Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Walk Alone & Tell with Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Have billionaire owners left us in the twilight of American fandom? Are crying Liverpool fans actually the cure for male loneliness? And is the NFL offseason running out of juice? Would you get married during the Super Bowl on Valentine's Day? Plus: Jim Thome's farm adjacency, Regis Philbin analytics, Gerry and the Pacemakers, institutional investors, the worst pandemic crowd... and feeding a sandwich to Stugotz on Microsoft Teams.• Read "Big Fan" • Subscribe to The PosCast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. Right after this ad. LeBron's 23-year NBA averages, 27.7 rebound, 7 assists. He has never had a game in which he has gotten 27.7. Oh, wow. Not wild? But then I went on this deep dive.

And it... Thank you, buddy. Probably you want to order? No, I'm good. Okay, thank you. It turns out. that math, it's one of these great things where like mathematically it's actually not that unusual. How is that possible? I don't know, but there's all these people who like broke down

the math and like one, he's only had three games of 28, 7 and 7. He's at three games of 27, 8 and 7. He's had three games of 27, 7 and 8. Like, oh wow. It's weirdly not that it's, there's only like a, it's like 20% chance that he would get to this point without that actual stat. but it's not, you know, 0.004%. That's crazy. I still love it. It's an old eap, goodie. I still love that Roger Maris was not intentionally walked one time.

Yeah. Yeah, he had 60. That's a great one. That's a good one. That's a really good one. Baseball-wise, Boggs popping up to the infield twice in the season in the 360-8 season. It's amazing, right? It's great.

Well, there used to be the MVP one was unbeatable. But you could build an actual full team of players that are one. back-to-back-embrook. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was exactly nine and it was on every position, yeah. For those who are not familiar with what you guys do, this is mostly it. Thank you for being here.

Yeah, I was going to say, though. I always hang up the phone with my credit card company and I take down a note and then I'm like, you guys are just trading stats and history. That's all we do. That's pretty much it, yeah. Can you right now name those nine guys? Yes. Okay, Hal Neuhauser's the pitcher. How old are the pitcher.

Yogi Bear is the kid. Let me see if I can do it, because I know you can. You wrote like seven books about this. Barr is the Catcher. Garrig is the first basement? No. No. Okay, wait, let me think about this.

Morgan is the second. Morgan's the second. Shortstop is, there might be two now. Are there two? There now are. Yeah, Rip, no. A-Rod. No, the A-Rod didn't went back-to-back.

Maybe there's only one. He didn't go back-to-back? Then who am I forgetting? The guy who did it? Actually, it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy. It's the obvious choice. Honest Wagner?

No, no. That's well before MVP's. Is it up? Think about who the best shortstop. Think about your favorite shortstop, the guy you had to have his card. Oh, no. Really? Wait, my favorite shortstop?

I don't know if he's your favorite shortstop, but I think you got a really cool, like, 1959-eight card of his. If I'm not mistaken. Ernie Banks. It's not my favorite shortstop. No, no. Yeah, but you've been.

But you didn't get that card. You thought that card was awesome. Oh, I did think that car was awesome. Yeah. Third base is Schmidt. Yeah. All right. Outfield would be, is it, does it, did it break down right, center, and left?

I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. DiMaggio? No. Ted Williams. No. No?

Ted Williams might be left. Yeah. Mantle? Mantle, yes. And he counts as center. He counts as center. center, but it said then the guy who actually played center, but you can put him in right. Oh, so there's no right field there. So it's not Clemente.

It's not Clemente. Guy who actually played center and you can put him in right. And more recent than those guys. An 80s guy. Jesse Barfield. Dale Murphy. Oh, Murphy, right. All right. So who did I miss? Who is it first? First base was Frank Thomas came along. he did it.

But I think Thomas is not the original. Maybe he is. Maybe Thomas is the original for his basement. Who else could it be? I don't think Fox won back to back.

What the fuck are you guys talking about? If you have not turned off your phone already or your YouTube rouser window, it is a joy to have you both here. Oh, thank you, buddy. It's a joy to be here

and I have to say in person now. Yes. Congratulations. Oh, Oh, that's right. What an incredible honor for you. Thank you. How cool is that?

Well, it's cool because Joe Posnansky, I used to fact-check you at Sports Illustrated. I remember. I actually really remember this. And I was just looking through my Gmail inbox, Mike Scher, a guy who has been on the show many times before. And I was looking at, like, what did I used to ask Joe Posnansky, one of America's great sports writers, and the co-author of this new book you have, big fan that you've written together. And I was asking you stuff like, did Jim Tomei literally grow up on a farm? because you say he's, quote-unquote, farm-strong.

One of my favorite things, and of course this is so long gone, was getting those fact-check emails from people. Because, I mean, it was so frustrating because you're like, oh, God, these questions. But at the same time, it was like, oh, I can't screw up. I mean, there is somebody really working hard. A human being is looking into what I wrote. And look calling the people, making sure the quotes are right.

Did Tomey grew up on a farm or not? He did not. No, and Farm Strong was intended, I think, just more of as a, which I believe I told you. Exactly right. Yeah, yeah. And for those listening, the Tomeys, if they are listening, let the record show, not farm people. Not farm people. No, they are not.

They're Peoria people, but not farm-adjacent. I was also, you gave me Marvin Miller's contact info at one point. Like, it's just funny, man. I'm like, look at it. This is like 2010, 2011 when I was at Sports Illustrated fact-checking. So fractional, fractional Pulitzer for Joe Pudson is what I'm here at a handout. But actually, the thing I wanted to start and I want to start with, and there's a lot I want to get to about fandom and sports fandom and all this stuff.

I think I have a take that I'm piloting, that we might actually be in the twilight of the sports fan, peak sports fan, but peering over into some sort of an abyss, I want to get to that. But speaking of awards, the thing in this book that made me laugh the hardest maybe, as you guys go on a tour of America together, was, Joe Posnansky's trip to Hollywood. A year ago this month. A year ago this month. Because what happened there, Joe?

Because a year ago this month, a guy named Michael Shore was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And my favorite part about all of this was we were on our very, very first trip for this book. We were in Texas driving from Austin to Dallas. And we were talking just exactly the way we always do on every podcast. And nothing changes when we're not on air. It doesn't matter. And at some point, he just lets it slip that he's getting a... And he's embarrassed about it, that he's getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

And he's, you know, just not... It didn't tell me. He, like, it just slipped out. It was sort of like, oh, I've got this thing coming up and whatever. And I immediately said, well, I'm going to that and I'm going to write about it. And he's like, not a chance. I mean, not a chance. that you're doing that.

And I'm like, oh, I'm totally going. Absolutely. And he was not happy. As I remember it, it was a, I'm going, no, you're not. Yes, I am, no, you're not. It was basically duck season, rabbit season for like a good 30 miles. Until I said, okay, I'm not. Yes, you are.

You switched it up on me. I did not want to start here. I did not want this to be the topic that we discussed. As many people are, I learn in this book. I'm on a group chat with Mike Scher. Sure. And the details of it are hard to summarize, but you would attempt to how. I would say, and this is true, that I am honored to be the token white guy on this group chat, which is how I was asked to join.

Correct. It was true. It was this is a meme. We were running affirmative action for white guys. There was a DEI situation where you guys had to get one white guy. It's you, Mina Kimes, Alan Yang, and me. and we mostly talk about sports and culture, and it's a mini Poblatori-Finds-out kind of casual friend version.

And Avatar, which was thrilling to discover, is attached to my entry in the index of this book. That's right. And that'll be a total Easter egg. I'm not going to explain it? It's just in here? The original point of the thread was to discuss Alan Yang's pending nuptials and the movie Avatar.

Those are the only two topics we could discuss. And the avatar part of that is what leads you to show up in this book. Which will, again, we will not explain. But I say this all to say that I'm on this group chat with Mike, and he doesn't fucking tell us. I'm scrolling through my feed one day, and I'm like, is this a video of Mike Sher kneeling on the sidewalk? Wait a minute.

Is he kneeling in front of a star with his name on it? Like he was being knighted. It was truly like he was being knighted. I don't know how it's possible he kept it as private and quiet as he did. There's a reason for this. And I said this. I had to make a speech and I said this in the speech and it's true. Like you go into writing specifically to avoid moments like that.

You know, like everyone's staring at you. People who want that become actors. People who don't want that become writers. And so it's a very weird position to be in where it's a lovely honor. I was very flattered. I found it weirdly moving to have people there. And of course, they read Mike's credits. Yes.

The office, Parks and Rex, Saturday Night Live, man on the inside, Brooklyn Nine, Nine, it goes on and on and on. But the video, I think we should just play the video for a second. Should we, though? If we could just, yeah. Yeah, no, we definitely should. Because when they pull off the covering to reveal it is, in fact, Mike, sure.

Your look is it's that of a man who is watching a stripper pop out of a cake that he did not order. Like, I should politely acknowledge what's happened here, but there's a general unease.

Look at Ted, so Ted Dantan and Kristen Bell and Amy Polar and a bunch of other people were there. Yes. And look at, so Ted and Amy are like, this is an old hat to them. They know what to do. I don't. know what to do in this moment.

What do you do with your hands? It turns out you will... Class them so tightly as to prevent circulation. Like I'm about to receive communion is what I look like. Ted and Amy are smiling and they look camera ready and they're happy and I've never felt more awkward at my life. And was there merch? There was merch.

The whole thing was wonderful. My favorite favorite moment probably was when they introduced Mike and they were like, producer, writer, showrunner, actor. And as soon as they said actor, everybody broke out laughing. Like literally everybody broke out laughing. But they gave out little fans, actual, like those little hand battery operated fans. And it was like Mike Shore fan. That was the name of it.

Like said it on it. Yeah. It said on it. Yeah, Mike Sure fan. And I keep that at a very precious place. Let's talk about the book. One of the conversations that I did want to have is about sports fandom as its own category of fandom, though.

Because one of the things that is written in this book that Mike actually observes is that, and we don't ever talk about this, but it is amazing that we are here, Joe, with the son-in-law of the late great Reader's Philbin. Yeah, yeah. And his statistics, speaking of statistics. Yeah, he's got a lot of them.

Do you have them committed to memory? Do you need me to help you with this? Well, he was awarded the Guinness Book of World Records. for most hours on TV. Most hours on TV. And the total was 16,746.5! Yeah. And then he was awarded that and went,

well, that's great. Thanks so much. And then he was on TV for like another thousand hours after that. The great stat you had on this page is that that is 698 consecutive full 24-hour days of being on television. For comparison purposes,

the U.S. was involved in World War I for 584. Yeah. Full days. He was on TV for a World War's worth of time. That's right. I mean, there were a million things. like that. He started, you know, in San Diego local TV when he was in his early 20s after getting out of the Navy and was just essentially never left. He just started being on TV and never stopped.

And that record will never be broken. But the notion that there used to be on television, these stars of this sort of a tonnage and wattage. And now in the fragmentation of everything, Joe, it's never been more valuable. Oh, yeah. And this is both kind of a point of pride for people, I think who worked in sports. And it's always been popular, but now it's like, holy crap. Everybody else wants a piece of this. Yeah, and specifically the NFL and that, you know, the recent, the schedule release, which now, it's so funny.

Yeah, what do you think of the schedule release now that it's like competitive comedy sketchwriter? What are we doing? What are we doing? It's like, it's a deliberate slow drip of information where you're like, the second Sunday night game is Bengals Cowboys or. or whatever. Like, they are so powerful that they're able to do that and get news cycles out of so many little moments. But it feels extremely risky to me because they are so cocky. They are so

cocky with the way they do it. And at some point, at some year, I don't know when, it's going to land like a thud. People are going to not care in the way that they currently care. And I just cannot believe the degree to which they dominate the news media with things that are not the sport. Like no other sport, no other institution ever in America has been able to do that. Yeah, it's like they keep squeezing the lemon and you're like at some point it runs out of juice, but I don't know that it does ever. I don't know, man. The draft to me is fascinating in the same way that the schedule thing is, in that we can, how often are you going to

get fooled by the draft. I mean, there's only going to be a couple of players in this draft that are going to be true, true impact players. There'll be some that will be, you know, successes. And most will not live up to the expectations, right? That's more explicable to me, though, because that's about promise, right? That's about, like, any of these guys could be, the greatest thing that ever happened in the NFL was Tom Brady at 199 becoming Tom Brady. Because now, if you're a true psycho fan, you've got to watch your, six-th-round pick because for the entire sixth round, Mal Kuyper Jr. is going to be reminding you that Tom Brady was pick number 199. And Rock Purdy. Rock Purdy was Mr. Irrelevant. So that's even,

now there's whatever, 60 picks later, there's a guy who matters. So I just think it's not called the goose that laid the golden eggs and then it just kept on laying golden eggs forever. Which is how they're treating it. They are trying to kill the goose and still get the eggs. And it's not going to work at some point. Only because I think they're going to make the product worse and worse and worse. They're going to add another game. They're going to keep doing things to make it so that it's... They're putting the Super Bowl on Valentine's Day.

Do you know that? Oh, I didn't know that. The Super Bowl... The Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day. It's a bit on the nose. The NBA had Christmas, they're coming for that. They've already taken Thanksgiving. They're now going after Valentine's Day,

which means that a whole lot of people are figuring out right now, here in May, how to explain to their significant other. that they can't do anything on Valentine's Day next year. Well, and you know that, like, Super Bowl Sunday is always, right, like the day with the fewest weddings, right? Like, that's like, obviously people are just never scheduled. So now there's going to be no weddings of Valentine's Day. We're shutting America down.

But this is also all, they're expanding their territory. It's empire expansion. That's what I mean. And this is because they're already counting on the 18th game that will push the schedule another week or two later. But you're, I'm less skeptical that they will conquer the entire world. I don't think they can. I just think that at some point.

I think they can. At some point, the product is spread too thin and it collapses. Before we get to the truly foreboding crystal ball, I do want to explain. So many of the things that you've already mentioned just spontaneously are themes running through this book. Yeah. The idea that there are hundreds of thousands of people in real life who will go and fill the streets of a host city for the draft. Yeah.

The idea that men will leave their ostensible loved ones to hang out and just name some dudes. The idea that we are starving for something psychologically. Yeah. You know, I think you can go to certainly NFL stadiums for that, but you don't need to. I want to actually paint the picture of darts. Well, start with the fact that darts was the impetus to run. write the book because a buddy of mine sent me a video and said, you got to watch this. And it was two stocky gentlemen throwing darts at a dartboard with blank expressions on their faces,

just thunk, thunk, thunk. But as they did this, a crowd of what appeared to be thousands of people behind them with each throw got like their engines revving higher and higher and higher. I've never seen the like. Come on, Spully Boy! Every throw and every successive throw made them go crazier and crazier. Look at that. Look at that, John. And they dump beer on each other, and they throw napkins in the air. And then I notice, as I'm watching the video, I start to notice they're all dressed in costume these fans.

They're wearing Harry Potter costumes. Some of them are dressed like the Jamaican bobsled team. So I had the idea for the book. Immediately I called Joe. and I said, you've got to watch this video, and then I think we should write a book where we go around the world and go to these weird events

and try to see if my theory that I'm forming in real time is true, which is these fans, as crazy as they look and as crazy as they're acting, are essentially just like us. That they're like, I recognize in myself a passion and a fervor and an insanity that for me is reserved for baseball and the NBA

and whatever else, but for these people, it was these two, stocky, blank-faced British dudes throwing tarts at a dartboard. And he watched the video and he basically said, yeah, let's do it. And then that's the beginning of the adventure. One of the things that I think you guys share in common

that I love to tap into because I think it's really at my core as well, although it's coated with many now poisoned layers of irony is the idea of like, you look at this scene at the Ali Pally in England and these characters are like Ronald McDonald's

and all, it's crazy. And on some level, it's like, this seems almost sarcastic or ironic. And then you watch these videos or you attend any given sporting event in which people care, and you're, like, brought to tears. Yeah. Mike loves to talk about one of his friends who became a Steelers fan when he was young simply because his father was a Cowboys fan. So he did it just to, like, you know, just to put up, like, the middle finger to his father, essentially. And now he's, there's no irony about it. It started ironically.

Yeah. But now he's a lunatic Steelers fan. And I think that was the feeling, certainly we had at the darts, but everywhere else, where you go and you're like, this is a laugh, right? This is a joke. But then you're like, no, people truly cared and got into it. And any time someone would get close to a nine-dart or the place would like really light up. And it's funny because I do think, you know,

like that old line that in order to be happy, you should smile and then that'll make you feel happier. I think there's something to that with fandom. Like, it might start ironically. It might start as like a laugh. But then it gets inside you and it becomes something different. I think to me the most important interview or event that we undertook was we talked to a professor of sports psychology named Daniel Wan, who teaches at Murray State. He's been studying fandom and it's all its forms for a very long time.

And he said something that is so obviously empirically true, but that I had never articulated, which was like, if sports were just like fun and distracting and entertaining, okay, yeah, people would be kind of into it. But there's a billion or more sports fans in the world of all different kinds. And he said, the way he put it was, if that's true, then this thing, fandom, has to be meeting basic psychological and emotional needs. Like, there are needs that we have as a species that are being met by this phenomenon. And when you stop thinking of it as like, oh, yeah, I like baseball. And you start thinking of it as, this is meeting a basic emotional need that I have in one way or another.

You start to understand why I, Mike, will cry at any video of a dramatic last second buzzer-beater NBA shot in which there's a crowd pop. Any video where you're in the back row. and it gets quiet, the balls in the air, you can't even see it because the video's too small, and then suddenly the entire crowd erupts. I have the instinct to cry every time I watch one of those. And the same is true of walk-off homers. If I see a video of Joe Carter's Walk Off Homer in the World Series,

if I see like Jackie Robinson stealing home and safe by a millimeter, I feel tears well up in my eyes. And that is not, and that's when it's not even my team or a big moment or whatever. And then you add on to that. Now I have an 18-year-old son. I share those moments with my son. We went to game two of the NBA finals and 24 and saw the Celtics win. I cried on the plane on the way before the game.

I cried during the game and I cried after the game. And now if we watch the video, I'll cry all over it. All right. It's getting harder to trust the mic as a reliable witness the more he tells this story. The point is basic emotional needs being met is a better way to think of the power of fandom than just it's fun to watch basketball. So for those not familiar, Joe, for those who are not dyed in the wool, soccer fans don't know Liverpool's whole deal. As Mike is a Liverpool fan and a Red Sox fan, because you have to be.

Right. But it was a coincidence. I became a Liverpool fan long before the John Henry Group ever bought the team. Total coincidence. I just believe he roofed private equity. I don't believe you. He does that also. Yeah, and then I also have my choice of teams.

There's plenty of. So one of the first things, maybe even the first thing that we said, Mike said we should each have a dream chapter where we get to do something we've never done that we've always wanted to do. And Mike really has been a Liverpool fan since 98. And he talks about his origin story and how he became a Liverpool fan. And he's like, we need to go. I need to go.

You know, Mike needs to go to Anfield. He'd never been. And, you know, it's one thing to love a Premier League team and never have seen them. But it's particularly the case at Liverpool. right because Liverpool is such a historic you know thing you have to go and and hear them sing you'll never walk alone and everything else just just so i don't really care about Liverpool at all right right but i dare anyone with a pulse right to go go to youtube.com or your preferred illegal streaming service and look up you'll never walk alone it's unbelievable Yeah.

So I went with Mike. It was a miserable day. I mean, absolutely just spitting ice and people are slipping and sliding and it's muddy and it's so cold. And we go in and, you know, Mike's really excited. And we went with a couple of people who were also big Liverpool fans, Brandon McCarthy and our friend Matt. The pitcher of Brandon McCarthy. The pitcher of Brandon McCarthy was a huge Liverpool fan. And we all go out to me.

And I'm not a Liverpool fan at all. And so we all go And you could just see Mike Mike really was He was like a kid It was like he was vibrating He was really really excited About going

And we sit there And I'm like This is really cool To watch Mike enjoy this And then they did You'll never walk alone And you're like I'm at the center of the world

I mean that's how it feels It's the tradition It's the thing that makes that clubs games famous Also you know The worst day probably in in UK sports history was a a FAA cup match

in which there was a collapse of the stands because of some very bad engineering and bad planning and crowd control and a lot of people died and so that has added this idea that the lyrics of the song take on a deeper meaning when moments like that happened so it was a thing I had been thinking about

for 30 years of my life what will it be like to be in that stadium hear that song and sing it and then it was exactly the way I pictured it, which is like for a fan, that's like as good as it gets, you know. So this is a song that started, it was Rogers and Hammerstein. This was in the musical Carousel from 1945, then Jerry and the Pacemakers, Liverpool Band. They take it over in 63.

And it has become an anthem in which one of, again, one of the best parts of these videos beyond hearing the palpable goose flesh is seeing the faces of all these dudes. Yeah. Who look like in any other context, they're, like, brandishing some, like, prison weapon. And they're just... Weeping. They're weeping. And so I am not somebody who's here to make everything about the male loneliness crisis.

But it's really hard. But it's not not about that. It's really hard to avoid what this makes people who otherwise might be fundamentally uncomfortable, viscerally uncomfortable feeling, like actually free to feel? Well, a huge part of fandom, and we talked to Professor Juan about this, is where does it come from, right? How do you adopt it? And for so many people, it comes down from the generation before, fathers and mothers and grandparents and so forth. It comes from communities. It comes from places where there is a sense of you are part of something larger than yourself. And there are plenty of stories about, if you could jump

into those videos and ask those crying Liverpoolians, how many of you right now are thinking about your dad or how many of you are thinking about your grandmother or whatever? It would be 98.7% or something. They're not thinking about the musical kerosene. I love Roger. I'm big Rogers and Hammerstein guy. There is a story from 2004 that I think about all the time from the Red Sox World Series where a guy was like, you know what I really want to do in the aftermath of the Red Sox. is finally winning is I want to like talk to my dad who passed away and so he his dad is buried in I think mount Auburn cemetery and it's you know 245 in the morning and there's church bells ringing everywhere and whatever but it's 245 in the morning and he goes out walking and he's and he's like I don't know how

I'm going to get in I guess I'll have to climb the fence or something but he brings a bottle of champagne and a redsox hat he's going to leave it at the grave and as he's walking towards the cemetery he starts to see more and more people falling into the path he gets there someone has anticipated this happening and has unlocked and opened the gates to him out Armored Cemetery, he walks in, he lays a hat and a bottle of champagne on his dad's grave and sees in his line of sight 25 other people doing the same thing. So when you think of fandom as something, which you are a steward, a caretaker for your group of friends, your family, your generational line, then you start to understand the weeping at you'll never, a Jerry and the Pacemaker's cover of a Rogers

of Amherstine song. And those things start to make a lot more sense. And I'm not kidding that when I say every time for the rest of my life, I see Peyton Pritchard's half court buzzer beater in game two of the finals. Like, I will think about my son. I will cry. You are not thinking of just the event. You're thinking of the people in your life that it represents, where you got this from, going to games with your mom or your dad when you're a kid. All that stuff is contained in these moments and that's what makes it so powerful yeah and i think specifically talking about the male loneliness thing a couple of weeks ago i went to this uh like uh it was a group of sport of psychologists talking about various sports things and and one of the themes they were talking about was this notion that when

you ask sort of the typical guy what movies are you allowed to cry in there used to be like one answer like you only could say brian song was like the only movie you were allowed to cry and and it's a lot it's allowed yeah it's allowed it's allowed it's a loud it's football and the guy dies. I mean, come on. And the other answer, so he was telling us what the answers were, and Brian Song is still right up there, but the final scene in Field of Dreams, that you're allowed to cry there. Allowed, sure. You're allowed to cry for a father playing catch for the son. I would be such an outlier for this interview. I'd be like inside out, right? Inside out, yeah. It's an toy story three. How about the beginning of up?

Oh, the first 10 minutes of up? Are you kidding me? It's crazy. But yeah, but but the point that they were was that they were doing studies on what women talk about when they get together. And it's relationships and it's, you know, love and it's, it's books and it's this and it's this. And what do men talk about sports? Like, that's like, I mean, it's a cliche, but there's some real data behind it. Is the theory that because they're talking to their friends about sports that like them seeing sad moments in sports movies makes them connect to their friends and so forth. The theory is that sports and fandom allows you to feel real emotion.

I think I buy that. Yeah, I mean, I think that when the Cubs finally won, the emotion that poured out of people that would not normally be emotional, right? Like, people talking about their grandfathers and all of this. And, I mean, the argument that the psychologist was making, which I thought was fascinating, is that we as a society need to do a much better job of letting men feel emotion? Like that was the larger...

It's a hell of a monopoly that sports is running right now. It really is. An incredible moat, as they say, in the world of business. But I want to get to that moat, actually, because it's so interesting to think about fandom coming out of the pandemic. Because in the pandemic, of course, this experiment that was unprecedented

and otherwise impossible was run for the first time in which fans were not in the building. Right. Yeah. And so, if you're not... you're isolating the variable of like, so what's this business all about? It's notable that the ratings went down. Everyone was just like, this is worse. Yeah, right. And the games were happening with the same guys on the same courts and fields. But it was the lack of the reaction. It's the reaction

video without the reaction. It's just like, oh, we're just like watching this in a vacuum. Yeah. And I thought that was so telling about like what were also even primarily maybe here for. even if we don't tell ourselves that, we're here for other people to be here with us. Yeah. I'd be really interested to hear Mike's thought specifically on this because I thought about this. That seems very sport.

Like, it wasn't the same watching it without the cheers, without the people in the stands. But there was a moment that Mike was right there on the cusp where they stopped putting laugh tracks on comedy. And it was still hilarious to people. Well, not immediately. No, I mean, the Office U.S. pilot was, by some measures, the lowest testing pilot in the history of the National Broadcasting Corporation. Now, Greg Daniels, who adapted the show, had told NBC, this is such a revolutionary thing.

It's completely different from, you know, Will and Grace and Friends and Seinfeld, and you, it's not, no one's going to like this. You just have to be prepared for that. Now, some of that was just him being smart and sort of prophylactically defending him, his, his work. But he was 100% right. And it's not like the office was the first single, what's called single camera comedy where it's shot sort of cinematically, where there's no studio audience and you're not in a proscenium set with like, you know, think of the friend's coffee house, right, where like one of the walls is missing because that's where the audience is. And they laugh at all the jokes. There had been other single camera shows before this, certainly. But the office had a

double layer between the audience, which is that there was no laugh track and also the actors were aware of the cameras. It was for the time extremely experimental. And no one liked it. If you go back and watch the react, read the reviews, they're very fun to read. Everyone hates it. This is terrible. It's so boring. It's it's obnoxious. But what Greg said was we have to retrain the audience to understand this visual language and this comedic language. Thanks to the comedic genius of Steve Corell and John Krasinski and Rain Wilson and Jenna Fisher and all of the, you know, the people on the show, the show managed to break through and obviously became what it became. But those sorts of moments in TV history are very difficult to get through because people

don't like being retrained. They like what they like. And at that time, in 2004 in the U.S., what they liked was Friends and Will & Grace and Seinfeld and everything else. But do you think that, I don't think that could ever happen in sports, no matter how much you retrained fans? No. So the difference, I would say, is that you can retrain, retrain people to some extent if you just are really good and people start to slowly learn. You know, Steve Karel was in the 40-year-old virgin between season one and two.

So people are like, oh, that guy, oh, that guy's funny. Now their brains have been rewired and they're like, oh, that's a funny person, I will now watch this show. Things like that can happen. Sports is just sports. Baseball is baseball. Basketball is basketball.

The weirdest sport to me during the pandemic with no crowds was baseball. I agree. It was unholy. It was horrifying. And partly I think that's because a home run being hit like a deep fly ball

Outfield are going back, gets to the wall Tink, dunk, ding, dunk. Like just the ball just rattling around the metallic outfield bleachers was just so disorienting and weird. But it was so weird in the NBA that in the bubble they had to put

like giant monitors in with giant heads. I was a virtual fan were you? Were you? It was It was... In playoffs? No, this was just in the bubble.

Actually, you know what? It's telling that I can't recall. It might have been a playoff game. It was truly flattened into being totally unremarkable. So set the scene for me. You're in your home. I am in... I'm on Long Island in a rented house during the pandemic.

Sure. And I am watching the Miami Heat play on Zoom. Or rather, maybe it was like a Microsoft platform. They had some sponsorship to me. Teams. You got to get teams It's important that Microsoft Teams

gets credit for this. I was a fan. I think Stu Gatz was a fan. Sure. And we were like kind of like Brady bunching each other. And it was, that was it.

Because that, look, watching TV is an individualistic thing, for the most part. Maybe there's a survivor watch party or that you go to or whatever. Generally speaking, you're home alone or you're with your spouse

or your family or whatever. But you're watching individually. sports is collective, even if you're at home watching it individually, the sense you have is that you're part of something. You want to be watching other people watch collectively if you're alone. You want to feel vicarious happiness for the people who jump up in the air and do this when someone hits a buzzer beater.

Like, it's not the same as TV. That's a much different relationship people have. By the way, I have to ask, did the heat win or lose? I'm pretty sure they lost. Great. I also remember, I think I tried to feed Stugats, a sandwich like through. It was bad. It was like, you do.

You made a sandwich and he made a sandwich and you did this. Yeah, I think we were trying to, like, feed each other. It was bleak, man. The pandemic was a real bleak time. Sports fandom at this moment of definitively unprecedented but seemingly infinite, sort of economic power amid all this fragmentation in which you can't make stars and entertainment the same way, you still can get these communities, especially around the NFL, to care about these games such that the evaluations of these teams,

teams are, I mean, Joe, the idea that, hey, guess what, the Lakers are a $10 billion franchise, and we all just like, nod along, sure, why not? What's happening, my theory of the case, as we look into the, again, the foreboding crystal ball, is that because the only people who can afford to buy these teams once we reach that threshold are not people, but institutional investors. Right. Yeah. Like private equity firms, we are entering a period. where that humanness that we've been talking about for an hour,

that ineffable but palpable fandom will never be less important to them, to the people who actually will own sports. This is exactly the problem, I think. If you own the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1934, you need to go sign a bunch of good players so that people will take a dime and buy a ticket to the game

and then buy a hot dog and a soda or a beer because that's how you are making money. That's right. It is literally like you have expenses, which are your players, and you have revenue, which is tickets. And we are so far away from that now. Why is the NBA showing a Game 7 on Amazon Prime?

Because Amazon Prime gave them a ton of money. And the degree to which fans attending games matters, to the people who own these teams has never been lower. And it's only going to get lower as the NFL renegotiates their TV deals and they break their season into 50 parts and they sell one piece to Netflix and one piece to Peacock and one piece to CBS

and one piece to Fox and on and on and on. The people who are sitting in the stadium and paying money to be there are a complete afterthought. And that means that the product that they are presenting to the people is almost completely divorced from the people

who made it valuable to begin with. Across the board, it's not just the fans that go to the game. It's we don't care if you don't have Amazon Prime. The Game 7 is on Amazon Prime anyway. We don't care. They gave us the most money. So the fans' consideration,

I mean, the NFL is far and away, the leader in this world, but across the board, the fans are not considered at all. And that's for their home experience, that's for going to the game experience, that's individual teams trying to win. That's not important to them.

You know, we were having this conversation about your good pal, Steve Balmer. He wanted to win. Oh, yeah. He wanted to win. The nicest thing I will say about Mr. Balmer is that that guy is a super fan. Super fan.

He will spend, according to my reporting, more than allowed to win on what it is to get the thing that you thought sports could deliver you as a billionaire, which is this feeling of, I get the trophy. I get the thing that every fan also wants. And I dare say that we will get to a point amid all of these private equity firms and institutional investors, owning everything, because they're the only ones who can afford it,

that we will long for the unhinged, rule-breaking billionaire. I think we're ready to. We already do. I think we already do. Mark Cuban's loss is. is already being felt, right? Like, you already feel that. We got Steve Cohen, a man so insanely capitalistic.

It doesn't matter, who cares. But you can count the number of these people on one hand. And a great irony, the world's most virulent capitalists bond together in a socialist collective in order to remove competition and maximize profit for their leagues. And they have a split intention, right? The one intention, you would think if you own the Dallas Cowboys or the Pittsburgh Pirates, your goal is to win a championship and hoist a trophy.

That's not really their goal. Their goal is to maximize franchise value. That's the side of them that's very than capitalist. And then the side of them that is collective is like, let's protect ourselves from the world by getting non-competeed clauses and antitrust exemptions and keeping away all of the vultures who, and part of that is imposing limits on themselves of how much money they can spend. And it is the rare Steve Balmer superfan where the side of him that is a fan and wants to win kind of goes rogue and overrules the socialist collective side of him and is like, I don't care if these are the rules. I want to win a trophy. And this thing, this sort of like dark crystal ball, again, that I'm looking into, it makes me think that we are in this twilight of the fan. Because they, private equity firms and the hedge funds and those institutions, man, they are motivated entirely and exclusively by the Green Arrow.

That's it. Is the asset improving year after year? It's not, are the fans mad at us? No. Did we win a title? And it makes me go back to the country that we've been exploring here today, which is England. Because I look back, Joe, at April of 2021 when there was this idea to both replace and or disrupt the Champions League. Yeah.

Because 12 of Europe's biggest soccer teams decided we're going to form a Super League. Green Arrow will go up. That's what it was. Think of the media rights deals. J.P. Morgan Chase said, as they provided $4.5 billion in financing at the time, more revenue, higher quality matchups, all that stuff. And what happened? The fans lost their minds. And wouldn't let it happen. And essentially stopped it with just protests, a number of protests that occupied the stadiums. Yeah. Here they are in their thousands. The ill-fated European Super League

has started a fire and it's ripping through the game. These protests had been well publicised, but the scale and ferocity surprised police and security at Old Trafford. There are fans who have made their way into the ground and they are now protesting. They've come through the bottom end, the Stratford end is away to my left. They're now heading out onto the pitch to let their feelings be known. This is obviously not what we want to see and the security here at Old Trafford has failed. Hundreds of fans breaching a cordon around the ground. just hours before Manchester United were due to play Liverpool.

It's so remarkable that within 48 hours... They shut it down so fast. 48 hours! Yeah. And that is like the obvious question that you're implying here is, could that happen in the U.S.? And the answer, I believe, is no. I don't think that fans would rally that way.

There might be protests or whatever. The question is, would Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft listen. No. I don't think they would. No, and they wouldn't have to. They wouldn't care. The utter disdain that Rob Manfred showed for Oakland literally protesting just like you're

taking the team away for no reason. And just the disdain like, it's good to see him have a nice crowd out there or whatever he said. I mean, they don't care. The same guy, by the way, who referred to the World Series trophy as just a piece of metal. A piece of metal, right. There is a real amorality, not immorality. Steve Balmer, allegedly, immoral, knows what the rules are and breaks them.

Hedge fund money is amoral. It has no skin in the game either way. It's actually telling you we exist with a profit motive. Yeah. Hedge fund money is a plague of locusts. It just swarms over a field. It devours the field and it moves on to the next field. not care about the farmer who's field it destroyed. It doesn't care about all the other insects

living in the wheat. It just eats and moves on. And so when you have Jeannie Bus, the last essentially like mom and pop shop in the NBA saying, getting the valuations get to a point where even she is like, this is my entire family legacy, but like, I can't say no any. I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm going to sell now the same people own the Lakers that own the Dodgers and they're going to do the Lakers exactly what they did with the Dodgers to the extent that you can in the NBA. And the green arrow will go up and the relationship between the fans and the team will deteriorate forever. I think that one of the fundamental aspects of sports used to be that these owners, they want to win.

They're competitive people. They're competitive in their business. They definitely want to win in their sport. That was like at the very heart of what it was. And now these owners aren't human in the same way. Well, the definition of winning has fundamentally changed. The definition of winning now isn't hoisting a trophy. That's right.

It's signing a record-breaking media rights deal for the NFL, which, and so, and they all get together and cling champagne glasses because they all won. And to me, getting back to your earlier point, Steve Ballmer, if he allegedly did what he allegedly is supposed to have done based on a Pulitzer Prize winning 10-part series on this, very program. Would you rather have that guy, or would you rather have a guy own your team who, the guy who owns a baseball franchise who looks at his revenue, looks at his expenditures, looks at his payroll, and things to himself, well, why would I increase my payroll? All I'm doing is eating into my profits, and all I have to do is nothing. And I'm guaranteed 178 million in

revenue sharing. And then next, and the valuation of my franchise will go up because I know what the media rights deal is again next year. So I'm going to go 78 and 84 and fly around my private jet and everything's fine. Like that's, to me, that is the immoral owner in sports. I dare say, Mike, as you impose this binary choice that maybe door number three exists. Yeah. Now granted, door number three pretty much got barricaded. And please caution tape over it. Harder and harder. to get into that door. To quote your favorite team, the coach,

no one is walking through that door, actually. There is no, there is no. A huge Patino guy. There's so many jokes. So many jokes that I'm not going to make. But yeah, if those are the choices, then I dare say things will get worse, and we should be so glad

that we got to see fandom create an economy that got so big that, of course, the financialization of that, everything, came to burn down the field of dreams. Joe Posnanski, Mike Sher, this was a total delight. Congratulations on the book, and thanks for coming in. Oh, thank you.

Thank you, buddy. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.