We made it to book announcement day! I have been teasing this for what feels like 15 years, and now, finally, I can tell you all about this book I’ve been pouring my life into over the last couple of years. This one is special.
My new book is called BIG FAN.
It is, as the title suggests, a book about fandom.
Well, I hope that it’s about even more than that. This is a book about loving stuff
MIKE
Hi everyone.
JOE
Wait. Is that Peabody Award-winning television writer Michael Schur? What are you doing here?
MIKE
That’s right, Joe. It’s Peabody Award-winning television writer Mike Schur. I am pulling a hilarious prank on Joe, because he has been teasing his new book for like six months, and I have waited patiently, lurking in the shadows, plotting and planning, and now, at the moment Joe is finally announcing his new book, I am jumping in to usurp his throne and steal his mojo and announce MY new book!
JOE
Your new book? That feels hostile! I’ve been carefully planning this book announcement and now …
MIKE
That’s right. I also have a new book, and it’s way better than Joe’s book, and when this announcement is done, everyone is going to want to buy my book instead of yours! Hahahahaha Joe, you never suspected I would do this, you fool!
JOE
That’s so strange that Mike can just jump into a JoeBlogs post anytime he wants. I don’t remember granting him that access. But I guess I did. That’s what you do for co-authors.
Wait! What? Co-author? Did I write a book called BIG FAN with Michael Schur?
MIKE
Okay, yeah, fine, it’s the same book. We wrote a book together.
JOE
Covers don’t lie.
Yep! Mike and I wrote a book together called BIG FAN: Two Friends, 81,589 miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love. That’s us in a red Mustang convertible driving through Wile E. Coyote’s desert holding up foam No. 1 fingers while all sorts of stuff flies out the back. This represents exactly how we reported this book.
And BIG FAN is available for preorder right now! More on that in a bit.
First, let’s tell you about the book.
MIKE
One day, several years ago now, I watched that amazing video of the World Darts Championship in London. You’ve seen it, right? We’ve all seen it (If you haven’t seen it, you should go watch it right now. I’ll wait).
JOE
I’d seen it. And loved it, of course. Here’s the usual reaction to that video: “Huh, that was wild, I better get back to work and, oh, wait, there’s that Crazy Frog Axel F video!”
Mike’s reaction was to call me.
“Hello,” I said.
MIKE
“Why did you say ‘Hello, like you didn’t know it was me,” I said. This is a weird thing that Joe always did when I called him. He answered and said “Hello?” As if it was 1977 and all of our phones didn’t have a screen that announced who’s calling. So this time I decided to ask him: “Why do you say ‘Hello?’ as if you don’t know it’s me?”
JOE
Yes, Mike phone-shamed me … now when he calls, I answer “Hi, buddy.” This seems to satisfy him.
MIKE
“I think we should write a book about fandom,” I said. “I want to go to a whole bunch of sporting events all around the country and maybe the world, like the World Darts Championship in London, and write a book where we think about fandom and try to figure out why lunatics like us are so intense about sports and why our hearts beat so fast when we watch them, about what it means to love something and be passionate about it and live and die with the results of events over which we have no control, and I want to try to figure out if all fans are essentially the same or whether there are differences, and what those differences are, and I want to get to the bottom of why people all over the world have devoted some or all of their lives to loving sports and music and whatever else they love.”
JOE
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds good.”
MIKE
So that’s what we did.
JOE
According to Google AI, it is approximately 24,901 miles around the world at the equator, and there are also three Bs in blueberry. So you know you’re getting the best information.
But assuming that Google AI is correct about the circumference of the Earth, Mike and I traveled 3.27 times the circumference of the Earth to do exactly what he talked about on that first call — we went to all sorts of crazy events (sports and otherwise) to learn about what it means to be a fan. To understand our own fan insanity. To see why loving stuff bonds us at a time when so little else does.
Where did we go? Well, I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s fair to say we had lots of adventures. LOTS of adventures. The book is 35 chapters filled with adventures. We did go to the World Darts Championship. We also went to a world-class chess tournament, a hockey game in Montreal, Wrestlemania, the Indigenous Stickball World Series, a Premier League soccer match, numerous baseball games, Olympic basketball, the National Sports Card convention, a pickleball tournament, an ice-skating rink, and, most obviously, a Buffalo Wild Wings in Dallas.
Along the way, we were joined by a whole bunch of special guest stars, too.
MIKE
We have spent the last 18 months or so zipping around North America and parts of Europe, meeting with fans and talking to fans and attending sporting events and interrogating ourselves about why these things make us so happy and sad and joyous and miserable, and why they have their hooks in us so deeply we cannot imagine living a life without them.
And then, we wrote down everything we discovered and observed, and the book will come out on May 19, and you can pre-order it right now.
JOE
Yep. You can preorder BIG FAN from wherever you buy books — it is online everywhere this morning (some of you sleuthy Brilliant Readers noticed that it was online before today, but it was mostly hidden).
But we also want to offer a personal experience for Brilliant Readers and PosCast listeners, and anyone else who is actually a fan of ours. In that spirit, we’re working with wonderful folks at Joseph Beth in Cincinnati on a special deal — preorder through their link and you will get a copy of the book signed by both of us.
BUT in addition to that, we’re going to do something inspired by parallel sports cards (one of our favorite chapters in the book revolves around collecting). We are going to randomly sign some books with special inscriptions, unique quotes, inside jokes, etc. Maybe we’ll get Mike to write “Deep down, I admire the Yankees.” We might even bring in some of our friends so, who knows, you might get a 1/1 book with a Nick Offerman signature or an Ellen Adair little pencil sketch, or Jason Kander’s up-to-the-minute OPS from his men’s adult wood bat league.
MIKE
Kander’s OPS will bring down the value of the book. And that Yankees thing will never happen.
JOE
So that’s the announcement! There’s so much more to say — so many ridiculous and wonderful surprises in this book — but there’s time for all that. For now, here’s that preorder link one more time or you can grab a copy from a book-buying station near you.
