OK, the new Poscast is up ... our first installment with (I hope) semi-regular co-host Bill James.
Here is the Poscast on iTunes.
And here it is at Sports Illustrated.
A couple of things. One, we are hoping to make a quantum leap forward in sound quality with this coming week's Poscast. We now have a lot of sound equipment, and while I suspect we may have to take the stuff out of their boxes, I am told that this will make the sound next week much better. Like everything with the Poscast, it's a work in progress. The Poscast with Bill James this week was done under less-than-ideal circumstances -- in Augusta, with a less-than-stellar Internet connection -- so I hope that the great stuff Bill is saying will make up for any sound quality gaps.
Two, I can tell you that it is my hope to have two regular co-hosts -- regular the way Charo was a "regular" guest on The Love Boat. I'm hoping, for instance, that the next month will look like follows:
April 18: Special guest (and if I get who I'm trying to get, it will be INCREDIBLE*).
April 25: Poscast with Michael Schur.
May 2: Special guest (again, potentially incredible).
May 9: Poscast with Bill James
*At least for me.
I'm kind of hoping that each month will look something like that -- incredible guest, Michael Schur, incredible guest, Bill James and so on.
This week's Poscast I talk with Bill about college hoops, the meaning of bad starts, how well past performance predicts future and a bunch of other fun things. Bill also reiterates my own belief that we all think baseball is at its most perfect when you are 10 years old. Bill, as you might expect, puts it in better words.
I've been pleasantly surprised by your podcast so far Joe. You're not nearly as terrible as you made yourself out to be. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteFor those interested, the .mp3 link:
ReplyDeletehttp://ht.cdn.turner.com/si/joe_posnanski/audio/2011/04/11/poscast003.mp3
"I'm kind of hoping that each month will look something like that -- incredible guest, Michael Schur, incredible guest, Bill James and so on."
Wait, so are Michael Schur and Bill James not incredible? (Just kidding!)
"incredible" for Joe is probably the guy who invented the Snuggie.
ReplyDeleteStephen - many thanks for the mp3 link. Rufus
ReplyDeleteStephen,
ReplyDeleteNice. I was going to make a comment about the implied insult if you take that sentence out of context.
Incredible* can only mean Duane Kuiper, right?
ReplyDeleteI was hoping this week's would be animated . . . if any brilliant readers out there who didn't write the winning song wants to take that on . . .
ReplyDeleteI think I should get a Poscast to plug my firm. Then we can get in all sorts of trouble. I will answer every question with a rare honesty. It may be a hindrance that I dont know too much about sports.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant (perhaps) Reader idea: You have on the Poscast some loyal readers/posters from time to time to discuss various items of interest with them. Similar to Letterman going into the audience for Know Your Cuts of Meat or Conan lately picking an audience member to attend nationwide events (e.g., Mardi Gras).
ReplyDeleteThese might not be INCREDIBLE, but entertaining nevertheless. Though you might want to do some pre-screening to select those who can talk without saying "you know" and "like" and "uhm" every few seconds.
Bill James is exhibiting some absurd Kansas bias there in trying to say the 1997 Kansas team is the best college basketball team ever. He uses the list of NBA guys as his reasoning, but that's a terrible way to judge a college team -- Christian Laettner is one of the best college basketball players of all-time, but he wasn't an NBA great...does that mean the Duke teams he was on are worse because he wasn't a major NBA success? Or look at the Fab Five....if you want to use NBA success as a barometer, they were a better team than 1997 Kansas because Juwon Howard, Chris Webber, and Jalen Rose is a much better NBA trio than the Kansas team had.
ReplyDeleteI'm speaking as a UNC alumnus and fan, so this is hard for me to say, but I think the 2001 Duke team with Mike Dunleavy, Chris Duhon, Jason Williams, Shane Battier, and Carlos Boozer was definitely a better team than the 1997 Kansas team. Honestly....that 1997 Kansas team was excellent, but I'm not sure I'd even list them among the top 5 college basketball teams of the past 15-20 years. What about Kentucky in 1996? Nazr Mohammad, Derek Anderson, Antoine Walker, Tony Delk, Walter McCarty, Ron Mercer....and I'm not even going to bring up any of the UNC teams, like the ones with Carter and Jamison.
I want to amend my comment -- although I still think Bill James is being a little crazy in calling 1997 Kansas the best college basketball team of all time (I don't think they'd even be in the discussion if I was making a list), I'm pretty sure think he wasn't trying to say it's because of NBA success. He mentioned Jacques Vaughn, and he's a perfect example of someone who was a GREAT college player but was just an NBA journeyman.
ReplyDeleteStill calling that comment an example of some Kansas homerism though.
I love the written word. Why has audio and video taken over?
ReplyDeleteUNLV in '91 is probably the best team to not win the tournament in my memory. They were undefeated, with an average margin of victory during the regular season of 27 points. They weren't challenged much in the tournament, winning by 33, 8, 17 and 12 in the first four rounds. They had four players hang around the NBA for a while, and that doesn't include Anderson Hunt, who was an excellent college player.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing is that the Duke upset in the Final Four seemed shocking at the time. I mean, UNLV had just beaten them by 30 in the championship game the year before. In hindsight, that Duke team was almost as loaded as UNLV. It's hard to think of a team with Bobby Hurley, Christian Laettner and Grant Hill as an underdog.
@Spud That's what I was thinking - has to be, right!
ReplyDeleteHere's a great team that didn't win the NCAA title: The 1975 Indiana Hoosiers. Better than the 76 group. Undefeated until losing to Ky in regional final by 2 points. Scott May was not up to par, recovering from broken arm. 75 team has 8 players who made the NBA: Kent Benson, Scott May, Quinn Buckner, and Bobby Wilkerson (1st rounders); Steve Green, John Laskowski and Wayne Radford (2nd rounders), and Tom Abernathy (3rd round
ReplyDeleteLet me be contrary - I'd much rather see Joe spend the time writing his iPad review than recording podcasts. Honestly, do we really need more skilled writers meandering verbally? For example, why bother with a superficial discussion of whether Albert Pujols is historically great? Doesn't everybody listening already know that he is?
ReplyDelete@Dave Backus
ReplyDeleteThanks for saying that...I am worried that there will be no more writing online soon, I don't have enough time to listen to everybody's hour long podcasts
It's gotta be the Sham Wow guy
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Dave Backus, y42k, and Kevin. Regardless of how you feel about Bill Simmons, the number of articles he's written has dropped precipitously since he started doing podcasts. He used to put out several a week, now it seems like he puts out two or three a month.
ReplyDeleteI'd hate to see the same thing happen with Joe -- I find it much easier to read an article than listen to a podcast. One, I can read MUCH faster than people will talk, so time is an issue. I can't really sit down and listen to podcasts for that long without doing something else at the same time, which leads to my second issue: it's hard not to get distracted while listening to a podcast. That leads you to missing out on some of the conversation.
While having discussions like that are great fun when you are actually involved in them, they're much less fun when you're a passive listener. I don't mean this as a knock on Joe; I just prefer reading an article/meandering thoughts than trying to listen to them, which takes much longer and makes me feel less involved (for some reason I can't explain).
I just finished listening to my first Poscast - the one with Bill James. Listening to the poscast is like listening in on a conference call at work that you really don't need to pay much attention to. The audio was better than I expected but the talk, talk, talk was not very informational. Joe (and Bill James) needs to stick to writing if he wants to show his true brilliance. Otherwise, as a talker he sounds like any other informed but uninspired sports dude speaking to a guy with similar credentials. Had I not been half going through some final tax prep stuff back from the CPA I would have turned the deal off 10 minutes or so into the program.
ReplyDeleteIf Bill James can go back 14 years to make a claim for the best NCAA mens team not to win that year which I agree is based fully on Bill's homer baloney, may I go back 50years? How about the TWO consecutive years that Ohio State's team with Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Larry Siegfreid, Mel Nowell and a guy named Bob Knight (mostly sitting on the bench) lost in stunning upsets? That's my OLD homer baloney.
ReplyDeleteMy hunch is that Mr. INCREDIBLE* is Tom Watson, but I could be wrong.
ReplyDelete@Ed and others, regardless of what you think of Bill Simmons he recently wrote a 500+ page basketball book, was the executive editor of a series of 30 documentaries, has been a guest host of PTI (along with other TV spots here and there), and is apparently starting some new website. Yet all I ever hear about is how his podcast has reduced his writing. On the other hand, people have been complaining about his output (or lack thereof) since, like, the early 2000s. Like Simon and Garkfunkel once said "internet commenters hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest."
ReplyDeleteI was skeptical about the podcast at first, given that I generally prefer reading good writing (like we get from Joe all the time) to hearing people yak. But so far I'm a fan. It's fun to hear really smart people like Joe and his guests bounce ideas off of each other.
ReplyDeleteJoe, loved this Poscast. Keep doing your thing. I see value with the written and the spoken word. When I'm bored at work or eating, I'll read. When I'm cooking or doing laundry or something, I can listen to a Poscast. They're not mutually exclusive media.
ReplyDeleteThe "I like the written word" crowd makes me nuts. They can co-exist. I bet people in the 50's were complaining about the TV taking over the radio and before that the radio taking over books and before that books taking over stone tablets and before that stone tablets taking over cave paintings and before that cave paintings taking over nothing. You know what I miss? Non-communication. The world was better before we had the means to communicate with words. I even think the random grunts that preceded language were going too far. I miss the times when we were simply eating, pooping and sleeping. Now? Pffft. You guys just don't even get it.
ReplyDelete