Inside Joel Goldberg’s Playbook: KC Royals, Small Ball, and the Power of Storytelling

Joel Goldberg Kansas City Royals

Joel Goldberg broke into the sports broadcasting scene by knocking on the doors of television stations, cold calling broadcast executives and sending out resume tapes in the 1990s.

His career was never handed to him. Rather, it was the product of building connections and dedication, mixed with years of hard work. Joel has worked in four markets during a 30-year career, covering two World Series Championship teams and thousands of baseball games, not to mention multiple Super Bowls, NHL playoffs and NCAA March Madness basketball games.

Joel has had the pleasure of interviewing countless athletes, Hall of Famers and celebrities while traveling the world, telling stories from famous stars to under-the-radar role players.

His longtime job covering the Kansas City Royals as a host and reporter is a privilege, enabling him to entertain, inform and connect fans to athletes. Through his years of storytelling and watching championship organizations succeed (and fail), he realized his access to methods executives use to build culture and championship teams translated to the corporate world.

That’s why Joel created the Game Changer Speaking Series to help organizations win trust and build a championship culture. Access insights from Joel through his podcast Rounding the Bases or book him for your next event.

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-Transcript-

Brad Burrow (00:00:01):
Welcome to In a World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts. Get inspired, then go live your story. It’s in a world with Real Media. Hello and welcome to In a World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow, and today we’ve been looking forward to today. This is really fun. I get to have Joel Goldberg on the podcast and we’ve been working together for a while, and we will talk about that a little bit. But we’ve done some things in the past and anybody out there that knows me knows that we’re a big baseball family and we have lots of friends, former players and stuff, and follow the team very closely. So this is a very special podcast for me. Joel, thanks for being on. I really appreciate it.

Joel Goldberg (00:00:58):
Well, it’s good to be with you, Brad, and you think about the way business evolves, the world evolves. Whenever you and I started doing some stuff together, and I don’t remember when that started or what it was, I could list off something.

Brad Burrow (00:01:10):
I can tell you what it was.

Joel Goldberg (00:01:11):
I was wondering if you would know my point then you will refresh. My memory is we weren’t doing podcasts back then and you didn’t have a podcast studio back then, so it was just a reminder that however long it’s been, the world changes quickly. What was it?

Brad Burrow (00:01:25):
It was real talk with real media. You remember that?

Joel Goldberg (00:01:27):
Oh, yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:01:28):
Oh yeah. So you were the host.

Joel Goldberg (00:01:29):
Yeah,

Brad Burrow (00:01:30):
And the idea was Scott Havens and I thought

Joel Goldberg (00:01:33):
It was a great idea. Might have been something before that. Maybe not. I mean, we’ve met,

Brad Burrow (00:01:38):
Well probably before that,

Joel Goldberg (00:01:39):
We had met before that, and then there’ve been just little things along the way that we’ve done that and some others, and so those were sort of versions of podcasting. Right.

(00:01:48):
But

(00:01:48):
That’s what I love about this, and if we sit down again in 10 years, it won’t be on the podcast. I don’t know what it’ll be.

Brad Burrow (00:01:54):
Yeah, who knows. Who knows. It’ll be the virtual you and the virtual me maybe.

Joel Goldberg (00:01:58):
Right, right. We’ll be kicking back and the Brad and Joel Box will be doing their thing. I don’t know.

Brad Burrow (00:02:05):
Yeah, I remember the real talk thing. That was fun.

Joel Goldberg (00:02:07):
It was fun

Brad Burrow (00:02:08):
And had, if I remember, we had a whole kind of day where we just brought people in and it’s amazing how interviewing people wears you out. Are you worn out after doing that for a long

Joel Goldberg (00:02:18):
Time? Yeah. I’m not necessarily aware that I am. I’ve actually come to realize that lately, that if it’s go time, it’s go time. And so what I’ve come to realize is that it takes a lot more out of me than I realize,

(00:02:34):
And

(00:02:34):
Probably everybody else gets that. I just don’t think about it. You just go and do it. And so I’m generally a fairly extroverted person that likes to be introverted when it’s all done, because you’re constantly on. Even doing this right now takes a certain level of being on, I don’t notice it. I am not sitting there thinking, oh man, I got to dial things up

(00:02:56):
Right now.

(00:02:57):
It just is what you do if you know how to do it. But it still could take a toll, I guess. But that’s part of the job of being some form of a performer. We’re all performers, by the way, whether we’re in front of a camera or not. We all have to do something to dial it up to get to where we want to go. That’s just part of what this is. And it’s pretty fun too.

Brad Burrow (00:03:17):
Yeah, I remember, so I get asked this all the time. It’s like, can we record eight podcasts in a day and then just start releasing like, well, good luck with that. Oh my gosh, people, it’s like you have no idea how you’re going to feel after two or three,

Joel Goldberg (00:03:30):
Right? I mean, my rule of thumb is I don’t really want to do more than two in a day. And then every now and then I’ll say, Hey, I want to add this one into my assistant. I’ll say, that’s three. You shouldn’t do that. And I’ll say, I know I told you not three. So when I get mad or frustrated or it’s not even that, but when I’m worn out and I want to blame someone, I’m going to have to blame me. The one that wants to rem them in it just to go one after the next after. And we like to batch ’em together. So to go one after the next, next, there just comes a certain point where there’s diminishing returns.

Brad Burrow (00:04:02):
Yeah, right. I agree. So I’ve prepared for our podcast today.

Joel Goldberg (00:04:06):
Well, that’s more than I do, but No, I’m just kidding.

Brad Burrow (00:04:08):
Well, no, but you probably have to. I mean, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, I guess we could ask you right now, but in a game, you’re watching what’s happening in the game and you’ve got to be prepared at the end of the game to talk about key moments. Are you taking notes? How are you doing that?

Joel Goldberg (00:04:26):
That’s evolved over the years, and I think just the way that I’m wired in my personality, it will always evolve because I’m always looking for a new way to do it better, and I don’t even know if it’s to do it better just to stimulate my mind. And so last year I started doing a lot of my notes and keeping track of them through chat GPT and just seeing if there are some common threads that I could check back to what am I missing? What am I? Because when you’re doing so many games, it’s like it just starts to blend together. What I have come to ultimately understand no matter what technology we have, and no matter what our preference is and our habits are, is that when you’re paying attention, you generally have a better chance of telling the story. And that’s really hard to do in this day and age. I’m knee deep in my phone like everybody else, and I go down a rabbit hole. If something happens in the game and I’m researching this, and then you miss that, and oh, by the way, this person wants you to come and say hi in this section and this person, which I’ve stopped doing a lot of that only because I used to want to go see everybody

(00:05:22):
With the pitch clock. Now, the pace of everything, you just can’t afford to look away for too long. Oh, by the way, I still have to do my in game reports and ultimately be ready for the post game show. I think that for me, and I look back to when I started in my career, I mean, I would just pages full of notes from every game, and I would never go back and use most of them because I didn’t end up applying the challenge. And the fun of doing a live post game show is that what you think is the storyline two hours ago may never see the light of day and what you thought was going to be, the storyline might’ve changed one minute before the show started. And so I think that anything else in life with repetition comes comfort. And so yes, I’ll jot some notes down. Yes, I’ll hit some key bullet points or just some little things to remember. But I keep score of every game and have for most every game in my career from a baseball standpoint, and I do it now digitally have for years, for about nine years.

Brad Burrow (00:06:23):
Like a box score,

Joel Goldberg (00:06:24):
A box score,

Brad Burrow (00:06:25):
Is that right?

Joel Goldberg (00:06:26):
On my iPad, it’s a PDF that I could draw over. And I, it’s a weird looking box score or keeping score. It’s weird, it’s color coded. It’s got all kinds of weird designations on it, but it is set up in a way that I know if I look at it that I could do anything on a post game show without having written down notes.

(00:06:51):
So I do have notes written down like a key number 20 game hitting streak or first hit in 23 days or five straight games scoring three runs or less. Little things like that. And that’s it as reference points. But then, because everything’s so quickly and on the fly for a post game show, because we don’t know what’s going to happen if my producer says, Hey, RO, or the manager’s press conference, or whatever’s not ready yet, or they’re just starting, we need to fill a little bit more time. Let’s talk defense right here. I’m going to look down and I’m going to see every defensive play from the game that I at least thought was a good defensive play highlighted in blue with an apple pencil. And I just can look and be like, here’s the second inning, here’s the fourth inning, here’s the seventh inning. And then my partner, Jeff Montgomery has his own system. And so we have this language that we speak together without even having to really say a whole lot. And that’s just the evolution of the no taking, and it’s a constant evolution.

Brad Burrow (00:07:48):
So I want to see the PDF from the wildcard game in 2014. What is,

Joel Goldberg (00:07:53):
I’d have to go back and look at that. I don’t know that we were doing them yet on pdf. I think we probably started right after that, maybe around 16 or something like that. But whatever that looked like, I’m sure that I have. It’s somewhere in storage. I think I had a physical scorecard that I’ve been writing on. I don’t know what I did. Once you get into extra innings, things get a little bit dicey with the scorecard too.

(00:08:16):
Where do you go?

(00:08:16):
Yeah, I remember more of where I was sitting at certain points of that game, which is never where people think, because when you’re doing what I’m doing, you’re usually somewhere in a stairwell or a hallway or something trying to get from point A to point B. So we never actually see those moments. We oftentimes, in the biggest of games like that, do not see those moments live. Oftentimes we see them live later or live on replay.

Brad Burrow (00:08:37):
Yeah, I can imagine just trying to get to play stuff.

Joel Goldberg (00:08:40):
That’s it. You’re listening in, you’re ear, you’re watching monitors as you’re walking by, but oftentimes I am talking about a key play that I never saw, even though I saw it and I’m aware of it and I know everything that happened. Oftentimes I’m not fully digesting the big picture, what it looks like, or I’m noticing something oh, that I couldn’t have possibly seen in transit.

Brad Burrow (00:09:01):
Yeah. Are you on IFB that whole time you walking through the

Joel Goldberg (00:09:04):
Stadium? Yeah. I mean, you’re going to hit certain spots of the stadium where you’ve got blind spots and you can’t hear anything. The good news in terms of a game is that wherever I’m walking in the stadium, they usually have the radio piped in with the tv, and so I can hear that going on, but I’ve always got my earpiece in my IFB, and so I’m hearing everything wherever I’m going. And then if I get in and out of a bad blind spot or something that’s blocked from the signal, I might miss a little bit. So there are pockets. I miss that sometimes I have to guess, not really guess, but sometimes I wonder as I’m going from point A to point B and I hear the crowd eruption, and I’m like, oh, that must’ve been a, let’s see, we’re on defense. Maybe there was an ending, ending double play. And then as soon as it clears, I’m able to find it out really quickly, either listening, seeing, or just pull out my phone and see what happened.

Brad Burrow (00:09:49):
Now are you hearing the director? Who are you hearing on IFB? I’m just

Joel Goldberg (00:09:52):
Curious. Usually producer. A

Brad Burrow (00:09:53):
Producer. Okay. So you’re not hearing the shots and all the,

Joel Goldberg (00:09:57):
I don’t hear anything unless occasionally. So for those that are listening and watching this, IFPs are your piece, and there’s an all call. I just assume

Brad Burrow (00:10:07):
Everybody knows that

Joel Goldberg (00:10:08):
Maybe they do, but there’s an all call essentially for a producer or director in the truck to be able to send that message out to everyone. They generally try not to do that. The really good ones are very specific. Their buttons are labeled, this is Joel, this is Ryan, this is Monty, this is Rex, this is whatever. And so usually it’s just me and the producer. If the director needs to jump in, he will. But generally, I’m not hearing from the director unless he feels like there’s some kind of loss of communication between me and the producer, and he’s trying to get in there to settle things down a little bit, give a little bit of direction. So again, it’s all a song and dance and a language of figuring out how to communicate in ways. The thing, the guys in the booth have a talk back button. They’ve got their headsets on. They could hit that talk back and talk to the truck without that going over our broadcast, we don’t have that on our set because we’re on camera all the time.

(00:11:09):
So sometimes you got to have a little bit of a look. Or the second that we get in video and something’s not working, I’m throwing my hands in the air. I’m waving down someone to stop and help me with my car that’s broken down, and you catch their attention doing 10 things as well, and suddenly they realize, and then I’ll hear in my ear, the guessing game begins. I’ll start pointing at something and meanwhile Monty’s talking and my producer will say, is the monitor out? Shake my head, yes. Okay, now we know that we can’t get too specific with the video. We’ll keep it generic or I’ll tell you what’s coming up on. If it’s a very specific, this play, this play, this play, this play, this play. Well, I can’t do that again. But if I know that he knows that the monitor’s not working, and oh, by the way, someone’s down on the ground underneath a camera trying to change a cable, and I mean, this is just the stuff that happens and you’ve been through it before. So I just need them to know that I may not be reading what’s on the monitor because I can’t see it.

(00:12:06):
So now he’s saying, here, here’s the wit, diving play, Leone defense, Vinny Home Run. And you just start to react that way. So that’s just sort of, it’s not fun, but it is fun. It’s kind of a rush. Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it keeps you on your toes and you’ve been there before and you just understand that. And that’s the biggest thing, Brad, is people want to know how many hours does it take a day to prepare? So much of the preparation is lifetime’s worth of

(00:12:34):
Preparation.

(00:12:35):
It’s the repetition, it’s failing in those moments before. It’s understanding that as we’re starting a show, I think it was in Minnesota this year, and the music starts and you have about 30 seconds of scenics, and maybe it’s the Minneapolis skyline and then target field, and then Bobby with JR warming up, and Mike hel Garcia in the batting cage. And I know all that’s coming in advance, and I’m going to do all of that and set the stage and welcome in Target field and Joel Goldberg alongside of Rex Hudler in this day, well, I start talking first words again. We’re not seen. So I’ve got some at least ability to do my crazy hand waving and flag them down that something’s not working. I didn’t need to flag him down on this one because I can’t hear myself in the microphone. Mike’s not working well. I catch the audio guy’s attention, a local guy from Minnesota crew, and he could see the panic in my eyes. And the panic isn’t that I’m so much freaked out. It’s my panic of making him know that I need your help.

(00:13:30):
There’s a problem.

(00:13:31):
So I see him reaching to get a new microphone. Meanwhile, I understand that Rex isn’t going to talk until we come on camera. So I yanked the microphone out of his hand, throw mine onto the ground, very trying to be almost animated about it so everyone knows what’s going on, and then I start talking into his microphone. Well, that’s working. Now as I’m talking and trying to describe what’s on the screen for the scenics and all that, they’re handing me a wired microphone, and I’m trying to talk into both and pulling the one away just to see if, do they have this punched up yet? Nope. I don’t hear myself. I’ll keep talking here. Try again. And right as we’re about to come on the camera, I hear it’s working, hand the microphone over to Rex and we’re off and we’re running, and I’m sitting there thinking,

Brad Burrow (00:14:18):
Save somebody’s bacon on that deal.

Joel Goldberg (00:14:21):
They don’t need to know at home that anything was wrong. But to be honest, I stumbled a little bit more than I wanted to. I’ve been there before. Someone at home probably sat there and thought, boy, he sounds a little rusty today, but we were fine, and it moved on. This is the kind of stuff that happens every single day. You’d rather everything go smoothly every single time. People don’t need to know that stuff is going on. They shouldn’t know what’s going on. But that’s part of the fun of being in this every single day

Brad Burrow (00:14:45):
Too. Yeah. So I was looking at your LinkedIn a little bit, seeing you were in St. Louis.

Joel Goldberg (00:14:52):
Oh, yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:14:53):
Part of the Rams. We used to do work, a lady named Keely. I don’t know if you,

Joel Goldberg (00:14:57):
I know Keeley. Keely Fbri,

Brad Burrow (00:14:58):
Yeah.

Joel Goldberg (00:14:59):
She was a good friend of mine during my time there. Yeah,

Brad Burrow (00:15:01):
So we did a lot of work animation where we were an animation company back then. We did a lot of work. So spent a lot of time down in St.

Joel Goldberg (00:15:07):
Louis, but probably bumped into you at some point, or at least qualify by you. I was there every day,

Brad Burrow (00:15:12):
The greatest show on Turf. That had to be pretty cool to be around that. That was when you were there, right? Yeah.

Joel Goldberg (00:15:16):
Yep. That’s when I was there. I think the two coolest kind of greatest stories I ever covered in my career in terms of teams were the, this was technically before the greatest show on turf, the 1999 Rams. They didn’t really start calling him the greatest show on turf until Mike Marts was the head coach replacing Dick. But this was the start of it. I mean, this was the team that won the Super Bowl, the greatest show on Turf Team lost the Super Bowl to Tom Brady and the Patriots. That was Brady’s first, and I was there for that as well. But 99, the 1999 Rams, and to me, the 2014 Royals are sort of the two, I don’t know, kind of coolest teams I ever covered, because they both ended these massive droughts. And in the case of the 99 Rams, they’d gone from a four and 12 team to a 12 and four Super Bowl champion in the case of the Kansas City Royals. It was expected that they were going to make a big jump in 2014. That was not the case necessarily with the Rams, although certainly the pieces were there. They had Marshall Falk. We didn’t know a Kurt Warner was going to be, that was a special team.

(00:16:19):
But

(00:16:19):
The feeling in St. Louis in 99 into the early part of 2000 and the feeling in 2014 in Kansas City, and then again in 2015 were very similar. Just so much pride in the smaller market, unexpected team doing what they did and a lot of momentum. The Rams never got to the point where the chiefs are at, where they were so good for so long that everybody got sick of them. What’s happened with the Chiefs? Yeah, it’s true. The Rams, their window closed on them maybe quicker than they had hoped. And maybe the same thing for the Royals, although baseball’s different, but because both of those teams weren’t your household names or your perennial contenders, I think a lot of the country got behind both of those teams, but it started within the communities. There was so much joy and so much just pure excitement with everyone, non-sports fans, sports fans, diehards, casual fans, that it brought community together. And that was really the similarity between both of those,

Brad Burrow (00:17:15):
The power of that. I remember 85, I remember I graduated in 81 from high school, but being around in 85 when that happened, and it’s like just how everybody felt. It was an amazing thing. And to have that happen again was unbelievable.

Joel Goldberg (00:17:32):
It does amazing things for communities. That’s true anywhere, by the way. I mean, but I think the difference is is that when it happens in New York or LA or Chicago, something like that, not maybe for football, but in Chicago, but mostly in those bigger big market cities, they have other teams. And so if the Cubs go to a World Series, half the town or maybe 40% of the town doesn’t care if the Yankees go to the World Series half or a little bit less that are Mets fans don’t care. Same thing for Dodgers are probably much more so than the Angels, but you get the point in Kansas City, that’s it. So no, it’s one thing if KU or K State make a deep run into football playoff or Final Four or whatever it is, and then it’s like, well, I don’t like them. I do like them. That’s what Kansas City does. But for the most part, everybody’s on board if the royals maker run or the chiefs maker run. And so it truly brings everyone together.

Brad Burrow (00:18:26):
Yeah, very exciting, fun. How did you get to Kansas City? You were in St. Louis and then was it through?

Joel Goldberg (00:18:33):
We drove,

Brad Burrow (00:18:34):
I’m just kidding. Sorry.

Joel Goldberg (00:18:35):
I couldn’t help it.

Brad Burrow (00:18:35):
You take the bullet train.

Joel Goldberg (00:18:37):
Yeah, eventually maybe that’s going to come.

(00:18:40):
So I’d worked about nine and a half years in St. Louis, which ended up being my third and fourth jobs in television. My first two were in a small market in northern Wisconsin, and then Madison, Wisconsin. I get to St. Louis in 1998, the day after McGuire hit his 70th home run. So I missed that by a day essentially, and worked for the local Fox affiliate there in St. Louis, which was great because that was the TV station that was the home of the Rams, which I never heard any prideful slogans mentioned of being the home of the Rams until 1999 when, no, I know I got there in 98 for part of the season, but there was no pounding your chest that we were the home of the Rams in that four and 12 season. But once it was 12 and four, we were there seven days a week. If they were off

(00:19:31):
And

(00:19:31):
Somebody stopped in to use the restroom, we were there to report on it live. I mean, it was like, I’m exaggerating by just a little bit. It was like you could not do any wrong in 1999 if it was going live from Rams Park, which was in Earth City, Missouri on an off day and nothing was going on. That was the news still. So I got to do all that. At the end of 2004, I moved over to Fox Sports Midwest, January of oh five, and that’s where I started traveling with the St. Louis Cardinals. I’d already traveled with them for playoffs, covering them for the Fox

(00:20:01):
Affiliate.

(00:20:03):
So I’m doing three years of Fox Sports Midwest. I find out my last year there that Fox Sports Midwest was taking over the rights to Kansas City Royals broadcasts. There were two pieces that were really appealing to me about Kansas City. The second, and I don’t mean to make it second because it’s personal, is that we have family here. My wife had grown up here and moved away. Her sister had grown up here and moved away. Her sister moved back here, got married to a guy here. They had kids. Those kids are now 29 and almost 27. So we were coming here from St. Louis for births, for birthday parties, for holidays.

Brad Burrow (00:20:45):
So you were

Joel Goldberg (00:20:46):
Making trips up here probably three times a year, at least three times a year. So we were making that drive down I 70 all the time. So yes, it was going to be, we weren’t coming here necessarily to be closer with family. That was going to be the icing on the cake, the bonus, and it was because we’d never really lived in town with the immediate family. But we are coming here because the job that I have right now in Kansas City, which I’ve had for 18 seasons, there were three of us with Fox Sports Midwest that split those responsibilities. So I didn’t do every game. I worked year round, but I might travel on a trip. I might host the pre and post game shows, but more often than not, I was the reporter. I come here and I have the opportunity to do all of those things. And over the course of the last 18 years of every televised game we’ve had, then I could add it up. I know, I think it’s six and a half games or seven and a half games that I’ve missed in 18 years. That’s not true. I think it’s three and a half games. Everything else that I missed was on assignment Cooperstown for Buck O’Neill

(00:21:51):
Or September 11th visiting troops in Kuwait while still working. So the only games I missed were two for a funeral, two for my daughter’s high school graduation and half a game for my son’s graduation. We were in town, and I left in the middle of a game. So I’ve missed four and a half games, which means that in 18 years, I’ve done well over 99% of the games that we’ve had. I never had that opportunity, that type of repetition. I was almost coming off of the bench often in St. Louis. So came here. Greatest move that I could have ever made professionally, personally. Our kids were two and five when we moved here, Brad, they’re now 20 and almost 23. And so it was life-changing for us. Empty

Brad Burrow (00:22:34):
Nester now.

Joel Goldberg (00:22:35):
Yeah. I don’t know that there’s ever such a thing,

Brad Burrow (00:22:37):
But yes, we are empty nesters now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my wife and I say we’re empty nesters, but our youngest is at K State.

Joel Goldberg (00:22:45):
Yeah, they come back.

Brad Burrow (00:22:45):
Yeah,

Joel Goldberg (00:22:46):
Which is a good thing.

Brad Burrow (00:22:47):
Yeah, it is.

Joel Goldberg (00:22:47):
For the most part. It

Brad Burrow (00:22:48):
Is. It’s great. What do you like about Kansas City? So one of the things, there’s kind of a rivalry between St. Louis and Kansas

Joel Goldberg (00:22:54):
City,

Brad Burrow (00:22:54):
And I’ve never really gotten into that. Me

Joel Goldberg (00:22:56):
Neither.

Brad Burrow (00:22:57):
A lot of people. I think Kansas City’s a great place. I think the people here are great. I don’t have a lot of experience in St. Louis other than working there a few times and stuff. But what do you love about Kansas City?

Joel Goldberg (00:23:10):
Well, I’ll tell you, the whole St. Louis versus Kansas City thing to me is always silly, but I get it. For the most part, it’s friendly, even though it can drive some people nuts, it’s just like

Brad Burrow (00:23:23):
The whole World Series thing,

Joel Goldberg (00:23:25):
And there are scars there that are never going to heal. And mostly it’s just built into people. And then for some families, it’s just fun. It’s kind of like a Zuke Yu thing

(00:23:37):
Or KU MOU thing, whatever order I guess you want to put it in, but where you actually have to live together and figure it out, and it’s fun. But we never had any issues living in St. Louis. St. Louis could be known, and people joke about this a lot. The first question you’re going to get asked in St. Louis is where did you go to high school? Or Where did you go to school? When they say, where did you go to school? They mean high school. And then you could figure out, all right, what neighborhood did you grow up in? It could be a little bit of status thing, a demographics thing. And so there’s some bat in there. Some of it’s just like it’s a small place just like here and who do you know? That type of thing. But there could be some of it’s a stereotype of St. Louis being a little bit more exclusive. And that’s really just meant, did you grow up here? Who do you know that we know? And if you didn’t grow up there, you got to figure out a way to get in. And so that could be the knock on St. Louis is that it could be if you didn’t grow up there, they don’t really look at you as the same.

Brad Burrow (00:24:34):
I

Joel Goldberg (00:24:34):
Never had that issue there going on.

Brad Burrow (00:24:37):
You didn’t grow up there.

Joel Goldberg (00:24:38):
I didn’t. But being on tv, not that anyone knew who I was when I started, but being on TV and meeting everybody and being on TV there at a time in my career where I was also covering not just Major League baseball and NFL and NHL, but I was covering a lot of high school sports meant that I had the great opportunity of walking in the gyms and football fields in the inner city and in the wealthiest parts of the suburb into rural towns, farm towns, and everything in between.

(00:25:09):
There is not a demographic that I didn’t walk into, which means that when news happens in St. Louis, in any community, whether it’s good stuff, bad stuff, you remember the stuff that happened in Ferguson. And that can be so hard for people to understand, well, I’m on this side, you’re on this side just like politics nowadays. That for me, it was really easy to understand what was going on through all of it, because I’ve been in every one of those communities. So it really shaped me for who I was. So whatever talk there is about St. Louis being more exclusive and hard to break in, if you didn’t grow up there, we didn’t have that issue there because I was walking into every one of those communities and I’d have people say, wait, I’ve never, is it safe to go to East St. Louis? Of course it was safe. I mean, anywhere else in this world, there are certain places that you shouldn’t be at certain times of day. And that could be true in any part of the world in the country, and that doesn’t have to be a city thing either. But for me, I was welcomed in with open arms everywhere I went, I could be sitting on the porch with the mom of a future NBA player in East St. Louis talking about life. And the next day, on and on

(00:26:20):
With that said, come here to Kansas City and have, for the first time in my life, I realized that I had the job that I not just loved, but that had me in a spot where I’m like, I don’t think I’m looking for the next thing anymore. So it enabled us to settle in here in a way of not looking at what’s next. And so the focus became here, and when you add, and it took a bunch of years being in two World Series, and now suddenly everywhere you go, people are wanting to talk about baseball and the love of Kansas City. And so it was very easy to become a Kansas City. And while at the same time, our city right now, and I’m a proud Kansas City, and our city right now does not look like it did when I got here 18 years ago.

(00:27:08):
This place is thriving and I’m so proud of it. And so I don’t have that attachment to St. Louis anymore. My attachment to St. Louis is those communities. My attachment to St. Louis is that my kids were born there, but we raised our kids here. We’ve watched Kansas City grow up at the same time as our kids have grown up. And so I have so much pride in wanting people to come here and experience our city, which of course they’re going to do with the World Cup and everything else that’s going on. When I hear people that move here that are moving here because the technology industry or because of the opportunities here, and I feel like they’re getting to do what I got to experience being a transplant here. So this place to me is extremely inclusive because everyone wants to, we love our city here as much as St. Louis’s love their city, but it feels like in St. Louis, they want to not keep it to themselves, but it’s sort of like an inside thing. Hey, remember we used to do this,

Brad Burrow (00:28:04):
Got to be a part of the club.

Joel Goldberg (00:28:05):
And whereas here it’s like we want more people to come and more people to come. And that’s a bit of a gross exaggeration, I think, or stereotype, because I think in the end, both cities are a lot more similar than we want to give them credit for or similar size, similar pace, similar good people that’ll look at you when you walk by ’em on the street and say hello. And that to me is important to me.

Brad Burrow (00:28:28):
Yeah, that’s really awesome. I don’t know if you remember, you and I had met, I think this was after the real talk. We did the real talk things, and I remember the season had been shut down and you were thinking, okay, I’ve got to find some new ways to generate some, do you remember that talk?

Joel Goldberg (00:28:47):
Oh my gosh,

Brad Burrow (00:28:47):
Sorry to bring that up.

Joel Goldberg (00:28:48):
Yeah. But

Brad Burrow (00:28:49):
I remember it because, and the reason I brought it up is because you’ve done such a good job of taking that moment and turning it around for you. I mean, can you talk about that a little bit? I remember it’s like we don’t have

Joel Goldberg (00:29:03):
Games.

Brad Burrow (00:29:04):
I don’t remember why we were meeting, but you and I were talking about it. I got to figure out, I got to figure out my path forward. And you’ve done it.

Joel Goldberg (00:29:12):
I just had a memory that triggered in my head though, well before that. And I think before we started the real talk, because I seem to remember chatting with you at an early fan fest. I was sitting out on a set, I dunno if it was an Overland park or downtown, and talking about the business, and I think you probably were talking about Kevin Seitzer or some kind of connection. I dunno why. It was something that just triggered an early conversation of meeting you that just popped into my head. Has nothing to do with the question that you just asked.

Brad Burrow (00:29:41):
That’s a good memory. I’m not sure I remember

Joel Goldberg (00:29:43):
That. No, but that’s what I’m saying. These little things pop up

(00:29:48):
And at our age, we don’t know where they come from. But that’s one of the scariest times in my life in terms of professionally, because I’ve been really lucky in this crazy industry that I went into. I’ve been in TV for 31 years now, and it was the first time and the only time in my career where I had zero money coming in and I had no idea what to do. It was like you’d been fired without a job. And I know a lot of people have been in those positions. I’ve been lucky enough to have not been,

(00:30:19):
My

(00:30:19):
Fear always was if I ever got fired or whenever that day came, what would I do? And that happened with the world changing overnight. A lot of people, I don’t know. The difference is that as a guy that works six months a year and then is off six months a year, alright, so this is 2020. I had started my speaking business in 2017. It was still in the early stages, but that’s what got me through a lot of the off seasons. Well, now it’s March. I’m one month from the paycheck starting again. The speaking business has carried me through the off season March hits. Season’s going to be delayed. We don’t know how long. And oh, by the way, no one’s going to hire a speaker right now. And we could do it virtually, but no one really is comfortable spending a lot of money right now because everyone’s in the same boat. And it was just a survival thing.

(00:31:27):
And I had this idea as I found myself probably begging for anyone’s business that no one, I realized really quickly nobody was going to hire me. I was able to secure a little bit of sponsorship help with the podcast. So that at least brought a little bit of revenue. And that was it. And I decided to do two things which I would do again and would recommend anyone do when they’re in this type of situation. And the spirit of the decision was this. When your back’s against the wall and you need a lot of help, instead of asking for help, double down and give help, see what you can do to help others. Because when you elevate them in some form or another, they’re going to elevate you. Or at the very minimum, you feel like you’re making some progress, you’re doing some good, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself.

(00:32:18):
And so I did two things. The first thing I did is I reached out to any business that I had spoken to in my first couple of years of speaking and offered to give their leadership teams a free 20 minute virtual talk with the thought that they could probably use the pick me up. They’re going through some stuff as well, and they’re now all at home and losing their chemistry. So let me offer that. And if it does nothing other than help some people out, great. But what happened is as the pandemic cleared, some of them came back and said, Hey, we want to hire you or we want to bring you back. And so it was a way to throw somebody else a life vest when they needed it. And then the other piece was I took my podcast and I started to, I don’t even know what we were doing at that point.

(00:33:05):
If it was two days a week, three days a week, however many days a week was, those were what was popping up on the iTunes and everywhere you get your podcasts. But any day that we weren’t doing one, I basically did one every single day, whether it was going to post on iTunes or not. And everything I did, iTunes are not streamed live on Facebook because that was bringing people together. And if I thought if I could do five a week, one per day and just highlight a business that maybe is struggling, I’m struggling. And just tell their story and let people get on these chat boards and just share their feelings and their emotions. And so that kind of helped me pass the time. It helped me network. It didn’t generate any extra revenue, but hopefully it threw out some goodwill. And so the lesson really was just like, yes, we all, when we’re down and out, we need the help. And that help will come from people that trust you and want to be able to lend a hand. But really you create that by helping others.

Brad Burrow (00:34:02):
So I got to spend a day with Zig Ziglar, if you remember Zig, but so a guy, Joe Calhoun is the guy’s name. Yeah, I know Joe. So we went down to Dallas and spent a day with Zig. Joe did work with him. So I shot the interviews. But one of the things that Zig said in Zigs voice that was a bad zig zig, but he said, if you want to be successful, help somebody else be successful. Exactly. That’s it. That’s so true. Why is that so hard for us? I mean,

Joel Goldberg (00:34:33):
I don’t even want to say it’s selfish. It’s just we’re so focused on being successful that I think we sometimes are wired in a way that says, if we’re not moving the needle to make ourselves successful, we’re going backwards.

(00:34:45):
But what if helping others gets you there in some form or another? It’s a great way to build trust with people just to help them. And you have to be discerning about it. I think that I’ve met enough people that say, take every meeting, say yes to everyone. Well, you can’t do that if there aren’t enough hours in the day. So you do need to be able to look at it with a critical eye, but you don’t always need to know what you’re going to get out of it. So if it’s something that makes sense, somewhere you could provide value somewhere. That to me, it’s what makes the world go round.

Brad Burrow (00:35:13):
Yeah, I agree. I want to switch gears just a little bit. I don’t know if you know this, but I did all the majority of the video for the Hall of Fame at Royals. I don’t know that I knew that. Yeah, so Kurt Nelson worked with Kurt, and we had George and all the guys here. I remember one of my favorite times was I got to have lunch with Denny Matthews and Fred White, and it was a really, really cool time. But that was being able to experience 1985 and have all those guys in here. And Willie Wilson was probably one of my favorites. He was so great. I mean, hearing his story. Yeah, you’ve probably heard all those stories,

Joel Goldberg (00:35:50):
But I’ve heard a lot of ’em, and they’re always so animated and fun. Yeah.

Brad Burrow (00:35:53):
But the story of George’s, of the pine tar from Willie’s point of view, have you heard that? I am asking if you’ve heard it, but hearing Willie tell that story, he goes, well, I see a guy come back. And it was just hilarious hearing those stories.

Joel Goldberg (00:36:06):
Yeah, I mean, that’s the best part of all of this. And I don’t know that I really understood that when I got into the television business or podcasting now as well. And I think, let’s just take it for podcasting for instance. Anyone, if they’re interested, should try out doing a podcast because it’s a great way to network. It’s a great way to build relationships. It’s a great way to,

Brad Burrow (00:36:31):
You’re doing a promo reel for me right now.

Joel Goldberg (00:36:33):
You realize that. I know that I was actually about to throw in a NASCAR style ad if you are interested in real media. But I thought, yes, that is a nice little promo reel for you. But my point, and if it helps build a little business, great too, is it’s a unique way still at this point to be able to promote your business, your brand or your services or the successes of your services without even needing to say a whole lot. And so I think to me, when you could do that through storytelling, that’s what builds trust. That’s what potentially builds business,

(00:37:07):
That

(00:37:07):
Everybody has a story to tell. Some are better than others, some are worse than others. Some of us are better storytellers than others, some are worse storytellers than others. But I’m of the belief that if you give me someone’s story, I could find some meaning in it, which means that there’s always a story to tell.

Brad Burrow (00:37:23):
I agree with that a hundred percent. Obviously, I would think about some of the stories that you come across, and I wrote down a list of guys, and we will kind of go through that. But one of the things that I wanted to ask you about the balance, the work life balance. I mean, you must have an incredible wife. I

Joel Goldberg (00:37:45):
Don’t know how she puts up with it.

Brad Burrow (00:37:47):
Well, and I know a little bit about it just because I’ve talked to Kevin a lot about it. And when you’re well, you’re just like them. I mean, you’re gone as much as they are. How do you do that?

Joel Goldberg (00:37:59):
Well, there’s no secret sauce or magic answer. I mean, there is some secret sauce to it, but I’ll start with this, at least for my industry. And mine is not the only one. I would imagine anyone that is working crazy hours, by the way, I don’t work more than the next person that works their butt off. Everybody says not everybody, but a lot of people say, oh my gosh, when do you stop? You’re constantly working. Well, so are a lot of people. Mine may be seen by more because of the nature of the platform that I have.

(00:38:34):
I’m not trying to diminish the work I’m doing. I’m saying a lot of other people figure this out as well. I think the difference between my profession, your profession to an extent, but anyone that is working odd hours, anyone that is working hours that don’t necessarily have them going to bed with everyone else in the house takes something, whatever that secret sauce is to make it work. So on the surface, I start always by saying this, there are really only three options in my business. If you have a spouse or a significant other, you either split, you find a new profession or you figure it out. And we figured it out. I don’t know when we figured it out, but we’ve had it figured out for a lot of years. And it was an evolution. I can remember early on, I remember being in St.

(00:39:30):
Louis around when we got married, which was 1999. It would’ve been 99 or 2000. We were newlyweds living in an apartment, no kids, no pets or anything yet. And I got a call last minute to go out of town for the weekend to Memphis because St. Louis University, the basketball team, the Billiken, had upset the number two seat in the country in the quarterfinals of the conference, USA basketball championship. And if they won two more games, they were going to go to the tournament, which was unexpected. And suddenly the news desk says to me, we need you and a photographer to drive to Memphis and spend the weekend there. And you would’ve thought that I had dropped something on my wife’s lap. That was the worst thing that had ever happened for me to just suddenly have to pick up. And I look at that now and she would be like, all right, when are you getting back? Okay, fine. I mean, we do this every day.

(00:40:27):
This is our life. And so I look at where that started and where it’s at now. And in between waking up earlier than I wanted to just spend five minutes driving the kids to school and being in the carpool line, knowing that at that age when they were younger, that by the time I got home from the stadium every other week when I was home, they were already sleeping. Those are the five minutes I had per day with my kids. And you just figure it out over time or you don’t. And this is the only way that we know. And so work-life balance, look, first of all, Brad, we’re of a generation where we didn’t know such a thing existed.

(00:41:08):
Alright?

(00:41:08):
No one in our generation, if you are Gen X or a boomer, we were never offered that option. It’s very hard to deprogram what we were born or raised on. It’s very

(00:41:20):
True.

(00:41:20):
Alright. A lot of us were raised as latchkey kids. Go figure it out and fend for yourself. Make your lunch, get home, do your chores, do your homework. See you when I get home. I would never ask anyone to do what we did in terms of millennials and certainly Gen Z. But you know what didn’t, I’m going off on a tangent here, but they didn’t grow up the way we did. And I think we grew up better than they did because we didn’t have the distractions of social media and everything that came with that. We don’t have the lesser attention spans. Yes. We went outside and we ran around, and then occasionally we played video games. It’s just a different world now. And oh, by the way, all the athletes I’m covering all grew up that way too. This is where we’re at. They need work life balance because they’ve already been through so much from a mental health standpoint. We didn’t even know anything like that existed.

(00:42:12):
Right.

(00:42:12):
With that said, I think that, and I tell this to leaders all the time when I’m on stage, that we as leaders or older generation, we need to do a good job of meeting them where they’re at. I know we use that expression a lot. It’s a good one. And when we do meet them where they’re at, one, they’re going to come and learn from us. And two, we might learn a little bit from them, meaning, Hey, maybe every now and then Brad and Joel should unplug a little bit and the world’s going to be okay. We’re going to be fine. As much as it feels like we’re only wired to work, work, work, work, work. So I think you mentioned being empty nesters now, trying to enjoy some more free time with my wife, trying to be able to take advantage of those opportunities when I’m not doing anything. Which by the way, I could do this 24 hours a day. And again, there’s not enough time in the day. I want to be working every single moment and just trying to figure out when can I pull back? When can I pull back and say, you know what? The business will be okay today. Everything’s going to be okay today. And just try to figure that. It’s a

Brad Burrow (00:43:11):
Scary thought right there.

Joel Goldberg (00:43:12):
Well, it is, but

Brad Burrow (00:43:14):
You know what? Carly’s in there going,

Joel Goldberg (00:43:15):
Yep,

Brad Burrow (00:43:16):
Listen to him.

Joel Goldberg (00:43:16):
But you know what? It always is. Okay.

Brad Burrow (00:43:18):
Yeah,

Joel Goldberg (00:43:19):
It always is. Okay, because we know what we’re doing. And you, as we’re recording this right now, I’m going to take pretty much all December off and how much work am I going to do? We’re going to disappear for a month. I’m going to try to do as little as possible. I know I’m going to do some, I need to do some, but I’m also of the belief that when I resurface after a month, the world’s going to be fine. It’s still going to be there.

Brad Burrow (00:43:49):
And you’ll be refreshed.

Joel Goldberg (00:43:50):
And I’ll be refreshed.

Brad Burrow (00:43:50):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly right. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and this is what a lot of people, probably you get asked this all the time, but the Salvy Splash, okay, you pretty much started a trend that’s happening all over MLB, isn’t that correct? I

Joel Goldberg (00:44:08):
Mean, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Brad Burrow (00:44:11):
First off, it would surprise me. I see guys’ doing it all the time.

Joel Goldberg (00:44:13):
Everybody does it.

Brad Burrow (00:44:13):
Yeah.

Joel Goldberg (00:44:14):
I don’t know if it started with the royals or not. And when you say you, that’s really salvy, but I know I’m guilty by association.

(00:44:24):
Yeah,

Brad Burrow (00:44:25):
Exactly.

Joel Goldberg (00:44:25):
Lemme explain how all this goes. First off, and Kurt Nelson has the info on this. I told him this one day, and of course being Kurt, the director of the Royals Hall of Fame, he looked up all the information. I don’t remember it.

Brad Burrow (00:44:37):
That sounds very Kurt,

Joel Goldberg (00:44:38):
But I am guessing somewhere around 2010, maybe 11, we were, there was a game. I mean, he found it, but there was a game

(00:44:51):
That’s early.

(00:44:52):
Early. Yeah, it might’ve been a little bit later. It could have been like 12 actually, it wasn’t 10 or 11, it would’ve been like 12. Anyway, there was a game. It was a getaway night, and we were flying to St. Louis afterwards. The reason why I remember is because I still can remember the back of my head sticking to my neck because there was Gatorade on it and my neck was sticky, and it was a little bit uncomfortable sitting on the plane. And I just remember

Brad Burrow (00:45:18):
Thinking, you didn’t even get to take a shower or anything.

Joel Goldberg (00:45:20):
No, there’s nowhere to take a shower. The only time I’ve ever taken a shower after one of those splashes is after the Royals won the wild card, and I knew that there was a chance they might clinch, and I knew we were going to have to hop on a plane right afterwards to go to Anaheim if they won. And so I brought another suit and a towel and a toiletry kit, and I was able to find that there was a shower on the office level in a bathroom at Kaufman’s Stadium that nobody ever uses in the executive offices, probably down the hall from the GM and everybody like that. And when all the celebration ended that night with the Wild Card, I went up, showered, changed, put all of my champagne soaked suit and everything in a big industrial sized garbage bag, tied it up, went downstairs, met my family. They’re all outside waiting for me. So this is what, 11 years ago? So my kids at that point are nine and 12 or something like

(00:46:18):
That,

(00:46:19):
And say goodbye to them, hand them the dirty clothes, hop on a plane, go to Anaheim for that sweep. But that’s the only time I ever showered after one of those. But on this night, it was the first time it ever happened, and I didn’t get doused head to toe, but I got enough that I had the sticky neck. Alex Gordon had done it. Alex Gordon did. The first ever Sly Splash.

Brad Burrow (00:46:40):
Did not know that.

Joel Goldberg (00:46:41):
Yeah. Kurt was able to, the reason why I remember that it was St. Louis the next day was because I just remember thinking, gosh, this is so uncomfortable. Neck’s all sticky and gross, but at least it’s a quick 40 minute flight. And I remember Alex Gordon getting on the plane and looking at me as he was walking by me and with his sly kind of subtle grin that if anybody knows, Alex knows he has because he’s a prankster, but very low key about it. And he goes, did I get you with that bucket as he walked by me and just kind of smiling, I’m like, yeah, you did. Little did I realize what was coming. The Salvy Splash, I’ve never had any say in it. My whole thing is if I could avoid getting dunked, I will. But if they want me getting dunked, I will. And whatever I can do to ensure that they can do what they want to do, meaning that this is their moment. We just did high fives when we were kids to celebrate stuff. But this is the way they celebrate. And if you think back to really the Gatorade bucket dump was something that we were seeing all the time in NFL after a big game, they dumped the big cooler on Super Bowl or something like that.

(00:47:48):
Then you started seeing all the teams doing it. I don’t know who started it. I just think that teams have changed over the years and done different things. And some teams do it sometimes some teams do it every game. And the royals of that team that just kept on doing it, and the guy that was the central figure in all of it, even though he didn’t do the first one, he is Salvador Perez, obviously. He’s still here. If you really watch the Salvi Splashes now, he dumps the bucket, I don’t know, maybe 20% of the time. 25% of the time.

Brad Burrow (00:48:23):
Yeah. Bobby’s the one

Joel Goldberg (00:48:23):
That’s Bobby, and then Bobby always has someone with him to do it. When MJ was up, it was usually MJ Melendez. If it’s not mj, it’s usually like a Kyle is, but he’ll recruit someone else to help him with it. Sal would be the one to tell you, I don’t need help. I can do it on my own. I’m big enough. But he’s let those guys do it. Now, the only two things I’ve seen over the years is this, along with the nonstop questions about dry cleaning and how many suits I’ve ruined, that’s standard. If somebody says to me, Hey, I got a question for you. I know exactly what it is every single time. And then you want to just honor that question, they don’t realize that I’ve been asked that question 10,000

(00:49:02):
Times

(00:49:02):
And we just have fun with it because it’s something that connects people.

(00:49:06):
The

(00:49:06):
Thing about the Sal Splash is I look up into the stands, and once I got over the fact, once my ego got over the fact, Brad, that in the first couple years of it, no one ever said to me, I love the questions you asked in that interview last night. It was only, Hey, I watched that interview last night. And I’m thinking, Ooh, what did they like that splash man, that looked really cold. But it brings people joy. It brings people personality in a world that we live in, of cliches and take one game at a time for that. Those brief few moments, you’re seeing that suspended adolescence, you’re seeing them act like kids the way we act like kids in some form or another, you’re seeing amidst all of the pressure, you’re seeing them exhale, celebrate, have some fun, and the fans are in on it. So I’m just the caretaker of it. I’ve never orchestrated it. I’ve never told anybody to do it or not do it with one exception, and I’ll give you that one in a moment, but I know this much. If I request Salvador Perez nowadays to be my star of the game, I am not getting out of there. Dry

(00:50:11):
Sal always, Sal’s whole thing is, he’s never said this to me, but it’s very obvious

(00:50:16):
That

(00:50:17):
If I’m going down, you’re going down with me. And that’s fine because it makes for, I mean, I think that he and I have this chemistry that fans are used to,

(00:50:27):
And I don’t ever want to fight that. There was a year early on in all of the shenanigans, 13, 14, 15, I don’t know what it was, where we’re in Seattle and it’s early in a road trip, meaning I think we had two more cities to go. So it’s like game one of nine or game two of 10 something. And I’m wearing a lighter color coat and I’m interviewing somebody, and I don’t know why Salvi didn’t take the bucket. Instead he took cups, which is the worst. I’d never experienced this before. Cups are much worse than a bucket because you can avoid a bucket, but cups,

Brad Burrow (00:51:03):
You can pour it right on your head.

Joel Goldberg (00:51:04):
No, he was going from long range. So now that’s like getting raindrops splattered all over your windshield. Well, he’s tossing blue Gatorade out of cups that night, and my light coat is just splattered with blue.

Brad Burrow (00:51:16):
Oh man.

Joel Goldberg (00:51:18):
So I brought it into the dry cleaning, which is a challenge on the road too. You got to make sure wherever you bring it in, there’s enough days to get it back before you move on to the next city. So I did that and I mentioned something to the Royals vice president of media relations at the time, Mike Swanson. I said, Hey, can you just tell Sal if you’re going to do it, just do the bucket or don’t toss that. I got to get this, and Salvi has never let me live that down. Oh, man. Any chance he gets to this day, he’ll say, Joel says it is fine. No, because two times he complained. I’m like two. It was one. So, okay. But he’s already exaggerating that we get back to the one. And yes, I wasn’t really complaining. It was just like, Hey, if we could manage this, and I realized, whatever it all comes out by the way, in the dry cleaning, it all works out. And who else in the, so while other teams stopped doing it or went on to do other things or other teams will only do it in specific situations. Because last year I got Jonathan India, his first Salvie Splash. He is new with the Royals,

(00:52:15):
And he was so shocked by it, not that he hadn’t received one in Cincinnati, but it was that with Cincinnati. They saved it for the biggest games or a walk off. And for the Royals, it’s like every win, at least every win at home, they’ve stopped doing it on the road. And then every now and then they’ll break it out on the road. And that catches me off guard. But it’s just fun, Brad. I mean, if that’s what people are going to know me as if that’s the number one thing people are going to know me as and I get to be connected to a future hall of Famer for having some fun. Bring it on.

Brad Burrow (00:52:42):
Yeah, that’s awesome. Savi, you talk about S, it’s like I have a hard time understanding him. Have you had to learn how to,

Joel Goldberg (00:52:49):
I just know all of their accents and all their demeanors and then when he is speaking and look, sometimes in the moment you’re rushed, you’re emotional and all of that. Some stuff can get lost. I’ll try to repeat back a little bit of what they say. If I think that people might not be understanding it. My Spanish is terrible. Try to work on it a little bit every day. I don’t know that I’m any better. I’d be scared to speak Spanish in front of anybody, but I’m pretty good at understanding some of the, and the accents and a little bit of just the dialect could be a little bit different from Venezuela to Dominican to Puerto Rico and having been around it so long, I generally understand those guys and want to help

(00:53:28):
In explaining a little bit better. And then even if you don’t understand everything, I’m just so impressed with any of these guys that are speaking a second language that have the courage to come out there and do that without a translator. I don’t begrudge anyone that has the translator because I’d want one too. But my belief, and I talk a lot about this one in my speaking business, is that if you can make life easier on people, then they’ll come back to you. And so it’s my goal to build up enough of a relationship and a safety net for them that they’re comfortable speaking English with me. And if you don’t understand a hundred percent of it, hopefully you see the personality as you did from your Donald Ventura. Because personality, one of the reasons why everybody loves Sal so much is even if you don’t understand 100% of what he says every single time you understand the personality, you understand the smile, you understand the laugh,

(00:54:17):
You

(00:54:17):
Understand the giving. And he has that which is all universal languages,

Brad Burrow (00:54:21):
That whole thing he did with the kids, that was an amazing thing. And

Joel Goldberg (00:54:25):
It’s just pure him.

Brad Burrow (00:54:26):
Yeah. I mean, can you imagine being the kid that Salvy shows up at his house and

Joel Goldberg (00:54:30):
Plays? Because every one of us, if we played sports as a kid, can relate to the star that you grew up on TV watching, suddenly wandering into your neighborhood under your street and saying, Hey, guys want to play. It doesn’t happen. But we all can visualize and fantasize about what that would’ve been like for an 8-year-old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old us.

Brad Burrow (00:54:52):
Yeah. Rusty Koons used to live across the street from us the best. And I remember this is a quick little story, but he had just moved in. Him and his wife just moved in, and so we were outside playing catch, and I didn’t even know he had moved in and he saw us playing catch and he came over and played catch with us. And then for a long time after that, he would come out in the afternoons and play catch with the boys.

Joel Goldberg (00:55:16):
Yeah, I’m

Brad Burrow (00:55:16):
Not surprised by that. And we just loved him so much. It’s a normal guy, but it’s like, wow, we’re playing catch with rusty cots. That was pretty

Joel Goldberg (00:55:22):
Cool.

Brad Burrow (00:55:23):
And then he became the first base,

Joel Goldberg (00:55:26):
Kind of a legend in his own right,

Brad Burrow (00:55:27):
A

Joel Goldberg (00:55:27):
Legend in his own right. I mean, well, and the smartest baseball man I’ve ever been around.

Brad Burrow (00:55:31):
Yeah, we have hard times stealing since he’s left. I feel like

Joel Goldberg (00:55:35):
It’s, well, he’s never worked with a guy that so badly wanted to not be in the big leagues. And I say that he loved the big leagues. Of course, I don’t mean to speak for Rusty, but I know Rusty. Well, rusty was a former player, a long time coach,

(00:55:49):
The truly the smartest baseball man. He and Tony LaRusso are the two smartest baseball men I’ve ever been around. I learned so much from both of them. But Tony could be tough, rusty, the nicest guy in the world that you could ever meet, but he just wanted to teach. And he’d been in the big leagues so long that it felt like every year he wanted to just say, I don’t want to coach first anymore. I want to go back to the minors. Well, that’s considered a lower job than being in the big leagues, but he loves teaching so much that that’s all he wanted to do. So when I say that I’ve never met anyone that so badly, didn’t want to be in the big leagues, it’s because he wanted to be the one building the foundation for those that made it there. I mean, truly one of the great teachers and personalities that I’ve ever met in the game,

Brad Burrow (00:56:33):
Well, he help Jack,

Joel Goldberg (00:56:35):
He helped Jack haggle, and that’s still a work in progress. But he

Brad Burrow (00:56:40):
Did a good job in the outfield this year.

Joel Goldberg (00:56:41):
He did a good job and will continue to get better with that. But I think that when you look at the greatest project that Rusty Kons ever had, it’s Alex Gordon. Alex Gordon becomes a Royals Hall of Famer and a perennial gold glover, and one of the greatest left fielders of his generation because of the tutelage of Rusty Koontz, helping convert him from third base to the outfield while they were in Omaha. Rusty was not on the Royals coaching staff at that point. He had, I think, gone back to the minors, then he came back again. Now he’s back minors. And I suspect that that’ll be, I’m sure there’ll always be times they keep trying to pull him out. But those coaches, you talked earlier in the podcast about the hours that we all

(00:57:21):
Work.

(00:57:22):
No one works. The hours of those coaches and the training staff and the clubhouse

(00:57:26):
Attendants,

(00:57:27):
Those three groups and the TV truck, the guys in the TV truck, those guys work more than the players, work more than the broadcasters. They’re the ones that are working the 12, 15 hour days.

Brad Burrow (00:57:38):
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a lot.

Joel Goldberg (00:57:40):
So Rusty’s, I don’t know, probably somewhere around 70 or give or take. And if you’re lucky enough to be at a point where, in his case, I would think, where you want to spend more time with the family and the kids and the grandkids or the kid and the grandkid and in his case and enjoy life while still getting to teach, he deserves that.

Brad Burrow (00:58:01):
Yeah. So let’s talk about the book. Just give me a little run, small Ball, big results. When did you get the idea? Because I’m going to write a book and it’s been pretty successful.

Joel Goldberg (00:58:13):
Yeah, I think so. I don’t know. I don’t know how successful or not, because I’ve chosen not to pay too much attention to it, which was not the case when that came out. And then there was a second one too. And for the first week, you’re looking, you’re refreshing just to see where it’s at on Amazon every minute.

(00:58:28):
Then

(00:58:28):
It becomes every hour, then it becomes that once a day. And eventually, I think the last time I looked was three months ago or something like that. This was all part of a master plan, starting my speaking business was never a part of any plan. I stumbled into it accidentally in the winter of 2016, 17, everybody and their mother said to me that knew anything about speaking that I think you could start a business and speakers write books. It’s a big business card. On and on and on. Well, I met with someone trying to get advice on writing a book because I didn’t think that writing a book about the Royals winning a world championship a year and a half after they won it was going to get me speeches or really provide any value for any

Brad Burrow (00:59:12):
Anyone. No, Dayton had done that too,

Joel Goldberg (00:59:13):
And enough people had done

Brad Burrow (00:59:14):
That.

Joel Goldberg (00:59:15):
It didn’t need to be me. I didn’t think writing a book about how to become a television broadcaster would have too much of a broad audience. And so I met with someone and the advice I got was start a podcast instead. I Oh, really? Why? Well, and this is now early 17. It’s not a new thing, but not everybody had a podcast at that point,

Brad Burrow (00:59:34):
Right? Not like it is now.

Joel Goldberg (00:59:35):
Not like it is now. And so she said to me, four reasons. One, the easy and obvious one is you already interview people for a living. Okay. She says, two, it’ll be a great way to network and meet people. Check three. It’ll be a great way to expand your brand beyond baseball. So don’t make it a baseball podcast. And while I called it rounding, the S and I had some baseball themes in there, meaning there are no expected questions except for three, my baseball themed questions. What’s the biggest homeowner you’ve hit in your career? I had to say career because everybody was saying marrying their spouse, which was nice, but it wasn’t a wedding advice or a marriage advice or a relationship show. Two, what’s the biggest swing and miss you’ve taken and what did you learn from it? And three, and this will lead me to the book, what is Small Ball? I thought the Royals won that championship by playing small ball.

(01:00:23):
Could small ball in some way be a metaphor for the secret sauce? I mentioned secret sauce before. Could it be a metaphor for the secret sauce to culture, to building more successful teams? What are the little things in your world? And so I started asking those three questions and I would explain it. It’s kind of a culture question. And then eventually I said, what are the little things in your world that I would add up to big results? And so from that came the book, small Ball, big Results. I wrote that and self-published it during the pandemic, or at least it came out about November-ish or so of 2020. So that was all a pandemic product. And I structured that book in a way that every chapter was the inning of a baseball game, and there was a top half of the inning and a bottom half of the inning, and we went extra innings. I have more stuff to write in there. And I think it went 13 innings. And there was a rain delay in there with a story about Salvador Perez, and there was a seventh inning stretch in there with another story. And every chapter was a topic, a small ball topic. So one was, I’m building trust,

(01:01:27):
And the top half of the inning would be a baseball story, and the bottom half of the inning would be a business story. And so there’s a trust story on Albert OLS and a business story from, I think maybe the CEO at the time of locked in or they’re on and on.

(01:01:42):
So that did well. And then in 2024, five, February of 25, so less than a year ago, I did a second version, which was Small ball, big dreams, similar concept, but in this one, just trying to be a little creative with it instead of every chapter being an inning, and then every chapter being a subject small ball subject. These are just grit and resilient stories about how people got there. Because I thought one of the number one topics I talk about with any athlete along the way, and certainly they make their big league debut, has to do with what their dreams as kids were growing up. And it never plays out the same way. The path for Alex Gordon was never supposed to go through left field or turn into left field.

(01:02:33):
The path for Lorenzo Kane, who is chapter one in Small Ball Big Dreams, is about a guy that did not start playing organized baseball until high school and had no idea what the draft was. And he’d go on to be one of the greatest players in Royals history and a world champion and an American League championship series MVP, and on and on to Freddie Ferme, a guy that just desperately had this dream, but nobody was interested. And ultimately ends up becoming Salvador Perez’s backup and one of the most respected and hardest working guys to the story of Susan Waldman, the now longtime Yankees announcer, who was the first female broadcast personality on New York Sports Radio, and then became their baseball beat writer on radio, or beat reporter on radio covering the Mets and the Yankees, and being blackballed out of every single press box because she was the only woman there and getting death threats as she went into the Yankees booth and cops needing to escort her to the car. And she knew that if her car had been turned on already when she got to the parking lot, that there had been a threat against her, and they were making sure there were no bombs.

Brad Burrow (01:03:47):
No kidding. Wow.

Joel Goldberg (01:03:47):
So just a lot of inspiration in this book. And it was funny, I did a chapter on my mom for this book because my mom, who’s retired now was, and I told the story to Susan Walman one day at Yankee Stadium, and she completed the sentence for me. I said, my mom was told graduating from college in the sixties that you could only be one of two things as a woman coming out of school. You could be. And Susan interrupted me right away, a teacher, teacher or a nurse. I’m like, oh, you got the same thing. And she said, yes. But I ended up going into Broadway instead. My mom was a teacher, music teacher, and eventually went back to junior college to become a computer programmer or what we’d now call a coder and climb the ranks for a company that eventually was bought by a major bank, which was then another big bank, and then in a bigger bank. And she’s traveling the world in leadership with teams all over the globe. And so Susan had the same path, but hers started as she was on Broadway, and she loved sports. So because she loved sports and thought she could get into games for free with her voice, she was offering to sing the anthem at baseball games. Well, that made her a lot of connections,

(01:04:58):
And eventually she gets into the sports world because she didn’t want to be the typecast mom on every Broadway show as she got older, and now she’s in the Sports Radio Hall of Fame or Radio Hall of Fame, something like that, legendary Yankees announcer. So the book’s full of a lot of that, and just inspirational stories of different paths of how people got there and similarities and the differences.

Brad Burrow (01:05:19):
A couple more questions we’re about done. I wanted to ask you, well, first about Bobby. When Bobby gets interviewed, it’s like he want to,

Joel Goldberg (01:05:29):
It

Brad Burrow (01:05:29):
Feels like he doesn’t want to give you the answer. He’s got a kind of canned answer. It’s kind of like Pat on national, but you do a good job of trying to say, give me something here that’s got to be a challenging,

Joel Goldberg (01:05:40):
It’s a challenge. It’s not a personal thing. He is a delightful guy to talk to. He is as

Brad Burrow (01:05:46):
Respectful. I’ve directed him. He’s awesome.

Joel Goldberg (01:05:48):
Yeah. I mean, he’s as respectful as they come. Everything out of his mouth is, yes, sir. No sir. He was raised right, his wife the same way. They’re phenomenal people. And oh, he also happens to be one of the most talented players on the planet. I think that my business is, it would be great if every single person had Vinny PAs Quintino or Salvador Perez’s personality. He’s the next one I’m going to mention. I’ll get to him in a minute then. But if everybody had that personality, you wouldn’t notice the bigger ones. I just think that what you see from Bobby is he is very locked in at every single moment. He’s not going to say, no, he’s gracious every single time, but he is going to be most comfortable, and this is the way he was raised. If the excitement and the personality is shown by highlighting someone else, he’s just the ultimate guy that would love for everyone else to get the attention,

Brad Burrow (01:06:45):
Which is awesome.

Joel Goldberg (01:06:46):
It’s great. It just means that I’ve got, I’ve got to challenge myself to put him in the right spot to answer these questions. It’s a strategy thing. I

Brad Burrow (01:06:58):
Know. So you got to think about what you’re going to ask him. Then you

Joel Goldberg (01:07:01):
Got to work a little more with him, and that’s okay. That’s part of the profession. And I’m not going to be able to avoid the cliches every single time. But what I want to be able to do is, can I capture his emotion? Can I capture the work ethic that goes into it? So it’s a game. It’s a game. A little bit of a game of cat mouse that he is trying to deflect, which says so much about him. And I’m trying to say, yeah, I get that. I respect that, but I need to know more about you. And so how do you get there? And that’s the cat and mouse of it every single time. And it’s fun.

Brad Burrow (01:07:34):
We did some social media shorts with Community America, with Vinny and Bobby, actually, but Vinny was hilarious.

Joel Goldberg (01:07:40):
Yeah. I mean, he’s born for this. He’ll be on television for the rest of his career whenever baseball ends

Brad Burrow (01:07:46):
And just the personality. And so we had a teleprompter there he is doing his lines and messes up, and it’s like, oh, and just lets it fly. And everybody’s just dying laughing. It’s like, it was so fun.

Joel Goldberg (01:07:59):
Yeah. He relishes in those moments, whereas Bobby is just going to keep it really close and Oh darn, let’s do it again. It’s a reminder that there are different ways to get there, right? Bobby’s talent alone speaks for itself. Vinny’s got a lot of talent too. If Vinny were to act like Bobby, he would be uncomfortable. If Bobby were to act like Vinny, he would be uncomfortable. We need to be able to be

(01:08:21):
Ourselves.

(01:08:22):
And so Vinny is fearless with the personality. He’s here at the right time in a generation where that generation’s all about branding, all about putting themselves out there. Vinny’s personality 10 years ago would’ve still played, but he would’ve had to negotiate or wrestle with, are you looking for all the attention it’s supposed to be about the team. Bobby’s more old school that way. We live in a generation of TikTok and Instagram reels, and even if you look at Bobby Whit Jr’s, all of his social media feeds, everything he does is put out there. Everything right now that we do is being shared with others. That’s the generation that we’re in right now. But he’s still true to who he is. Vinny’s still true to who he is. It’s a great reminder that you have to be yourself. But Vinny was made for every bit of this. He’s as good as it comes.

Brad Burrow (01:09:12):
It was great seeing him on the World Series broadcast.

Joel Goldberg (01:09:16):
He could be working in TV right now if his baseball career came to an end tomorrow. And I hope that it comes to an end in 15 years from now, because he’s got a whole big career ahead of him, and he’s a heck of a player, and he works hard and all the things he can hit. He’s working on his defense. He’s a good leader, all these things. But whenever it ends, Vinny can slide right into the TV or broadcast booth or into the studio and on the set, just like Jeff Rancor did. He’s got that kind of personality.

Brad Burrow (01:09:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s on the national broadcast now. He He’s done a really good job. Yeah,

Joel Goldberg (01:09:50):
French, he’s unbelievable. And we knew that from day one. Some guys will surprise you along the way. Oh, I didn’t know that he had that in him. Jeremy Guthrie’s doing stuff with us now. Eric Hosmer is starting to do a little bit. Those guys, you knew that those guys were born for this as well, but I mean, Vinny, Vinny could have been doing this years ago. No, no-brainer, huh.

Brad Burrow (01:10:07):
Well, I want to go ahead and wrap up. I appreciate you being on here, Joel. Course.

Joel Goldberg (01:10:11):
It’s great to be with you.

Brad Burrow (01:10:12):
I could keep going for a couple hours right now. This is a lot of fun. If somebody wanted to reach out and wanted to hire you to speak, get the book. Give us all the nine one or the 4 1 1.

Joel Goldberg (01:10:23):
Yeah, I think that the easiest one-stop shop is my website, which is joel goldberg media.com. And you could reach me anywhere on social media. LinkedIn’s a great way to reach me. I’m easy to find there. And I’ll see messages that come in there. And if they’re not like the messages we receive every day of, are you looking to build more of your podcast or Can I make you a song for your podcast? All these things. It’s like, wait a minute. I didn’t say I wanted this deal. Are you looking to publish a book? I already published two of them, but if somebody wants to get ahold of me, that’s a good way. Or just the website, joel goldberg media.com. Because within there, there’s the video reel. If you want to see a little bit of what it looks like, there’s the testimonials, there’s the information and all the content too. And we live in a content world, so I’m pushing out a lot of newsletters and a lot of inspirational stories and all these type of things. And the podcast, of course. So it’s all there.

Brad Burrow (01:11:20):
So they could go there and find you. The last thing I always ask everybody to do, so it’s in a world with real media. And so this kind of started with this fun thing that I was the voice of the Miami Heat for four years. I don’t know if, I

Joel Goldberg (01:11:33):
Don’t know that I knew that.

Brad Burrow (01:11:35):
So I could do this movie

Joel Goldberg (01:11:36):
Voice like Alonzo Morning Days, or

Brad Burrow (01:11:38):
I don’t remember. Well, it was the Dwayne Wade era at the end with LeBron. And so I have a really good buddy who runs the Heat Television network, and we would play golf together. And so we’d go on these golf trips, and I do this in a world like this, joking. He calls me up one day and says, Hey, I want you to audition to be the game opening voice for the heat. I’m like, are you serious? He’s like, no, I’m really serious. I’m like, whatever. I ended up doing it, and I was that voice for four

Joel Goldberg (01:12:08):
Years.

Brad Burrow (01:12:09):
So now that’s where in a World With Real Media came from, is the inner world. So I want you to do your movie voice.

Joel Goldberg (01:12:15):
Okay.

Brad Burrow (01:12:16):
Can you do one? So get real close. Well, I didn’t even tell you how to do it.

Joel Goldberg (01:12:19):
Let’s come right down here. Right?

Brad Burrow (01:12:20):
Yeah. So in a world with Real media.

Joel Goldberg (01:12:22):
Yeah. And then where am I going with that? Wherever or wherever

Brad Burrow (01:12:24):
You want to go. Yeah.

Joel Goldberg (01:12:26):
Alright. In a world of real media, there is no better place than hanging out with Brad Burrow for Real Talk. It used to be called Real Talk. It’s still always real. Talk with Joel and Brad. I don’t know. See, you got it Better than me.

Brad Burrow (01:12:43):
Well, this could be the start of a new podcast. Who knows?

Joel Goldberg (01:12:47):
For Real Talk with Brad Burrow and Joel Goldberg. I dunno.

Brad Burrow (01:12:52):
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on, Joel. This is awesome. You’re very welcome. I can’t believe we’ve waited so long to do this. This man, it’s like, this is awesome. Let’s

Joel Goldberg (01:12:59):
Do it again.

Brad Burrow (01:13:00):
Yeah, let’s do it again. Well, thanks for joining us, everybody. It is in a world with real media, and be sure to share this man. We’re going to put this out and there’s a lot of really cool stuff that people can learn from this. But follow us, share us, tell people about us. We look forward to doing more of this, and we’ll see you next time. This has been In a World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow real media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So you never miss an episode.