the emphasis on past, seems so simple, but yet, it's not.
The Motherhood Penalty trailer
Today, Canadian boxer Mandy Bujold will learn whether or not she's headed to the Olympics. She earned the right to go, having made the Canadian team that was to participate in the Olympic qualifying tournament last year. But when it was cancelled due to Covid, the International Olympic Committee decided to qualify boxers based on their results from three tournaments in 2017 and 2018, the only three tournaments Bujold has missed since starting her boxing career in 2004. She was away from the sport for 11 months due to pregnancy and postpartum, and in 2018, she and her husband welcomed their daughter Kate Olympia (KO, as in knockout) into the world. Bujold asked the IOC to use her pre-pregnancy rankings - she was #8 in the world in 2017 - to qualify her for the Olympics, but the IOC denied her request. Her appeal went to the Court for Arbitration of Sport, the highest court in international sports, which is to announce its final decision this afternoon.
The Motherhood Penalty
Heading into what the International Olympic Committee has billed as the Gender Equity Games, Canadian boxer Mandy Bujold’s fight just to qualify for the Summer Olympics next month has served notice of how far we still need to go to achieve actual gender equity in the world.
In 2017, Bujold, then ranked 8th in the world, took some time away from the sport to start a family. After an absence of 11 months, she returned to the ring and made the Canadian boxing team.
However, when the 2020 Olympic qualifying tournament was cancelled due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, the IOC determined that boxers would qualify based on their results in three tournaments that Bujold, one of the best-ever Canadian boxers, missed because of her pregnancy and postpartum. The IOC denied her appeal to have her Olympic qualification be based on her pre-pregnancy rankings. She now awaits a decision from the international sports world’s top court.
Joining me to discuss the impact of these decisions on mothers and mothers-to-be in the world workforce were Miriam Williams and Tara Elwell Henning, the co-founders of Superkin, a lifestyle brand for ambitious parents.
Sports Gets It First
There’s no such thing as, “just stick to sports.”
To paraphrase Oscar-winning film director Spike Lee: If you read the sports section, you’ll know what’s happening in the world. Sports gets it first… Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Megan Rapinoe, the courageous women of the WNBA… and most certainly Covid-19. The reason why March 11, 2020 is the day the coronavirus pandemic became truly real in America is because the NBA shut down its season, and March Madness was cancelled the next day… full stop.
“If you read the sports section, you’ll know what’s happening in the world. Sports gets it first.”
Spike Lee speaking to Kara Swisher on “Sway”
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Florida Man Strikes Again
“Florida Man” isn’t just a meme or a jokey news story including a mugshot of a white man looking like he has no idea he’s done something wrong. Personified here by newly minted Jaguars coach Urban Meyer, “Florida Man” is also a culture, one that can help explain a disturbing lack of diversity when it comes to corporate hiring practices.
MUSIC CREDITS
"The Sky of our Ancestors" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sneaky Snitch" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Interloper" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Memory Lane" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Work is Work" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Living the Dream
Because of the courageous and heroic work of her employees, the mostly Black women who play for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, a team named after Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, Dream co-owner and former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler lost her re-election bid to Raphael Warnock, the pastor of the Atlanta church King once led. Loeffler’s re-election campaign and subsequent defeat has left her own life’s dreams in tatters.
Contact the show at jgwilliams99@gmail.com
CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains graphic audio and descriptions of people being killed by police.
MUSIC CREDITS
Morgana Rides by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4080-morgana-rides-
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Man Down by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4016-man-down
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Outfoxing the Fox by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4183-outfoxing-the-fox
The Old Boys Club
Why would the Chicago White Sox organization make the exact wrong hire at the exact wrong time? The Old Boys Club, of course. What’s that, you ask? Take a listen and learn about all the benefits this club bestows on its members. And remember, you’ll never get to be a part of it, and neither will I.
Want to contact the show? Email me at jgwilliams99@gmail.com
MUSIC CREDITS:
"Fearless First" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Division" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Unity" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"I Can Feel it Coming" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"The Complex" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
It's OK to Say You're Depressed
Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott showed true leadership when he admitted to having suffered from depression and sought treatment. His story and those like his are a meaningful strike against what’s called “toxic masculinity,” the outdated notion that men should hide or otherwise cover up their vulnerabilities.
A brief warning to listeners: This episode contains discussion of depression and suicide.
MUSIC CREDITS:
Memory Lane by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4036-memory-lane
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Bittersweet by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3440-bittersweet
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
College football is broken
It's time to stop pretending that the "student" in the NCAA's student-athlete model is anywhere near as important as the 'athlete" part to those in charge. This structural imbalance in college sports has been exposed and magnified by the desire of those in charge to do everything they can to play a full college football season in the midst of a pandemic, regardless of what it might do to their players' health. This is how the system was designed to work, to take advantage of the players, most of whom are minorities, and their free labor. It shouldn't be that way.
Thank you to Miriam Williams for her outstanding voice over work.
MUSIC CREDITS:
Kevin MacLeod – Welcome to the Show
Welcome to the Show by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4614-welcome-to-the-show
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Kevin MacLeod – Sax, Rock and Roll
Sax, Rock, and Roll by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4324-sax-rock-and-roll
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Chipper by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3502-chipper
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A Capital Disgrace
Go Football Team! Yes, that's the new name of the Washington Football Team, formerly the 'Skins. On this episode, we take a look back at the team's last two decades under owner Daniel Snyder, and why the Washington football organization during that time can best be referred to as A Capital Disgrace.
Content warning: there are curse words used as well as descriptions of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Sports to the Rescue
It's on! Major League Baseball is back, but is bringing sports back in the midst of a global pandemic a good idea?
Are we ready? Is professional sports ready? Or could it be that sports are the Covid cure we've been searching for all this time?
Content Warning: There is a graphic interview in which someone details his own personal battle dealing with Covid-19.
Exploring an Empty Stadium
Professional team sports are coming back in bubbles, to be played in completely empty arenas and stadiums. Until the coronavirus pandemic ends, it's probably we won't get any further than partial crowds in the stands.
But there is a second, and larger cloud casting a pall over these fan-less sporting events... To understand the full symbolism of an empty stadium, we went back five years, to the April 29, 2015 game between the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles played at a locked down Camden Yards. Outside the stadium, Baltimore was teeming with demonstrators protesting the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who'd recently died in a hospital a week after sustaining what would turn out to be a fatal injury while in police custody.
CONTENT WARNING: This podcast contains graphic audio clips and descriptions of people being killed by police.
The forgotten World Series champions
In the season following the Boston Red Sox breaking "The Curse," there was bound to be a shadow hanging over the 2005 World Series champions.
But what if I told you the 2005 White Sox, broke an 88-year championship drought, two years longer than the Red Sox, but that their achievement has been largely lost to history in the past 15 years? So let's take a look back at why the 2005 White Sox deserve far more credit and attention than they've received.
Music credits:
Soularflair - Cue 1a, Dark Building Tension; Understated Focus, Let's Do This
Scott Holmes - Storybook
Lobo Loco - Shadow Man
SIP - Chicago Dream Center
When electric orange was the coolest color
We re-live the best season in Illinois basketball program history - how the Illini and coach Bruce Weber were ahead of their time, and we discuss the greatest moments of the season - a demolition of Chris Paul and then-#1 Wake Forest, the greatest comeback in NCAA Tournament history and the first and only time Illinois reached the national championship game.
For five months, the Illini couldn't lose, and they made everything cool - even the fluorescent orange usually reserved for traffic cones and hunting vests.
Music credits:
Jessie Spillane - Super Bubbly
Jim Keller - Crush on You
Dee Yan-Key - A mother's mourning
Soularflair - Montage, Understated Focus, Let's Do This
The Beauty of Winning Ugly
We miss sports. A LOT. But why? Why does it feel, during this time, that there is such a void in our life?
This season is an exploration of the sports touchstones of my life, why sports became so meaningful to me that I made a career of working in sports journalism.
This episode is the start of that story, which begins with my memories of the very first sporting event I remember watching start to end - the Chicago White Sox beating the California Angels 11-0 on Sept. 9, 1983. Why does that game stick in my memory, and what did I learn going back in my memory of what made baseball so exciting to me as a 7-year-old then?
The Legend of Patrick Mahomes
What's the secret to Patrick Mahomes' incredible popularity? Why does he seem to have become a national spokesman for so many companies so quickly? Hint: It's not just his on-field play; it's what he does off the field that's made him, at just 24 years old, a transcendent star.
Music Credits:
Deep Space Destructors - Return to the Black Star; Scott Holmes - Drift
A closer look at the Cubs' new cable network
With the end of the regular season came the final days of being able to watch the Chicago Cubs on the public airwaves - WGN and WLS. They're not the first team to create its own cable network, but their decision to partner with noted conservative broadcast company Sinclair Broadcasting is worth examining through a microscope, especially because the announcement came a day after tsplinter.com published a trove of Joe Ricketts' unambiguously racist emails, and shady fundraising history for conservative causes - the man who provided the approximately $400 million for his son to purchase the team in 2009.
Music credits: Van Halen - Jump; Kikoru - Honesty Matters; Enigmanic - Cryptic Clues
Bat Flips vs the Baseball Police
Why spontaneous celebrations in basketball and football aren't given a second glance but the same actions in baseball, like flipping your bat, spur conversations about showing up your opponent and respecting the game. Who are the ones being told they're not respecting the game and why?
MUSIC CREDITS:
Jon Luc Hefferman – Ascent; Kevin MacLeod – Impact Prelude and Impact Allegretto; Ketsa – Residual Anxieties; Scanglobe – Maelstrom ; Scott Holmes – Suspect Located; The Edge of Nowhere – Mastered
My Career Story
This is my career story, how I turned my most glaring weakness - stagefright - and turned it into a career in media, as a journalist, reporter, writer and producer - and the marriage of the two subjects I care most passionately about, sports and politics.
Making White House Visits Great Again
Ever wonder why the World Series or Super Bowl champion visits the White House? How did this tradition get started? Well, it wasn't always the joyous tradition it felt like when the New York Giants visited President Reagan or the Golden State Warriors went to see President Obama. No, the original tradition is somehow much more insidious, and also much more akin to a visit to the Trump White House today, and the weight of the decision each athlete must make about whether or not to go.