I believe this episode of the PosCast is the longest in our history at one hour and 16 minutes and yet Michael Schur and yet, somehow, there’s even less content than usual. Apologies in advance for the inevitable technical foulups that I’m sure you will alert me to later, but I can say that this PosCast brings back the marvelous 2011 PosCast theme song by Alex Birdsall called “I Have No Idea What I’m Doing.”
As true now as it ever was.
Coming to iTunes and Stitcher soon and a podcast service near you. It’s on PodBay.fm right now if this doesn’t work for you.
A definite free agent target in the sports traditions category needs to be the throwing of the octopus on the ice at Red Wings playoff games.
Still halfway through the picks, but it seems it’s only stupid/silly traditions.
The best sports tradition, in general, is the number retirement. It’s the greatest honor, and only in sports. There’s museums and hall of fames (again, museums) for tons of things, but you’d never see that in some other fields.
I mean, the general feeling is “that guy was so good for us and for so long, it’ll be weird to see someone else with HIS number”.
It’s like the company president for 40 years passes away, and they just stop using his office. No one does that. Maybe they’d name the conference room or something after him, but not “IT’S HIS, LEAVE”
Well, okay, but they don’t have 4x the offices as they have employees, right?
And the first number retired was Lou Gehrig’s – a communication to a dying man. Now Wade Boggs’ number is retired in Tampa.
My first thought on ridiculous traditions is the beanball. Someone does something you don’t like, so you retaliate against either them, or some other random person on their team, by doing something on purpose that has actually killed someone in the past.
A close second being fighting in hockey. Someone does something you don’t like, so instead of letting the referees handle it (as per their actual purpose for being there), you grab the person, or some other random person on their team, and punch them in the face. Which, as we all know, ALWAYS makes the rest of the game and future games between those teams turn into a very calm and gentlemanly affair.
Again, it bears repeating, that as a part of this sport, you can punch someone in the face, repeatedly, and it’s so commonplace and accepted that the rules dictate you can continue playing again the game five minutes later.
Agree completely with your assessment of both the beanball and hockey fights. What makes hockey fights even more WTF for me is that you’ll have the other team’s 3rd line winger check one of your first line players heavily (although often cleanly!), and you respond…by sending out your fourth line goon to fight their fourth line goon. Yeah, so that will…show them?
Joe, you need to add a fast forward. I was listening, got disconnected and had to go back to the beginning.
My favorite sports traditions
1) The Haka before rugby.
2) Shaking hands after the game/match/series is over.
3) Soccer teams trading uniform shirts after match is over.
4) Stanley Cup being carried around ice.
5) Throwing hats on ice after hat trick.
6) Cutting down nets after win.
Joe-
The original purpose of the red light in hockey is that it is hard wired to the clock. The goal judge hits the button to turn it on as soon as the puck crosses the line but if the clock has hit zero or had been stopped due to a whistle, the red light will not turn on. It was a way to determine buzzer/whistle beaters before repay.
As far as awesome traditions, how about the name of every player on every Stanley Cup winning team ever being etched into the cup for all time? Or each player on the wining team getting to take the cup home with him for a few days. What other sport does that?
The inventor of the wave, whom Michael wants to be jailed for life, is crazy George Henderson.