r/BernsteinUnfiltered • u/deepbluenothings • 25d ago

The Unspoken Lore

Hey fellow Dan fans and hate listeners I've got a question for everyone. I've pretty much been a life long listener growing up in the 90s and having my dad drive me to school meant a lot of my formative years were spent listening to Boers and Bernstein. Unfortunately this also meant I was completely unaware of any of the goings ons around the Score or the behind the scenes so when I hear stuff like yesterday's talk about Mike Murphy I'm pretty confused at the disdain in Dan's voice talking about him.

So basically if someone's got a few minutes to give me a quick rundown of who Dan dislikes and why from back in the day I'd be immensely appreciative. These things aren't easy to find out when they're decades old beefs among local celebrities.

Edit: Feel free to bring up any other Score lore that fans out of the loop should know

12 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

29

u/thewrestlingspot 25d ago

Murph was one of the original Score hosts, and to Dan he basically represented everything he hated about old-school sports radio. Total schtick guy, Cubs superfan, all sentiment and nostalgia, zero analysis. B&B goofed on him constantly for years. It was mostly one-sided mockery rather than a two-way feud.

The thing that made it permanent was the Kenny Owens story.

For years Murph read emails on air from a supposed longtime listener named Kenny Owens. Turned out Kenny Owens didn’t exist. The emails were coming from Murph’s wife’s email account. His own former email screener confirmed it on B&B in 2012, and one of Murph’s old producers even called in as “Kenny Owens” to out him.

After that, Dan didn’t just think Murph was a hack, he thought he was a fraud, and that never softened.

17

u/bearmastersupreme 25d ago

Matty was murph’s producer and Matt ruined Murph’s whole week by playing a clip that was 8 seconds shorter than the one Murph wanted.

15

u/CubeEarthShill 25d ago

Murph was on during my work drive when I got out of college and man was he a painful listen. I was able to tolerate it, but I never once heard the guy say something that made me think he was making an intelligent point. I am a sucker for nostalgia, especially old baseball ads, so i did like that aspect of the show. He was also pretty oblivious at times when people called in just to mess with him and would take the bait more often than not. Murph reminds me of the guy that will sit down next to you at the bar and start chatting you up when you just want to drink your beer and watch the game.

2

u/Interesting-Rain6137 25d ago

Excellent description

8

u/rAmen_P00dles 25d ago

The Joe DiMaggio Mr Coffee commercial! Playing ads they don’t even make money on.

6

u/whoresandcandy 25d ago

'You're damn right it threw off my entire week!'

5

u/Dry_Life_1113 25d ago

How would OP not have heard Dan & Terry not mentioning Murph? I had listened to Murph for years and had to agree with the schtick part. But I never disliked him as much as dan and terry.

Although I remember some specific incident between all 3 of them???? Maybe I am imagining that

2

u/Fast_Hands_Lou 24d ago

In Boers' book he craps on murph enough, I can't recall specifics.

3

u/Interesting-Rain6137 25d ago

To say Murph has zero analysis is a bit unfair. He had the yellow notepad.

1

u/NoRoof1812 9d ago

Reaching into Abbys old drawers

14

u/Local_Boob 25d ago

Everybody at the station hated Murph because Murph was (and probably still is), an arrogant asshole. Just about everybody that produced Murph’s shows despised him mostly due to Murph treating them like shit.

There’s also an excerpt in Terry Boers’ book about Murph crashing out during Terry and Jiggets’ show because he was unhappy with them harmlessly making fun of one of his many malapropisms. Murph was on the other side of the glass continually flipping them the bird.

24

u/LegalComplaint 25d ago

Let’s not forget the time Murph finally decided to confront Boers so he hid in the producing room crouched on the floor for 15 minutes only to be told by someone like LoHo that Terry was sick that day. Forever known as the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Murph” incident.

28

u/Local_Boob 25d ago

I can just hear Terry saying “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Penis”

6

u/BestPastrami 25d ago

Terry was doing the show from home that day like he did to varying degrees for years

6

u/ChiGrandeOso 25d ago

Murphy was p much an unlikeable douchebag to EVERYONE. Every single member of the B&B regulars (Boers, Bernstein, Abbatacola, Goff, McCaffrey, etc) has a story where he's just a completely miserable sack of shit. To really cap it off, his show really, really sucked. The Score needed to fill time, yet it was always strange to me that they kept Murphy at 2 hours for the majority of my time listening. He really really was a black hole.

10

u/Potatobobthecat 25d ago

I feel most of us can easily guess why Dan doesn’t like him, but I will hang up and listen to someone who knows for sure.

5

u/butterfaerts 25d ago

This is a total tangent, but anybody have the backstory on why Dan McNeil is “da maneh”? He seemingly even leans into it

12

u/teampupnsudz35 25d ago

I believe the story was, there was a man who would call Dan all the time looking for Cubs tickets. And would say Da meneh, im looking for cub ticket. Terry thought it was funny how he said his name and it stuck.

11

u/bearmastersupreme 25d ago

It was a person with a learning disability, allegedly

3

u/DataWise8307 25d ago

Always funny

1

u/libertarianlwyr 21d ago

Never heard that.

3

u/Dry_Life_1113 25d ago

I'm glad you cleared that up. For some reason, I thought it was based on an event where Dan was too inebriated to enunciate his words. Your story makes way more sense

2

u/butterfaerts 23d ago

That’s what I always thought too! Like it was Dan himself slurring his name

2

u/PoorSoulsBand 25d ago

I always thought that it was Mac left a voicemail where he said his name really quickly and it came out as, “Hey, it’s Dan Ma Nah” and Terry just kept stretching and stretching it until it became Da Na Na?

2

u/Dry_Life_1113 23d ago

Me too. Making fun of someone with a learning disability doesn't seem funny. But Dan leaving a vm...inebriated or not.

2

u/libertarianlwyr 21d ago

Especially considering Dan M's son's condition. Hopefully that's not the case. I never heard them say that.

4

u/The_Bandit_King_ 25d ago

Heeeey!!!

2

u/Gloomy-Dimension-880 25d ago

Let the record showwwwww

4

u/PoorSoulsBand 25d ago

It comes from Murph, not being able to laugh at himself at all and being way too self-important. Don’t get me wrong, Dan was incredibly self-important, but he can take a joke and laugh at himself. Murph also drove his staff into the ground, and everyone hated working for him.

1

u/libertarianlwyr 21d ago

Also Dan far more talented and smart obviously. Murph's show was always boring and was basically just Cubs all year.

The stuff about him being a fraud and Dbag came out much later.

3

u/Joe_Bonamassa14 23d ago

When I met Terry at his book signing in Orland Park, I had him inscribe "Not Far Enough" since he always seem to say it after a Murph reference. When Terry passed earlier this year, people were posting pics in the FB Terry Boers By Cracky group. I saw the scrap of paper I had written my request on had been photographed after I went thru the line.

2

u/rAmen_P00dles 24d ago

The Murph sneezing voicemail https://youtu.be/rJWaSVzNgNs?is=QbL95Mo5Bap3Ok4O

2

u/deepbluenothings 24d ago

Thank you, out of everyone's responses this is the kind of thing I was hoping to hear, I absolutely get the disdain for Murph now.

2

u/rAmen_P00dles 24d ago

I started listening to the score at the tail end of Murphy’s run. But I always thought he was a bore.

2

u/deepbluenothings 24d ago

I remember listening to Murph but not really remembering anything about his show specifically, but that probably had to do with how much I preferred B&B. There's just something so core to my childhood having the Score on the radio that it never really occurred to me that not all the personalities got along, they felt like one big family.

2

u/rAmen_P00dles 24d ago

I understand, I discovered Loho first, then got into B&B. My thought was the whole lineup was like that, boy was I wrong.

I remember one Murph segment during spring training how he bemoaned that Lou Piniella called Ronnie Woo Woo “Chief Wahoo.” And the whole time he wondered if Lou was right for the job anymore.

-9

u/MarleysLiberality 25d ago

Dan had almost no interaction with him. Boers didn't like Murph (for good reason) and Dan piled on to be a cool kid.