Podbit · Pardon My Take
Tommy John doesn't make you throw harder — it returns you to where you were before. And if you have it at 12 or 14 years old, you're not advancing; you're just setting yourself up for a second surgery.
Where this was said
At 1:52:20 · chapter starts 1:11:45
Big Cat welcomes John Smoltz, who has been attending the American Century Championship for 16-17 years and calls it a marquee week on his calendar — he even warned his six kids not to schedule weddings during it. Smoltz explains the tournament's unique modified Stableford scoring: birdie = 3 points, par = 1, bogey = 0, double bogey = -2. His confession that he once made 29 consecutive pars, scoring no better than 1 point per hole while competitors made birdies and bogeys and flew past him, becomes the defining absurdity. [1] — John Smoltz "Smoltz: 29 consecutive pars at Tahoe: John Smoltz disclosed he once made 29 consecutive pars in a single American Century Championship tour…" 1:16:36 PFT trolls him about having no clutch gene. On the baseball front, Smoltz surveys the NL: the Braves hold a lead in the East but are injury-depleted, the Dodgers remain the prohibitive favorites despite their own injury concerns (no Blake Snell, bullpen gaps), and the Phillies and Brewers are making charges. He identifies the Mets as the most interesting trade deadline watch — a bloated roster that needs to decide whether it's a buyer or seller.
John Smoltz disclosed he once made 29 consecutive pars in a single American Century Championship tournament, which cost him the lead due to the birdie-heavy scoring format.
Teams now burn through 38 pitchers a season to get through the year — a number Smoltz calls insane. Nobody running baseball has ever played, so nobody cares that careers are being cut to thirds and eighths of what they should be.
John Smoltz argued that MLB teams now use approximately 38 pitchers per season, which he called 'insane' and a symptom of the broken pitching development system.
Want to fix pitcher overuse? Tie the starting pitcher to the DH slot — if your starter comes out early, you lose pinch hit options. That one rule change would kill the opener strategy and force teams to develop pitchers who go deep into games.
John Smoltz argued that analytics and overuse have so diluted the starting pitcher's role that he cannot identify 10 pitchers in today's MLB he would buy a ticket specifically to watch.
Maddux gave deliberately terrible interviews to keep the spotlight off himself and on his teammates. While Smoltz and Glavine were doing press about Maddux, Maddux was living quietly and building every possible competitive advantage — including staying anonymous enough to walk down the street unrecognized.
AI nailed Andrew Huberman's vertigo-vs-low-blood-pressure diagnosis because that pattern has been reported millions of times. But every patient's liver is different and data on liver surgeries is scarce worldwide — making solo robot surgery dangerous. The rule is simple: data abundance means AI can help; data scarcity means keep the human in the loop.
Fei-Fei Li's father had liver surgery performed by a da Vinci robot guided by a surgeon. The result: 10 times less blood loss than a typical procedure. This isn't replacement — it's the gold standard of human-machine collaboration, where the human's judgment and the robot's precision combine.
US drug overdose deaths fell from 110,000 to roughly 70,000 — the biggest CDC-recorded single-year drop ever. Men's rates fell 27% in one year, and the steepest decline of all was among 15–24-year-olds, down 37%. The crisis narrative around young men needs to make room for signs of genuine progress.
Kessler thought his grief expertise would protect him. It didn't. When his son David died unexpectedly, he found himself on the floor — and eventually realized that acceptance alone wasn't enough. That unmet need became the sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief isn't just death — it's any unwanted change. Kessler lectured at Coca-Cola and General Mills not because they had lots of funerals, but because change management is grief management. People who grieve well live well.
Witnessing someone's grief isn't just emotional support — it's an essential act of healing. Kessler argues grief is a severance and connection heals it. But real witnessing has two steps: seeing the pain AND affirming the person's capacity to recover.
Avoiding grief isn't free — it's exhausting. Kessler's beach ball metaphor nails it: pushing a small balloon down is easy, but holding a massive beach ball underwater takes constant, draining energy. Unattended feelings don't disappear; they just consume you.
Most people try to control their environment to avoid triggers. Kessler flips this entirely: triggers aren't problems to manage around — they're a detailed map to your pain and your healing. Every trigger points directly to what needs attention.
Running from pain doesn't leave it behind — it accelerates the chase. Whatever we run from pursues us, and whatever we face transforms us. Both Kessler and Lewis Howes testify to knowing both roads firsthand.
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