Succotash Epi318: 4 Good Sports

If this is your first time dropping in to listen to Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast, welcome. If you’ve been this way before, welcome back! This is Episode, or “Epi” number 318 and I’m Marc Hershon, your guide for this week’s tour of comedy soundcast clips.

Not to be confused with your host for last week’s installment, Epi317. That would be Mr. Tyson Saner, a grand fellow in his own right. He presented a trio of soundcast clippage under the title “Reach Out and Clip Someone”. Those shows included The Greatest Song Ever Sung (Poorly), Mom Can't Cook!, and The Co-Founder. If you somehow missed the show last week, it’s still hanging around wherever you get your soundcasts. Places like Apple and/or Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, Audible and, after a long break while we were boycotting them for their programming decisions, Succotash is back on Spotify, baby! Plus, as always, you can grab any of this show’s past 11 and a half years’-worth of episodes at our homesite, SuccotashShow.com.

But that was then, this is now, so let me tell you what I have in store for you. Of all the comedy sub-genres – crime, movie reviews, TV show rewatches, the paranormal, etc. – one that has gotten very little play on this show over the years has been sports/comedy or comedy/sports. Not for a lack of content – there are thousands of soundcasts with a sports bent to them. The truth is that I’m just not much of a sports fan. Any sports. And although some of my favorite funny people host or are featured guests on these shows, when I’ve tried to listen I pretty much don’t know the details that they get into around whatever the sport happens to be.

To be totally transparent, no one has ever written in or called the Succotash and Runaway Truck Ramp Hotline at 1-818-921-7212 to request clips from sports-based soundcasts. Nor have any of those shows sent in their own clips to our direct Hightail upload site, at hightail.com/u/Succotash. So have I been remiss? Sure. I’ll take the hit on that but Succotash is a two-way street – or soundcasts, rather – and if you let us know what you like to hear, don’t hesitate to reach out!

No matter! Today’s the day we make it all up with a quartet of sport-oriented soundcast clips! You’ll be hearing from the likes of Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, Sportsfeld, The Grade Cricketer, and The View from the Cheap Seats. I will confess right now that I won’t pretend to know the intricacies of what’s being bandied about in these clips but for you sports fans out there, you won’t need my help. And, if like me, YOU’RE not a big sports fan, just sit back and relax. This won’t take long. PLUS we have a commercial from our favorite and only long-running sponsor, Henderson’ Pants new Drifter Chinos. If you love the romance of the open road, look out: Henderson’t rag pickers are out there, looking to get into your pants!

CLIPS

Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson
Who would have figured soundcasting would be the next best stop for heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson? Who in their right mind would tell the champ “no”? Not me! No, sir, no way! I understand from some friends of Succotash who have been guests on both our shows that the title isn’t so much about boxing as it is about being enclosed in a studio with a former pro boxer and a lot of herb being partaken of with very little ventilation. Back in July Mike had Bill Maher as his guest and they tore it up about religion, Black Lives Matter, police brutality, and Marilyn Monroe. (Who’s coming at poor Marilyn Monroe after all these years? That would be Bill, of course…)

Sportsfeld
Here’s a clip where I am totally out of my depth. This is from Sportsfeld – “a sports podcast about nothing”, according to the show’s description on Apple Podcasts – and I think the hosts, Andrew Zuber and Jake Goldsbie are talking about soccer. Pretty sure. But the series in Canada they’re talking about was happening concurrently with a baseball series AND a hockey series. For this clip I purposefully left off whatever set-up there was, just to see if you’re as lost as I am…

The Grade Cricketer
This next clip may be a bit out of reach for listeners who are even die hard sports fans in North America. The show The Grade Cricketer and it’s about – you guessed it – cricket. To start with, I’d never heard of the term “grade cricket” and had to look it up. Here’s the definition on Wikipedia: “Grade cricket, also known as Premier Cricket is the name of the senior inter-club or district cricket competitions in each of the Australian states and territories.” There were originally three hosts of the show, all cricket writers in Australia: Sam Perry, Dave Edwards, and Ian Higgins. These lads have even written books about the topic, although I was sad to hear that Dave went his own way in 2020 to focus on other things.

Anyway, I could barely understand what they’re saying, let alone what their cricket references are about. So I reached out to an one of our oldest friends of the soundcasts: Jabs (Jason McNamara) of the old DHead Factor soundcast down in Canberra, Australia to give me his thoughts on The Grade Cricketer. Thanks, Jabs!

View from The Cheap Seats
Our final clip is from a show by a couple of guys I’ve met peripherally, years ago, at the Los Angeles Podcast Festival. We’ve featured them before from the great soundcast they do along with Daniel Van Kirk called Dumb People Town. I’m talking about the Sklar Brothers, Randy and Jason. These guys are totally into sports and they get to let it shine nowadays in their other soundcast called View from the Cheap Seats. In this clip they’re talking about MVPs and champinoships and other things I don’t get, along with their guest – another friend of Succotash – the great Wayne Federman.

That’s going to do it for our sports clip-related show. If you’re a sports fan I hope I didn’t ruin it for you, but I just don’t get it. Or them. I’m a nerd, and a dweeb, and I prefer a good game of Dungeons & Dragons to watching the Super Bowl. But I recognize the importance of sports in our international zeitgeist so please enjoy.

Listener, you are always welcome to send email into either me, at [email protected] OR Tyson Saner at [email protected]

Jump into this feed next week for Epi319 when Tyson  returns with more soundcastic wonderfulness. If you’re looking for more entertainments, I do an editorial cartoon for the Half Moon Bay Review weekly newspaper which you can find online at http://hmbreview.com and just click on the Opinion section in the pulldown menu.

Other than that, if you find yourself pushing a cart down the aisle in your neighborhood grocery store and a kindly senior citizen is heading your way from the other end of the aisle and stops you to ask, “Have you heard anything good lately?”, won’t you please pass the Succotash?

— Marc Hershon