David to Tiki on the film. Get back to your calls in a minute. We will unveil our offseason baseball plans coming up soon. But Anton Richardson may be listening to the show. Anton Richard, of course, is the former Mets first base coach, and it just came out within the last hour that he's taking his talents to Atlanta. He will be the new first base coach of the Atlanta Braves, Anton Richardson, famously given a lot of credit for all the stolen bases that the Mets had last year. Jeremy Heffner are also going to Atlanta.

And I said to you, Teak, while I was arguing with Tommy, that it doesn't feel like Anton Richardson wanted to come back. In fact, that's what I heard, that he didn't want to come back, especially with no other coaches brought back, and Carlos Mendoza being on the hot seat. Anton Richardson to Anthony DeComo.

This is straight from him.

During the negotiation process with the Mets,

we weren't fully aligned on how we viewed my value.

I have great respect for their process and the conversations we had.

But this narrative of me not wanting to be a met, that's kind of bogus.

Once I was allowed to speak with other teams, I remained open to a return to Queens until the end,

while also focusing on finding an opportunity that was more in line with what I was looking for.

That means they were being cheap.

Yes!

If you believe Anton Richardson and why wouldn't I?

I choose to.

He is saying, no, no, no, I was good with coming back.

The Mets cheaped out and didn't want to pay me.

Or the Braves in this case wanted to pay him more. Well, the reason, yes, but remember, Anton Richardson said that throughout the process before he was even speaking to other teams. He wasn't even talking to other things. Yeah, no, he's no other way to read that. The Mets did not value him, which is code for they weren't paying him enough money. Yeah, it's hard for me to hear, because I don't know what assistants in Major League Baseball should be paid. Like, I kind of have an idea of what NFL assistants should make, but I don't have an idea. How much were they cheap in them by? I don't. Like a couple hundred thousand, or was this the length of the deal? It's hard to know. And in terms of being cheap, like Anton Richardson was a free agent, right?

His contract was running out, and he very well, his agent, if you're smart, probably went to the Mets and said, you see one soda stolen bases? You see that, right? Okay. You're going to pay me a lot of freaking money. Right. Because I earned it. That's on me. And the Mets probably were like, no biggie.

Sorry, Tommy.

So now I ask you, Tom, since we have this evidence from Anton Richardson, in which I admit, well, clearly he did want to come back and the money wasn't there. Are you mad at the New York Mets? Well, I'll say if I am or not before you have to apologize, though. Oh, I apologize to you, and I apologize to the audience. The New York Mets screwed this up. And look, what money we're talking about can't be big deal money. I mean, we're talking about coaching staff. So like you said, it's not like you're paying coaches millions upon millions of dollars. And so as a Met fan, and I know that Steve spends a lot of money, it's also raising ticket prices. It is tough for me to be like, oh, no biggie. They didn't want to pay Anton Richardson. The guy made a clear difference last year, and it sucks that he's gone, and it sucks even more than he went to Atlanta. So I not only apologize to you, Tommy,

I apologize to the audience for not ripping the Mets 20 minutes earlier. But I trust Anton Richardson. He seems like a noble guy. I trust him at his word. So bad job by the Mets. Would you like to join in? I am very disappointed that Richardson is not back with the Mets. Are you mad at the Mets? And if it's over dollars and cents, I think that is penny-wise, dollar-foolish, as I say. You would say it's not really a Big Brother move, is it? I think you got to pay your best coach. I don't know what anything Big Brother. Little Brother has to do with anything. But I think when you look at the best coach on your staff, you got to make that work.

And then when he goes to the Braves, it makes it, you know, three times worse. Yesterday on the program at about 5 o'clock, we began something this week called Cinco de Peno, where each day one of us will give our top five most painful losses in our sports fandom. Tommy went yesterday. Sean's going to go today. I'll go tomorrow, Tiki on Friday. and I keep getting emails and text messages about how great Tommy was.

He was passionate, he was angry. went yesterday. Sean's going to go today. I'll go tomorrow, Tiki on Friday. And I keep

...