Episode Seventy-Seven - Blue Moon Odom

Thanks for the Memories. Ichiro retires.

To help us kick off the baseball season and the closing stages of the European futbol season, we’re happy to welcome back Awful Announcing Managing Editor Joe Lucia (@joe_TOC). We talk about the first week of the baseball season, the surprises both good and bad. What’s going right for Seattle, the Mets and Milwaukee and wrong for the Yankees, Boston, the Angels and Joe’s Braves. Just how early is too early to panic if you are one of the struggling teams? Who is the biggest heel in baseball? Is it Bryce Harper? Or someone else? And just how well will a heel Bryce fit it in Philadelphia?

We also talk about just what is going on in the Premier League and the Champions League, as their seasons wind down. Just how confident is Joe that his Manchester City can win the quadruple? Where are they most likely to slip up? If they don’t win the Champions League, who will? Messi? Ronaldo? Pogba?

There’s some fun random stuff thrown in, like doing a fantasy league for pro wrestling in the mid 1980s, price-for-rental videotapes and hand-typing in statistics from USA Today in the early years of rotisserie baseball.

As we teased last episode, we will be doing a convention soon. We will be appearing at TMPT 3 in Richmond, VA on May 18th. Scheduled to be at the show are Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express (including Dennis Condrey), The Rock and Rock Express, JJ Dillon and more folks. If you come to the show, please stop by and say hello. We hope to have a wrestling themed issue of the magazine debuting at the show. You can get your tickets here.

Episode Sixty-Six - Islands in the Stream

NBC's excellent EPL studio cast: host Rebecca Lowe, and analysts Kyle Martino, Robbie Earle and Robbie Mustoe. 

With some sports media news in the headlines, we are pleased to be joined again by Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) from Sports Illustrated.  We recorded on Operning Day for the English Premier League, so we chat about NBC's near-universal popular coverage as well as their paid app and whether people will purchase.  That seques into a discussion of The Athletic, the paid content sports writing site, their successes so far and would their model work in a city like New York. We talk about ESPN and how necessary they are for a fan whose favorite sports are undercovered (like hockey and soccer). We also discuss where ESPN fits in with Disney's new streaming strategy. We end with some brief wrestling chat, what Richard is enjoying with the current WWE product and being able to wrestling from around the world online. 

We are working lining up some guests to discuss the Premier League and the other European leagues starting up, but were not able to get them in time for today's podcast. Hopefully, they will be on the next episode. Thanks for listening.