I have known 97.1 The Freak host Jeff Cavanaugh for a long time, and I am better for it. He is very smart, very nice, and very funny, and he has done some damn good Cowboys writing for us on occasion (and hopefully will again down the road).
I can also say with some degree of familiarity that our dear Jeffrey is a bit of a wild card, which begins to explain why he got a Rangers tattoo on his ass following Texas’ improbable World Series victory.
To begin to understand why he did this, one must travel back to earlier in the Rangers playoff run when, after Texas swept Baltimore in the American League Division Series, manager Bruce Bochy asked a simple question: “Hedgie, what’s the number on your ass right now?”
“Hedgie” is Austin Hedges, the Rangers’ backup catcher, who apparently was tallying the number of remaining wins to secure the World series on his rump.
That inspired Jeff to make a proclamation of his own on air: “If the Rangers win it all, I’ll get a tattoo with the number zero on my ass!”
And, being a man of his word, he followed through earlier this week, when he got a zero along with the Rangers logo inked onto his behind live on air during The Speakeasy, the drivetime show he hosts with Mike Rhyner and Julie Dobbs. (You can watch video of it here, should you be so inclined.) And it has gotten a whole bunch of national attention, too.
None of that, however, is close to a sufficiently full explanation for why a grown man tattoos a baseball team’s logo on his buttox live on the radio, which is why I got on the phone with him last night to ask a whole bunch of questions about it. Believe it or not, there’s something deeper in play, too.
Let’s start at the beginning. What exactly made you think, ‘Yeah, this is a thing that I am comfortable putting on the line and forcing myself to do if the improbable happens?’
Nothing. It was a throwaway comment that I thought maybe someone would giggle at, but I forgot that on our show, we all kind of follow the same rule, which is if somebody screws up, if somebody says something dumb, even mispronounces a word, we stop the show to make sure we draw attention to it. So it really was kind of a throwaway, where it’s like, yeah, I’ll tattoo the zero on my butt if they get to zero wins left. Then Julie stopped the show and was like ‘Hold on.’
After they won the World Series, I knew it was actually going to happen. It was [Rangers manager Bruce Bochy] in the locker room after the ALDS when we realized they were counting down the wins on Hedgie’s bum bum, so they had to beat the Astros and at that point I was sure the Phillies were going to beat the D-Backs, so when I was pressed on it, I was kind of like ‘You know what? They’re not going to win the World Series. So, sure, yeah I will!’
And then they did.
Before we get to that, when you’re getting pressed on this by Julie, what percentage chance did you really think they were going to win the World Series?
This may just be the way my brain works—it defaults to negative—but I didn’t want them to play the Astros. I feared the Astros. The Astro fans are jerks online, and I was like, ‘Damn it, we’re going to play the Astros, the Astros are going to beat us, and we’re going to have to hear that crap.’ So I’d say it was, I don’t know, a 40 percent chance they beat the Astros. I was pretty darn sure the Phillies were going to beat the D-Backs, and so even if the Rangers beat the Astros, I was pretty sure the Phillies were going to beat the Rangers.
So that puts me below 25 percent, right?
Something like that. We’re not math people, but that sounds about right.
OK, so I thought there was maybe a 15 to 20 percent chance to win, and I thought there might be a chance people would forget. But that didn’t happen, either.
How soon after they won the World Series and Josh Sborz spiked his glove did you realize ‘Oh, shit, I have to do this now’?
I don’t think I knew until Thursday when we went on the air, and I was reminded, and I went ‘Oh. Oh, yeah.’ But at that point, I was in on it. This is going to be way too deep for an article about a tattoo on your butt, but I’m a therapy and a mental health guy. And initially, getting into radio, I can recognize that 10 years ago, I literally would do anything to try to get people to like me or get attention or whatever. So now I have a Rangers tattoo on my butt, and a part of my brain is like, wait, are you doing that thing that isn’t really like a healthy thing? And this one, I actually stopped and thought about that. Because I think in real life, I think you can pull the cord on something like this and you would catch crap for it, but ultimately, if I really cared that much not to, I could have gotten out of it.
So I actually did spend time thinking about that. Am I actually OK with what I’m doing, or is this the ‘Hey, look at me!’ And I also have no tattoos. And I thought, you know what, it’s not what it used to be where I was like, ‘Hey, if we have a station event, guess who’s going to be the drunkest and having the most fun with fans and talking on the microphone?’ That was Jeff. This one, I thought about it, and it was like, no, this was a sober decision and claim on air.
And because it’s also a tattoo in a spot that in my real, personal life, there will be very few people who ever see it, and if they do, at least it comes with a funny backstory, and it is my favorite sports team–I’m fine. I’m good with it.
So the big day comes. You’ve never gotten a tattoo. What was your mindset when you had to get inked up on air?
I was nervous, but I wasn’t nervous about ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to hurt,’ or ‘Oh my goodness, I’m going to regret this.’ I was nervous about, it’s going to start right when we go on the air, she’s going to begin to tattoo my butt, and we don’t have an actual setup for this, so I found a plastic table that you wouldn’t be comfortable putting your full bodyweight on. I’m leaning on it in a real weird way that’s uncomfortable for my pelvis and my legs, and we’re doing a radio show, so if I’m laying there quiet, that would be weird.
That’s what my brain does, it’s the anxiety of ‘OK, but you also have to work.’ So I’m laying on a table and I’ve got the mic pulled down and my head turned to the side. How is this going to go on air? Is the show going to suck today because I suck at radio because I’m getting stabbed repeatedly in my butt? That was my worry. I wasn’t worried about the pain of it or anything like that, although I will tell you, it stings.
So I’ve heard—I don’t have any, either. But it all worked out! It was good! Which compels me to ask, is this the dumbest thing you’ve ever done on air?
Oh, great question. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve done on air of that I can think of right this second. Years and years ago, I was on very late at night, and I won’t say that we didn’t “stop by the store” before the last hour or two of broadcast sometimes. But, no, I can’t think of anything dumber than getting an ass tattoo during a radio show.
Final question: will this increase or decrease your chances of future dumb bets?
This will probably not affect that in any way, shape, or form. I will, however, if I’m thinking about making a claim that involves something that’s permanent, I’ll want to make sure I feel way better about my odds. And in this case, technically, I won, because the team I wanted to win won.
Yeah! This is a good thing.
I don’t think I’ll claim anything that will involve the permanent addition or subtraction of anything to my body without being considerably more confident.
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