Nick Swisher's Wildest MLB Stories: Giambi, Barry Zito, Yankees
All The Smoke
The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 7.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matt Barnes sits down with World Series champion and 13-year MLB veteran Nick Swisher for an unfiltered conversation. From the Oakland A's locker room to the darkest year of his career to winning it all in pinstripes, Swish holds absolutely nothing back.
They get into Jason Giambi's infamous team motto, Barry Zito's off-the-field life, and what it felt like to win a World Series with the New York Yankees after hitting rock bottom in 2008.
Plus — the real talk on A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, the death of Oakland baseball, the Dodgers dynasty, and why the Yankees are built different.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.0 | Welcome back. |
| 0:05.9 | All the Smoke dugout MLB Player House out here in cold and a little bit rainy, Arizona. |
| 0:14.4 | It's normally not that. |
| 0:16.7 | Got to my right, my man, Nick, they call him Swish. We've been working today. We shot a show early. We got a chance to sit down with Eric Davis. We were supposed to have another guest that couldn't make it last minute. So now we're just going to shoot the shit. Let's do it. Let's do that. This is a new channel in the baseball space. You know, all the smoke is partnered in the MLB space. We've been big fans. So now we're doing some works out to my man, C.C. And everyone who made this happen. So normally me and Nick are the interviewers, but now we're just going to go back and forth because we got a little history you guys probably don't know about. Where we will? So we met in what, 06? I think so. Oh, six. |
| 0:54.4 | And our careers were in parallel in sports, 02 to 17. |
| 0:59.2 | Both of us were both, I'm a couple months older than them, we're both 80s babies. |
| 1:02.9 | So there's a lot of similarities here. |
| 1:05.3 | But we believe team. |
| 1:07.3 | I was on my way out to NBA when this shit happened. |
| 1:09.5 | Yeah. |
| 1:09.8 | This particular season, I had |
| 1:11.3 | drafted, cut, G-League, played with the clip, got a call up from the Clippers, played well, |
| 1:18.7 | had an opportunity to sign a two-year minimum deal, but this is the same time, and you was funny, |
| 1:22.4 | you asked me who my bet was. This is the same time in the late 2000s when C Webb was with the Kings, |
| 1:30.5 | and I'm a Sacramento guy, but going to school, UCLA, it's the Laker King rivalry. |
| 1:35.6 | So I'm working out all something with him, and I met Jay Will and Bibb, and when the trade |
| 1:43.2 | went down and everything. |
| 1:43.9 | So I'm working with them. So there's a |
| 1:45.2 | chance for me to go home and play. Long story short, I go home play. I get traded with Steve Web to |
| 1:49.5 | Philly. Horrible. I've talked about this horrible time. I was on my way out the NBA. So I'm in |
... |
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