Chasing Brian Johnson

Chad (00:05.87)
All right. So I'm gonna get rid of all this.

Chad (00:13.966)
Alright, are you ready?

Jasper (00:16.714)
Yes, sir.

Chad (00:18.51)
Hey Listener, welcome to town... I didn't even get it right all over again. Hey Listener, welcome to ch... no.

Jasper (00:23.082)
Great start.

Jasper (00:27.05)
What's happening?

Chad (00:29.582)
Well, I fucked it up myself, and nobody told me that I fucked it up.

Jasper (00:34.122)
Oh jeez, you meant... yeah. Yes, and not mine either. This is Chad's AI, so it's not... It's not even his fault, really.

Brian Johnson (00:35.406)
I like it when it's not my fault.

Chad (00:38.542)
Oh, get used to it. Yeah. I'm, I'm, if you're looking for somebody else, yeah. If you're looking for somebody else to pass the blame, I'm fine. I'm fine. All right. Look, Hey listener, welcome to talent chasing where we bring real world stories from the fields courts and pitches of major league sports and offices of corporate talent. It's our job to amplify those hidden stories and finding, retaining, and motivating the best talent in the world because no team exists without great talent.

Chad (01:11.95)
Brian, that's where you jump in. That's where you say, hi, I'm Brian.

Jasper (01:14.89)
Yeah, say hi Brian, hi.

Chad (01:16.686)
I put it in Trello.

Brian Johnson (01:16.974)
Oh, what am I saying? Oh, my bad. I wouldn't have thought, my bad.

Jasper (01:19.338)
Yeah, we did put it in Trillobri.

Chad (01:25.518)
I don't want to hear shit anymore. Put it in Trello. I did.

Jasper (01:27.242)
Yeah, we did, yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:28.142)
Right. Hey, if you dish it out, you got to be able to take it. I can take it. Give it to me.

Jasper (01:35.914)
The best 30 seconds you messed up the name and the script and then Brian forgot to take it. Hey man, yeah, get it, get the jitters out now.

Brian Johnson (01:39.47)
Amazing.

Chad (01:42.158)
Take two. Hey, we get it all out early. It's fine.

Brian Johnson (01:44.654)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:49.39)
This will be part of our story later. Oh yeah, there you go. Okay, you said what? Scripts, scripts, oh, show ships, okay. Ah, okay.

Jasper (01:59.754)
There we go, yeah!

Chad (02:01.934)
Okay, take a read of it and then let me know if you have any questions before we get into it.

yellow lights instead of...

Jasper (02:17.162)
Yellow lights? What do you mean?

Chad (02:22.83)
Mike.

Brian Johnson (02:23.662)
So I'm sorry, so my, when it says Brian Dash, overview with discussion? Am I supposed to say something there?

Jasper (02:29.706)
No, no, no, no, but just before that, we've so we've got the intro that Chad just did, and then we're supposed to sort of introduce ourselves quickly. That's the intro.

Chad (02:34.446)
Yeah, but he's

Chad (02:38.446)
Yeah, so when Bright, when

Brian Johnson (02:39.438)
because we're introducing ourselves as the show and then we'll transfer over, I transfer back into the guest role, okay.

Jasper (02:46.346)
Yeah, well, you're not the guest, you are part of this now, but yeah, you are the co-host, but today you are also sort of the...

Chad (02:48.11)
Yeah, so.

You are the co-host, yeah. So when Jasper asks, who exactly is Brian Johnson, right? So you give us kind of like a Twitter bio of you up through wherever, I mean, obviously don't make it too long because we've got a whole few episodes of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give yourself a Twitter bio. When you hit that, then I'm coming in for the setup and then we just start the discussion. Make sense?

Jasper (03:08.746)
But it is gonna be quite not.

Brian Johnson (03:19.918)
Okay, sounds good.

Chad (03:21.486)
Right, so here it is. In this case, it's all about chasing Brian Johnson, which you felt started back in high school, is that right? And then start the discussion at that point. Or I can actually start, where did it start?

Brian Johnson (03:46.286)
All right, I got enough.

Chad (03:47.566)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (03:49.006)
Takes me a little while.

Jasper (03:50.282)
That's fine, mate, that's fine. We put it in Trello for you.

Chad (03:53.678)
So... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Jasper (03:55.722)
OBEYING YOUR WISHES, MATE.

Chad (03:59.342)
Oh yeah, okay. Okay, are you ready? Four minutes in, four minutes in, we're ready. Okay, good. Hey listener, welcome to Talent Chasing where we bring real world stories from the fields, courts and pitches of major league sports and offices of corporate talent. It's our job to amplify those hidden stories and finding, retaining and motivating the best talent in the world because no team exists without great talent.

Jasper (04:03.402)
Yes.

Brian Johnson (04:03.726)
Now I am RIP. Yes.

Brian Johnson (04:30.19)
Hi, I'm Brian Johnson, Major League Baseball player, former Major League Baseball player, and former Major League Baseball scout.

Jasper (04:36.97)
I'm Jasper Spongart, I am a journalist and filmmaker.

Chad (04:41.646)
And I'm Chad Sowash, recruitment industry veteran. Welcome to episode number one, Chasen Brian Johnson.

Jasper (04:50.026)
Because you think to yourself, where do we start with this? And we've got a sports star right among us. So it's sort of the easiest transition to go from there. Our very own sports star and co-host, I may add, Brian Johnson. Brian, who exactly are you?

Chad (05:04.206)
Yes.

Brian Johnson (05:08.142)
Good question. I've been worrying about that for the last 50 some odd years. But I guess I understand there may be one or two people on the planet that don't know exactly who I am. So let me... Yeah. Yeah. Let me do a brief overview of my role or one of my roles here today being part of the guest. But anyway, so I was born and raised in Oakland, California.

Jasper (05:12.362)
I'm going to go to bed.

Jasper (05:19.146)
That's it.

Chad (05:19.15)
Doing research on you, dude? Oh my God.

Brian Johnson (05:34.766)
A large baseball hotbed, Frank Robinson's from there, Kurt Flood, Joe Morgan, a bunch of other baseball legends. I grew up there, I went to Stanford University, played football and baseball there. I was a quarterback there as well as on the baseball team. We won two national championships there. And then I went on to play in the major leagues for 12 years. I had a lot of fun there. Left there, went to the corporate world for nine years, went back into baseball as a major league scout.

and would get into the differences of what a major league scout versus an amateur scout might be. And then I got, I left baseball after, left scouting after 10 years. So 22 years in baseball and went back into the business world. So a thumbnail sketch of who I am. That's me.

Chad (06:09.838)
Yeah.

Jasper (06:10.122)
Absolutely, yeah.

Jasper (06:23.338)
That's not a thumbnail sketch, that's a big sketch. That's massive.

Brian Johnson (06:26.286)
Hahaha!

Chad (06:27.086)
Yeah, dude, that sounds more than one lifetime. Okay, that sounds like more than one lifetime, which is why today we're going to start the discussion around the chase, which is what great teams do. They identify, they engage, and then they chase talent, right? So in this case, it's all about chasing Brian Johnson, whether you can find him, the right one on Google or not. Yeah, exactly. So the big question.

Brian Johnson (06:30.158)
Yeah.

Jasper (06:30.986)
I'm sorry.

Jasper (06:47.786)
There's a lot of them, yeah.

Brian Johnson (06:48.334)
Yeah, right. The guy from ACDC, I get a lot of his stuff. I wish, yeah, I wish I got his paychecks, but I didn't. So, yeah.

Jasper (06:53.898)
Hey man, yeah.

Chad (06:59.47)
So where did the sports bug catch you, hit you? Where did all this start?

Brian Johnson (07:06.094)
Yeah, as a kid, you know, I kind of had a short attention span and all I wanted to do was be around the ball. Didn't matter what ball was, I played basketball, but I was playing soccer a lot or football, it should be called football. But that's a whole different story we can get into another time. But we for some reason in the United States called soccer, which is dumb, but whatever. But yeah, anything that had to do with the ball would have been, I was locked up in it. And so just this natural-

Jasper (07:13.162)
Mmm.

Brian Johnson (07:33.422)
really from my soul, kind of connection with soul, movement, athletic competition, and all that. It just kind of was my thing.

Jasper (07:42.89)
What was the first ball that you picked up?

Brian Johnson (07:46.734)
I think it was soccer. My best friend, his dad was our coach. He was an orthopedic surgeon and he was the team doctor for the Golden State Warriors who were garbage back then. For Laney College, it was a local junior college there, their football team and their soccer team. So he introduced us to soccer. I didn't know anything about soccer until we started playing together. So at seven years old, we started playing and-

Jasper (07:48.106)
Hmm.

Chad (07:57.07)
Oh, dang.

Brian Johnson (08:15.79)
had a blast. So that was my first game.

Chad (08:16.91)
So were those pickup matches? Were those like pickup matches? You had your buddies in the backyard. Did you go to the park? I mean, what was the scene, especially in Oakland?

Brian Johnson (08:25.742)
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, yeah, soccer on the park was what is kind of it's around, right? There's there's always there's more of an adult thing. Ours is more the, you know, the t-shirt league for soccer and for baseball. Um, where I really got serious about it was with baseball, because, uh, to your point, the leagues and soccer didn't really start to your 10. So probably the first one was baseball t-shirt league is what we called it. You put your mom, you know, your parents have paid 10, 15 bucks. You get a t-shirt and a hat.

Chad (08:32.942)
Uh-huh.

Jasper (08:39.754)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (08:55.534)
You come down to the recreational park at eight o'clock in the morning and you stay there all day. You play your game at nine, but you get to substitute in the game at 830 and then 930 in the game at 11 and 12. And when you're not playing in one of those games or substitute another game, you go play three flies up in the outfield. You play pick pickle or rundown is what we call it back then. You play pepper a lot of like I've been coached a lot too. So.

Jasper (09:15.946)
Hehehehe

Chad (09:18.51)
Yeah, yeah.

Brian Johnson (09:22.606)
A lot of kids nowadays don't know what pepper means. It's the great game with just you can do with just one person, one ball or two people, one bat and one ball. So yeah, so baseball is probably as far as getting serious about it was probably my first endeavor into that.

Chad (09:39.246)
Talk about Oakland a little bit. What was the environment in Oakland? Because as a kid, I mean, I grew up in small town Ohio, right? We didn't have big major league sporting teams, right? You did, right? You grew up in the shadows of that. So talk a little bit about that.

Brian Johnson (09:58.958)
Yeah, it was a great time. It was the Charlie Finley Oakland A's of the early 70s. They won three World Series in a row. The Oakland Raiders with Otis Sistrunk and John Matuszak and Kenny Stave were the snake. You know, so we had all those characters around, you know, for our... The Warriors had just before... The Warriors won the championship in 74, but cognitively I didn't really check into 75, 76.

Chad (10:04.974)
Wow.

Jasper (10:07.85)
Oh yeah.

Chad (10:08.398)
Yeah.

Chad (10:15.086)
Uh-huh.

Brian Johnson (10:26.286)
So I suffered for 40 years until the latest dynasty 40 years later. So that's a whole separate subject too. But yeah, I grew up in a, I grew up in the city of Oakland, but a little tawny white upper middle class suburb called Montclair. And so my father is a cardiologist, my mother was an emergency room nurse. So and a lot of the kids in that field that I would go to every morning were white.

Chad (10:29.806)
Yeah.

Jasper (10:44.522)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (10:55.118)
And there was one girl who she was awesome. Sarah Lillivan was her name. And there was a couple of sprinkle of diversity, sprinkle of different folks, Black folks mostly. Didn't have a whole lot of Asian folks. Didn't have a whole lot of Latino or Hispanic folks. And so from there was kind of where I started and got to be playing. And ironically, what happened to me, which changed my life, is that when I got into the first organized league, where you get the full uniform.

Chad (11:09.71)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (11:23.178)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (11:24.174)
My coach was a black guy. He was going to law school at Cal Berkeley, which is right next door. And so he was in the middle of law school. He and his two law school buddies, the three of them coached this little league team. And so when my head coach, Dennis Young, my head little league coach, noticed that I had something that was a little bit different. He took me off, and we were up in the hills of Oakland. He took me off of the hills and took me down into the flatlands. So in Oakland, there's the hills and there's the flatlands.

Chad (11:30.414)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (11:53.582)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (11:53.642)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (11:53.902)
So the Flatlands is where the best athletics were, the best teams were, the best athletes were, the best competition. And they were all black communities for the most part, sprinkle of Latino and Hispanic folks. Again, not a whole lot of Asian folks, Asian folks kind of lived on different side of town. They were kind of across the bay in San Francisco. But in Oakland, that's what we had. So this predominantly black city, this white kid went to start playing in those leagues, and it transformed my life.

Jasper (12:16.042)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (12:21.386)
What was your favorite part of growing up there?

Brian Johnson (12:25.87)
We had a beautiful view at our house. We got to see the San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge behind it. All of that I got to see every morning and every day. And it was really a delight. And I look back on having not been there for a long time. But the other piece is that because there are so many different types of people, there's so many different types of Asian people. There's so many different types of Latino folks and Hispanic folks.

Jasper (12:29.098)
Mm.

Jasper (12:48.81)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (12:55.054)
So the black folks were varied, right? They came from so many different places. That for me was my favorite part of it. And still to this day is the richness of the culture of Oakland. And if you ever meet anybody from Oakland, they'll tell you pretty much the same thing. We were all very arrogant about where we came from. We know it was unique. We know it was different and in my life, I'm 56. I've never seen another place like Oakland anywhere in my travels.

Chad (13:21.454)
Yeah, yeah. Wow. So talk a little about you. You talked about the coach that that first saw that you had a little something, right? Talk about the mentors. I mean, that, that to me, uh, for, for any kid, any kid, whether in sports or not, I mean, that's a big part of their, their, their upbringing in their life, whether it's family, whether it's a coach. So, so talk a little bit about that. Who, who were your mentors?

Jasper (13:29.322)
Hmm.

Chad (13:46.83)
that actually brought you along, whether family, coaches, who are they? Who are the most important ones to you?

Brian Johnson (13:52.494)
Yeah, the first one I'd say was probably my mom. She and I were always best friends, still best friends to this day. She's 86 and plays golf five days a week. And still driving, still driving a car. Yeah, she don't necessarily remember what day it is today, but she can do everything else. But anyway, she was, again, she grew up in the 30s. She was a golfer, her father was a golfer. And so she became really good and was good enough.

Jasper (14:01.226)
I love it. I love it. Still driving.

Chad (14:03.598)
I love it.

Jasper (14:09.066)
Hahaha

Chad (14:18.606)
Mm.

Brian Johnson (14:21.518)
at the end of high school to be a pro potentially a pro golfer. But again, so she born in 30s. So as a teenager, so that's basically 51, 52, 50 mid fifties. There's not a whole lot of money to be made for female golfers during that time. So she was like, eh, there's not a whole lot of money there. I'm going to go to nursing school and do my thing there. But that love of sport, that that hand eye coordination, which is key, because my dad didn't have a whole lot of my mom is the one that had it.

Chad (14:32.814)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (14:48.942)
But we connected on sports always. And so I think she was great and she always used to tell me that, hey, because I felt like I was impressing people at 10 or whatever. I felt like I was big on the field, right? But my mom would always say, hey, just remember there's always gonna be somebody better than you. And that always stuck with me and she didn't have to, again, I've done a lot of coaching. I got two kids that I coached along the way.

Jasper (15:01.834)
Thanks for watching!

Jasper (15:09.45)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (15:18.894)
And I refuse to be that parent. So we can get to that later. But the example I'm using as my mom is that she never pushed me to do anything. She never said, hey, you got to work harder. Hey, you got to do this. She said the other thing the other way around, she said, there's always someone better, and that kicked into where I was not going to let anybody outwork me. And so my that's where my attitude came from. I said, oh, there's somebody better. Let me see. And so that kind of from 12 years on, 12 years old on.

Jasper (15:27.722)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (15:47.566)
was kind of my mentality of, OK, even if I'm not the better player on day one, maybe by day five, I'll catch him.

Chad (15:55.918)
So mom's DNA, that's the sports DNA, huh? And apparently dad was not a surgeon. That's what I'm hearing. He's not good with his hands. Ha ha ha.

Brian Johnson (15:57.486)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (16:03.694)
Yeah.

Jasper (16:04.458)
Hahaha

Brian Johnson (16:06.702)
True, he was not a surgeon. Yeah, probably not good with his hands would be accurate too. But yeah, I mean, so many other mentors along the way, but that was the first one. She was the first one and the big one. Joan Jett, cuz she drove too fast, was her nickname around the neighborhoods. So yeah, she was the first one and has been with me for this whole ride along the way.

Jasper (16:24.522)
That's it.

Jasper (16:31.626)
Was it tough to them because I think the mindset of there's always someone better than you, you just went into it slightly. I might want to dive into that a little bit because it is a form of parenting where you go, hmm, there's always going to be someone better than me because, okay, it motivated you. It is a bit passive aggressive. I know she was jetting down all the lanes there in Oakland, but it's a bit in your face, I guess.

Chad (16:31.886)
That's amazing.

Chad (16:46.83)
It's passive aggressive. Yeah.

Brian Johnson (16:48.878)
Hahaha

Chad (16:56.718)
Yeah

Jasper (16:58.602)
What did that do to your psyche though? Because you're always think everywhere you were going to go from 12 on, you were thinking someone was going to be there and it was going to be better than you.

Brian Johnson (17:06.19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Great question. The, yeah, because at first I was offended. I was hurt. I was like, in my mind, I was like, what? What do you mean? Aren't I the apple of your eye? Yeah, we got three of my three other siblings. Yeah, okay, whatever, them too. But, you know, what kind of thing? So I, for a long time, to your point, for a long time, I kind of took it as, wow, she doesn't think I'm good enough.

Jasper (17:14.377)
Yeah, I get it.

Chad (17:17.869)
Supposed to be in my corner, Mom!

Jasper (17:19.594)
Hehehe

Jasper (17:33.642)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Brian Johnson (17:34.478)
And it wasn't until obviously later, I matured a little bit since I was 12. And I realized, whoa, that was amazing. Now, I didn't use that with my kids. Well, I used it in kind of different contexts. Because so with my thing, as I had my kids, everybody knows your dad was an athlete. Everybody knows your dad played in the Major Leagues. Everybody knows that. So there's pressure, inherent pressure on the kids of a former athlete to be great, to be great right out of the chute, never fail.

Chad (17:38.126)
Hmm?

Jasper (17:46.122)
Okay.

Chad (17:54.414)
Yeah.

Jasper (17:58.058)
Mmm.

Chad (17:59.15)
Oh hell yeah.

Brian Johnson (18:02.734)
If you make an error, well, your dad never made an error. Or if you strike out or you hit a home run, oh, your dad's home and probably was way farther than that. So, you know, that whole trip. But what was nice is that I didn't raise my kids in Oakland. I raised them in Detroit, Michigan. So no one knew me. And so I had an opportunity to really have a clean slate as a parent. But I tried to kind of take the lessons of my mom is that, Hey, be the guiding force here. Keep them humble, keep them working, encourage. She did encourage, but you can also give them some haze. Hey.

Jasper (18:17.322)
Hmm.

Chad (18:27.726)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (18:32.686)
You're 14 years old. Hey, you're 16 years old. Hey, you got to keep moving because you got to be able to have that mentality of you want competition. You don't shy away from competition.

Chad (18:43.79)
Yeah, well...

Jasper (18:43.882)
It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. And I'm not meaning to hate on your mother's parenting skills because I'm thinking I'm thinking I would like your mother. It did it. I mean, you can say loads of things about it, but it did work. Yeah. If we were to because you dived into it a little bit too, like being aware of the fact that you're good at something.

Brian Johnson (18:49.134)
She's texting me right now. She's asking what your phone number is, yeah.

Chad (18:53.198)
Apparently, apparently it worked, okay? Apparently it worked.

Jasper (19:10.026)
Um, I feel like, especially now where you've got 12 year old kids putting up their highlight reels on YouTube or Instagram or tick tock and you, and they've already, they've come to a sort of platform where you were, you perhaps as a kid, 10 years ago, you were striving to possibly be there in the future one day, and now they're putting out highlight reels and everyone's telling them how good they are, but how dangerous is it for, for that to happen though? Because if, if, if everyone's telling you, you're, you're great at something.

Chad (19:28.43)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (19:39.918)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jasper (19:39.978)
As a kid, you're going to believe it, right? You're going to think, well, except for your mom, maybe she's going to say, you have to believe it maybe even to be successful, but what was that like for you growing up, growing up in Oakland at that age, because it's, I, yeah, to stay even keel is quite tough.

Chad (19:43.694)
You wanna believe it. Yeah.

Brian Johnson (19:56.558)
Yeah, I would agree. I think it was easy on one part for me to be even keel because there was so much talent in the city during that time. During that time, there was talent everywhere. There's so there was four or five of us from that era that went to the major leagues that play like a couple dozen of us went to division one sports in several different sports. So a ton of talent during that era. But I would say also, yeah, it's tough for kids nowadays.

Jasper (20:02.986)
Hmm.

Chad (20:11.63)
case.

Chad (20:19.086)
Mm.

Brian Johnson (20:26.158)
to keep that same mindset that I was able to keep because I strove to be seen, right? Part of my motivation is to be exposed and be seen, show what I can do, show my wares and compete against other people. And this instantaneous video that can go viral, you know, and you can you can you can have your own you can have your own company in your living room and sell your widget on the other side of the planet. I mean, that just wasn't it when I was coming up. So it's not a criticism of what it is now.

Jasper (20:29.098)
Hmm. Exactly.

Jasper (20:54.314)
Mm.

Brian Johnson (20:54.35)
It's a it's an understanding that I didn't have that. And thank God I didn't. I could focus on what I'd like. I could focus on trying to reach that level and get to where I needed to go. Instead of giving all the great gear and the thing. I mean, I got, you know, newspaper articles are written, right? That was about the extent of it. But now you can your picture can be flashed up there. A video can be done over here. You can have thousands of followers. It's a different world. And so I'm grateful for the time that I grew up in that I didn't have any of that.

And I could just really get into the essence and the beauty of competition and sport. And I don't think a lot of kids get that opportunity. There's so many other things to pull their time and attention away.

Chad (21:32.59)
So much hype, so much hype. I mean, I actually had a friend, I was down in Atlanta and one of my friends is talking about how they were picking out music for their son's walkup music.

Brian Johnson (21:44.142)
Hahaha!

Jasper (21:44.65)
Come on man! Yeah

Brian Johnson (21:46.734)
Yeah.

Chad (21:46.798)
We're talking about, yeah, this is travel. We'll get into travel teams, but.

Brian Johnson (21:49.71)
Yeah. Well, technology, I mean, technology is fun. I would have done the same thing, you know. And you would have too, Chad. You would have wanted your own walk-up music.

Chad (21:55.95)
It's fun, but I mean, oh yes, no, I would have been a heartbeat. I would have, I would love that. I would have loved that. But, but, but is this, is, is it, is it the, the time of first and foremost, we, I mean, you, you played multiple sports, baseball, football, basketball, and in high school, right? Yeah. So, but today that's not how it's working out. We've got all of these, these, these travel clubs.

Jasper (22:00.106)
Who doesn't want their own woke up music?

Chad (22:25.198)
We've got all, I mean, we've literally focused on, hey, look, you've gotta be playing this one sport all year round, right? Where I played four, I was varsity letterman in four sports. That was it, right? I did not go to a college or anything like that, but I had an opportunity to go play it all and just enjoy myself. It sometimes does not feel like, whether it's walkout music or whatever it is, right? It does not feel like these kids are getting a chance. Number one.

Jasper (22:44.81)
Exactly, yeah.

Chad (22:54.35)
to enjoy themselves. And number two, there are a bunch of kids that are out there that can't enjoy themselves because they can't afford the $5,000 to be able to be a part of the travel club or what have you. And they're missing the experience. They're missing the experience, even if they don't make it to college, right? I didn't, but I loved that experience, right? So talk a little bit about that, Brian.

Jasper (23:05.194)
And to be able to compete against the best, yeah. Yep. True. Yep.

Brian Johnson (23:18.286)
Yeah, I mean, and you're right. And during the time we grew up, right, people would flock to sports. People love sports and even didn't matter if you were good or not. But now we're in an age, as you say, if you everybody who plays is going to be Tiger Woods. Everybody who plays is going to be Michael Jordan. And so what so I know we're going to do a whole different show later on on the the the fleecing of the parents and sport youth sports. But that's not what you're asking for me in this

Chad (23:23.566)
Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jasper (23:24.682)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (23:48.174)
sadness of it is that when my kid goes to try out for the 10 through 12 year old team, there's no such thing as keeping kids that maybe haven't developed yet, that maybe aren't quite as good quite yet, but they may be, you know, people, young kids grow like trees, right? They can at 11 or 12, they may be completely different. So, but they don't have a chance to play in any league.

Chad (23:54.318)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (23:54.538)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (23:58.25)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (24:08.814)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (24:15.63)
Because the parents, to your point, got to pay so much money. So you only take the top five guys or girls or whatever, maybe the top five players. And so what do the other 50 players do? Back when I played, there was, like I said, the Recreational League, T-shirt league, where we had 100 kids before they got to the full uniform league. They could just play, no one cared. No one cared we hit off the tee first, then coach pitch, then whatever. No one cared, you just got to.

Jasper (24:38.474)
No, yeah.

Brian Johnson (24:44.334)
You learn the game, you got to play. And that I think at its essence, if it's ever one thing, that was before the parents took over, before the almighty dollar took over. It could just be kids playing the game.

Jasper (24:58.73)
I feel like, and chiming in from a European perspective, because obviously you guys talk about travel ball and you talk about that concept, that doesn't really exist here, but the same stuff happens here. Because if you're a kid playing football, playing soccer football here in Europe, and you have to be sort of eight years old and you have to sort of choose, which sport do you want to pursue? Like you can do field hockey, you can do basketball. Well, we're quite short, so no basketball, okay. So, okay, you play football and...

Brian Johnson (25:16.43)
Yeah

Jasper (25:26.73)
because you're taught at a really early age, you can be good at one thing. You can't be good at like four sports, Brian. We can't all be Brian Johnson. Only three, oh yeah. In high school, yeah, but high school, because Brian, you are a very meticulous guy and you asked us to do plenty of research. So as a journalist, I take that very serious. That's a threat, man. That's a threat.

Brian Johnson (25:35.598)
No, Chad was four sports. I was only three.

Chad (25:38.99)
in high school. High school.

Brian Johnson (25:40.654)
Yeah.

Chad (25:49.518)
Uh oh.

Jasper (25:56.138)
So but I also take my sources very seriously. Brian, I went to your Wikipedia page. No, I do sort of fact check my stuff. So I came across a... Yeah, you wrote it yourself or? Oh. Well, good. But I also came across a post on Cougarboard. No chat, not that Cougarboard. It's sort of a BYU guys, BYU, sports universities. But I came across this post and I loved it. It's...

Brian Johnson (26:05.678)
It's surprisingly accurate, that page, which is interesting. I don't know who wrote it, but it's surprisingly accurate.

Brian Johnson (26:18.062)
Hahaha!

Chad (26:21.774)
Oh, okay. Sure.

Jasper (26:25.13)
from 2005 and they're having a discussion about the best athlete they've ever competed with and there's a comment from a guy called Pablo three uh sorry 393 gotta get it right because the people want to fact check this dated back to 2005 he says he was a senior at your high school in oakland called skyline high that's correct right skyline high okay so he says the year is 1985 and gary payton and greg foster were both juniors and brian johnson was a sophomore

Brian Johnson (26:44.526)
Correct? Correct.

Jasper (26:55.37)
Is that still does that add up 1985 we use sophomore? Oh, oh.

Brian Johnson (26:57.326)
No, we were all the same class. Gary, Greg, and myself were all juniors. We were the same class, yeah.

Jasper (27:02.282)
Okay, juni so This is the first thing then that is the pablo's gotten wrong. Yeah It's very close. No, but he says but this is now i'm getting we're getting to the interesting stuff So he says most of you may know payton and foster. No, no, we're getting no, trust me. Trust me. It's okay So he says most of the most of you may know payton and foster known for their hoops, of course But brian johnson was an all-around stud. You may be actually be pablo. This may not be written by an actual public but

Chad (27:06.254)
corrected Go ahead carry on carry on

Brian Johnson (27:06.926)
It was close, as close as I...

Brian Johnson (27:13.806)
I'm a little nervous. I'm a little nervous as to what's coming, but I'm good. I'm good.

Brian Johnson (27:29.198)
I kind of like Pablo already. I like Pablo.

Jasper (27:30.474)
You like public, I get it. But he says, Brian Johnson may have been the best athlete of that group. Now Brian, were you?

Brian Johnson (27:41.87)
Well, no, well, it depends on how you define athlete. It depends on how you define athlete. Because Gary was always special in that way. Greg doesn't really count because he was seven feet tall. So it's kind of a, you know what I mean? It's hard to be, and he was athletic. He was athletic, but you know, it's hard to, he only played basketball seven feet tall, still growing, still early in his maturation. So.

Jasper (27:57.258)
We have the hidden advantages.

Brian Johnson (28:10.51)
Not a criticism of Greg, but he played in the NBA for a long time. He's coaching in the NBA now, so he's had an amazing career. But Gary was always special, so again, depends on what you define as athletic. But-

Jasper (28:13.866)
He did, yeah. Yeah.

Chad (28:25.102)
Did Gary play two sports in college? Oh, he didn't. OK. I think we've settled that discussion then. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Brian Johnson (28:29.774)
No, he just won. Oregon State, Oregon State only play, all the way through only play basketball, yeah.

Jasper (28:31.21)
Ooh!

Brian Johnson (28:37.39)
Hahaha

Jasper (28:37.834)
No but it's interesting! Yeah. And he's chatting to us!

Brian Johnson (28:40.462)
Well, but he made it to the Hall of Fame, so and as, yeah.

Chad (28:43.278)
Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I'm just trying to get Gary to come on the show.

Brian Johnson (28:50.574)
I don't know, I might have to work on that. I might have to work on that.

Jasper (28:50.922)
Yeah, no, but I feel like you're right on the, yeah, you're right on the athleticism part because you feel like, you know, with the NFL runs combines and you know, they measure guys hands and you know, MLB has obviously become data driven to see as you well know. Um, and you've got like youth academies here in Europe where they, they're tracking players at an early age with AI and they sorta want to measure everything they can possibly measure, but

Brian Johnson (29:06.606)
Sure.

Jasper (29:18.89)
How do you really measure athleticism? Because we're talking about it in Australia, it's a talking point, right? Athleticism, okay, to be an athlete. Okay, you can play multiple sports, well, Chad wins the athleticism contest if we were to try that. I'm not sure that's totally valid. But like, how do you look at that though? Because how can you consider someone to be an athlete?

Brian Johnson (29:37.998)
Yeah. So for me, for me, the way I do it, again, this is coming from a scout. My job for 10 years was evaluating talent. And I know we'll get into that another time, but what I think the best way to do it, because I'm a simple guy, I need you to kind of paint me a simple picture so I can put my arms around it. So for me, the best way to identify a great athleticism is who jumps off the page at you. When you're watching the game.

Jasper (29:57.002)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (30:07.758)
Who jumps off the page? Who is it that is really spectacular? And it doesn't have to be the person to score the highest points. Doesn't have to be the prettiest jump shot. But who athletically is dominating the interplay, the dance routine on the floor or on the pitch or whatever field you may choose, the game will tell you who the best is. And that's what I kind of used as my scouting piece.

Jasper (30:07.786)
Hmm?

Jasper (30:17.354)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (30:36.334)
is that you really just read the game and read the players within the game. They'll tell you and the cream will rise to the top even in a five on five pickup game somewhere in the Netherlands of a basketball player, ten basketball players, the best will, it'll be just relax, just watch and you'll know who the best athlete is on that group. So that's how I see it.

Chad (30:58.958)
Here's the segue. When did the Scouts finally figure out that Brian Johnson was a guy who leaped off the page, right? How many times did you have to win, you know, best athlete in California before they actually started to show up and they started they started scouting you?

Jasper (31:07.69)
exactly.

Brian Johnson (31:17.198)
Yeah, great question. Nowadays, everybody has to pay to go to Florida, the state of Florida, for some tournament or California for some tournament in Southern California. And then everybody kind of flocks there. So if you don't have the money to go to that part of California or to Florida or Texas, you're out of luck. And so for me, what happened when I was coming up is that the local colleges and the sports, well, stay with baseball, the baseball teams, their scouts lived in the area.

Jasper (31:47.178)
Right.

Chad (31:47.182)
Hmm?

Brian Johnson (31:47.438)
Their scouts lived there. And so there was the, they done their homework. And so they had a feel for the competition level in the city. And so I was watched early on, cause when I was, our school was three years, sophomore, junior and senior, right? So as a sophomore was our first year in high school, I start off a junior varsity for like a game, I think. And our team that year was the state champion. We were number one in the state in baseball.

Jasper (32:01.29)
Hmm.

Chad (32:08.59)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (32:13.838)
And I was on the junior varsity for one game, and then I came to varsity and, you know, dominated. So that was when I first splashed on the scene. And so the local scouts took wind of that. They read the articles, they saw things were going on there, saw our team getting more and more notoriety. So all of us within the team were getting noticed, and the seniors more so. But then, as I say, scouts are trained to do this. Who jumped off the page for them? Some of them said, hmm, that.

Jasper (32:33.034)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (32:42.414)
That little kid over there who had a lot of hair at that point, that little kid over there, that's somebody I want to keep an eye on. So they kept an eye on me for the next two years. And then when I was a senior in high school, I had been a two time All-American and I was drafted up until the day before the draft. I was projected to be a number one draft pick first round. And back then it was like $160,000, but college was a whole lot cheaper back then. Everything was cheaper back then. So it was all relative.

Chad (33:03.598)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (33:08.078)
Oh God, yeah.

Brian Johnson (33:11.022)
But I was called and told by the Giants, they'd take me in the second round if I was still there. Cincinnati Reds would take me in the first round, Boston Red Sox would take me in the first round. And so once we got to the day before the draft, they called it a little more serious tone of, listen, if we draft you here, we need to know if you're gonna sign. Because if we draft you and you don't sign, someone's gonna lose the job. Because that's serious capital for an organization, a first round pick. And I was a catcher, you know.

Jasper (33:29.674)
Hmm.

Chad (33:29.966)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (33:37.546)
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.

Chad (33:37.678)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (33:40.334)
catcher that can hit was kind of my forte. And, but I was also throwing 94 off the mound as a pitcher. So there's another team wanted me as a pitcher, whatever. But there, because I was in high school and the athleticism was there, that there was a willingness to kind of take a chance on that. So, but I, so the day before the draft, I had a conversation with my parents and my mom especially. And she's like, hey, what are you going to do? If you get drafted, you're going to sign. And I was like, well.

Kind of like just the idea of being drafted. I want to go to school. I want to go to Stanford and play football and baseball. But it'd be cool to just have that button on my shirt that I got drafted in the first round. And she was like, no. That's not how things are done. That's dishonest. So if you have no intention of signing, you call those people up and tell them, thank you, but you're not signing. And that's what I did. She was right. And I called everybody up, said, hey, appreciate it.

Chad (34:13.87)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (34:21.546)
Hmm.

Jasper (34:25.194)
That's cool.

Brian Johnson (34:34.958)
But I'm not gonna, no matter what you offer me, I'm not gonna take it. I wanna go to school. And so I ended up not going the first round, but the Montreal Expos in the 30th round, the last round at that point, 30 rounds back then. The Montreal Expos, the only telegram I ever received in my life. I got a telegram from a renowned scout during those days. He wrote the telegrams like, hey.

Chad (34:43.502)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (34:49.002)
Yeah.

Jasper (34:55.305)
You

Chad (34:57.518)
Western Union?

Brian Johnson (35:02.51)
appreciate, respect your opinion or respect your decision. And this is a team that I had never heard of before. I hadn't even kind of been in contact with the Montreal Expos at that point. But said, hey, if you change your mind, the Montreal Expos would love to have you type thing. And so that was the high school experience and it was kind of a bizarre time.

Chad (35:13.038)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (35:25.23)
Now, is there a scout? Is there a scout in college that was like, he felt like he just picked up a big bag of gold? I mean, you were getting ready to go into possibly first round major league baseball. Yeah, and now, oh, wait a minute. Now we've got the guy, we've got him falling into our lap. Not only that, you were two sports, right? Quarterback and obviously baseball. So tell me about that.

Jasper (35:25.354)
Will you? Yeah.

Jasper (35:35.274)
foot first round pick yeah

Brian Johnson (35:43.022)
Well, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Johnson (35:52.014)
Yeah, it's kind of funny how that happened too. So I got a letter from the baseball team, whatever. But in the summertime, I went to a football camp. Because I was getting some offers for football, but I was a little tepid at the time. So my running back and I from high school, Raymond Sanders was his name. He would go on to Cal Berkeley as a running back. He really had a great career there. But we went to this camp at Stanford.

Chad (36:06.35)
Mm.

Brian Johnson (36:21.742)
And it's like an hour away, but neither one of us had cars. So it was like on the other side of the planet for us. But so we go to this camp and there was Mark McGuire's brother, Dan McGuire there. There was a bunch of guys there. There was the year of the quarterback coming up in California. So it was a whole bunch of some of the best prospects across the country. It was John Elway's camp. He ran the camp, his dad, Jack Elway was the head coach at Stanford. So it was a John and Jack Elway football camp. So as it turned out,

Jasper (36:22.09)
Okay.

Jasper (36:42.058)
Alright, okay.

Jasper (36:46.378)
Mmm.

Brian Johnson (36:50.638)
Raymond and I did really well. We play on the same team. We kind of dominated. Our group won the little championship seven on seven. And so we really were able to kind of turn some heads there at the camp because there's a bunch of other schools that come to recruit. Well, it just so happened that Stanford saw me and liked me and liked that I was local. And so anyway, I ended up going there or thinking about going there, but the baseball coach heard from the football coach that they were gonna give me a scholarship.

And then all of a sudden I became more attractive because they already had the number one recruiting class in the nation. And then they added me on to it for baseball. Cuz we won on the national championship in baseball my freshman year and sophomore year back to back. And the only two championships they have, they're Stanford baseball, though they've had some great teams there. And hopefully they'll win this year. But so anyway, so I was there. So the baseball wanted me to come play baseball and football.

Jasper (37:25.514)
Ah, okay.

Chad (37:27.214)
and baseball? Yeah, okay.

Jasper (37:29.93)
Okay

Chad (37:34.606)
Uh-uh.

Jasper (37:35.402)
Right.

Brian Johnson (37:49.518)
And I was like, great, but I asked for, I kind of negotiated a little bit. I said, listen, I don't want anybody pulling me in one direction or the other. Cause I was going to go, I was thinking about university of Michigan and university Arizona or UCLA and each of those examples, the either, the both either, or the football coach or the baseball coach would pull you Jasper to your point, pull you to, to specialize, pull you into and be solely our guy. And I said, I don't want anybody doing that. Don't do that.

Chad (38:01.454)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (38:14.186)
Mmm.

Brian Johnson (38:16.782)
I'll come to Stanford and I'll play both football and baseball, but I want to be able to play both all four years. And they agreed. Now, it didn't happen necessarily that way, but they agree. They still pulled a little bit, but it wasn't bad. And it was an amazing experience to be able to play two sports, have fun kind of still as a kid, and really get an opportunity to show what I could do. And I was very fortunate to come up during that time when that was still allowed.

Chad (38:34.446)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (38:43.31)
is baseball was baseball your favorite sport or is that just the one that you were better at? So maybe maybe it did become your your favorite because you were better at it.

Brian Johnson (38:50.222)
Yeah.

Jasper (38:52.906)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (38:53.518)
Yeah, well, I think basketball was my favorite. Basketball was my favorite, but it was my I was I was not as good in basketball as it was the other two. Like I could streetball like one on one, like on the I was good with that. But four other guys on the court, much less nine other guys on the court. That's too much. That's too much going on. Anyway, so I didn't I was not as good in basketball. But within football and baseball, I really loved them both. I took baseball a little bit for granted.

Jasper (38:57.93)
Hmm.

Chad (38:57.966)
Really? Okay.

Brian Johnson (39:22.83)
because everybody kind of knew me as a baseball guy. So, I was kind of driven by challenges. So I want to prove I was a football player too. So, at being the quarterback, there's a whole lot of time commitment. So it took away from my baseball a little bit. And I didn't really play that great at the college level for baseball. So, but at the end of the day, so I had to have a conversation with our head coach was Dennis Green at the time, Coach Elway had been fired, a whole different.

Chad (39:26.702)
Mm.

Jasper (39:26.73)
Okay.

Jasper (39:47.658)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (39:50.414)
Really?

Brian Johnson (39:51.31)
Whole different, whole different story to that. I was involved, I was involved in the process to get him out. I can say that now I'm 56, I don't have to worry about. Right, I don't care anymore. But there was a coup, there was a coup d'etat at our school over Jack Elway, yeah. And so myself and about eight other guys, there was a lot of things going on, but anyway. So he was removed, Dennis Green, who had just come off Super Bowl wins with the San Francisco 49ers came in. He was the, he learned under

Chad (39:53.198)
Dennis Green.

Jasper (39:58.826)
You don't care anymore!

Jasper (40:05.066)
Really? Oof.

Brian Johnson (40:21.742)
not George Seifert, but the big guy, the blonde guy. San Francisco 49ers head coach, Bill Walsh, Bill Walsh, Bill Walsh. So he was a Bill Walsh protege. So he comes out and Stanford takes over. And so at the end of my time there, there was a possibility that I might get drafted football and I had already been drafted in baseball and there were some whispers of maybe get drafted again for baseball.

Chad (40:29.358)
Yeah, what, um, what, what, wash, wash, yes.

Jasper (40:32.33)
It was.

Chad (40:38.382)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (40:45.834)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (40:50.83)
And so I went to Dennis Green and said, hey man, here's what I'm facing. What would you do? Should I come back play another year football? Should I go ahead and play? If I get drafted to go play baseball, I really like playing football. But do you think I'm good enough to play in the NFL? Essentially is what I was asking. And we had a great relationship. We had a great conversation. He's like, well, he's like, I can't tell you that. It didn't help me at all. He's like, I can't tell you that. You gotta do what you love more and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jasper (41:05.866)
Hmm.

Chad (41:18.286)
Smart man. Yeah.

Brian Johnson (41:19.502)
And he really didn't help me at all. But so I had to really grow up and say, okay, business decision. What, what do I need to be good in football? I needed a perfect offense because I'm six, two, so I'm not six, five. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't run like the wind, but I can move around the pocket well and get my, get myself 10 yards. But at the end of the day, I could dominate in baseball tomorrow as a catcher. I was bigger as a catcher. I could hit as a catcher, which made me unique. So I felt like I need the right offense for football.

Jasper (41:30.506)
Hmm.

Jasper (41:41.29)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (41:48.974)
But tomorrow I can dominate. So that's kind of what it came down to, a business decision of not what I enjoyed most because I go play basketball, that was it. It was from a business standpoint of which one was better for me to put all of my time in now. And that's how baseball became the ultimate decision.

Chad (42:05.87)
So we always hear about how the speed of play is so much different, at least on football, on the football side of the house, from one level to the next, right? You go from high school to college, speeds up dramatically. Go from college to the pros, it's warp speed. What was that like for you? Was that the case? Were you just a man playing a boy's sport in high school and then you came into college and it was like...

Brian Johnson (42:16.398)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (42:33.294)
I'm here. I've made it. Or was there a huge difference in speed? Did you have to get used to a lot of things on the football side and baseball side?

Brian Johnson (42:41.614)
Yeah, yeah, great question. Absolutely. Cause that is the defining factor in the two sports that I experience. And I know it's basketball too, I've heard that, but it is the speed. And so it takes a little while to get used to. That's why the athleticism that comes into play is so important because if you're an athlete and you have sound fundamentals, so that's why coaches harp on fundamentals so much is because if you have sound fundamentals, right.

Chad (42:46.734)
Yeah.

Chad (43:01.07)
Mm.

Jasper (43:02.858)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (43:09.55)
where your footwork is correct on turning a double play. If your feet, if you're able to utilize your lower half as a hitter to generate thrust and power to hit the ball. As a quarterback, if you're able to use your legs and your feet to be more accurate as a passer, as a guard in basketball, use your shoulders correctly and your feet correctly to be more accurate. If your fundamentals are sound.

Chad (43:21.71)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Johnson (43:37.55)
you can adapt to the speed of the game. If your fundamentals are not sound and inconsistent, when the game speeds up, you're going to get spit out by the game and you're not going to be able to adjust. So that's the difference. That's the essence. Again, I like simple stuff. If your fundamentals suck, you will suck as the speed picks up on the college level or the pro level. And I think... Exactly right.

Jasper (43:43.37)
Yeah.

Jasper (43:57.77)
Yeah. Because it's only going to get faster, right? It's only going to get faster and faster the higher you go, so...

Chad (44:04.494)
So, so,

Brian Johnson (44:05.262)
And you can't and you and if you have to unlearn bad habits, you're losing time. It becomes a matter of time and speed. You got it. You got to develop quickly. You got to be able to adjust to the speed quickly. And if you don't, there's 50 other guys that will take your spot.

Chad (44:16.782)
Mm.

Chad (44:20.27)
So it's funny. So quick story. I was actually in training as in the military. So we were going through asymmetrical warfare. And we're getting trained by Delta Force, right? And invariably, invariably, you always get a guy.

Brian Johnson (44:31.182)
All that sounds cool. All that sounds cool.

Jasper (44:32.65)
Yeah, sounds so cool, mate! Heheheheheheh! You've just made Brian Johnson less cool! Heheheheh!

Chad (44:38.894)
This goes with the story, okay? Anyway, invariably somebody always asks the question, some dummy fives like, hey, what's better? You know, like the seals, what do you guys do different? What's different between you, you know, the Delta Force and the seals, right? And there was one answer and it was perfect. We do the basics better than anyone. It's not about advanced, it's about the basics. Exactly what you just said. The way that you get to the next level,

Jasper (44:41.066)
Okay, go on.

Brian Johnson (45:00.878)
There we go.

Chad (45:08.238)
is not trying to be the advanced, you know, dunk, you know, or posterizing somebody. It's about the basics. So yeah, I mean, I think that that goes all the way through, whether it's military, sports, the corporate side of the house, right? Everything that we're talking about now, I think even has a feeling like, you know, training, how we go from one job to the next. They all just kind of like mix the same. You've got to get the basics right.

Brian Johnson (45:12.718)
That's right.

Brian Johnson (45:37.582)
I agree completely, completely. And there's got to be love for it that you're able that working at it is not work. It's fun. The fundamentals working at it and enjoying it. Yeah, all those things transfer to no matter what you do. I completely agree.

Jasper (45:44.842)
Exactly, yeah.

Jasper (45:53.546)
But in like, you mentioned that you took baseball for granted. And did that do anything in terms of your development then? Because if you're just extremely, extremely talented at something and you just take it for granted, do you, what does that mean? Like.

Brian Johnson (46:13.038)
Um, and take it for granted could be to varying degrees. I definitely worked at it in college, but baseball, but football dominates in college. Right. Uh, their spring football had to be a, cause again, if I was like, so Deon Sanders, uh, was coming out in Bo Jackson, they all, we all were kind of around it. They were a little bit older than me, but I kind of aspired to be them. And I wanted to play both sports in the professional at the professional level.

Jasper (46:19.018)
Okay.

Chad (46:22.222)
Yes.

Chad (46:31.438)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (46:31.498)
Hmm. Okay.

Brian Johnson (46:38.19)
But then I realized over time, because everybody's like, oh, yeah, sure. Either, oh, yeah, sure, go for it. Or there's no way you ever do it. So I love the no way you ever do it. I always like to remember that stuff. But what happened was I realized that in order, I couldn't do it as a quarterback because the quarterback has to be at every meeting, every, every practice, everything that has to be done as a runner back, you can just show up and play the next day as a, as a cornerback, you can show up and play the next day. Essentially not to, not to take it.

Jasper (46:56.298)
Yeah.

Jasper (47:05.834)
Essentially. Yeah. Yeah. True. True. The quarterback

Brian Johnson (47:07.726)
Not to take anything away from them, but as the game, no one is really coordinating with the running back. Yeah, there's some timing with the offensive linemen, okay. But the quarterback, everything centers around that position. So you can't have the quarterback not be there. So once I realized that, that was a big deal. So that's why I kind of took baseball for granted a little bit. I was like, I'm good, whatever. And but the problem was our team, our baseball team was so good. I sat on the bench a lot in college.

Jasper (47:30.25)
Hmm.

Jasper (47:37.322)
Did you?

Brian Johnson (47:37.518)
And especially my friend, especially my freshman year. And I was pissed. I wasn't a great, a great, I didn't handle it real well. I was angry. My son, you know, sits on the bench now he's playing college baseball. And every once in a while he'll sit on the bench and have to work his way up. He handles it so much better than I did, but I was pissed. I was angry. And, um, so I think from a standpoint, if I put so much time into football, uh, I kind of assume baseball would always be there. I kind of assumed I could just click it on and get after it. But the

Chad (47:48.462)
Mm.

Brian Johnson (48:06.222)
The competition was so good, our team was so good, I couldn't break the start in line for that first year. But what was nice about that experience, again, the whole idea of you don't have everything to be roses and compliments and you're the greatest thing ever. I struggled, the first class I took in college, I flunked because I wanted to play baseball and run and chase around the girls. But then I turned it around and played two sports. Yeah, but I turned around, played two sports and graduated on time in four years with my degree.

Chad (48:20.59)
Mm.

Chad (48:29.806)
normal.

Brian Johnson (48:35.982)
And so that was a good experience. My freshman year, I sat on the bench, both baseball and football. Football, I redshirted. So it was good because I had to work at it and wait for my turn. So what was nice about kind of taking for baseball for granted and so much football dominant in college is that once I decided, hey, baseball is gonna be the sport that I choose, now my motivation and my enjoyment of the game is so much better. Because I played left field for two years, I was bored to tears.

Chad (48:46.894)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (48:50.474)
Mmm.

Chad (49:05.038)
haha

Jasper (49:05.45)
Hahaha!

Brian Johnson (49:05.71)
Bored to tears. I was so bored it couldn't even. And because what will happen was when I show up to the baseball field freshman year, been playing football for six weeks, everybody else been playing together for during the fall season for six weeks. I show up in the spring, all the positions are taken but right field. Exactly, and now right field, those guys can play. Anyway, so my coach says, hey, have you ever played the outfield? I was like, I never played the outfield a day in my life.

Chad (49:08.142)
Picking daisies.

Jasper (49:09.706)
Thanks for watching!

Jasper (49:23.498)
Yeah, we got a spot for you, Brian!

Brian Johnson (49:35.374)
I was like, absolutely, I play it all the time. And so I was out there in the Alphans, so I backed up seven different positions at the college level and except for catcher and second baseman. I never caught a day in my college career, but then went on to be a catcher at the major league level. So go figure, go figure, go figure. Hey, athleticism, fundamentals early on.

Jasper (49:37.546)
Hahaha

Jasper (49:45.098)
Oh wowie.

Jasper (49:55.05)
You were the ultimate utility guy. You could play everywhere. Just plug and play.

Chad (50:03.662)
But talk about utility though, because you're talking about two sports that are completely different. You're talking about using different muscles, different timing. I mean, it is completely different. So when you're prepping as a quarterback, right? I mean, that in itself is like a college course, right? You're prepping as a quarterback, and then you've got to get your muscle memory.

Brian Johnson (50:03.918)
They matter. They matter.

Brian Johnson (50:28.814)
And we played in, we had three different offenses while I was there. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Jasper (50:32.522)
You got to learn a new one every year!

Chad (50:34.126)
God, well then you get your muscle memory in place for that one sport, right? And then you've got to go to the other one where, you know, obviously football, there's a lot, I mean, timing is everything, but baseball, obviously it is timing, right? It is timing. So what was the difference there? Did you, is that one of the reasons why you knew you had to disconnect from the one that you were not going to go pro in or at least have a chance to and say, okay, boom, I'm.

Brian Johnson (50:49.998)
Yeah.

Chad (51:01.838)
This is my ride, I've got to focus here.

Brian Johnson (51:03.982)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting you said, because the way I looked at it back then is baseball and football was really the same script of music, the same sheet of music. Just athletically, it just made sense to me, both of them. But to your point, once I decided, I realized, hey, the key factor is that, hey, I can't play both professionally because I realize as a quarterback, my role, if I wanna be a good quarterback, I have to be there. And so if I can't...

miss anything because again, Bo (Jackson) goes off and and Deion (Sanders) goes  plays baseball at the Yankees. Bo goes plays baseball at the Kansas City Royals. Then they pop in late in training camp or first couple of games and they go play football. Quarterbacks can't do that. So once I realized that, then I had to pull away from my love of football, really focus on one and get after it. focus on one and get after it. And hopefully I didn't lose too much ground hopefully I chance  the major league level. So, and I was a... and I was

My junior year in college, I was drafted as a third baseman. I was drafted as a third baseman by the New York Yankees. The Yankees had taken John Elway four or five years earlier. And he was an outfielder, obviously with a big cannon. And so George Steinbrenner was a big fan of the Stanford quarterback. So George Steinbrenner kind of had an affiliation or not affiliation, but enjoyed the idea of the Stanford quarterback.

Jasper (52:09.546)
Okay.

Jasper (52:21.098)
Ugh.

Brian Johnson (52:30.062)
And so that's where I got some love and they, it was a local scout in Sacramento from the Yankees that would come and, and anyway, so he, he drafted me and the Yankees drafted me and sure enough, I go play rookie ball. I come back after my first year. My agreement with the Yankees is that I'd be able to continue to play football and graduate. So I came back from rookie ball with the Yankees, came back, played as a quarterback and had one of my best games at Arizona State, playing against Paul.

It was Paul. So anyway, he was the leading passer in NCAA history at the time. I can't remember what his name was, but anyway. So it was against him. We were driving, we were down by four points, fourth quarter. Had probably one of my best games of my career, a 65 yard touchdown, 85 yard touchdown. And then we were in a two minute drill, my tight ends over there. I feel the pressure coming from my backside. I throw the ball at my guys, at my tight ends feet.

Jasper (53:04.106)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (53:28.654)
because he was covered and I was ready to take the hit. And so he picked me up, the linebacker got underneath me, picked me up in the air and landed, my shoulder landed first and all my weight landed on, then all his weight landed on me and my right shoulder just exploded. I had a fifth degree separation. I had a clavicle that dislocated posteriorly and my clavicle split in the joint, split like that. And...

Jasper (53:35.562)
Oh

Chad (53:40.27)
Oh

Jasper (53:44.682)
Uggghhhhhh

Chad (53:51.438)
Damn.

Brian Johnson (53:56.366)
So anyway, long story short, I recovered from that. But it's just the, I had been told my whole life, football, you're gonna get hurt. Football, you're gonna get hurt. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna get hurt. I'm Mr. Wonderful, I'll never get hurt. And I'm a dumb kid, you can't hurt me. And so when I got hurt, that was another wake up call for me. It was like, okay, showtime, cuz what happened was I got hit, right? I'm landing on the turf, my shoulder exploded. I'm like, my God, I don't know what happened.

Jasper (54:22.09)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (54:26.094)
I literally rolled over at Arizona State and Tempe, Arizona, rolled over 60,000 people in the stands. I rolled over and looked up in the sky. I was like, oh my God, what did I do to my baseball career? That's the first thought that came to my head. And so that's when I knew, okay, I'm supposed to be playing baseball.

Chad (54:29.998)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (54:37.29)
Hmm. So that was the first... was that the first thing?

Chad (54:38.094)
NOOO

Chad (54:45.55)
There it is. There it is.

Jasper (54:45.93)
Wow, that's the most unique intervention story I think I've ever heard. Like you get blindsided by a huge guy for you to separate your shoulder for you to think actually kind of like baseball.

Brian Johnson (54:50.638)
Hahaha!

Chad (54:51.502)
Yes, I think.

And

Chad (54:59.758)
just that point, that point, right? So, okay, so that, I mean, that's good. And that's like a perfect place to, I think, end the episode. Is there anything that, like stories or anything like that, that you would want to dig into? I mean, we do those in other episodes, but how did you feel like that went? Just being able to tell, you know, kind of like your story, it was kind of disconjoined every here and there, but I mean, it's, it was, it seemed fun.

Brian Johnson (55:21.998)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, I thought it was great. And I think it's important for me to kind of ad-lib at some point to go outside of the lines a little bit and then try to come back in a little bit. So it's not just question and answer, question and answer, question and answer. So if you guys are okay with my liberal use of my answers, I thought it went really well.

Jasper (55:33.226)
Exactly, yeah.

Jasper (55:40.394)
No, exactly. Yeah.

Chad (55:43.982)
Oh, I love it. Doop.

Jasper (55:44.586)
I love it. Yep. There's one, there's one thing that we forgot. I feel like, because I think we sort of skipped over the recruitment process. Like, because you mentioned that you, you sort of talk over it because you're a humble guy, you were recruited by colleges, you were recruited by teams to come and play for them in the draft and perhaps drafting you in the first round. So I think, I think I'd want to dive into that a little bit more, like sort of the.

Chad (55:47.662)
No.

Chad (56:12.59)
Well, let's go ahead. Let's go ahead. You want to, yeah, I was going to say, let's just go ahead and if you, if you've got time, Brian, we can, we can, we can knock that out now. And that's, we'll just end with that. The recruiting side of the house. So go ahead, Jasper, ask it and we'll roll.

Jasper (56:12.618)
the interactions that you had with Scouts.

Brian Johnson (56:18.894)
Yeah.

Jasper (56:26.442)
Yeah. No. So Brian, I was curious because you sort of talked over it. The fact that you were a division one athlete, both in baseball and football, and you were recruited by all these colleges. Now recruitment, highly recruited actually. Yeah. Because you were the star of the baseball team. You were a really good quarterback, but you get sort of, for me, the picture that comes to mind is you're playing, you're off, you're doing your training, you're exercising. They've got these sort of scouts there.

Chad (56:37.87)
Highly recruited. Highly.

Jasper (56:55.434)
and they're on the side of the pitch or the field and they're sort of lurking and they're sort of writing stuff down and what was that like for you? What was your first interaction with a scout maybe that really struck you?

Brian Johnson (57:08.366)
Yeah, good question. It's hard to well again as a young kid. I'm in high school, right? There we didn't really have a whole lot of interaction with that because remember back then The big rules was you can't even sniff professional stuff as an amateur athlete So there was there was big big rules around that And so the the college scouts were only allowed to speak to us through our head coach through our high school coach

Jasper (57:16.81)
Hmm.

Jasper (57:28.106)
Alright, yeah.

Jasper (57:38.57)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (57:38.958)
So I didn't have a whole lot of interaction with the Scouts at the time. I knew they were there. I could tell they're there. They sit behind the screen. You can tell who's sitting out there. And usually always all old guys. And so I would hear secondarily about what they thought. But they wouldn't share a whole lot, but they would ask. You could get a feel for how they thought by the questions that they asked. So on the football side, I never got to see them. Well, except they would come during lunchtime. And so,

Jasper (57:42.858)
Hmm.

I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Chad (57:59.182)
Mm-hmm.

Jasper (57:59.21)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (58:08.462)
Coaches would come, a lot of them were at the camp I told you about, but coaches would come during lunchtime. So they'd call you down to the gym, you'd shake hands and hey, blah, blah, blah. Hey, we think you're really good. We'd love for you to come down to University of Southern California or UCLA or Washington or Michigan. I went on a Michigan trip, it was really interesting. That guy almost died on us, but whatever. But yeah, so I didn't have a whole lot of interaction, again.

Jasper (58:23.05)
Hmm.

Chad (58:27.118)
But whatever.

Jasper (58:31.402)
Whatever, it's just, yeah.

Brian Johnson (58:36.75)
My conceagly area, not conceal here, but my liaison, my unofficial agent was my high school coach. So he kind of vetted people. He kind of was there. We were really close. He's like a father figure for me. So he was kind of the liaison and also my football coach. Tony Fardella was the football coach. Joe Panella, two Italian guys were my coaches there. And they were really the ones that were kind of the filters before they got to me. So.

Jasper (58:45.962)
Okay.

Brian Johnson (59:05.006)
It wasn't until later on where I became a college player and then a professional player and then actually a scout where I really appreciated more as to what the, you know, what that process was.

Chad (59:14.734)
So no movie high school, like every movie we see, it's like, you know, the coaches come into the living room and they look the mom and dad square in the eye and they say, your boy's gonna be fine with us, right? That didn't happen, none of that happened. Okay, okay, see, yes. Yes, I was gonna say it. Yes.

Jasper (59:28.65)
Yeah, we've

Brian Johnson (59:29.006)
Yeah. No, no, that happened. Yeah.

Jasper (59:32.81)
Okay, go on. Yeah, so the movies are always right, aren't they?

Brian Johnson (59:37.678)
The best one was a guy named Jerry Kendall. He was University of Arizona college baseball coach. And he brought his wife and he was a nice kind man. He came to my parents house and spoke with all of us and had a great time and just had really nice things to say about me. And I ended up not going there, but that process was pretty interesting. Everybody else kind of came to the school, so no one else came to the house.

Chad (59:42.478)
Okay.

Jasper (59:42.602)
Okay.

Chad (59:46.286)
Uh-huh.

Jasper (01:00:05.802)
Okay, so the personal touch, yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:00:06.03)
But then, yeah, but then when I signed with the Yankees, that was when I was in college, right? So I had breakfast with the Yankee Scout, which is kind of intimidating. And he was a guy that would, yeah, he was, no, he's from Sacramento, which is a couple hours north of where I was at Stanford.

Jasper (01:00:20.81)
Was he from New York or where was he from?

Brian Johnson (01:00:32.046)
And so I didn't really like him because he didn't give me everything that I wanted. I was a 16th round pick. I wanted first round money. And for some reason they were, they just weren't, they weren't feeling that. I don't know why, but, but they did give me four years of college, uh, uh, tuition when I was done playing, whenever that may be, I could utilize that. So that was kind of where I was able to cash in a little bit. I never used it. I was going to use it to go to law school, but different story. Um,

Jasper (01:00:43.626)
That's so strange. I don't know why, no.

Brian Johnson (01:01:02.478)
But what's interesting is that guy, and I can't remember his name to save my life right now, but Yankee Scout. When I became a Scout, I ran into him 30 years later. And I met with him in Detroit, it happened to be Detroit, in the press box, because that's where all the pro Scouts kind of meander and get food before the game and all that. And so I saw him one day and we chit chatted. No, I'm sorry, it was in Toronto. It was Toronto.

Jasper (01:01:08.49)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (01:01:32.654)
And so we chit chatted and I was like, hey, man, I said, let me tell you something. Thank you so much for believing in me and giving me a chance to play baseball. I didn't say that to you before because I was a dumb kid and I was mad because you didn't give me enough money. And I've never run into you since then, but now I have a chance. Thank you for giving me a chance. It was a great ride. And, and if, if, you know,

For that moment in time, if you hadn't have done that, I might not have had the opportunity. So it was a great opportunity to be able to say thank you to somebody that was important.

Chad (01:02:09.294)
And he didn't ask you what your name was?

Jasper (01:02:11.05)
HAHA

Brian Johnson (01:02:11.726)
Yeah, yeah. No, no, he will. Now, see, he got a lot of praise for me because I was 16th round pick. Most 16th round picks don't make it to the big leagues. So that's a feather in his cap where he said that as well as that, hey, you helped me out quite a bit because blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, yeah.

Jasper (01:02:18.73)
Thanks for watching!

Jasper (01:02:25.61)
Yeah, so...

There we go, you were probably good for his career, yeah! So-

Jasper (01:02:39.466)
mutually beneficial. Yeah.

Chad (01:02:41.646)
mutually beneficial.

Brian Johnson (01:02:41.87)
Yeah, so, but he did remember my name, Chad, and that was even better. That was even more of a monumental moment that he didn't say, who are you? What?

Jasper (01:02:45.578)
Hahaha!

Jasper (01:02:52.746)
Have we met?

Chad (01:02:54.926)
Cause yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, you know, those, those guys have to be on their game because they see so many people, um, so many athletes constantly. I mean, not just year after year, but week after week, right? And then all the, the research that they have to do and whatnot. So yes, I'm sure.

Brian Johnson (01:02:55.566)
Hahaha!

Jasper (01:03:02.442)
Yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:03:08.91)
Yeah, yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:03:13.518)
When I was a scout, I did 1,200 reports a year on one player. So 1,200 individual reports in one season. No, I'm sorry, 1,200 individual reports for individual player. It's a lot.

Jasper (01:03:18.186)
Oh

Chad (01:03:21.998)
Did you say on one player? OK. OK, thank you. Whoo, but still wow, that is amazing. That is amazing. Well kids will get into that into future episodes. That's just a little tease. I'm just a little tease, but Brian, you know, again, thanks again for being co-host. I'm not going to thank Jasper. We appreciate.

Jasper (01:03:23.754)
No.

Jasper (01:03:28.842)
That's insane, yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:03:44.622)
Yeah

Chad (01:03:48.078)
Appreciate you giving some of the stories, man. I mean, one of the things that when Jasper approached me about doing this podcast, I got excited was for these conversations. Because nobody's having these conversations. They're not going deep enough to find out who the people are. And hopefully we'll get a chance to find out a little bit more about Brian Johnson, not just in this episode, but in the many other episodes that we'll be able to do. So appreciate it, man.

Brian Johnson (01:04:15.342)
I appreciate that, but I gotta be honest, this is not my favorite episode. I wanna hear all the other guests that we get. I wanna hear their stories. Yeah.

Jasper (01:04:21.77)
Yeah, man, I think, I think, like he said, like, it's so important because we talk about these sports stars and we talk about the show, Aotani's of the world, and we talk about all these big guys, but we don't really talk about the guys who discovered them. And that's like, they're the ones that have actually done a lot of work, the 1200 reports. So like to give them a platform that would be that would just be great. Yeah, they are.

Chad (01:04:21.966)
I'm excited. I am.

Chad (01:04:33.39)
Hmm.

Brian Johnson (01:04:41.326)
Sure.

Chad (01:04:42.574)
Yeah.

Chad (01:04:47.054)
They're the sorcerers.

Brian Johnson (01:04:47.31)
And what you, yeah, yeah. And I think what you're gonna find is a lot of folks, there's different stories too, but some people, but every one of, I think the people that we're going to be interviewing really appreciate, just as I did later on, really appreciate those other people that helped along the way. So it's gonna be a lot of fun to hear those stories from everybody else.

Chad (01:05:09.166)
just to be able to watch them reflect, I think for me is pretty amazing, right? Listening to the stories, amazing, but just the watching you go through it and just like you can see you reflecting on those stories, that to me is magic. So again, Brian, we appreciate it.

Jasper (01:05:13.674)
That's... yeah.

Brian Johnson (01:05:27.086)
Thank you.

Chad (01:05:29.806)
Excellent. How should we stop these things? Joel and I have a stupid We Out thing, so...

Chad (01:05:37.902)
Any idea?

Brian Johnson (01:05:39.854)
I don't know, until next time or thanks for being here or whatever.

Chad (01:05:41.87)
Okay.

Until next time guys, we will be back. Chad, Jasper, and Brian, we're gonna have, obviously, more discussions like this. I mean, Brian's already pitched. He's dropped names like Gary Payton, Dennis Green. I mean, it's...

Brian Johnson (01:06:00.366)
Dennis died, Dennis died, we can't get him.

Jasper (01:06:02.09)
yours is... oh god that'd be a weird podcast man

Chad (01:06:05.358)
We will get the Ouija board out.

Jasper (01:06:09.45)
Yeah.

Chad (01:06:11.342)
for Dennis Green, I promise. Excellent guys, I appreciate it. We'll talk again soon.

Brian Johnson (01:06:12.686)
Right, right.

Brian Johnson (01:06:17.934)
Yeah, that works.