Cheapseat Baseball TSB & JJK

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.