The Sporting Class: Affairs, Private Eyes and the All-Seeing Eye

What are the business ethics of sh*tting where you eat? Can you be a journalist and an "insider" at the same time? And what happened after the Knicks' owner doxxed the man threatening his arena's beer? David Samson — the Marie Kondo of sports infidelity and the watchful eye of Florida baseball — helps Pablo decode the messy stories of Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel... and James Dolan versus his enemies. • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704 (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:07Speaker 01

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• 0:14Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 1:13Pablo Torre?

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• 1:57Pablo Torre?

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• 2:23Pablo Torre?

  We're gonna call this a sporting class today. Just you and me.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:26Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Are we gonna tell John?

• 2:28Pablo Torre?

  Well...

• 2:29Speaker 04

  It feels like we're cheating.

• 2:30Pablo Torre?

  I know.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  But that's okay.

• 2:32Pablo Torre?

  I think you've just given us the most organic segue to how I wanted to start this.

• 2:37Pablo Torre?

  Because I have been inundated, as the guy who does investigative journalism, with calls to investigate Diana Rusini. And this is a story that, as I put on Twitter at some point, I have been making calls about. And you've addressed this on your show at length. Dan Levitard, our friend and our boss on some level, he is deeply uncomfortable with talking about this because he has disclosed a friendship with Diana. And I also, in this attempt to be transparent, I want to disclose my conflicts. You're talking, David, to me on a show that is a part of The Athletic Podcast Network. Diana, until she resigned recently, was, of course, an employee of The Athletic, their NFL insider.

• 3:20Pablo Torre?

  I am represented at CAA, where Diana is represented. I worked with Diana at ESPN. I don't really know her that well. I've run into her a couple of times. We are not friends.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  Are you acquaintances?

• 3:33Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  If we saw each other at an event, and if I still saw her at an event today or any other day in the future, I would say hello. And I would not have any sort of hesitance about that. But she might, depending on how she takes what I'm about to say, because it's uncomfortable to be a public person in this regard as an alleged cheating scandal with the most famous photos in recent sports media history.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Wow. Give me a minute on that.

• 4:01Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  We're gonna call them the most famous photos in recent sports history?

• 4:07Pablo Torre?

  Sports media history.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:11Pablo Torre?

  A separate take. A separate take.

• 4:31Pablo Torre?

  It's been astonishing how much traction this has gotten since it broke in the New York Post. And to you, David, as I've talked to you off air about this, it became pretty clear that we should talk about the alleged affair as a concept in the ways that it informs, I think, a larger exploration of the dynamic underneath the surface, behind the curtain. But also, you're kind of bored by the premise of like, oh, great, an affair.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  That's boring. When you've been in the sports world for as long as I've been in, and when you come from Wall Street, where I was before, affairs are not really something that anyone cares about, but everyone loves to gossip about. It is one of the great glass house syndromes that exists in the business world, where people talk about it while they live in a glass house or have lived in a glass house at one point or another. And when you travel with the baseball team, you have to become numb to it, because if you're too moral, truthfully, you can't function. And that makes me feel badly sometimes, but not often.

• 5:32Pablo Torre?

  We already have arrived at the difference between working in sports and journalistically covering sports. Because there is a code of ethics in the world of journalism. There is not a code of ethics around this subject, so to speak, in the world of allegedly sleeping with journalists.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  There is. We had a set of rules.

• 5:49Pablo Torre?

  You came up with them.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  No, I actually inherited these. These are longstanding rules.

• 5:54Pablo Torre?

  Not the commissioner's office. This is the Marlins.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  This is wherever I've been. So with the Expos and then the Marlins.

• 5:59Pablo Torre?

  You're the president of the team.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  It was just a very simple rule. My view, and I've spoken to players about this a lot, there's ample opportunity. Just be very careful. And this was the same rule on Wall Street. Ample opportunity. Try not to [BLEEP] where you eat. Because when you do that, it causes a mess that I would have to clean up. And what I would say to players is, I don't want to clean up that mess. I want you to live your life, and I'm not going to judge, but don't make it so that I have to get involved. Where sideline reporters get involved, where cheerleaders get involved. Player wives, I've had that.

• 6:35Pablo Torre?

  What do you mean?

• 6:36Speaker 04

  I've had a player wife cheat with a teammate.

• 6:39Pablo Torre?

  Oh.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  So I've had that, and that creates, I just don't want mess. I don't want, and you know me well.

• 6:45Pablo Torre?

  You're the Marie Kondo of player infidelity.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  That's exactly, so listen, and I tell them that. I am not ever gonna tell you what to do. I'm just gonna ask you not to involve my time, cuz I don't have a lot of it.

• 7:00Pablo Torre?

  Right, the variable you're trying to restrain is time, which is not to say this is a judgment on an ethical basis.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  It is not.

• 7:08Pablo Torre?

  It is a business practice.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  So simply put, and so perfectly put. It is exactly that. So the issue comes when something in your orbit expands to other people's orbit. That's what you try to avoid.

• 7:26Pablo Torre?

  Well, the thing that everybody wishes they could have avoided was the New York Post. And I wanna explain how this broke because, again, I'm a journalist. You're the former team president. Different sides of this aisle, but both of us trying to discern, decode what's actually happening here. And the way this broke was in the New York Post. And I wanna get to private investigation as an industry because you are familiar personally with that industry, and I am fascinated by that. We've been reporting in other episodes, one connected to the New York Knicks. The premise of private investigation as a tool in sports and beyond, in politics certainly. But the whole thing of there are high-quality photographs of Diana Rossini and Mike Frabel on a roof

• 8:10Pablo Torre?

  at an adults-only retreat hotel in Sedona, which is a beautiful location that was captured in high-definition. You know, the photographs are good, but immediately I'm like, does the fact that they were taken with a professional-seeming camera indicate something? Or is it also entirely plausible that people bring nice cameras to a place like Sedona? And so, not dispositive is my point. I don't think the quality of the photographs tells us.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  I agree, not relevant.

• 8:40Pablo Torre?

  Is this a professional? Because we live in the era of cellphones in which all these things are high-def. However, here's what's interesting. So TMZ was offered these photographs first. Or at the very least, they were offered these photographs and learned that the New York Post had published them first. I want to explain the backstory, why, because I've confirmed this part. And some of this has been reported elsewhere, and I want to just make sure that people who have not been deep in the lore on this understand that, I am told, a woman provided these photographs to TMZ, and they did not name Diana Russini.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  They did name Mike Vrabel, though.

• 9:19Pablo Torre?

  They did identify the NFL head coach with a woman who's not his wife, I am told. And the price requested was, indeed, four figures. And TMZ, to their shame, I think in retrospect, they weren't super interested. But by the time they figured out that the other woman, interlocking fingers on this roof with this sunset in the backdrop, was in fact Diana Russini, a day or so later, the tipster in question, I am told, had seemingly already made a deal with the New York Post.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  I love that there was a moral part to this, that the person said, "I already have a deal with the Post, so I can't go back to TMZ and get a higher offer." I love that.

• 10:02Pablo Torre?

  But here are the details, and here's the question. If you were a private investigator hired on behalf of one of their spouses, which is a common rumor in this story, and I have no proof, by the way, that that is the case, would that be how you weaponized these photos?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  For me, when you find something and you want to monetize it, the biggest thing you have to do is understand the value of what you've found. And so the person who took the photos is moronic, because how do you not find out who both parties are? And you don't stop at just the NFL head coach. You have to find out, because if that woman is monetizable, you have lost that ability if you sell it before you have done the work. And that seems to be, if what you're saying is true, which is what you're saying and what I've read, that is just a poor job of monetizing the photos, because once you have both parties who are recognizable, it makes the scandal larger, more interesting

• 11:02Speaker 04

  to a more diverse group of people, which is a higher price.

• 11:06Pablo Torre?

  What does that say to you about the possibility then that this was taken by a private investigator?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  The private investigator would have had information already. Because when you hire a private investigator-

• 11:17Pablo Torre?

  And have you hired a private investigator?

• 11:19Speaker 04

  I have hired a private investigator, yes. And in order to hire a private investigator, there's a question. The first question, after you do Price, the first question is-

• 11:28Pablo Torre?

  What does it cost?

• 11:30Speaker 04

  Well, it depends what you're asking them to do. Because there's travel, there's- If you're asking them to fly somewhere, you have to pay like their lawyers for transportation to the airport.

• 11:38Pablo Torre?

  Is it hourly?

• 11:39Speaker 04

  It's hourly. It is hourly, yes.

• 11:42Pablo Torre?

  So there's illegal billable hours?

• 11:44Speaker 04

  You can negotiate a flat rate, but my experience has been hourly.

• 11:48Pablo Torre?

  So I want to introduce the other possibility, which is another guest. Who's like, "Oh, there's that giant guy I know from watching America's most famous television show, the NFL." I'm gonna Google his wife, I'm gonna find that she has blonde hair, I'm gonna look at the woman who turned out to be Diana Russini and say, "That's not his wife, they're interlocking fingers, I think I got something." "What is this run for on the open market? Who can I give this to?" You get to how they get to TMZ, to The Post, and being like guessing, "Five thousand dollars?", question mark? That'd be all right.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  That's tough for me, because it's a pretty exclusive hotel in the middle of Ichveld. It's not as though it's walking down the street of New York City, where you could just happen upon something that, "Oh, could I monetize that?" This, to me, had more purpose.

• 12:28Pablo Torre?

  But, it's interesting. Another thing I've confirmed is that Diana Russini did not provide any other photographs that had been requested by pretty much everybody, not just the internet, but certainly The New York Post, The Athletic, her employer, to indicate that her initial story, the story that she has stuck by, which is that others were there, it was a friend's trip, and Vrabel is, of course, someone she's quite friendly with. And this is not what it looks like, this is not an affair, this is a bunch of buddies hanging out, at the pool, on the roof. And this is where I should say a couple of things. Number one, we are independently produced by Metal Arc Media-

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 13:05Pablo Torre?

  -and distributed by The Athletic, and the views, research, and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those Appalatory finds out, and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists. And by the way, to The Athletic's credit, they have not- Not told me personally a single thing about what not to cover or to cover with the story. So just to be very transparent about that.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Well, that would make it way worse if they called you and said, by the way, hands off this.

• 13:27Pablo Torre?

  But, but listen, this is the thing that became clear to me from afar as soon as those photographs did not emerge. Which is that it became impossible for Diana Rusini to credibly do her job as an NFL insider. That doing the job of I'm going to report on the NFL would be, as a credibility issue, impossible.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Can a person at Morgan Stanley date someone who works at Goldman Sachs?

• 13:52Pablo Torre?

  The idea, to be fair to Diana, of what it means to credibly do your job. To do your job as a journalist, an insider with credibility, is a worthy discussion because there are lots of other ways to compromise your integrity that an insider in sports, a sports journalist, is uncompromised by their sources so long as they don't have an affair with them is farcical. It runs the gamut. You're just friends with them. You've been to their weddings. You've been on family trips with the general manager of the team who's breaking news to you. You even advise front office executives on trades sometimes.

• 14:32Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, all of that, that's all stuff I've heard over decades.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  I've experienced it because when I give an insider a piece of information, I want something back. It's a trade.

• 14:46Pablo Torre?

  Of course you do.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  So that is very normal. Have you ever seen when a manager gets fired and then all of a sudden there's a list of candidates for that position? Do you think that list comes out of like the ether? It's, it's, it's the media insider says, oh, I've got the perfect fit for the manager for this team or the general manager. No, it comes from, hey, I get information from this person. And in return, I add this person to a list of candidates. And the reason I know this is that as a president of a team and having fired a gazillion managers, there was always a list of people.

• 15:26Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  who were candidates and we never interviewed them. We never even considered them. And I laughed thinking, oh, I understand why that person's a candidate. Because that person is giving information to the person, the media. And I'm not impugning any member of the media. That's how the business is done. Tell me about a trade or a signing. Give it to me first. And by the way, when it comes time to advance your career, I'll make sure that you are in the conversation.

• 15:51Pablo Torre?

  But here's the thing about the monastic rules of journalism. It's how do you define consistently by a letter of some law? What it is to betray the trust of your public in order to service a source and therefore yourself, right? The public interest is, and again, I don't think there is spoiler alert, a constitution that everyone agrees on here. And there are codes of ethics that vary from outlet to outlet, publication to publication. All of that makes this very, very messy. And journalism has done a terrible job across the board of communicating why and how. But I want to give one example of what a very established, and in this case, very notably male NFL insider,

• 16:35Pablo Torre?

  a direct competitor to Diana Russini, might be doing out in public that could cause in a journalism ethics conversation, a real question. And it takes us to the very same week when Diana Russini's photos were taken. We're going to now three days after that, actually. This is March 31st, 2026, at the hotel, the Biltmore, where the NFL owners' meetings were happening. And this is what Jay Glazer put on Twitter for millions upon millions of people to see.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  All right, we have our annual NFL coaching day, Greg, a day. Oh, just doing our little, hey, hey, hey. Whisperer out here. Michael Phelps over there. Is that?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Who else we have over here? Hey. Now, he's the third best coach. Showing it all, showing it all, showing it all. Here we go. Hey, who's that? Oh, it's on the thing. Yeah, he's a good coach, man. He's a good footballer. Now, smashing machine, Mark Kerr right over here. Say it again?

• 17:40Speaker 05

  You know.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Trump ain't holding the court across.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Annual, our annual event.

• 17:57Pablo Torre?

  So, that's Jay Glazer, NFL insider, saying, this is the tweet caption, people who aren't watching the video. "One of my favorite days of the year are 18th Annual NFL Head Coaches Day Drinking Day at the NFL Owners Meeting. I started this with Mike Tomlin 18 years ago," yes, we raised a glass to him, parentheses, "to get the head coach fraternity to bond together, bounce things off each other, ask each other for advice, and to celebrate how cool life is together. Leaders take care of everybody else, but who takes care of the leaders? This is a cool way to bond so these leaders can all take care of each other, trying to make it less lonely at the top. Oh, and the stories that are shared are classic. We had 28 of 32 coaches show." And then it goes on, and McVay apparently picked up the bill. Because as a side note, everyone always asks, who picks up the bill? McVay did it this year.

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  It's all immediately, like, not allowed by any sort of journalism school code of ethics. But I should point out, 2.6 million views on that, 10,000 likes. As far as I can tell, no immediate eruption of, "How dare you compromising your integrity, favoring your friends," all of that.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  What is Glazer's job? His job is to go on TV every single weekend and give the betting audience information they can have in order to bet, or to help them with fantasy, or to just give them information that they can pretend they know as firsthand, so they can be cool when they're talking to other people on a Monday morning. That's his job. His job doesn't change because of his relationships with these coaches. As a matter of fact, his audience would say, "I need you to have these relationships with these coaches."

• 19:35Pablo Torre?

  So, something that I want to do vocabulary-wise is point out that I don't believe Jay Glazer would call himself a journalist. I believe Jay Glazer has a title of insider. And part of his currency, his actual upfront credibility is, "Look at everybody that I know." I mean, he's a MMA trainer. He trains players. Like, his network of sources are his friends and clients.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Is Diana a journalist or an insider? Or can you be both?

• 20:02Pablo Torre?

  I think the entire premise of her job was that she was both. And that, in fact, insider has been, until perhaps recent days, synonymous, often with journalists.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Not to us, not in the industry.

• 20:15Pablo Torre?

  But I think there are some insiders who would object to the fact that, "How dare you say I'm not a journalist." And also, for most fans, they don't know the difference.

• 20:24Speaker 04

  They don't need to know.

• 20:26Pablo Torre?

  But I want to sort of make this more specific, because the gender part of this, right? So let's just do the thought experiment, which I was doing as I was watching this. And I was looking for a good example. I was like, is it Schefter? Is it Woj? Is it? And I came upon the Glazer video. And so, there are many other potential examples, to be clear. But this video, imagine if poolside, it was not Jay Glazer, but Diana Rusini, with 28 of 32 NFL head coaches day drinking. Immediately, right? Part of the frustration, both by, I can imagine, a Diana Rusini, and by other female self-identified journalists, who in real life have really resented, the ones that I've talked to have

• 21:07Pablo Torre?

  resented, the implication that this is standard practice, what Diana is accused of, among female journalists. It's just different to be a woman doing this job in sports. And it can be unfair, to the point of all of this being an aggravating factor.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  What if Jay had been with 28 women?

• 21:29Pablo Torre?

  So immediately, I was like, "Good luck finding a sport with that many female coaches."

• 21:34Speaker 04

  I made up the number.

• 21:36Pablo Torre?

  But I think-

• 21:37Speaker 04

  We're talking gender.

• 21:38Pablo Torre?

  So I presented to you the hypothetical of, "What if Jay Glazer was, in fact, a woman? What if it was Diana Rusini?" Here is a thing that I was told while making calls. And two sources with direct knowledge of this have confirmed it to me. So, that pool, where Jay Glazer was hosting all of those NFL head coaches and others. Across the way of that same pool was Diana Rusini and Mike Vrabel. And what she was doing, I am told, was effectively trying to host a rival office Christmas party.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  Were the other four coaches there? Is that why it was 28 and 4?

• 22:23Pablo Torre?

  It was Diana Rusini, it was Mike Vrabel, among the Cabanas, and a few other head coaches.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Well, there could only be four total.

• 22:30Pablo Torre?

  So I don't have, I don't have the James Dolan surveillance camera data on who was going, when and where. But I can tell you that part of what the game is, that Diana Rusini was trying to play, was what if I do the thing that Jay Glazer does quite successfully? How can I build my own party and build a network of sources? Because what no one has ever denied or objected to is the ambition of Diana Rusini and trying to compete at this insane, crazy-making job of insider.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  It's soul-crushing to have to compete both as a woman but also as a man. Anyone who's new trying to become an insider, it's crushing. You know this as a journalist, trying to get sources that are not giving to anyone but you, an exclusive source.

• 23:21Pablo Torre?

  Oh, man, it can drive you insane. It can make you lose grip on whatever you think your principles once were.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  I love the ingenuity of trying to build your business, because that's what insiders need to do, is cultivate relationships in order to get information first.

• 23:38Pablo Torre?

  Now, the thing that happened that day at the pool, March 31st, 2026, at the Biltmore, is that all of these head coaches across the pool, and their wives, I am told, started talking about Vrabel and Rusini. And this was before, days before the photo is broken in the New York Post. Which is to say also, a thing I found out is that their friendship was not breaking news to the people at the NFL owners' meetings. They all knew that in fact, they were out front together at this other competing aspirational party.

• 24:23Pablo Torre?

  And so this is where I do just need to point out that New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, that guy who took the Patriots to the Super Bowl this past February, decided to speak for the first time this past week after the photos that blew up his life were released. And he did not confess or admit to anything in specific, but his lack of specificity, I would say, conveyed something pretty clearly: shame.

• 24:49Speaker 06

  You know, I've had some difficult conversations with people that I care about, with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players. Those have been positive and productive. We believe in order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me. That starts with me. We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. We never want to be the cause of a distraction. And those are comments and questions that I've answered for the team and with the team. We'll keep those private and to ourselves. I care deeply about this football team and I'm excited to coach them.

• 25:32Pablo Torre?

  Late Wednesday night, after that presser, Vrabel then told ESPN that he would not be with New England for day three of tomorrow's NFL draft, which was confusing to, I think, everybody else because he wasn't missing day one or day two of the draft, but specifically day three because he was seeking counseling. This was Vrabel's quote to ESPN. "I believe this is what I have to do to be the best husband, father, and coach that I possibly can be." End quote. And all of this immediately made this an even bigger story, raising so many more questions among Boston sports fans because this story now was directly impacting

• 26:14Pablo Torre?

  the team, making the mess that David Samson had advised that you not make. But on Thursday, the other shoe dropped. Helping explain perhaps what happened on Wednesday. And we return now again to the New York Post, which published a story with this headline. Diana Rusini and married Mike Vrabel caught kissing at NYC bar in bombshell new photos taken six years before scandal. And in this story, you can see a series of photos of Rusini and Vrabel doing what I think can be fairly described as canoodling. Their faces really close together, her legs sort of positioned in between his legs as

• 26:58Pablo Torre?

  they're sitting on bar stools. And this was reported to be a relatively empty bar in Manhattan. And so, for at least the time being, that's where we are. That's how the patriots are trying to navigate this scandal. More to come on that. But as for the journalism side of the equation, where I come from, there is another fair question, I think, when it comes to how all of this looks.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Is that up to the standards of The Athletic?

• 27:30Pablo Torre?

  So, according to The Athletic's official editorial guidelines, no, not as far as I can tell. And I'll just quote them here. Quote, "To maintain the highest form of authority, we should avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest and reveal those sources or affiliations that may put into question our ability to be credible." End quote.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  But you know what? As a consumer of information, I don't draw the line where The New York Times draws the line. So I get information from plenty of people who operate outside the line of The New York Times, and I don't care. I base it on the veracity of the outside-the-line work that's done, and can I rely on it to help me do what I want to do.

• 28:07Pablo Torre?

  And I would say that a journalist, as this profession, with a code of some kind, the decision that journalism has made as a premise is, the best way to provide information reliably and to win the trust of the public and to be the closest thing you can be to an honest and impartial broker, is to subject yourself to these rules.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  I don't agree, Paulo. I hear you, and you sound so high and mighty, and that's fine.

• 28:32Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's not even meant to be.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  But it's not true. You think The New York Times, by the way, is so impartial? I'm just curious, like, is that their reputation?

• 28:39Pablo Torre?

  There are so many examples of the fallibility and the failure and the betrayal of the standards that I'm talking about. And I hope that when I say these words about, like, the code... It's not with a tut-tutting, high and mighty, "I am at the elevation level of the Mount Everest of journalism." It is actually with the almost sad recognition that I don't think you're alone. I think most people don't give a [bleep]. And it's a competitive disadvantage. It is a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. And so the only way to make it into something advantageous is to explain why this code on balance is worth respecting.

• 29:32Pablo Torre?

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• 30:05Speaker 03

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• 31:07Pablo Torre?

  So this brings us back to the idea of a private investigator. Because they're also in the ecosystem. There are the investigators with a journalistic code. There are the PIs, who often are who, David? What's their background typically?

• 31:21Speaker 04

  Some of them are former detectives. Some of them have no training whatsoever, except the ability to follow someone or to do internet research on someone. You can get like a high-profile PI, and it's like going to a white shoe law firm.

• 31:37Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Or you can get sort of a guy from the Yellow Pages. That sort of dates me. But someone who's very cheap. And you generally, in PI work, get what you pay for.

• 31:46Pablo Torre?

  I like the idea of you tearing off a tab on a lamppost, being like, "I'm gonna ask this guy to investigate my wife." But this now takes us to Madison Square Garden. And so, something that I left out of the episode that we did about the Garden and its surveillance state is a story that involves a practice that, as you can attest, is more common in sports, among sports owners, than people realize, which is the hiring of private eyes. And so this story, I gotta recap it here. It happened because, in early 2003, the New York State Liquor Authority was threatening to take away beer at Madison Square Garden. And you know this story personally, because you've covered it on Nothing Personal, but to explain-

• 32:24Speaker 04

  And I lived it while I was running the Marlins.

• 32:26Pablo Torre?

  Okay, okay, I wanna get to that. Because in this case, there was facial recognition technology that was kicking out attorneys from law firms that were engaged in litigation with Madison Square Garden and James Dolan and its assorted properties. And what the New York State Liquor Authority posed was a legal challenge. If you are discriminating against customers, you cannot serve liquor, according to New York State law. And so this led to one of the great clips, I would say, in sports media history as well. Because it's James Dolan on Fox 5, the morning show, with the local legend, Rosanna Scotto. And he does this. Instead, what we're gonna do is, where we serve liquor, we're gonna put one of these up, which says,

• 33:09Pablo Torre?

  "If you would like to drink at a game, please call, right, Sharif Kabir."

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Chief executive officer or write him an email at this number, right? And the, and tell him, right, to stick, stick to his knitting and, you know, and to what he's supposed to be doing and stop, stop grandstanding and trying to get press. The, so. Wow, okay.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  She gave him the platform.

• 33:36Pablo Torre?

  So that is.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  She gave him the platform.

• 33:37Pablo Torre?

  That is him doxing basically the CEO of the SLA, the state liquor authority, and also using a phrase that I had never heard until that clip. Stick to your knitting.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  I'd not heard that either. I'm not a knitter. Nor am I a needle pointer.

• 33:50Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Listen, what's Dolan doing there? He is using the power and I think that the power that he has is the power that is actually exhibited by all owners. He just does it in a less pleasant, more public way.

• 34:04Pablo Torre?

  So I should say that Sharif Kabir, who's now the former CEO of the SLA, he received, as you can imagine, you know, racist messages and beyond. He, at one point, I am told, he had to call the state police on a fan who threatened him. So that's like part of the consequences of when that happens in that way. But the more interesting germane part to the conversation we've been having about private investigation and who's watching who, is that The Garden, James Dolan reportedly hired a private investigator to follow the state investigator who was looking into Dolan and The Garden. And so James Dolan hired a private investigator to follow the former police captain who was investigating him.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  The reason you hire a PI is to gain leverage in a negotiation. That's it. You are negotiating a divorce. You're negotiating a buyout. You're negotiating an insurance payment. You're negotiating something. And so what Dolan was negotiating was, I need my liquor license. And by the way, I am not going to give up on the fact that I use facial recognition.

• 35:11Pablo Torre?

  And is therefore, is it possible that this state investigator, this former police captain, is himself exhibiting bias in ways that I can use in some sort of response? And so I should point out that. According to Wired, who's reporting we featured on our episode a week ago, a source with knowledge of this says that MSG's own security guys, they refused to do the job of investigating the state investigator. And to quote the source in Wired's article here, quote, "Trail a law enforcement officer in his duties? Absolutely not. Like, that's a step too far," end quote. And so they wound up with somebody else. And this somebody else, I am told, followed the police captain.

• 35:55Pablo Torre?

  And apparently, this according to the New York Times reporting, eventually, the former police captain called the cops on Dolan's private investigator, who was eventually cited for possession of what the New York Times had called, quote, "a knife in excess of the permissible length," end quote. Which I also, much like Stick to Your Knitting, I did not know was even a thing. But the Gardens lawyers, meanwhile, have said that state officials were, quote, "harassing the private investigator, that hiring PIs was, quote, 'common and lawful practice.'" Which brings us to other examples, David, that you may be familiar with in terms of sports owners having this power.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Well, one of the big ones is in politics with the current ambassador of France and the meshbuche of Donald Trump. Charlie Kushner hired a private investigator.

• 36:44Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my god.

• 36:45Speaker 04

  Meshbuche, that's Yiddish for they, their children are married to each other. Charlie Kushner's son is Jared. Donald Trump's daughter is Ivanka, and they are married. And so Charlie Kushner actually hired a private investigator.

• 36:59Pablo Torre?

  He's an Alzheimer.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  In order to bribe, basically, his own brother. He set up a woman to seduce his brother and got pictures of them doing it. And it caused Charlie, gave him leverage in a negotiation because there was a business transaction that Charlie needed some help with from a family partnership. To make a long story short, a private investigator can't make someone do something if you're a PI. But you sure as hell can set it up so people are tempted.

• 37:31Pablo Torre?

  So all of this, of course, according to the Department of Justice. And I just need to clarify.

• 37:38Pablo Torre?

  That that's how you weaponize something. He did not go to the New York Post and offer four figures with those in with that information. He went directly to the place that he needed to have leverage.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  I mean, that's what's laughable is that that's why a P I offering it for four figures to the New York Post. It wasn't something or T M Z. It didn't interest me. A real P I, when you've got a real situation where there's real money involved, not just who's getting inside information from who on who's going to be a head coach. There's millions of dollars at stake, sometimes tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. And what P I's are doing is they are hired and that's why wired and I'm not impugning them and their sources. But I've known security people and I've hired security people, not just at Marlins Park, but I also know the people at M S G from all my decades there. And for me, if there's something that they don't want to do, it's something that's not going to be asked of them to do.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  And that's a subtle difference. When you are trying to follow a police captain who's running the state liquor authority. I'm not going to my underlings in the security department. I'm either going to my number one head of security loyal guy who's going to hire someone and take care of it. Or more likely, I'm going outside of that sphere, pun intended. And I am going to hire someone who's not at all related to M S G because I'm not going to ask them a question. I don't want to hear the answer to. I've done that many times where you figure out how you're going to staff something. It's a staffing question.

• 39:08Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  When you get right down to it, who can do the job that I need to be done in the most economic way? And in the most important way to get the job done.

• 39:17Pablo Torre?

  At all points here, I want to point out that what I love about this program is that you are sharing what you would have done in this hypothetical and how and why you would have done it.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  Or I'm sharing with you as president of a team, what goes on inside a stadium that I'm was a part of building. Or I'm telling you the truth about what's been done inside a sport where I worked for 18 years. You can take it however you'd like to take it without upsetting your producers.

• 39:44Pablo Torre?

  I think we're just going to Photoshop you onto the OJ if I did it. Book cover.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  No, it's not about gloves and it's not saying if I did it, I'm telling you that there's a mystery around what goes on in this, in the business world that I'm trying to uncover to let you know that what you think is so rare, or what the audience thinks is so rare, is actually super common.

• 40:04Pablo Torre?

  Well, I want to also point out that another sports owner of note, who was reportedly a big fan of PIs, was Dan Snyder. This was according to Don Van Natta and Seth Waker Shametan at Thomson at ESPN. Allegedly Snyder, in this case, hired these PIs to snoop on his fellow owners, which is to say, to bring it all back to politics, compromat, having information that you can leverage for some return is always a consideration.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  That is the consideration. Remember in the Snyder case, that was, he felt he was being forced out, he didn't want to leave, he didn't want to have a forced sale. And in a negotiation, when you're told about a forced sale, because in sports ownership, if you get two thirds of owners to say the sky is red, there's nothing you can do. Twenty-three owners tell you the sky is red, the sky is red.

• 40:52Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  And that's it. So you gotta get to them before they say the sky is red. And the way you do it, this, he's, oh my God, I've had these conversations with presidents, with owners.

• 41:02Pablo Torre?

  How do you get the votes?

• 41:03Speaker 04

  You're getting votes.

• 41:04Pablo Torre?

  No, it's Congress.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  That's what you're out doing.

• 41:06Pablo Torre?

  It's politics, yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  So, I, I understand that you want it to be very mysterious.

• 41:10Pablo Torre?

  No, I, I-

• 41:11Speaker 04

  But it's not that mysterious.

• 41:12Pablo Torre?

  I actually love the demystification of it, and your point of view, and I want to make this even more literal than your point of view, your actual physical ability to see what was happening at Marlins Park, the view you had through the security system, because you built the building.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:28Pablo Torre?

  And you're the president of the team. I mean, can you explain what you had access to as that guy?

• 41:36Speaker 04

  I had access where I could see where everyone was at all times. And why is that important? Because I need proof if I am ever compromised. And I don't mean myself personally, though I have a funny story about that, but I'm talking about if there's ever a situation where a fan is claiming something, I need to be able to know whether that's true. So we had cameras on fans if they get hit by a foul ball, we are making sure that they were not looking at their phone.

• 42:02Pablo Torre?

  You have an arc, hold on, you have a vault, you maintained a vault of like- Most innocently, like, America's Funniest Home Videos.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 42:12Pablo Torre?

  Of like Pratt Falls and-

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Until the statute of limitations runs out on what a lawsuit could be for a slip and fall, we'll keep, it's not like a 24-hour loop.

• 42:20Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  We're keeping the tape until we can no longer be sued on the tape.

• 42:25Pablo Torre?

  How long does it take?

• 42:25Speaker 04

  And so, depend on what it is, but three to five years.

• 42:28Pablo Torre?

  Very good.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  And so, the reason why we have to keep it is, I don't want a he said, she said, because it costs me more money in a settlement. I want actual proof. So, we have cameras everywhere. Everywhere. We have cameras everywhere. Why? Not because we care if someone's having sex in the restroom. We don't care if someone's-

• 42:48Pablo Torre?

  You don't have cameras in the restroom.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Not in the toilets. We don't care if someone's doing lines. Like, that wasn't what I was ever after, nor anyone on my security team. It wasn't about someone breaking the law. We didn't care about affairs.

• 43:01Pablo Torre?

  Did you care about fans who would criticize Jeffrey Luria, the owner of the team?

• 43:05Speaker 04

  100%. We would have eyes on anyone. If they had any sort of sign that would say, "Blame Jeffrey Luria," or "Sell the team Jeffrey Luria," we have eyes on that person. That person is getting their sign removed, and they're likely gonna get ejected. That's number one. You think that Jimmy Dolan's the only one who has eyes on Sell the Team people? It's a joke. Every owner has eyes on that.

• 43:29Pablo Torre?

  I hate that. I mean, just, this is me as a fan now, right? The idea of, like, criticism being baked in to the business. Like, come on.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Owners have the thinnest skin. You can't even imagine how thin their skin is.

• 43:43Pablo Torre?

  I love to chronicle the ongoing translucence. And how, in fact, it is, at times, surprising even to someone cynical like me.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Pablo, we had security. It's funny, we had, this is before facial recognition. We did facial recognition the old-fashioned way, with actual photos. And we had people at every door.

• 44:03Pablo Torre?

  We had like a wanted poster.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  We, we, it was-

• 44:05Pablo Torre?

  "Do not serve this man."

• 44:07Speaker 04

  It was actually that. At every entrance to the ballpark, there were pictures of people that we did not allow in for any reason I wanted.

• 44:14Pablo Torre?

  And you had a full, full choice.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  We're in charge of it. We are in charge of it. We don't need to get FBI Most Wanted. I couldn't care less about the FBI Most Wanted. It's not about stopping a terrorist attack. I've got people who are helping me secure the building to stop it from attack. Different. What I'm using facial recognition for, and what I would use it for, and what everyone will use it for, is to make sure that we are not subjecting our owner, or our players, or our president to anything they don't want to be subjected to. And I'm completely in favor of that. It's our house.

• 44:49Pablo Torre?

  I know you are.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  You don't have the right to come into my house and violate my rules. By the way, if I tell you you can come to dinner, but you have to take your shoes off, if you want to keep your shoes on, no problem, you just can't come to dinner.

• 45:03Pablo Torre?

  What if I have also paid via taxes into the construction and the maintenance of your house?

• 45:09Speaker 04

  That is one of the great arguments of all time. I own part of this. It's like walking into McDonald's and saying, "I'm a season ticket holder. I want my Quarter Pounder made the way I want it made."

• 45:20Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so we are-

• 45:21Speaker 04

  It doesn't ma- it's not relevant.

• 45:23Pablo Torre?

  Okay, of course, we disagree on this. And of course, there is another episode, which we will do, about what is permissible because public money is involved, or not. What is permissible when the premise of a sports arena or a team involves some notion of like civic relations and civic duty?

• 45:41Speaker 04

  Pablo, we have agreements online. Go look online, Pablo. We have a thousand pages of agreements-

• 45:47Pablo Torre?

  You're saying that we all sign the terms of service?

• 45:48Speaker 04

  We have everything. Not one paragraph talks about, "Hey, we gotta make sure that you're not taking any looks at any of our citizens because of public money." They had the opportunity, the public did, if they wanted to negotiate some sort of protection to their citizens.

• 46:04Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  It never came up in one negotiation.

• 46:06Pablo Torre?

  And part of, I think, what our reporting is indicating is that perhaps there should be a conversation on the front end of such legislation, of such political decision-making, that is another episode, which we will get to, I promise, on this show, that is trying to investigate everything.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Good luck.

• 46:22Pablo Torre?

  And I appreciate that. In the most sincere and sarcastic ways. But I want to take us now to a statement from MSG because of course, part of what we do here journalistically is make sure that we get their point of view. And what they gave to us in response to Wired's reporting was the following statement. "This story is built on false, misleading, and unverified allegations, including claims drawn from lawsuits filed by rapacious litigators. We categorically reject such reckless reporting and are actively evaluating our legal options against Wired," end quote. I say that after you say all the things that you said because I think it's hilarious to deny the things-

• 46:57Speaker 04

  It really is funny.

• 46:58Pablo Torre?

  -as a larger matter of what's really happening in sports.

• 47:11Speaker 07

  State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  We'll have room for fried cookies.

• 47:16Speaker 07

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• 47:34Speaker 02

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• 47:42Speaker 03

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• 48:05Speaker 07

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 48:44Pablo Torre?

  Before we go, the question that I need to find out about today, as I hold my friends to account, is whether you ever took advantage of the knowledge you had of your own ballpark security system, the surveillance state, you were the watchful eye yourself. Did you ever know how to hide something inside of your own house?

• 49:04Speaker 04

  Floor three of one of the northern garages has a corner in it where it is not actually on camera, and I knew that. And so I would go to that corner in order to get away from anyone I needed to get away from, to make a phone call that I didn't want anyone to hear or to do anything I didn't want anyone to see that I would do. I knew about a corner if you leaned down. So I had to squat. But there's a blind spot on the third floor of a garage, which is the players garage. And if you lean down, that is a place that the cameras don't have.

• 49:36Pablo Torre?

  I will not rest until I find footage of you squatting out of sight.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  It doesn't exist. That's the point.

• 49:44Pablo Torre?

  Not with that attitude.

• 49:54Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tummenello. Studio engineering by RG Systems. Sound design by Andrew Bersick. Digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern. Theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

• 50:16Pablo Torre?

  And we'll talk to you next time.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 51:02Speaker 03

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• 51:25Speaker 07

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a health care plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.