Episode 75 -- The Bad News Bears

We've got a real barn burner this episode.  We talk about our fantasy football league -- especially topical now that football season is over.  Thankfully that's it for the football talk, as we end up discussing the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals, which has NOTHING TO DO WITH FOOTBALL AT ALL WHATSOEVER.

This week Tom and Josh discuss pranks -- including Josh pulling his own prank by not using his recording mic for this episode.  While we start talking personal stuff, we spend most of our time talking about MLB pranks.  We go over some of the old standards and tell one another about some more elaborate pranks that we came across.  This is a fun, if a bit of a dumb one.

This week Josh tells Tom about Glenn Burke and Billy Bean (not the one you're thinking of) who were two baseball players who after their playing days came out as gay.  Both had very rough stories for very different reasons -- none of which had to do with them being mediocre players or Burke creating the high five (seriously).  While we make a couple of jokes, we will warn you that this does get a bit heavy, but if we're a baseball history podcast, then it's a story to cover.

Welcome to episode 75, where we finally get to Rickey Henderson... just kidding, we're covering the 1976 classic The Bad News Bears, not to ever be mistaken with the 2000's era Billy Bob Thornton-era cluster****.  Walter Matthau pulls together a scrappy group of child rejects to SoCal Little League greatness.  We admire the hardcore 70's nature of the movie, the wide variety of cheap beer, and are touched by the fact that it's an actual movie with an actual plot.  Enjoy it with us!

We talk Boggs, we talk the Rocket, we talk the curse, and we talk Buckner.  This week Tom tells Josh about the 1986 Boston Red Sox, including the history of the franchise leading into this season, how they built a contender, and how they fell just short in the most agonizing way possible.  Join us.

Apologies for ending 2022 with a fizzle -- between the holidays and other stuff in real life, we didn't post any new episodes, but we'll make it up for you in 2023! We discuss Nolan Ryan and Bo Jackson a bit more before launching into the meat of today's episode on the history of the minor leagues.  Over time the minors have gotten more standardized and smaller.  This episode was also recorded as the news broke of the MLB Players Association deciding to allow minor leaguers to join... so we kinda blew that one by not posting episodes forever. Though we do discuss some fun moments of the history, talk about fun team names, and some of the records set in MiLB history.  Join us.

Tom and Josh draft their 1990's all-decade teams, exercise veto powers for the first time, Tom jumps all over Pedro Martinez for the umpteenth time, but does Josh figure out Pedro this time?  Let's find out...

In this episode Josh tells Tom about 'dem Bums, the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, first going through the sad-sack history of the team until that point -- including a discussion of their many questionable team names. Tom's dog Dalton makes an overdue cameo. The famed Boys of Summer finally put it together this season, and got past their crosstown rival Giants (who had taken them down previously via the Shot Heard Round the World) and the Final Boss of 1950's baseball -- the also-crosstown New York Yankees, who had defeated the Dodgers in the World Series the past five times they had made it. Join us to talk 'dem Bums.

As elder millenials, Josh and Tom decided to watch the movie rather than read the book, and that's what we did with the 2011 Bennett Miller / Aaron Sorkin movie Moneyball.  It was based on a 2003 book by Michael Lewis about the 2002 Oakland Athletics.  We dig into the movie a bit, we nitpick the baseball details because we're a baseball podcast.  Though we do call out important details they got right, like the Royals' horrifying 2002 uniforms.  Also, some dude named Brad Pitt was involved. Never heard of him, though.

Following up last week's episode with our own take on Bo Jackson, we welcome sports journalist and bestselling author Jeff Pearlman to discuss his new book The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson.  Jeff tells us about some of his favorite Bo stories, how people are so willing to talk about their heroes and brushes with a legend like Bo.  We also cover a few of the other topics he's covered over the years as well like the 86 Mets, Lyman Bostock and others. If you'd like to purchase The Last Folk Hero, it's now available for purchase at the publisher's website or from your local or online bookseller.