Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1357: Bryce and Brockmire

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

In a bonus episode of EW, Ben Lindbergh and The Ringer’s Michael Baumann banter about Bryce Harper’s transparently but nonetheless almost endearingly calculated campaign to win over Philly fans, why it’s working for him, and whether he could take it too far, then (14:26) talk to actor Hank Azaria, the star of IFC baseball TV […]

And it feels so much like being in love that I thought you should know Oh, you, you wouldn't like me If you saw what was inside me Yeah, you, you wouldn't like me at all Oh, you, you wouldn't like me No matter how pleasant I'd be Yeah, you, you wouldn't like me at all Hello and welcome to episode 1357 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graffs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. For the second week in a row,

I am doing a bonus episode of Effectively Wild, and this time around I am joined by my colleague from the ringer and the ringer mlb show michael babin hello michael that's my line hello and welcome yeah so we're uh reviving a tradition here this is the third year in a row that we are talking to hank azaria about a new season of brockmeyer which is a baseball show it is the best baseball show it's the only baseball show in the post pitch environment if you want baseball entertainment this is uh pretty much the only show in town literally fortunately it's a good one and so we've talked to hank we talked to him on the ringer pod the first time and then on effectively wild last time and we're going to talk to him again because brock meyer comes back for its third season on Wednesday,

10 p.m. on IFC. We really dug the third season. It's a very baseball fan-friendly season. I think people who listen to this podcast might appreciate it more than most, but it's just generally good. It's a good show, not just a good baseball show, but the fact that it's a good baseball show obviously makes us like it even more. Yes, it's show laugh i laughed i didn't cry but like i come as close as i come to crying these days yeah there are some genuine emotional moments even though this show is a comedy about a very profane baseball broadcaster whom hank invented in a funny or die sketch we won't give away too much about the season we won't really spoil anything that wasn't already in a trailer or something. We don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. I think this will be sort of a setup primer type conversation.

We spoil a little bit, but not like- Yeah, a little. It's not. I wouldn't be mad at us if I listened to this before I watched the season. Because we made these decisions. So either you're mad at yourself or you're mad at me. So I'm glad that neither of those things are the case. You can save it until you've seen some if you want. But I think it won't diminish your enjoyment of the season if you listen to this in advance.

So before we get to Hank in just a moment, since you are here and since Bryce Harper is making his eagerly awaited return to D.C. on Tuesday, And since Bryce Harper is making his eagerly awaited return to D.C. on Tuesday, I want to talk to you about Bryce Harper and his pandering to Phillies fans because you are a Philly fan. You are a Philly person. And so you have a more personal perspective on this than I do. coordinated campaign that smacks of a consultant or a full-time person on payroll who is just telling him exactly how to ingratiate himself to philly's fans and the latest stage now is that he is having a baby just to get philly's fans to like him so i think he made this decision just you know sort of counting backwards on my fingers from august he uh uh the the baby happened before the contract so right but obviously his name i think the joke i made today is he's gonna name him brian dawkins citywide special

harper um yeah i mean if we had to rank like he's been seen what he was wearing the the gritty shirt the other day and the philly fanatic shirt exclet Talking about like, I mean, that was an all-timer red meat for the base intro press conference, even talking about how I don't want to, I want a no trade clause and no opt out because this is where I want to be and these are the fans that I, you know, and just it was all three Phillies games

were on national TV over the weekend. So I forget if this was Saturday or the Sunday night game. He was talking to either Ken Rosenthal or Buster Olney about how he loves playing in front of the fans because they're so blue collar. And like, you know, he just got the handbook. bell he's making it's always sunny references it's just been from the start i mean other than the one slip up where he said he was going to bring a championship back to dc or whatever that was just a slip of the tongue understandable but otherwise it's just been this extremely coordinated like it seems like someone has been paid to tell him how to do this and so you would think it would come off as phony and that it would backfire and that people would think it's insincere and he's trying too hard to appreciate himself nobody cares so that's not happening yeah so here's something about philly's fans and i don't want to you know speak

for everybody there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of them but uh they love trying too hard and they we love trying too hard and we love being pandered to because I think there's a sort of a Philadelphia exceptionalism that like we need to be told that that we are special or harder or more demanding or more passionate than any other fans. And I think comes from being like a city of a vast cultural worth of unique importance to American society that gets ignored because it's not Boston, D.C. or New York. I've told you the Pete Rose story, right? I don't know. Refresh my memory. So when I was in college, Pete Rose went on a book tour.

He had just wrote an autobiography and came to speak at South Carolina. And he talks for like 20 minutes and then just takes audience questions for probably close to an hour. And somebody stands up and asks who the best fans are that you've ever played in front of. And Pete Rose just points out and says, you're from Philadelphia, aren't you? And Philly's fans are so needy that Pete Rose makes fun of how needy we are. So I think there's not, I don't know, there's no limit to how transparently pandering Bryce Harper can be that will turn people off. Presumably that's a product of the reputation of Phillies fans maybe, which is the opposite of that, that they will turn on you in a second and throw things at you. I mean, is that why you think that they need that validation?

I don't know. I mean, like I'm sort of at the, not only am I a Phillies fan, I'm not from Philadelphia. I'm from South Jersey. And, you know, you can ask our friend and colleague Tyler Tynes about what that says about, you know, my status on the totem pole. You know, I think the whole thing's, you know, it's on, on the totem pole, you know, I think the whole thing's, you know, it's, it's a little ridiculous, but it's fun. Like that's as much as I think the, the neediness is as much part of the identity as any, you

know, saying that Phillies fans are blue collar or whatever. And, but when somebody goes out of their way to connect with, with the fan base, which Harper is doing, you know, whatever else you can say about it, he's, he's making a huge effort, you know, whether it's somebody like Joel Embiid or Allen Iverson or Brian Dawkins that like when the fan base really gets with an athlete, you know, that's, I can't say from experience that it's more special than it is other places, but Harper definitely goes, you know, comes into this knowing that, that needs to to get in good um and to say nothing of the two home runs he had over the weekend right if he keeps doing that then it doesn't matter

what you know yeah we're coming up on on a time where he's probably going to wear a vegas golden knights jersey to the ballpark at some point perhaps when they're playing the flyers so i think he's he's got to build up a lot of goodwill before before that happens yeah the home runs go a long way i mean literally i scared the cat i shouted on sunday night and and the cat was jumped off the couch and ran you know ran and hid yeah the the first one i don't know which one was technically longer they were both crushed longer yeah the first one was like 465 feet or something and what did you say about it you had a line about how it was like the i don't know one of the most like forehead vein popping swings you'd ever seen or something like

that yeah i said it's like if ken griffey jr was capable of expressing hatred yeah so if he plays well then he'll be beloved regardless of of his pandering and it won't turn anyone off to him if he i think the pandering is good i think the pandering is it won't turn anyone off to him if he goes too far. I think the pandering's good. I think the pandering's going over well. I think everybody knows that it's kind of fake and calculated and they just, they either don't care or the fact that he's trying so hard makes him love him even more. Yeah. In a way, that was kind of what always made me like A-Rod was that he really seemed like

he wanted to be liked and he didn't know how to do it, but he cared and he wanted people to like him. And to me, I mean, there are a lot of athletes who don't really care if people like them, which is fine also, that is their prerogative, but they're there and they're making lots of money and they're mercenaries to a certain extent and that's okay. But Bryce Harper is going to be in Philly for a really long time so I mean just it makes sense just from a self-preservation standpoint you would want to be liked but he doesn't have to be liked he could just go out there and play and make his money forever like yeah it it'll help I think you might I think I don't know that it that it doesn't matter

that he doesn't have to be liked I I think just from a standpoint of survival. Yeah, I think so. But yeah, to your point, I don't know what it's like to be effortlessly cool like Derek Jeter, but I know exactly what it's like to want everybody to like you even though they don't, which is, like you said, the reason I like A-Rod so much. Right. And with A-Rod, though, it always came off as phony and insincere, or at least a lot of people perceived it that way. I guess it kind of comes off that way with Harper, but no one cares right now, at least. Well, it's because the reputation is Philadelphians are assholes, but really they just want to be loved, whereas New Yorkers actually are assholes. That's the...

Sorry. No, that's okay. I don't disagree. Yeah. Well, well i mean you've been a long time brace harper and kayla harper instagram follower right and it has been your opinion as i understand it that they're a pretty good hanger that they look like they're up there on not to like pull back the curtain too far on uh what we talk about privately at the ringer.com but yeah you know i follow a bunch of baseball players on Instagram. Those athletes uniformly suck at Twitter. Like there's like two that are any good at Twitter across all sports, but generally they, they, they're pretty good at Instagram. So I follow Bryce Harper and it seems like, you know, you follow enough baseball players

and they talk, you know, they photograph stuff about their families, the Harpers seem like a good hang. They more than I would say, maybe top five baseball couple in terms of how good a hang they look like based on their Instagram. I really do wish I could talk to the person though, who game planned this whole thing out and said, okay, here's your gritty and Philly fanatic t-shirt. I've laid it out on the bed for you. Just wear this today and unzip your jacket just the right amount so that everyone can see what your shirt is as you walk through the tunnel or under the bells of the stadium.

I mean, it must be plotted out point by point. Here's what you're going to say. Here's how you're going to endear yourself. And I wonder whether there is some consultant who is an expert on Philly or just performs this service for all Scott Porras clients where it's just like- It's me, actually. I base that shirt off of a shirt that I've worn out

that's you and Sam. Your face is photoshopped on top of Jules and Vincent for Pulp Fiction. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Ingratiating yourself to the effect of a wild audience. Yeah. I wonder how that goes, though.

There must be planned out like that. But it's going fine. If there is a limit, here's my prediction. If there is a limit to how much he can pander without getting blowback, we will find it. Do you think, is there anything you can conceive of that he could say that he would just be like, all right, buddy? Honestly, so if there's like video of him cheesesteak ordering is the short version of that. Like even as somebody who grew up in the region, I feel like it still feels stilted to order a cheesesteak like whiz wit or whatever. You know, however everybody says you're supposed to do it i could see him like leaning too far into that or going to the wrong

place like you know yeah people from around there you know pats is a tourist trap you know so i could see him like going to pats and and stumbling over how you're supposed to order a cheesesteak that's what yeah then it could cross into like politician territory when they eat the local thing and they eat it with a fork or they fold it wrong or whatever it is and you know that it's just all it's for the cameras yeah but so far that hasn't mattered so yeah he guessed what did he there was uh it was something on either fox or yahoo where he's he took a quiz this is like right before opening day about Philadelphia stuff, and he didn't know what hoagies, like he didn't know the word hoagie. So there's probably something that he'll screw up, but we'll see if it just makes everybody

love him because he's trying too hard or if that's actually a mortal sin. Right. I mean, the guy has a lock on most overrated player, according to other players. And he's also, I believe, a Cowboys, Lakers, Yankees, and Duke Blue Devils fan, which just makes him like a perfect storm of hateability. Granted, he's from Vegas. They didn't have teams in those sports. But still, it's kind of the ultimate in front running. So lots of people already dislike Bryce Harper.

It's nice that he can have his own city in his corner now, because I'm not sure he really nailed that in DC. All right, so we'll take a quick break now and we will be right back to talk to Hank Azaria of the ladder of his ride. When he was just a rolling stone, he sang so high and lonesome. This one goes out west to Hudson County All right, so we are happy to be rejoined now by Hank Azaria, the star of Brockmire, which comes back on IFC on Wednesday, April 3rd. Hank, glad to have you back. Thanks for coming on again. Glad to be back. Thanks for having me.

So we really enjoyed the season, and one of the reasons why I enjoyed it Is Brockmire goes to Florida in the season That is partly driven by the plot He is Colin Spring training games But it also opens up a rich vein of Florida-based humor You know, as much as Brockmire looks down on Floridians He's kind of a Florida man himself Or at least he has been through his actions in previous seasons.

When you say Florida man, are you referring to that the way Florida man is referred to now in pop culture? My wife shared that with me the other day. And when we were laughing so hard, we were crying because when you think of Florida man, it's like one guy running around doing all these things every single day. It's really hilarious and absurd. But yeah, Brockmire would certainly qualify as Florida man, although he would take exception to that. I think he would see himself as a much more cosmopolitan, polished version of that kind of maniac.

Yeah. Well, there was a line from very early in the season. I think Gabby says something like, going from drunk asshole to sober asshole isn't the dramatic transformation you think it is. And I thought that that served as a really nice, like you could almost put it on the season three poster because I had questions about what sober Brockmire would look like.

And I think we got all of the hijinks with less of the fear that he was going to die. Yeah, you know, I kind of miss playing drunk Brockmire just because it's fun. all of the hijinks with less of the fear that he was going to die. Yeah. You know, it's, I kind of miss playing drunk Brock Meyer just cause it's, it's fun to play a drunk like that fall down drunk. I just really enjoyed it.

But it's more of a slow burn kind of comedy, a comedy of frustration for Brock Meyer. In some ways, I'm more of a straight man, this version of Jim Bachman. But I don't mind. You know, as long as we find ways to be funny and realistic and raunchy, that's really all I care about. Yeah, and I think that worked.

That was even a plot line in the second season, I think, where he's concerned about what he's going to be like sober and will anyone still like him. And he doesn't know how to act. And I guess it's sort of the same thing if you're writing a series and your protagonist is just always high or drunk or both. And then suddenly he becomes sober and you wonder where the humor comes from. And you found it. It kept coming. So it wasn't solely reliant on him going on constant benders, although there's always the threat that he will. You know, that's funny you say that. I didn't even realize that. But you're right. The characters in Security became mine. I'm like, I'm not going to be as funny if I'm not just wasted all the time. I didn't think about that. But it's fun to play that sort of loose and crazy. It's more fun to be the crazy guy than it is the guy, you know, anxious and trying to hold it together and edgy. But it was fun.

It was also fun to, you know, the line we cut, but it's a line I loved where they're talking about going to Disney World. Brockmire just doesn't want to go. But they end up going. And the sister says, well, did you have fun? And he says, you know, I don't really have fun anymore i just tolerate and survive which i relate to my old age a lot yeah so i mean this is i mean this is obviously very fun very weird very silly uh show but there's a lot of really heavy themes being played with in season three. And there was always this sort of emotionally vulnerable vein to to Brockmire. But I think more so now than ever, not only are you not getting to play the falling

down drunk version, but playing a character who's this emotionally raw, like inhabiting that that persona, you know, what is that like for an actor? Well, it's sort of our job, although I got more than I bargained for with this character. I didn't conceive him that way as a sketch, you know, which is basically how it started. I've said this to you guys before it was, it was Joel Church Cooper, our, our head writer who kind of saw the alcoholism and depth and tragedy and sort of the tale of a modern fish out of water you know emotionally and otherwise in this character and i didn't even realize it till i was acting at season one and the director walked up it was a british guy season one it's like mate you know it's a loss of pain this character's in a loss of pain. I'm like, you're right, aren't you?

And I didn't realize how written in to what we've done that was, but it is. And it's about, yeah, it's about, you know, at its best, the show is about really painful things that are really funny, like, you know, like snorting abortion pills. And, you know, you saw the episode with his mom. I mean, it's like or the death of his dad. I mean, they're handled

realistically and they're excruciating, but they're also pretty funny. And you knew going into the season, the show was renewed for two seasons just even before season two started. So did that give you some freedom to do things differently, to get different actors? I mean, did that change anything you think about how the show unfolded in season three that you knew there would be a season four? No, I mean, they're all sort of unto themselves.

I mean, the only thing is like, now that people know the show and like the show, it's easier to get, you know, great actors. You know, it's easier to pull in J.K. Simmons and Martha Clinton and Linda Lavin and Richard Kind, where season one, it might have gotten no's from those folks because they had no idea what the show was. Yeah. Did you get anyone who, I mean, of course, Bob Costas plays a fairly prominent role, which I'm not giving anything away because that's in the trailer, but there are other

baseball people who make cameos that I won't bring up but do people come to you and say i'm a baseball person i like the show can i just find my way onto the show at some point no we sought out the other baseball luminary you're talking about but he said yes right away it was kind of hilarious and then uh and costas you know i sent the show to him because I kind of, when we had, we're done with season one, I was so pleased with it that I, I just, I kind of emailed it out to everyone I could think of who I thought might like it, you know, all legendary broadcasters and people. So I knew some, I didn't and Bob, you know, like watched it within the first week and

just emailed me back how much he loved it. And from that point on, started campaigning to be in the show. I was like, Bob, no problem. Absolutely. You don't have to ask us twice. And even from like, you know, getting Joe Buck on the show and he's funny in his previous appearances. But I think everybody sort of knows there's a silly, sarcastic side to him. Bob Costas is like the giant of baseball broadcasting.

And so, you know, did it feel strange making, you know, he says the word douchebag on the show. I can't imagine Bob Costas saying that word on television. And yet he is. And so, you know, what was that like to to see that up close? Well, you say that, but he had lived that, quite frankly. And, you know, it's funny, Bob. Yes, it was fun. Bob, you know, was drawn to it, I think, to do that and to come play. There were certain things, you know, that we wrote that Bob didn't want to do. that he was like, I can't, I spoke with the guy, you know, I eulogize the guy. I, I, I know his family. I can't, you know, go there. And it wasn't even that harsh to stand mutual joke, but Bob was, you know, there were certain places, you know, Bob is, he's an American institution and, and,

and there are certain places he could not go, but that said, he was like more than happy to say douchebag and the million other things he said and did that were ridiculous right and i feel like there's maybe more baseball in the season than there has been before it's always been a baseball show obviously but i just felt more and more often that i was seeing call outs or inside jokes or kind of things for true baseball fans that they would recognize that maybe other people wouldn't. And there's a recurring gag about Ken Burns' baseball in the season, which is hilarious. And I wonder where that came from, where you got the sense or your writers got the sense that that would be something that would be fun to lampoon. You know, again that's completely joel church cooper uh joel and i are

both tremendous baseball fans and you know obviously love ken burns baseball documentary and you know it's funny i don't i don't give many notes because joel writes the show so brilliantly but one of the things i did say was i'm not sure we can get away with that. You know, Ken Burns, uh, parody. It's almost outside the world of the show. It's like almost pushing the boundaries of believable. Um,

but then Joe said, well, look at it this way. It's just a rough cut of 10 birds. I was like, ah, all right. Cause then in the end,

it seems such a delicious thing to do to just parody Ken Burns baseball, that how could we not do it? And it was pretty funny. And just to have Costas say that stuff and Brock Myers add his ridiculousness to it was too much fun. Not to mention it really went with the theme of the yips that we were doing. That was a total jolt. That's a jolt. I was going to say,

Dolores Carnes-Godwin killed me. I had to pause because I was laughing so hard. Yeah, that was good. Well, I'm glad you like that because that was not a mistake, but we just really tried to get Dolores Carnes-Godwin and couldn't. And then we were like,

and then for a while, we just said it was her anyway. And then I think I noted, I said, guys guys we can't just call it dolores kern's good one what it isn't and the next cut i saw was dolores arms godwin and it made me laugh too and it's and that's you know that's the kind of thing that ben was talking about that like that was on screen for maybe two seconds and you have to have watched ken burns baseball 50 times in order to, to get it.

And there's just so many moments like that, that tie it back into the real baseball world. I think, yeah, definitely more than in seasons past. You know, it's funny. I didn't, I didn't notice that. I didn't think of that because first of all, to me, you know, Joel and I are so, I mean, all those references are so second nature to us that I don't really think about who knows it or doesn't know it. And, you know, as time goes on, right, those of us who know all these references as they relate to baseball, we're becoming fewer and farther between.

But to me, the show, to me, season one was the most obvious, like, love letter to baseball. Season one was the most obvious love letter to baseball. I think of season two and three as more about getting into issues of sobriety and relationship. But I guess you're right. I guess there were more baseball references this year than in years past. So as you alluded to, Brockmire gets the yips at one point this season as a broadcaster, which means that he can't do the count, essentially. He knows that a ball is called, but he can't say 1-0, for instance. Is this based on anything that has happened? Are there broadcaster yips that you're

aware of, or is this just taking a real thing to a ridiculous point? Yeah, not that I'm aware of. I'm highly aware of players who got the Ipsen. As a Met fan, I remember Max Sasser, the catcher. He never overcame him. You know, if you remember, he couldn't throw back the pitcher. He could throw to second just fine and first and third just fine, but he could not throw back the pitcher, and he had this crazy hitch. Do you remember this?

Where he would have to pound the ball into his glove obsessively like in an ocd way before he threw it back and eventually it got like seven eight nine times before he threw the ball back yeah and yeah but players on the opposing team would clap along with each time that he he pounded the ball into his glove to the point where pitchers for the mets had to like threaten to throw at members of the other team if they kept it up. You know, it was really good. And it ran him out of baseball. Who was it that lost it? Like the second baseman who couldn't throw the first anymore.

There was some real thing. That's right. Knobloch. Knobloch. Yeah, but no, I have never heard. I mean, I've heard of actors getting stage fright to a point where they just would freeze on stage. heard of actors getting stage fright to a point where they just would freeze on stage like olivier talked famously about having a really bad phase of his career where he couldn't look people in the eye on stage he would just freeze up but i don't know i never heard of any broadcasters

having any hips like that have you guys no i have not new to me yeah you mentioned getting you know martha plimpton and jk simmons Simmons and, you know, some other big name actors. That's part of, you know, the first season this was so much of the show is based around sort of weird ad hoc family of Charles and Brockmire and Jules. And now, you know, the three of them have all gone and become successful. And we see both of them in this season. But, you know, there's a new cast of characters and, you know, played by some well-known, really excellent actors. And so, you know, what was that evolution like as you're getting to, you know, had you worked with any of these people before? You know, what was getting to know them and integrating them into the show like? I haven't worked with any of them before. Richard Kind is an old, old, old, old friend of mine, but we had never worked together before. J.K. is, I played cards with many times and i got a really nice email from like a fan email he's a big baseball guy he's a big tigers fan and he loved the show and i was like well good we're gonna put you to work then and

it just turned out that matt that was the perfect role for him linda lab and i had met a few times and thought she was amazing but I never worked with before same Martha Plimpton so no we just um you know again Joel Church Cooper he he loves to not rest on his laurels like he wanted each season to be a different sort of self-contained thing in a different location the story continues but it's sort of a different story we're telling every year and he really wanted to play with you know not being i mean there are certain running things about the character that remain what they are but he sort of wants to push it each time like you know i can tell you like going into season we're

about to start shooting season four in the summertime and it is nothing like what we've done before like in the same way that seasons one two and three were all different from each other and so in past seasons brock meyer's in the minors or he's trying to work his way back. And now he's back in the big leagues more or less, but kind of the bottom of the barrel as it's described. He is an Oakland A's broadcaster and they're cutting every corner. So was this something where you had any involvement with the teams here. Now that you're talking about real teams, I would imagine that they probably would not love their portrayal here, even if it is kind of already their reputation. They're studiously not real teams, right? Like the Tampa logo sort of looks like the Reyes

wordmark, but everybody sort of knows who you're talking about. We're very careful to call them Oakland and Tampa Bay and Kansas City, but not refer to them as the Roy Tampa Bay and Kansas City, but not refer to them as the Royals, the A's, the Rays. And that's how you get away with it. And your uniforms are semi-reminiscent of real-life teams. And it's amazing how nobody cares about that. I mean, yeah, it would be Major League Baseball officially, their official stance is they love Brockmire and sanction it.

It would be okay with them if we were connected. But, you know, it's interesting how the licensing works with the MLB. They okay it, but then you have to deal directly with owners. So then it's kind of up to each owner individually whether they want to really sign off. And even if they do, which a lot of these guys probably wouldn't, they charge you an arm and a leg. I mean, they charge you a wild amount of money. Like if we wanted to do actual Oakland A's uniforms and to, you know, set foot on the field, uh,

it would cost so much money that we, I promise you, we don't have, like we shot at SunTrust Park. We shoot in Atlanta. So we've shot at every ballpark in Atlanta, like every minor league and major league field because, you know, they got, now they have SunTrust and the old Turner is now the current football stadium for one of the college teams there. And

at SunTrust, you can shoot in the booth and in the hallway and in the guts of the stadium and the stands for a fairly reasonable rate. If you set foot on the field, it's like $50,000 a second. It's like ridiculous. Wow. So if you notice in season two, it's actually 50,000 bucks a day,

but it might as well be $50,000 a second to us because that would put us way over budget. And we, the one thing we shot out on the field in season two, we're actually beyond the bullpen. Like, if you notice, we're sort of looking into the stadium from the warning track. That's the only place we could afford to stand. Otherwise, they would have charged us

a lot more money. We were supposed to be on the pitcher's mound. That scene was written to have Brock Meyer be drunk out on the pitcher's mound. Yeah, and it doesn't interfere with your enjoyment at all. If anything, the fact that it looks more low-budget than a real team would because it's just these generic uniforms sort of serves the story, if anything, because the whole idea is it's this team that's trying to cut every corner.

It's also really hard to shoot convincing baseball. I know, Ben, you and I have talked about this. When you try to make it look like an actual Major League Baseball game, and I think pitch is the closest that anybody's come to this on TV, just the expectation for the viewers goes up. So I would almost rather go into it knowing that you're going into this with the – these are the A's with the serial numbers filed down. Right. Yes, but that said though, it would be – when we shot the short originally for Funny or Die, we just used existing real baseball footage, you know, and and they actually we put that short up and we had to take it down because we were so worried about legal. And then in the end, so for a day it got pulled and then Major League Baseball came back and saw it and like loved and said, eh, it's all right. It's parody. We're not going to hold you to any licensing, anything for this.

So there's nothing I'd love better than if we could get real footage we could use of Major League and even Minor League stuff. It all costs, and it's really hard to find at the right price. So I wish we could. But yeah, you're right. and it's really hard to find at the right price so uh i wish we could but yeah you're right it doesn't really matter you know it doesn't really take away anything there are a couple moments i guess in every season not to spoil too much but well i mean this is right in the beginning of the first episode uh there are incidents with the model christmas village uh in brockmeyer's townhouse that like i I wonder, you know, obviously you've created this character and signed on to do, you know, these silly things. Is there anything that you've done

that you've thought before the cameras are rolling? Wow. There's going to be video of me doing this on TV. Yeah. Almost, uh, almost everything. Uh, a lot of my career, not just Brockmire's like, wow, I'm really going to do this now. Okay. Part of the fate of an actor. But no, it's really actually fun doing it in service of this, knowing that it comes from such a smart and insane place. You only feel really self-conscious when you feel like either the joke is lame or this is not really very smartly constructed or crafted what we're doing here this joke's cheap you know what i mean it's like doing nudity you know you really hope the scene's worth it uh either i wouldn't know

anything about that yeah um well i would and you know so um yes but also you know editing is a lovely thing especially when you're a producer and you know that if you get in the editing room and you look at it and go boy that didn't work i'm cutting it because you're a lot more relaxation on set to just try bizarre things because you know if you don't like them you can just lose them how did you enjoy acting with a turtle as a scene partner? I've worked with worse. I've worked with more stiff actors. A turtle was named Mary.

Her real name was Mary. She was actually 80 years old. Oh, okay. And we have her playing 100. We have her aged up. Yeah, it was very convincing. Turtle was actually quite delightful, very easy to work with. The monkey on Friends, that was a pain to work with.

Turtle on Brockmire was a dream. There's a lot of social commentary, political commentary in the show, sometimes in a baseball-specific way, like when Brockmire will go on a rant about public funding of ballparks and sometimes in a more societal way. It is a beautiful spring afternoon for baseball here at King Venom Vape Cartridge Stadium. A few fun facts about the city of Seascape, our home, for the next six weeks. Two years ago, its mostly elderly and retired citizens were duped. They were tricked into paying for this stadium by voting yes on the misleadingly named

Make Grandchildren Visit Act. So a $200 million stadium was built that nobody wanted and had no team to occupy. In order to lure Oakland to come all the way across the country, the city of Seascape had to promise them free rent. So we are party here today to a civic boondoggle of just epic proportions. I mean, swimming pools drained, children's educations thwarted, shut-ins meals

undelivered, all in the name of King Venom Vape Cartridge Stadium. Art Newley, the racist broadcaster from season two, he comes back as this InfoWars type figure who has an online show and incites everyone to protest things. And it's interesting because Brockmire, you would not think of as your typical woke standard bearer, but he is very respectful. He is very solicitous of minorities and trying to give people a helping hand. I mean, it's kind of, you know, he is very openly a terrible person, or at least believes he is one, and is not at all accustomed to helping people or doing good things. And yet he ends up being one of the better people on the show. Yeah, his manner is just horrible. He has no, like, personal regard for people, and is extremely self-centered and narcissistic. That said, I think part of what Joel used was that this guy almost was frozen in time. And as he's thought out and caught up with modern society,

he has a strong moral compass that sort of comes out in his politics and social stances and wokeness. And he's hyper aware of his own old white madness and how kind of lame it is, you know, which baseball is an incredible, you know, metaphor. You can't get much more older and whiter than baseball. Um, and, and, uh, you know, Brock Myers aware that that's who he is and what he is. But again, that's Joel Church-Grooper. I mean, that's just where his...

I mean, to me, for example, in episode, in season three, the sort of story arc of the season goes to one through seven, and episode eight is kind of this social commentary bonus track where we kind of find, you know, Art Newley, as you mentioned. And I was a little worried about that episode as you mentioned and and i was um a little worried about that episode as a result but actually was really pleased with it it was really i thought it was really funny there were really strong jokes in it and it was good social commentary and really organic and yes season four which is pretty much done at script is is very much that

is you know a real almost meta commentary on society through the lens of Brockmire and baseball. It's like, very much just kind of all about that. Yeah, which is, I mean, this is something that started as a funnier die sketch about a funny broadcaster voice, essentially. And it has gone way beyond that. I mean, it still is that. There's still a lot of humor in that. But that's kind of become a springboard for a show that can talk about all sorts of things. Again, I know it's not a broken record, but Joel Church Cooper, I mean, he saw all that in this and wanted to do it. It was a happy marriage because Joel's a fairly young guy. He had never run a show before he'd never been a head

rider of a show before so this was a real opportunity for him and because you know it's at ifc in a place that will take chances they you know most other places would have made would have paired paired joel with an experienced showrunner who he would have had you defer to a lot but i actually was saying no this guy seems to have a voice let let him do it. Now, Joel's bent is all of this, this social commentary, this wokeness, this sort of meta self-consciousness about baseball in America and alcoholics and relationships and codependency and drug addiction, all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, Joel wrote all that in. You know, I'll say this, I'm a good enough actor that I was able to. Joel wrote that.

So I was able to bring that to it as well once Joel wrote it, although it never would have even occurred to me to take the series this way. I would have left it much more, you know, sophomoric and silly. But I was, you know, I've been thrilled to do it. You know, it's really been a challenge, actually. was down and out and at death's door. And now he is back in the big leagues more or less. And he at least finds love for a while. I mean, is he capable of being happy? And is the show capable, do you think, of sustaining itself if he is happy since you are working on a forthcoming season? You know, I don't think so. I think that the show would probably, I think where we're headed is when and if Brockmire finds that, it will be the end of the show. I can't imagine a happy Brockmire being funny. You'd have to be deludedly happy. You'd have to be happy for a little bit and then suddenly realize that that was all an illusion.

realize that that was all an illusion because part of the i didn't realize this either about the character but part of the fun is knowing that anything that does go right for the guy is about to go very wrong and just by definition right um so if it actually ends up right for him then it would have to be sort of the final word i think yeah so i want to end on this you know part of the struggle for me coming up with things to ask you whenever we talk is just knowing that people are going to watch the show, not spoiling stuff, because I want to go, well, you know, I love this scene in episode five or whatever. But I do want to mention one thing that happens relatively late in the run of the show. Ben and I talked. I think this was the best scene for both of us. And in season three was the scene in the hospital with, between Brock Meyer and Matt,

the bat where they're talking about the God of baseball and really like talking about what they love about baseball and how it's sort of, you know, on its own, it organically comes together into a coherent vert, you know, a view of the universe that both of them can, can live with.

I, you know, I thought that was just an incredible scene. I imagine you'll, you know,'ll praise joel again um but yeah that was probably the best moment of the season for me i agree you know it helps to have an actor like jk simmons um delivering that stuff but yeah joel really as we say wrote the shit out of that and um you know that i was i was proud of that because i'll take a little more credit for that than I normally would, because at the beginning of the season, Joe and I talked a lot about, you know, this whole concept of a higher I'm a guy who has taken that journey. And, you know, finding a higher power is part of a 12 step thing, which was not easy for most people.

Certainly wasn't for me. So I had to make that up as I went along. And Joe and I talked at length about how it can be anything. You know, it doesn't you know, it can be the force in Star Wars. And we even mentioned some of it in the course of the show. It can be just the wisdom of the group that you talk to. It could be nature. It could be, you know, in what's that great movie? American American Beauty.

Yeah. Where it's just the way a paper bag kind of drifts in the wind sort of becomes that kid's, uh, bliss, you know, it's this kind of Zen thing of how it's, it's really, to me, it's acceptance, you know,

and when JK Simmons says, uh, you know, at the end of that scene, when they're talking about baseball, God, and that's the kind of God I could worship. And he says,

we did, we do, you know, and it sort of hits Brock Meyer that that it's really because the other part of that is that I ended I told Joel this is that it's not so much about what you realize I for me anyway that journey I think Brockmire's journey was it's not so much do I believe in a god or a supreme being or an all-knowing power in the universe. A higher power really is, the truth is, something's always running your life. It's just whether you choose to acknowledge it or not,

whether it's your job or your wife or the drug or alcohol you're using or whatever you're really obsessed with and so connected to that you can't live without it and whatever runs you uh it becomes your higher power whether you want to admit that or not and that's sort of the journey a lot of alcoholics take is that it's like well whether i want to admit it or not that drink was really what ran my life and and so now what i want to run my life. And for Brock Meyer, it was baseball. That's absolutely what was his salvation when he was a kid, Vin Scully's voice, and then his chosen profession, and then his love of the game really became what brought him back to humanity. I was always at my best on a baseball field. Oh, man.

They're like sacred places. Lit up, they're just like temples. In the darkness, they're like cemeteries. Look at that. I guess I do believe in something bigger than myself. Baseball. Yeah. That's a god I could believe in, baseball. Yeah.

That's a God I could believe in, the baseball God. Yes. Yeah, kind of God that demands that all his churches be parks. God that forces you to play outside on a nice day. Yeah, doesn't keep time because our actions should determine our fate, not some stupid clock. You know, a God who keeps us humble by making us play a game that's steeped in failure. That's the kind of God that I'd worship.

Well, we did. We do. We did, didn't we i love that scene too and it could have very easily crossed over into overly sentimental kind of mockish hokey you know field of dreams style i mean i like field of dreams but i know it's a it's a little bit too much for some people. It was sort of the same sentiment, but for whatever reason, it really landed. And I didn't roll my eyes. I was genuinely touched by that, which was really nice. And that was a great kind of coda to the season. I agree. Another great writing stroke by Joel is the context of this. Two men who are pretty awful,

stroke by Joe is the context of this two men who are pretty awful, too narcissistic, pretty rough guys who kind of found solace with each other in their connection over their love of a game. And then, you know, at the end of one guy's life, it really means something to them. You know,

uh, it was, what was real for them, you know, uh, their love of the game, you know, they say,

right in our deathbeds, you're not gonna remember how much you worked or, you know, how much money you made. You're gonna remember, you know, they say, right, in our deathbeds, you're not going to remember how much you worked or, you know, how much money you made. You're going to remember, you know, relationships and how much you loved. And baseball, that was definitely true for both these men. They say what you want about them.

They loved the game with all their heart. All right. Well, we enjoyed the season. We enjoyed talking to you again. As long as you keep making the show, we will keep wanting to talk to you every time it comes back. So we appreciate your time. Thanks again. Thank you, guys. I enjoyed talking to you. And Michael, thanks as always for joining me for this annual tradition, and we will podcast again very soon. Yeah. Sorry I called you an asshole earlier.

Sorry I called you an asshole earlier. All right, that will do it for today. Don't get too used to these bonus episodes. They won't be a weekly occurrence or else they wouldn't be bonus episodes. But it's fun to do something extra from time to time. Again, if you want to tune in and watch Brockmire as you should, the show airs on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. Eastern on IFC. But, of course, there's no need to be bound by such archaic things as scheduled TV airings. You can actually watch the first episode of this season for free right now on ifc.com. You can also watch the first couple episodes of each of the past seasons, too.

If you're a cable and satellite subscriber, you can watch full episodes of the show on ifc.com. You can watch episodes on the IFC app on various devices. It's on Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Googleunes amazon google play etc etc not too tough to find and you can find hank on twitter at hank azaria you can support effectively wild on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have already pledged their support christopher hennell darren pater ethan lutzky nathan diorio toff and ben lewelland thanks to all of you you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast.vanagraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine, which comes out on June 4th. It's about the ongoing revolution in player development in baseball. And we will be back with our regularly scheduled next two episodes a little later this week. Talk to you then. I wish I could see my television family wait for me. No one fights and no one screams. No one laughs and no one leaves.

I don't care how the story ends. I want to feel like I used to feel. I want to feel like I'm living again. Whoa, I'm living again.