The Bog Boys Interview Ken Hannahs

[KenH]

Excerpt from The Bog Boys Morning Show featuring an interview with the Florida Featherheads GM Ken Hannahs. Catch The Bog Boys, Ellis and Grover, every weekday for your morning commute from 6 am to 10 am, Monday through Friday only on 1080 KTFLA.

GROVER: Welcome back to the Bog here on 1080 KTFLA. It’s Monday, November 26th, a balmy 65 out there on the highways with traffic backed up past 295 southbound. We appreciate you tuning in and joining us as you start another week atyour dead-end desk jockey job [laughs].

ELLIS: Hey c’mon now Grover –

GROVER: WHAT? I’m just saying we’re not the ones stuck in traffic. We actually have pretty exciting guest at the top of the hour that I’m looking forward to.

ELLIS: Ugh…

GROVER: Not a big fan of the biggest F-Head of them all, huh?

ELLIS: Listen you know my thoughts on the guy.

GROVER: Be careful man he’s probably listening right now.

ELLIS: Well then it won’t be the first time he will have heard me say this. He’s coming into the lion’s den coming on this show is all I’m saying. [a LION’S ROAR sound effect plays]

GROVER: Well it sure smells like that in here. Is that you Ellis?

ELLIS: What?

GROVER: What do you mean what? Did you literally just bathe in the St. John’s River this morning? You smell like hell. Susan, doesn’t he just stink? My god at least we’re doing this interview over the phone.

ELLIS: It’s not me, G. I practically bathed in cologne this morning.

[Susan laughs off mic]

GROVER: Had to be ready for the little person lady’s gymnastic troupe later today or something? My God, just foul stuff. We need a fan in here or something. Susan, honey, can you grab a fan and just point it right at Ellis’ head? I’m going to pass out if I have breath in whatever he rubbed all over himself. What is that? Eau de Beached Whale?

SUSAN: I’ll get the fan.

ELLIS: NO! It doesn’t even smell bad. It smells good. Sophisticated.

SUSAN: Ellis, I’m behind glass and it’s like, permeating through the window. Axe body spray would be an improvement.

GROVER: See I told you! Now, let’s get the man of the hour Mr. Ken Hannahs, GM of the once-beloved Florida-

ELLIS: I don’t stink. This is ridiculous.

GROVER: Ellis, I’m going to need you to stop talking. I think it may just be your breath. Anyway, Susan! Bring on the guy. Ellis, we gotta do this one for the fans.

ELLIS: You know I’m ready, Grover.

HANNAHS: Hey guys.

GROVER: Heyyy! If it isn’t Mr. Misses-the-Playoffs like a friggin chump! How you doing my man?

HANNAHS: [laughing unconvincingly] I’m good. Lots of stuff going on even now.

ELLIS: Oh for sure. Getting on the jet and hopping over to Vegas, getting a 26-million-dollar check from Mr Streets so you can blow more money next year?

HANNAHS: Mr Streets believes in what we’re doing. It’s a long road to success but we’ll get there. Shorter than it could be thanks to the fans and to Mr. Streets.

GROVER: You’ll have to forgive Ellis, he’s a bit of an incompetent. Got hit in the head by one too many Luis Torres foul balls.

ELLIS: Never dropped the beers though! Not even once!

GROVER: Here, take this tissue you got some gray matter leaking out of your ears you moron… and don’t BREATHE on me.

HANNAHS: Ellis sounds like we could use you on the team. Just stand you real close to the plate to get pelted by 100 mph fastballs then take you out of the game!

GROVER: Ken, you have no idea how much he’d love that. We hooked up some electrodes to his nethers the other day and he was grinning like an idiot for the rest of the day. I think the guy’s got some serious emotional issues but we don’t let him see a psychiatrist. Better for ratings, you know?

HANNAHS: Hey, I’m not going to come on your show and tell you how to run things. I’m just here to talk about the Florida baseball club.

ELLIS: Hey, so that’s the FIRST thing I wanted to talk to you about –

GROVER: C’mon Ellis let the guy finish…

ELLIS: No, hey, is it true? Are you guys really going to change the name of the team? Because honestly I think that’s bullplop. You can’t let those college kids waving signs out front of all your home games push you around like that! It’s crazy!

HANNAHS: Man all I said is the Florida baseball club…

ELLIS: WE KNOW WHAT YOU MEANT!

GROVER: C’mon Ellis, go get some water man. You get so bent out of shape about this stuff its honestly embarrassing for you. Not as embarrassing as that bum Dave Crocker getting decimated in a blue stronghold, eh Ken?

HANNAHS: [Laughs] I have no comment on that. What I do have comments on is our ballclub if you have any questions…

GROVER: Alright, jeeze, this guy is all business. You get that a lot Ken? That you’re all business? You go to bed in a suite or what?

HANNAHS: No not quite –

GROVER: — Nude then. I always knew it. You tie-wearing business guys are always freaks.

HANNAHS: Really depends on the temperature, Grover.

GROVER: I hear that! Wake up all sweaty, smelling like Ellis over here. Sandy, did we find that fan? I want that blowing right across his lips and away from my face. He’s a trainwreck, that one. So anyway Ken, we brought you on here to talk about other things besides the freaky things you do in the privacy of your own bedroom.

HANNAHS: Man, I was wondering there for a second…

GROVER: Yeah, yeah. We wanted to talk about the, as you called them, the “Florida Baseball Team.” As you may expect, we have cultivated an unruly, dirty, disgusting fan base here and for some reason they all love the Featherheads. Can’t get enough. So this year was like the apocalypse to them. Ken, I get paid to fart on the microphone not to try and play shrink.

HANNAHS: Hey, I hear you Grover. We’re well aware that people were less than thrilled – no, they were pissed with how the season went. I get that as much as anyone. We weren’t happy with it either.

GROVER: What do you think caused the issues?

HANNAHS: Honestly, and this is hard to say, we don’t have all the answers on that yet. We did a lot of things right. We were actually the best team in PEBA in the second half of the year and we had probably the best pitching staff in Florida history but it just wasn’t enough to get us to where we needed to be.

GROVER: A lot of us blame those limey bastards from London…

HANNAHS: Hey that makes sense, we do too! London had our number all year. If we even split the season series with London, we’re in the playoffs instead of Hartford and who knows what happens? It was a tough year especially given how many runs we scored. But if you look at it our team is going to be significantly leaner next year. Lots of young talent. Lots of space to make moves as we come down the stretch.

GROVER: So you’re not going to trade away possibly the best first baseman on the market again? Not that we harbor any grudges…

HANNAHS: hah! No, probably not. If anything we’ll be trading FOR the best first baseman we can find.

ELLIS: I’m back. Brushed my teeth.

GROVER: It already smells better in here. Sit down.

ELLIS: Is he still on the line?

HANNAHS: Yeah I’m still here.

ELLIS: God, you are so silent. It’s unsettling.

HANNAHS: Not quite sure what I can do about that. Want me to hum or something?

ELLIS: This guy is such a jackass. Can’t believe he’s in charge of the Featherheads – by the way Ken, I’m never not calling our team the Featherheads – you can’t stop me!

HANNAHS: Anyway, going back what we were talking about. Drew and I feel good about where we stand already going into next year. Sure, we have some question marks at first base, and we want to find a leader but we’re in a great position to play good ball with what we have already. We’re going to have Ty [Evans] back in the fold and we think that with him, van Dam, Acosta, Ashley, and Gold Glove winner Alvarez, we’re going to have an amazing rotation with some really promising new bullpen arms that really came into their own down the stretch there.

GROVER: Yeah, we were talking the other week that with all that money coming off the books we figured we’d get some big new free agent or something – is that the plan? You thinking like German Hernandez behind the plate or Alfredo Torres in left?

HANNAHS: We’re keeping our ears to the ground as they say, but we’re not making any hard plans quite yet. We really do believe in a lot of the guys that got us to a point where we scored 200 more runs than we gave up last year and we’re going to let them play. I’m not saying we won’t be active in free agency, but only that we have a lot of flexibility with how we approach the off-season which, for a team that is going to be bringing up some pretty exciting players in the next 2-3 years is a really really good thing. The last thing you want to do is handcuff yourself early by attaching salary to guys that you’re going to regret right when your new guys are hitting arbitration.

ELLIS: Well, we all love Kenny Ashley and Christian Webb – those guys did great for us last year.

HANNAHS: Thanks, Ellis! That might be the first good thing you’ve said about the club since I came on. But yes, we’ve been very happy with those guys and there’s no buyer’s remorse with them at all. They’ve quickly become Featherheads as far as we can tell.

GROVER: We know you’re low on time, so just one more question I’m sure everyone is thinking… whats the new team name going to be, Ken?

HANNAHS: [Laughs] You’ll hear more about it at the winter meetings.

ELLIS: I’m still never using it. MY team is the Featherheads.

GROVER: Shut up Ellis and go put on some deodorant for God’s sake.

[Lions]

I'll bet Hannahs was really looking forward to that interview.

[KenH]

He was not. Popped a couple of happy pills before hand to get him through.