On May 21, Rita and I attended a Rainy Day Books event promoting a new book, Big Fan: Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love.
As described on the book jacket, “New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: Baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars and more.”
Below, on stage at Unity on the Plaza, moderator Jason Kander (left) and the book’s co-authors Michael Schur (center) and Joe Posnanski.
The evening was a delight, which was no surprise to me since I am a devoted follower of the PosCast, a podcast that Mike and Joe have been doing for several years (available on all the usual suspect podcast platforms).
As they advertise, the PosCast delivers sports and nonsense. The sports talk is knowledgeable, insightful and opinionated. The nonsense is fun (and punctuated at the end of each show with Joe and Mike discussing “one last meaningless thing”). Their banter can sometimes feel like an episode of Cheers or Seinfeld or listening to the sportscasters on Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night (which ended way too soon, but Sorkin did okay with his next TV project, The West Wing).
One of the regular features on the PosCast is the holding of drafts where the hosts and their guests pick favorites from various categories (e.g., fruit, breakfast cereals, baseball books, uniform numbers, sandwiches, things everybody loves but we don’t, “We Are the World” singers. salty snacks, etc.). A regular annual feature is the holiday draft with several guests like Jason Kander drafting best holiday ornaments, songs, villains, gifts, cheer, etc.
At the beginning of each season, Joe and Mike predict how MLB teams will finish that year and guarantee (with tongue in cheek) they will be 99.44% accurate. Sounds high and suspiciously like the Ivory soap purity number (and it floats).
The PosCast is one reason I am a BIG FAN of Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur. Here are some more.
The Writing: Most Hot Stove readers are familiar with the writing of Joe Posnanski. When he joined the Kansas City Star in 1996, local sports fans soon realized we lucked out to have one of the best sportswriters in the country. Joe moved to Sports Illustrated in 2009 and then worked for a series of other sports publications before establishing his own blog, now platformed on Substack (subscribe here). He’s also written several best-selling books (more on that below).
Most Hot Stove readers are also familiar with the writing of Michael Schur, but they may not connect the name with the writing. Schur is a TV comedy writer who honed his writing skills at Saturday Night Live and The Office. He then started creating and co-creating his own shows, including Parks and Recreation (7 seasons), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (8 seasons), The Good Place (4 seasons) and A Man on the Inside (2 seasons and counting). He was also an executive producer of Hacks (5 seasons) which had its series finale last week.
The Joe and Mike Partnership: In 2005, three TV writers decided to “make each other laugh” and founded a website titled Fire Joe Morgan. They operated the blog under pseudonyms, and one of those was Ken Tremendous (a/k/a Michael Schur, then a writer for The Office). The website championed sabermetrics, and the three bloggers wrote pieces taking on broadcasters and sportswriters who they thought were missing the boat on analytics (“bad sports journalism”).
The site became very popular and was often referenced by other media. And there is a good chance it played a prominent role in nudging the sports establishment to accept the modernization of baseball analysis.
Joe Posnanski spotted a post on Fire Joe Morgan that was a takedown of a column by a friend of Joe’s. Joe thought the FJM post was accurate as well as being one of the funniest things he’d ever read. Joe emailed Ken Tremendous to tell him that and pleaded “PLEASE don’t ever do this to me.” As it turned out, Joe was safe. He was already a favorite of Michael Schur because Joe “wrote thoughtful, soulful, humane prose.” It also helped that Joe often wrote about the new methods of baseball analytics.
Ken Tremendous emailed back as Michael Schur, and the two struck up a friendship. Fire Joe Morgan ended in November of 2008. The next year, Parks and Recreation began its first season, and Joe Posnanski began writing for Sports Illustrated. In 2011, Joe and Mike aired their first PosCast.
“Ken Tremendous” lives on today as the handle for Schur’s Bluesky account. In addition to posting about sports, he ventures into politics (I am also his fan on that).
World Series Predictions: Joe wrote columns on the Royals from 1996 to 2011, the last couple of years overlapping with his work at Sports Illustrated. In those 16 seasons, he laments that the Royals had 15 losing seasons, four 100-loss seasons and six managers. Nonetheless, in March of 2011, Joe wrote an article in Sports Illustrated predicting the Royals would win the World Series in 2015. And they did. The cover after the Series win read “WORLD SERIES TITLE NO ONE SAW COMING.” An SI editor remembered Joe’s 2011 prediction and sent him a mock-up with a red cross-out so that it read “A WORLD SERIES TITLE ONE [JOE] SAW COMING.”
When the Royals won the Series in 2015, the Chicago Cubs were suffering their 108th year since last winning a Series (1908). But an episode of Parks and Recreation that ran that year provided hope for Cubs fans. It was set in the future, the summer of 2017, when characters in the show were walking down a Chicago street and one says, “And obviously, everyone’s in a really good mood now because of the Cubs winning the Series.” This meant that the 2015 episode predicted that the Cubs would win the Series in 2016. And they did. Click here for a clip from the episode.
It was not pure luck. Both Joe and Mike were making informed predictions. Joe was impressed with some upcoming stars (like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas) and the strategy of Royals GM Dayton Moore. Mike, a big Red Sox fan, thought the Cubs team building was similar to his 2004 Red Sox who won the Series for their first time since 1918.
Hamilton: Another reason I like Joe and Mike is that they often are fans of what I like. A good example is the Broadway musical Hamilton. All three of us wrote about it 10 years ago.
In 2016, Joe took his teenage daughter Elizabeth to see Hamilton and wrote one of the best things I have read on the show. His piece went viral and prompted a tweet from Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Sobbing reading this in my dressing room after a long week. Thanks Joe. Thanks Elizabeth.” A year after his first post, Joe did a tear-jerker about how he and Elizabeth almost missed Hamilton because of her bout with Crohn’s disease.
Michael Schur’s piece on Hamilton (under his pen name of Ken Tremendous) spoke of finding a moment in the show that overwhelms you. The moment when the enormity, the complexity of, the entirety of it overpowers you. He saw Hamilton three times, and the moment came at different times. One of those was three minutes in “when the entire cast of the show, in a piece of choreography that can best referred to as ‘badass,’ all walk down to the very front of the stage…and they are every size and ethnicity and gender, and their voices are loud, and I thought to myself, oh my God, this is a cast of people descended from every nation on Earth, all singing the foundations of the American experience.”
Schur admits to “humblebragging” about seeing Hamilton three times. So, I take that as permission to say I’ve seen it four times, twice with the original cast in New York plus the road shows in Chicago and San Francisco. Rita has the true bragging rights with five, adding an extra in Chicago with her St. Teresa’s high school girlfriends. Our experiences are archived at the Hamilton link on the Lonnie’s Jukebox website.
[Broadway Musical Trivia: Jason Kander, the moderator for the Rainy Day event, is the grandnephew of John Kander who with songwriting partner Fred Ebb wrote the songs for the stage musicals Cabaret and Chicago (and a lot of other stuff, like New York, New York, most famously sung by Frank Sinatra).]
Mockumentaries: One of my all-time favorite movies is This Is Spinal Tap (1984). When I run a search in the Hot Stove archives, I get 12 hits, many of them related to the great scene on turning it up to 11 (clip here).
Joe Posnanski on Spinal Tap: “Funniest movie ever made…I’ve seen that movie so many times and I never ever tire of it, and I quote it all the time.”
In Big Fan, Mike mentions his fear of getting lost in the bowels of Dodger Stadium, reminding him of Spinal Tap in Cleveland (clip here).
Spinal Tap is a “mocumentary,” a film or TV program that is fictional, but presented as a documentary.
Two of the best TV mockumentaries of all time: The Office and Parks and Recreation.
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM): Joe Posnanski is a long-time cheerleader for the museum. When he and Mike started raising funds for charity on the PosCast, their inaugural charity selection was the museum. Joe’s interest in the Negro Leagues is best captured in…
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America (2007): In any listing of best baseball books, this one is often toward the top. Joe spent much of the 2005 baseball season touring the country with former Negro Leaguer Buck O’Neil. NLBM president Bob Kendrick was along for several stops on the road trip.
While Joe traveled the country with Buck, music followed them. Jazz of course, but also whatever might come up on the radio or from a street musician. Johnny Cash, the Beatles, 50 Cent, gospel, etc. One day Buck was signing autographs and tapping his toe to Billy Joel’s “My Life,” which was playing on a speaker nearby.
Buck: “I like this.”
Joe: “Billy Joel isn’t exactly jazz.”
Buck: “It’s all jazz.”
Buck knew how to uncover joy. Make people feel more positive about life. The relentless optimist. Joe obviously loved the attitude. When signing copies of the book, Joe quotes Buck…
The Baseball 100 (2021): Sorry to use a cliché, but Joe hit a grand slam with this book. From Goodreads: “A magnum opus…an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of 100 greatest players in history.”
Customers ordering from Rainy Day were given the opportunity to ask for a specific inscription, and Rita and I asked for this: “To Rita and Lonnie and all their Hot Stove subscribers.” When we opened our book, we saw that Joe did a bit more, adding “…including me.” Joe is indeed a Hot Stove subscriber via our mutual friend Adam Sachs. I doubt Joe has time to read my musings, but it was nice of him to add this.
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question (2022): Rita and I loved The Good Place which ran from 2016 to 2021. It was a sitcom mixed with cool plot twists and lessons on moral philosophy. Creator Michael Schur studied moral philosophy in preparation for the show and followed up his show with this book.
As Joe Posnanski had done, Mike signed stacks of books in the Rainy Day basement, including any requested inscription. Joe sat in on the signing and was rewarded with Covid. Rita and I were rewarded with the inscription we requested:
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments (2023): The prolific Posnanski released another baseball book in 2023.
Michael Schur came to the Rainy Day event in Kansas City to interview Joe on the book.
Again, those preordering from Rainy Day could ask for a specific inscription. Since Joe predicted four years ahead that the Royals would win the 2015 World Series, I asked him to make the same prediction for four years ahead of 2027. I also asked for, and received, an Ivory soap guarantee. The Royals are now on the clock to win it all next year.
Joe and Mike – Storytellers: Joe does it with sportswriting, Mike with screenwriting. They are superb at storytelling. And they are funny. As co-authors of a book, they are a blast.
The idea for the book came when Mike watched a video of a darts championship in London. The stoic players methodically threw their darts while thousands of fans went wild. You must watch (click here; 1:34). Mike also noticed that a good portion of the beer-splashing crowd was in costume (Harry Potter, Batman, dinosaurs, fruits/vegetables, traffic cones, etc.). He felt the urge to investigate them and the concept of fandom. He knew he had to do it with Joe who quickly agreed.
The co-authors (with some input from a “fandom” professor) came up with four reasons why people become fans.
1. Life Is Boring, and Sports Provides Entertainment: There are many types of entertainment, but watching a game has an added factor: We don’t know the ending. Sports is more than fun, it’s thrilling. We risk our happiness on an honest competitive outcome. You will be sad if your team loses, but that’s part of the bargain in exchange for the celebration of winning.
2. Life Is Chaotic, and Sports Provides Order: Joe lists what he means by this. The NFL playoffs in January; the Super Bowl in February; March Madness; baseball in April; Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May; and onward through the year.
3. Life Is Lonely, and Sports Provides Community: I’ll let a photo speak for this one. Roy Inman’s shot taken from the roof of Kansas City’s Union Station during the 2015 World Series celebration.
4. Life Is Uniform, and Sports Provides an Opportunity for Individuality: Michael Schur watched the 1998 World Cup on TV with a friend who was a serious soccer fan (a rarity in 1998 America). Schur decided he also would become a soccer fan and picked Liverpool as his club team in the Premier League. He was now rooting for a team on the fringe of (or completely outside) his social group’s dominant tastes. He wears the hat and jersey. He knows the team anthem is sung by a Liverpool rock band (no, not the Beatles, but Gerry and the Pacemakers cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”). For one of the chapters in Big Fan, Mike and Joe crossed the ocean to watch a Liverpool game at Anfield.
Our across-the-hall condo neighbors Jill and Leland Shurin have a similar story. Jill became interested in soccer after watching England win the 1966 World Cup, and Leland also came on board. Their son Jared has lived in London for the last 20 years, and he and his friends became Arsenal fans. Jill and Leland joined in. In those 20 years of fandom, Arsenal never won a Premier League championship…until this season. Arsenal also made it to the final in the UEFA Champions League (all of Europe), which was played this past Saturday. Below, Leland and Jill leaving our building to go watch the game at Johnny’s Tavern in the Power & Light District.
Johnny’s Tavern was crammed with Arsenal fans (video here). Alas, Arsenal lost to the favored PSG (Paris Saint-Germain), but Leland and Jill’s fandom was rewarded with a great season.
Small World Trivia: When Joe Posnanski was in London in 2024 promoting Why We Love Baseball, he reported in JoeBlogs that he had met his “new pal Jared Shurin, who is head of marketing campaigns and strategic communications for the mayor of London. Jared has been working in London for a couple of decades, but he’s from Kansas City, and he’s invested in (1) Looking to see if baseball can make inroads in London; and (2) Finding actual Kansas City barbecue in London. I would think that with the popularity of ‘Ted Lasso’ that (2) would have happened by now. Apparently not.” Yes, the same Jared Shurin who introduced his parents to Arsenal.
Joe was prescient on the Ted Lasso comment. Season 4 premieres on August 5, and the first episode begins in Kansas City where one of the filming locations was Gates Bar-B-Q (Teaser for Season 4 here). Show creator Jason Sudeikis (a/k/a Ted Lasso) was in Kansas City this past weekend for the annual Big Slick fundraiser for Children’s Mercy, and three bidders combined to donate $360,000 to attend the Ted Lasso premier. Total for the night was $4.2 million.
Buy the Book: You’ll love it. I guarantee it (99.44%).
And if you would like a signed copy, head over to Rainy Day Books where some are still available.
Coming Next from Joe and Mike: Michael Schur is premiering a new sitcom, Dig, on Peacock in November. His co-creator and star in the show is Amy Poehler who was the lead in Mike’s Parks and Recreation. The show is based on the 2023 novel Excavations and features four women archaeologists working on an excavation site in Greece. Hugh Laurie, my favorite doctor character (House), is in the cast as a British professor
I’ll have to say prolific again. Joe will release a new baseball book, Fifty Seasons, on February 2, 2027.
Per his publisher: Joe Posnanski is the go-to writer in sports, and Fifty Seasons delivers a joyful, stirring look at baseball moments and miracles that often don’t make it into lists of best players or teams. In this new book, Joe shares the greatest seasons in the history of the sport, across players and teams, from amateurs to the most glorious single seasons the game has known.
Lonnie’s Jukebox – Joe and Mike Edition: Although Big Fan is primarily about sports, Joe and Mike cover some other realms of fandom. Music is a big one, ranging from Mike hating Steely Dan and Joe and Mike loving Taylor Swift. Joe and Mike took their teenage daughters to the New Eras tour, Joe in KC and Mike in LA. From Big Fan: “Swifties fandom goes beyond just the pure joy of a concert or the hyped-up energy of ‘Shake it Off.’ She has shaped and continues to shape a generation. So, we turned to the biggest fans we know – our daughters – and asked them to write this chapter on what Taylor Swift means to them.”
“Never Grow Up” by Taylor Swift. In Katie Posnanski’s piece in Big Fan, she wrote how this song was a special moment in the concert. She was preparing to leave for college, and this song resonated as she swayed and sang along with her parents. Taylor: “Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up/Don’t you ever grow up/Just stay this little.” Katie: “There might have been a few tears. Dad will deny it. Mom and I will admit it, though.” For Joe’s moving blog post on the concert, click here.
“Shake It Off” and “Better Than Revenge” by Taylor Swift. Ivy Schur wrote of how her admiration for Tayor grew along with her age, starting with her infatuation with “Shake It Off” as an eight-year-old and “Better Than Revenge” becoming her anthem at ten.
Some Joe songs…
“Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Joe is a BIG FAN of Bruce Springsteen. In a blog post in 2017, Joe used verses from this song to tell his story of turning 50 (“Turning 50 and the Boss”).
“Out In the Street” by Bruce Springsteen. “Put on your best dress baby/And darlin’, fix your hair up right/’Cause there’s a party honey/Way down beneath the neon lights.”
“Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino. This might not seem like a natural for Joe. It was released in 1956, 11 years before Joe was born. But I found it on Joe’s list of “282 Happy Songs” (blog post here). He also includes songs from Sam Cooke, Buddy Holly and Ray Charles, all favorites from my high school days in the 1950s. You can listen to all 282 at this link on Spotify.
“Ain’t Even Done with the Night” by John Mellencamp. In a cool piece of writing about Roberto Clemente, Joe told of songs that open his memories and transport him back in time.
Some Mike songs…
Mike is a BIG FAN of Tom Petty and wrote a lovely tribute when Petty died in 2017. When a Parks and Recreation episode needed a song to score an important moment, a Tom Petty song was chosen. Three Petty songs marked some big milestones for Amy Poehler’s character (Leslie Knope): “American Girl” (her biggest career project), “Wildflowers” (when she said goodbye to her best friend), and “End of the Line” (when the show ended).
“We Can Work It Out” by Stevie Wonder. Mike lists this Beatles cover as a favorite in Big Fan.
“Life in Seven Songs” is a podcast where Michael Schur discusses the seven songs that influenced his creative path. They include “A Day In the Life” by the Beatles and “gold rush” by Taylor Swift (all seven on his Spotify setlist here).
Some Joe, Mike and Lonnie songs…
“Alexander Hamilton” and “The Room Where It Happens” by the original Broadway cast.
Walk-Off Photo: Joe, Mike and Jason with the crowd at the Rainy Day Books event. In the third row back on the left are Jill and Leland Shurin.
