PosCast Plus: An All-Fruit Team!

Welcome to PosCast Plus, a newsletter for those uniques who listen to The PosCast — the endlessly nonsensical podcast hosted by Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski — and think to themselves, “This is fine and utterly pointless, but what I really want is more meaninglessness. Where can I get more meaninglessness?”

If you would like to get PosCast Plus, all you have to do is sign up here for Joe Blogs as either a paid (yay!) or free subscriber. After signing up, PosCast Plus will appear in your email or RSS feed when you least expect or want it.

Oh, and hey, to celebrate the launch of PosCast Plus, I am offering a special deal — 20% off an annual subscription. There will be a couple of special “perks” for paid subscribers that I will mention at the bottom. I put “perks” in quotations for all the obvious reasons.

Now to the nonsense …

Unofficial Nicknames

A few weeks ago, we on the PosCast heroically took on the quest of giving every team in baseball sort of second name, something we call their “unofficial nickname.” Mike looked around the league and realized that there are quite a few teams around baseball who already have them. These might include:

Los Angeles Angels — Halos
New York Yankees — Bombers or Bronx Bombers
Chicago White Sox — Pale Hose
Milwaukee Brewers — Brew Crew (or, less ceremonially, the Brew-HOZZ)
Atlanta Braves — Bravos

This is not nearly all of them, but hopefully you get the point. We determined that every team should have an unofficial nickname for this exact scenario:

Your friend: Hey, you wanna go to the game tonight?

You: Sure, who are the local nine playing?

Your friend: The Fish!

You: Oh. Sure.*

*This screenplay is the intellectual property of PosCast Inc.™, a subsidiary of Meadowlark Media, and is fully protected under United States and International Copyright laws by the goons at Meadowlark Media, who are definitely packing guns. It also works under the assumption that someday Major League Baseball will be played again.

We have, so far, worked through the National League East and Central. These are the unofficial nicknames of those teams, so far, but every name is subject to PosCast listener review, meaning that if someone comes up with something better, we’re all for changing.

National League East

Atlanta -- Bravos (existing unofficial name)

Philadelphia -- The Phightin’s (PosCast addition!)

New York Mets -- The Amazin’s (Existing, but we consider it a PosCast addition)

Miami -- The Fish (existing)

Washington -- The Beltways (PosCast addition!)

National League Central

Milwaukee -- The Brew Crew (existing)

St. Louis -- The Redbirds (existing)

Cincinnati -- The Chilies (PosCast addition! There is some question whether they should be the Chilies -- plural -- or simple The Chili, singular, like the Orlando Magic)

Chicago Cubs -- The Bleachers (PosCast addition! Has caused much consternation among Cubs fans!)

Pittsburgh -- The Bucs or Buccos (existing)

And now we move on to the National League West, and we’re starting with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Your recommendations and suggestions are welcome in the comments.

The All-Fruit Baseball Team

An inspired PosCast listener asked us to put together an all-fruit baseball team. We believe it is the single greatest artistic achievement either of us has ever accomplished.

Catcher: Coconut (obviously, it’s a fruit wearing catcher’s equipment).

First base -- Starfruit (a fruit with multiple arms for scooping bad throws out of the dirt; there is a good argument we missed this one and should have had a pineapple here)

Second base -- Tangerine

Shortstop -- Orange

Third base -- Grapefruit (Great chemistry with the citrus fruits in the infield)

Left field -- Blackberry

Center field -- Apple (The king of the fruit).

Right field -- Blueberry (looking back, obviously should have been Strawberry) (Note from Mike: “I assume you’re referring to Darryl Strawberry, and to that I would say: This makes altogether too much sense and as such has no business being a part of this process.”)

Designated Hitter -- Strawberry

Pitcher -- Banana (pitching staff is a bunch of bananas. Lefty bananas are plantains)

Middle reliever -- Kiwi (quirky sidearming reliever with a bunch of off-speed pitches)

Closer -- Grape (Red-flamed seedless grapes, arguably your best fruit).

Manager -- Pear (because many managers are pear-shaped).*

*We did not add this, but I now think it’s obvious that we should have had tomatoes as our umpires. This is the bonus material you can come to expect from this pointless newsletter.

This Week’s Official Position … on the baseball lockout

Joe: It stinks.

Mike: I think it’s good, actually, because I like it when faceless billionaires ruin things that bring joy to millions of people in order to make very slightly more money than they already had, which was, again, billions of dollars. I genuinely enjoy it when 30 anonymous rich lunatics display an utter lack of interest in protecting or caring for the national pastime they’ve inherited, and make children cry. 

The Draft: Uniform Numbers by sport

Mike gets the first pick:

1st round

Mike: Soccer 10

Joe: Baseball 24

2nd round

Mike: Basketball 33

Joe: Hockey double numbers.*

*In a brazen attempt to skirt the rules, Joe tried to get all the double hockey numbers because he realized that, incredibly, there’s an iconic Hall of Famer connected to every double number.

11: Mark Messier
22: Mike Bossy
33: Patrick Roy
44: Chris Pronger
55: Larry Murphy
66: Mario Lemieux
77: Ray Bourque
88: Eric Lindros
99: Wayne Gretzky

PosCast commissioner Roger Goodell was unimpressed by this big numerical sleuthing, saw through the ruse and immediately declared Mike the winner of the draft.

3rd round

Mike: Baseball 8

Joe: Football 88

4th round

Mike: Basketball 00

Joe: Baseball 7

5th round

Mike: Football 1

Joe: Baseball 42

One Last Meaningless Thing

Even though Mike never mentioned it on the PosCast, it turns out he wrote a book. You think you know a guy. The book is called How to be Perfect: The Correct Moral Answer to Every Question, and despite Mike’s reticence in telling people about it, the book seems to be on sale in pretty much all the places that books are sold. Weird.

A thread with links to some fun conversations Mike has had about the book, with the likes of Nick Offerman, Conan O’Brien and others, is pinned to his Twitter page @KenTremendous.

And I guess since Mike is coming out as an author now, Joe should probably tell you that h wrote a book as well, called The Baseball 100, which is also available for sale. He was just in Cincinnati picking up the illustrious Casey Award for best baseball book of 2021, which was very cool, and he will be in Tucson, Ariz., this week for the incredible Tucson Festival of Books. 

On Saturday at 1 p.m., Joe will be joining Luke Epplin (author of the excellent Our Team, about the Satchel Paige, Bob Feller, Lou Boudreau 1948 Cleveland team) and former major league pitcher Pat Darcy to discuss baseball legends and how to write about them.

Then on Sunday at 1 p.m., Joe will join the most excellent Mirin Fader (Ringer writer extraordinaire and author of Giannis) and longtime journalist Mark Woodhams (who reportedly holds the record for most festival panels hosted) to discuss writing about global cultural icons. It should be tremendous fun, and if you’re anywhere near Tucson. Joe would love to see you.

Post Your Questions and Thoughts

So one of the cool things about starting PosCast Plus -- OK, let’s be honest, it’s pretty much the only cool thing -- is that here in the comments, subscribers can now post their PosCast questions. As you might know, Joe and Mike try to answer a few of them in the PosCast Draft episode, and it is what leads to things like the All-Fruit Baseball Team and a continuing trying to figure out what Gronk knows and doesn’t know.

This is also the place for you to nominate unofficial nicknames, suggest draft and segment ideas and, well, write whatever else you like. This is a “perk” for Joe Blogs subscribers.

Seems like a good time, once more, to put a subscribe button offering 20% off!