hello everybody welcome to another edition of timeout for sports talk here at the belmont media center where for exactly twenty years or almost to the day we have been the belmont's first and only live all sports talk show and this is our special twentieth anniversary program very glad you could be joining us tonight my name is todd long hours it is monday night january the twenty seventh two thousand and fourteen and my goodness i cannot believe it's been twenty years but yeah our very first show was a super bowl preview on january twenty fifth  four so we didn't quite make it to the exact day but pretty darn close and here we are doing our twenty first annual super bowl preview couple other interesting things happened in january one thousand nine hundred four did you can was named the general manager of the boston red sox and certain gentleman by the name of robert kraft bought the new england patriots and saved the franchise from moving to st louis and of course you know the rest of the story there are three super bowls and a lot of a lot of great memories and basically i think what i would say is the other third thing of course being time out for sports talk debuted i think we kind of fall somewhere in the middle we outlasted danticat but we're not quite as brilliant as robert kraft of the patriots so there you have it where we are anyway glad you could join us and if you're watching us live on monday january twenty seventh please give us a call six one seven fo four two four four three that is the phone number when you see who our special guest is here i'm sure you will want to call immediately if not sooner but we also have many other ways you can get ahold of us or you can contact us through twitter at t o s t b m c is our twitter account spam but you can e mail us at g mail or hotmail dot com that's time out for sports talk and of course we're on facebook too you can become a fan anyway one of the gentlemen no actually the gentleman who's been sitting to my left in the co pilot's chair who has been with me for a have you here been great to be on this ride for for twenty years and like i said united been here for pretty much all of it all stall of it like i say you came along and stabilize things we're going through some transitional periods in that i was just going to show and yeah you started calling in and then before you know what we've got a permanent space for you and i we wouldn't be on this long if it wasn't for you how we so i don't know if i did all that but i appreciate that and our special guest tonight and it's been a decade since we've had him on but we're very happy to have him back for  for this twentieth anniversary show bob little bell is here in studio with us the former sports anchor sports director w b z doing a lot of other things these days back maybe we'll start by asking bob i just want to you know have you but i do because we miss you saying that if the boston red sox ever want to world series in our lifetime things would never be the same you know what bob you were right and three world series later i think you're three times as you know i'll stand by that statement definitely will stand by it but it's great to be back green it was so what do you been up to these days bob i mean i know first like you said we miss you not being on the air anymore it's a g i can rest in about five years yeah it's been about that i kind of miss it i miss the people in miss you know all the stuff and kind of the action but you know we've seen just about everything we could see we've done about everything that was to be done so it was kind of time to move on and there's a lot of you know doing the p a of family parker you know i think about this a lot todd and i know that you are you do it happen to somebody else is like it's kind of detached and it's like you're watching this other person do all these things but the ph stuff is that's like when a kid again i think we all did that grown up we know you know style here's a starting line up for the boston celtics you know bill or us all of the stuff on and on but yeah it was pretty cool yeah i'm not sure a lot of people are aware of but so but for those who don't know bob labelle is the public address announcer one of all one of those three of them there slaven and henry is one of them those the main stuff flavin he's got day games i have saturday day and night games that's really cool i'm going to love the saturday games but you know it's just to have a chance to do it and it's all scripted i was really you know what really fortunate it was the first game after the marathon bombings they didn't play on friday because they were still hunting for the kid in watertown right mary we're going to carmel right next door to drama of that night and saturday because they canceled friday night's game so the saturday game was the first game back and that place was like a cathedral i mean it was like it was a first time everybody had a chance to get together and kind of bond and that was the ortiz you know f bomb and all that stuff diamond flew in live with his wife and wants to do sweet caroline alive but don't tell anybody so but i did text my friend mike barnicle who was sitting and he said yeah you know i've been trying to you know take care of this guy for the last four innings so anyway that was it was pretty cool having a chance to introduce him and then the best part about that was that they were playing kansas city they were trailing at that time in the eighth inning when neil diamond came out and now i had the chance to yes recently up there earlier this month and we had the music director and he was like having a fit because he didn't have he knew them was going to sing live and he only had like a two minute cut here so he didn't know what to do and then  john carter the boss guy that runs things that just go with it just let it run your time went for six minutes and it was an eternity and they had to tell the kansas city pitchers don't warm up because this could go no we don't know how this is going to end up so that's i think that maple twentieth of like to think that was the thing that turned everything around that's the thing that got them going in that home run by novel was remarkable and then the best another great part about it is that they novel was playing left and  place so i got to introduce him again moving in the right field so that just kind of you know exacerbated in the crowd into a frenzy and it was quite a team last year i really enjoyed watching them play yeah i mean everybody did want to direct dogs especially after the year before  you know come on it was like who knew who saw this coming right nobody nobody you know and then on top of you know just the fact that again the healing power if you can but if you believe you know that you know i think the red sox did do something for the whole city ha what the connection was was you know amazing it wasn't fake that's the best part about it people knew and felt the connection and everything was the real deal you know what do you do for an encore i don't know but you know what you kind of had to enjoy that while it it happened then they put up that six one seven shirt and they carry dad around with them wherever they went it was and they hung out in the dugout every day and it was about an action it was a really emotional connection with the city it's not that the other teams would have had the you will get probably get back to the red sox a little bit but first kind of talk about the team that the president of the season that just ended the patriots sadly once again came up a little bit short of their goal sadly talk about you know we continue to talk about how we're spoiled you know three red sox world series in the last decade and you know three patriots super bowls within the last you know twelve thirteen years none in the last decade and you know we keep waiting for that fourth wanted least i kind of do what i think how you're sort of in agreement with me on this that you know it's we're hoping that there is going to be one more for brady to kind of punctuate this this sentence of what's been a dynastic i ought to want to use that word but you know it's just been a strong period of dominance by this organization which we never thought we'd see twenty years ago when we started the show a movie we were happy enough they were moving to st louis and him but you know what it just seems like they keep just coming up these come up short all of a sudden they just don't seem to have that to get over that anymore and i don't know what it is that could have had two more super bowls i think we can all agree with that or at least that one would you know i think to my i wouldn't be you know i'm not going to be greedy i think two more but who knows we're at the end you know we are the window is closing and i think you know but bob you weren't really back it wasn't the worst loss i mean i was a pretty hard to complain about losing after you've won three you know but it was kind of tough the way it happened plus it was a lot of what was at stake to the end well that's all part of the history of the patriots although you want to go back to this last season of the four teams that were left i think they were the worst of the i didn't think so at the time i thought they were going to i thought they're going to win it this year and maybe if they had their full complement of players on the roster clearly it would have got to figure out a way to keep growing caskey healthy to the playoffs i mean because this is going to be an ongoing thing i don't i don't see him being a healthy player you know for a whole season ever i just don't think he has been in the past and and there are different team with him and the whole thing was a nightmare starting with hernandez going down but in a culminated with welker it was the only i mean that see smart enough to pull it off and try to take the heat off the team which i suspect that was probably as to what the motivation was but it was you know it did take the heat off the team it didn't you know that's really could accomplish that but it was not him at least not the ballot check that we have learned to love and believe in and trust and so i'm not i'm concerned i don't i don't think they're going back that's my feeling yeah i mean i think that was i think this was it i mean that's how i've been talking about this disc yeah i thought yesterday i thought i was watermark i thought that was a shot you know prove me wrong i really mean i hope i'm wrong i've been wrong often well no i mean father time certainly would be against brady doing it in fact i mean if peyton manning win the super bowl the son he's going to get the second oldest quarterback to ever win a super bowl brady will be thirty seven to go there how lucky we've been to watch him play how lucky were they to get him in the draft and both bell and check and craft i mean how fortunate were they to do that so you know they have to hope i'm wrong ok i just i don't know wrong about the red sox not winning or i make a declaration there but i hope i hope i'm wrong but i don't see it happening i think you know what you want to  i only have one how i know i don't see that i just can't see they just can't seem to get over the hump anymore they just can't seem to win the big one but i'm going to run up in the tall was a poor performance i mean that last game they didn't show up i was so know weapons but you know what the week before against a good apples didn't feel like they had many weapons and they still put up over forty points is that true but it was raining but you know blunt was running crazy for the two games in the rain right now when that when they said the weather's going to be real nice and denver the way seem like they were in the games up until that point and they even i mean when i say that bell check was right then that was really the key play of the game well but i'm not going to say what welker did was intentional i don't think it was i haven't thought check come out and say that was the key player in the game i mean  i think he was making it more person i know but i know that's true ty but did you ever see a coach this coach will come out and say that a downfield hit was the key play in the game what happ ok i'll shut up but no no no i mean i just you know like you forced me to make that argument about some i don't want to argue about but i mean you know i don't i don't want to have to defend my opinion because i want to be wrong ok well and again i'm not making an argument i'm not necessarily arguing he was the problem he added said he was cursed to have to work under the yaki trust that i think they're really did not help his fortunes here but that's another story but you know but yeah i know here's the thing i actually kind of i don't want to necessarily agree with you guys on the on the window closing point involving the patriot the scary part is i kind of them leaning that way myself i'm trying to be optimistic about the things i want to see the win one more i feel like if they don't win one more it's going to be an incomplete sentence whenever the play you know what i worry about his future i worry about his life expectancy i know it's a terrible thing to say but you know it's going on all around us yeah the statistics are in you know this is a serious thing and i've never seen a guy hit as and as hard as welker when he was here so sure was she when added to the insult the belt check claiming that he deliberately went after right that's why can't be deliberate why would a guy with two concussions over the last month even try to do that it  comments that he did maybe he sees you know there are going to be that many more chances perhaps you know is that we he knows the window is closing you know he knows it probably better than any of us and you take a look at the last and you don't always statistics to go to but there are the four biggest games that they had the last four biggest games were the two super bowls against the giants and the two a f c championships and they lost all four of them so it doesn't take a genius to look back and say hey the last biggest four games week we've had we've lost is that is that not a problem for them and when they talk about all those stats about brady's record of ten and five but most of those winds were gears ago most of those losses i'm coming now he didn't  was when he had weapons and when there was a different defense made such you know in those super bowl winning teams the three super bowl winning teams defense was such a huge part of those teams and and defense has the possibility to get there within a couple of years you know but they're not there yet and the question is when they finally get to that level maybe two three years where is brady going to be honest i think the league impulsive league is deemphasizing defense to we know that it's just it's proven so you're actually putting you know going against the tide you're fighting gravity because it's the league's permitting our fences to do more and more how we're going to get your defense to counteract that i mean i tell me what i don't know what do you think about that the hits the fact that they go in lower now while there are more people getting hurt i mean i know this didn't take it take it in that you know consideration that people are going to go after they still sell out right you know but here's the deal ok it's getting to the point where wouldn't you rather stay home and watch it on your fifty five inch high definition television with you know the bathroom in the say ok that you right there guess you say forty dollars to park or whatever ok you know they have to figure out what they're going to do about getting you know they try to put wife i am to try to make it more fan friendly shorten the commute getting out of the parking lot is true and you know what doesn't mean you're not having fun times i mean you don't enjoy it but you know it's getting to be one hundred thirty dollars for a ticket forty dollars to ten dollars for a b you know like you said lines in the bathroom i mean just to go plus all the food you'd get you know for the tailgate you know the burgers the dogs the steak tips you know all the cotton demands it i mean that all adds up and would leave at eight o'clock in the morning we get home at eight o'clock at night i mean it was a it was an all day affair yeah yeah and then go to work the next day i mean that those days are kind over i think i mean those i think most people have experienced it and it was it's a now they have a whole different genda you know most people have gone through that have had a great time but now it's time to kind of stay home and reap the rewards of being a having a decent life and living in the england where you have winning teams you know and being lucky to have them yeah you know we have been lucky i mean that's the thing i think we forget here even though you know you you'll hear some folks in the local media say that you know what they haven't won in ten patriots permeates all sports do you think the patriots were had a chance to come to win that game as the game was going on they get they were within two extra points of making it a one score game you know seemed like they weren't world series i wasn't expecting things to go wrong any more i had all of a sudden there's nothing wrong with this i think was more of a feeling of not waiting for things to go wrong but just feeling confident once again and on which changed morning ok i agree when the red sox won the world series that change because everyone kept saying we're what was more which one was more meaningful two thousand and four this last one i said this last one i said this last week this last one meant more than the because it was totally unexpected they got a bunch of dirt dogs in after a terrible season that they would just ate slept and drank foot baseball and no one expected would do anything they don't want to eat it they lost their clothes i mean they had pitches go down i mean other than what t said didn't really have any names you know a couple of pitches you throw in but i guess you didn't expect anything out of this team when they went on and just won it what do you think of it i know i agree with that but do you still say two thousand and four was about coming here the body is i think two thousand sox jerseys and but that was a win for the if you passed generations sure this was a win for the future generations this last one i think i think this was a this was a twitter facebook right that's why i think he wanted the curse europe but because he's the one that invented the curse but i love him i think he's taken that but that's another subject for another time i think he's taken a lot of tough raps that he doesn't deserve i think use it terrific columnist and i think he's kind of is he was here just like i mean i think you smell a little lately you know in the last you know some like no i think some of the is recent writings i think it's almost easier to kind of stir the pot i know part of the job of the columns to stir the pot but i i think he does it in the way what you tell his beat writers had a time that this is coming down or does he not and and which business is he put first i mean you know what i'm saying you get inside information inside trading he owns the globe and he owns the team the team makes the news that she give the news to the globe i don't think so i don't think so either i don't think you want that what what will if he's going to get a player in a way he wants this paper to get to school you know what is of getting off on this track which is a good track but i kind of we were talking patrons i wanted to segue a little bit into we're talking about our viewing experience we can stay home now watch the games kind of say with a little bit into this year's super bowl which you know they're playing outdoors for the first time in cold temperatures the possibility that there might be some snow or or rain or you know freezing rain or something and i guess now the latest forecast where you know here we are six days before the game they're saying temperatures a kickoff are going to be right around freezing which would make it the coldest super bowl ever the former the coldest previously was super bowl six tulane stadium new orleans was thirty nine to kick off this one expected to be right around freezing but it sounds like it's not going to be as bad as it could be and i guess you know the n f l is kind of breathing a sigh of relief as i'm sure peyton manning but what are your you know what let's talk a little bit about your guys thoughts on the game itself the experience the decision to even have the south side if they if this might be something outside in like a northern climate and you think they might keep doing it this way or i think they should i mean they think they should alternate it i mean play is playing it you know from november to january i mean why all of a sudden you know especially cold weather teams it's almost like they get the disadvantage in the super bowl distracted me here's the deal that's why you're right it's everything's close everything's walkable this is crazy you got to swim to get to this one you know you can't go across the george washington bridge just traffic jam so the question is  experience there and then you go over and go to the game so i think it will be fine but no i think you got to do every year in new orleans i just they reward cities that build new stadiums it's that simple it's like blackmail to build a new stadium metlife well we'll give you a super bowl five years down the road build new stadium in detroit well give us new super bowl fibers on and on and that's that's there but those were all different because they you know in the case of detroit it's a dome and i get the thing ok there's a major storm in the south ok i think they really dodged a bullet because that storm is coming up through wednesday ice snow schools are closed you know a major major showing that they shut down and you know that storm and been to three hundred miles to the north they would have been in big trouble they really lucked out i mean that's it they lucked out well you know what weathermen have been wrong before the ma yeah well that was a big deal right you know i get paid back you want to go to the game all right i mean obviously if you go to the game in new orleans since super bowl no you would have though not necessarily i think with the lottery because he had a lot of yeah and he probably would have taken first dibs on the game because good friend of mine said super bowl to pick your season tickets for like twenty years never won a lottery does the tickets aren't good enough i think i shouldn't say they're going to be the hottest i don't know i rolled go ahead we told our why what's the deal i don't know why would you want to own a team in the national hockey should ask with groesbeck i don't you know i just don't get it i don't get the n b a ownership thing i mean maybe it's maybe i don't know y a real kick in whatever but well yeah i mean going kind of elaborating on your point bob you know look what kraft has been able to do not only saving the franchise but just look at what's happened to let stadium and you know not just the winning of the franchise becoming a legitimate means i think that part of problem is that there's no players union i think that's the real true how it's not quite right about what on a football believe me if they had more than sixteen games it wouldn't be enough players around to play because they're all getting getting hurt so that's why you don't want to go to eighteen games but you know and now the players union is emasculated i mean the owners have total control not true in baseball not true in basketball not true in the national hockey league it's it's a different world unless you're in the n f l right and that's just that's changed that's just recently changed hasn't changed a little bit though because i know kraft brought the two sides together during that last lockout and it felt like the players were starting to get a little bit more think they were heard a little more thing ok i will i'm not so sure but you know what if they if they're happy and they feel like they've gotten more than maybe they have well i just know that's the that is the league to own a you have to here's the anky spot fifty in the red sox philosophy major league baseball try to put brakes on some of the owners jenkins just go right to the stop sign they don't care now just because the red sox did what they did last year the red sox in her own team yankees could not abide by that and spend half a billion dollars this is a rattle of billion dollars they could not abide by that that was as painful a year for the anthonys think they've ever had as good as it was for us and they just had to take it and they'll be they'll be back to some to call my dad on that i wonder who's going to play in their infield but that's a different story but i gotta figure out shortstop and second base and they were right on that but really y regard yeah but i think that's true he's it's a terrific punt returner he just gets a lot of yards after the catch he just does hard to go down and i think he was i think he was their most valuable player that he definitely a breakout yea them and i think i think a year or two ago there was talk about cutting them another that i think they miss would head i don't know what happened with that deal everyone kind of forgets about that i mean welker was all the talk of the off season i think its departure but yeah it would had going to san diego i mean look what the chargers were able there with him and the patriots i think did miss him a lot of maneuvering could have possibly stepped in and taken a lot of that role but then he got hurt just like everybody else pretty much on the roster and i was and the patriots had no weapons to discuss that scoop would lloyd i mean the guy had over a thousand gas cats and they didn't even snip adam last year what what was the gig with that they seem to have had a great reluctance to sign big time well i should say that they so i'm stealing from them i'm going with them all right thirty one twenty three denver and i'm taken seattle over denver twenty eight twenty because at the beginning of the year i picked seattle over denver so i'm going to kind of stick with that pick all the way through i want to see seattle win the white now no i'm not making a bet of this i would i've only owned this thing a couple of months i don't even know how to make that was it it's a it's a tablet yeah i got that but it's like you are making bets on that i'm trying to get into the digital age instead of holding papers in front of me  for him but well anyway yeah i mean that's you'd think you'd think it would be that it'll never get there again who's to who's to know who's to who how did kraft know that the check was going to be valid check until they drafted brady in the sixth round which changed everything mean lewis changed every lead to think about it right think about how it got that way how it happened how fortunate bell a check was for brady or how fortunate brady was for you know you wonder why they ask questions you can't answer would brady has been successful under someone else or would check have been successful with anyone else i'm glad we don't have to answer the question of gladiator two you're not here you know you haven't been a channel four for five years and you know i think in those last five years you know sports media's changed awful lot between the social media the interaction you know everyone throwing up their little tablets the info on it there you know it's it has changed a lot and i guess i wanted to in fact i said this a few months ago i think this came up as a subject we were talking about you know sports talk and i think i sort of blurted something out along the lines what i would never want to host a show on sports radio kind of went off on a little rant on sports radio these days and i think one of the biggest problems is and this this goes back to you know the early days of your broadcast career bob when you went up to bell were were doing calling all sports and that was about a once a week show right now a weekly show and i think one of the things now here we are in a sports saturated don't know if i can do it because you have to make up have to make up such drivel and things that just annoyed the absolute listeners because you're a little older now yeah i think that's probably just you know you kind of put everything in perspective but what's your take on this say you know you told us before we went on the air bob that you're going to be you actually you're up to reuniting if you want to use that's a yeah to talk about i think saturday morning up in new hampshire and four stations in new hampshire actually starting this coming saturday so it's great to be good i mean i'm looking forward just two hours on saturday but go back to social media you know if you want to twitter's war stories are broken i mean if you want to you could have a computer going to be there was a time when we would never even think about sitting in front of our computer it was a time we never even take a call from a car because there were no such things as cell phones and i remember the first call we ever got from a car from bob wolf in a cell phone because he had the money to have a cell phone in a car i remember i've never forget that it was a big deal but you know it's a whole different and i hate to say it but all different world but you want to you want to get storage you go on twitter to keep instantaneous instantaneous stories ok you got to be pretty sure they're correct but yeah that's the place to have you got to have that thing go on all the time i mean if you're on the air because you've got a computer in front of you you've got to have a television set up they're going to be watching e s p n and i do the show in new hampshire now an hour a day and i think i got more stories on her b s p n instantaneously or on twitter than anything it's just amazing but i guess what i also wanted to ask her bob is i'm sure after you left channel four you had a lot of opportunities in fact i'm sure you don't get a sports radio stations in town were calling you and asking if you wanted to devote to being a full time host and being on five days a week and you didn't obviously you never had an inkling to do it and i'm just wondering do you think we've come to the point where we're almost oversaturated sports radio is just too much of it i mean as much of a sports fan as i am i find myself listening less and less to it because it feels like you know especially with all the prosperity going all the teams are winning instead of things feeling i'm not i don't see what the host to be rob reiner all the time but for them to be so mad and angry and bitter all the time that doesn't feel right either to me i don't want to be mad angry or bitter i kind of like watching the games the teams are generally winning so what's wrong with that you know little optimistic about that you know i think it's more about you it is about the programming i and i he does have to have a thick skin and you have to not care what people think that's one of the problems i have is like i care too much what people think that's a that's a big character flaw that's probably my fault to women and  lecture also want to thank there's i'm not going to list all the names we've had over the twenty years we've got about one hundred fifty people between crew gasps people behind the scenes people who've been sitting in the chairs with us whole lot of folks over the twenty years i've been a part of the show and couldn't do without any oh you can now because you get the tablet i'm on that note we'll see you next month february twenty fourth is our next show good night