Casual Diehard

The other working title was “If a snake had a butt.” Welcome home, Allison, we missed you. Addy and Jesse are also present for this, largely marveling at both the Mets not falling apart at the end of the first half, and their co-host’s adventures around her new neighborhood.

And now, we present the horrors of Baltimore, straight from Allison’s camera.

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We’re back! Sort of! It’s been a few weeks since we’ve gotten together to do a “studio” recording, and with Allison still finishing up her move and Colleen’s computer borked, it was just Addy and Jesse left to bask in the Mets’ sudden return to their early-season magic with their comeback in Cincinnati and Thursday night pounding of the Marlins.

We didn’t get back to it, but if you catch the “French YouTube” reference at the beginning of the show, it’s because we started recording and talking about a highlight of Ron Hunt, then with the Expos, breaking the major league HBP record. The clip includes Hunt saying, “I don’t think it was stupidity,” which gives us a fantastic French subtitle.

And, if you’re curious about that 1986 game in Cincinnati, yes, Jesse did tweet about it.

The entire recap of the game from 36 years ago is, of course, part of the 1986 video.

And, Chris Bassitt, man… c’mon. Like Addy said, you’re better than that. Or not.

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We will not make any apologies to Chuck Chodson, because he doesn’t exist, and even though he doesn’t exist, he’s a lousy comedian who doesn’t deserve the promotion. We will, however, continue to profusely apologize to the woman who got a drink spilled at her feet because even cupholders cannot stop Jesse Spector from being a klutz.

Stacy Cay is a comedian from Kansas City who’s touring this summer with Megan Graves, performing their slumber party-themed show, Spend The Night. It was in Brooklyn this past weekend, which was not a great time to do comedy because, well, you’ve seen the news, jeez. More on that in a newsletter coming later today (that’s a tease)!

The Yankees not only managed not to get no-hit on Sunday, they of course went on to win, 6-3, on Aaron Judge’s homer in the 10th inning. Is that because we openly talked about the no-hitter? Of course not. As Stacy said, “Fuck that. God doesn’t care about superstitions.”

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From HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, we’re lucky to bring another Emmy winner to the Willets Pen family, Kavitha Davidson, who joined Jesse Spector at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night to watch the Yankees take on the Astros, fresh off of Houston’s two-game sweep of the Mets and ahead of another Astros-Mets series next week. That’s a lot of Astros.

Podcast guests are family, right?

From ogling Olympic swimmers to being weirdly confident in the Knicks’ front office to free Red Bull in the Huffington Post office, it’s a conversation that might be best summed up by Jesse saying, “it’s still 6-3, who cares?”

Of course, the next words out of his mouth were, “They need a rally, and that was not the inning they were going to rally,” and that turned out to be true. The inning was the ninth.

Huge thanks, as always to, good ol’ Vobby Balentine for turning around the episode before the West Coast games were even over!

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Yesterday saw the arrival of Brittany Huber to Willets Pen, as she wrote about Adley Rutschman, Buster Posey, and growing up with a franchise catcher, as part of our latest newsletter.

Today, we’re continuing to get ahead of the NHL, whose free agency is still more than a week away. Chrystal O’Keefe is on this episode of Willets Pod, joining us from South Side Sox and the Estrogen Power Hour podcast, where she and Colleen Sullivan share creative space, in addition to a birthday. They’ve already got “Femlord” in their podcast’s bio, and the Voltron reference should be pretty obvious, and “Chicago Bureau” even more so.

We didn’t get fellow EPHers Keelin Billue and Janice Scurio on this episode, but they’re absolutely part of this now, so this Mets ebook project is now also a Substack with a strong White Sox contingent.

There’s obviously a bond between the Mets and White Sox as the “second teams” in their markets, but this addition isn’t about that so much as our general deal here: we want to have cool people doing cool stuff that they’re happy to do, and which you enjoy as a result.

You’ll get to see Chrystal, Keelin, and Janice as part of the newsletter soon, and more folks, too. We’re so excited about the chance to do fun and creative stuff with our talented friends, whenever they’re up for it. So enjoy this episode, subscribe, and come back to enjoy tomorrow’s newsletter and the next Pod At The Park, set to record at Thursday’s Yankees-Astros game in the Bronx!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

Look at these handsome fellas. Don’t you want to hear them talk through a bit of the Mets’ comeback win over the Brewers? Of course you do. The odds that you arrived here accidentally, to the third episode of a podcast series — and ninth episode of the podcast overall — are infinitessimal.

But, hey, you’re reading this, and we should shout out Mark Canha, who not only hit the game-tying homer last night, but proved in preparing for tonight that he indeed belongs here and not on the doofus homophobic Tampa Bay Rays.

Sitting in the upper deck, it seemed like Canha’s homer got a little extra boost from the wind, a little more push than a lot of balls going out that way, almost like some kind of divine intervention, who knows.

Canha also stole a base, joining Francisco Lindor (twice), Pete Alonso (somehow), Starling Marte, and Jeff McNeil in the homer/steal same-game club this season. At 33, Canha is the oldest Met to go deep and swipe a bag in the same contest since Carlos Gómez in 2019 against the Nationals, a highlight of Go-Go’s ill-fated return to Queens.

This podcast is free because we didn’t get it together to record the “studio show” this week, but we’ll be back next week, same Substack time (ish), same Substack channel.

Last but not least, there’s a moment when Roger’s piece about pessimism is mentioned, and said to already be posted. It’s not, at the time of posting the podcast, but will be within a few hours. We wanted to get the pod up first because our fantastic producer, Matt — uh, Vobby Balentine, turned it around so fast. Thanks, Vobby!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

We’re on Apple Podcasts now, and this episode went off without a hitch, so we’re immediately getting cocky.

With Friday night’s Mets-Angels game on AppleTV+, we’ll be missing our beloved GKR, so the Willets Pod crew is going to do a Twitch stream.

Is that a good idea? Will we continue this run of technical competence? Have we even signed up for Twitch yet, to be able to put a link here?

No, no, and of course no.

But we will have fun, so follow us on Twitter and join the Discord so you can get the link when we actually set it up.

In the meantime, enjoy this episode and today’s first premium newsletter! And stay tuned tomorrow for the first bonus podcast episode, Pod At The Park with comedian Tony Deyo!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

Welcome to Willets Pod At The Park, or Pod At The Park, or PATP, or maybe Willets Park? Willets Park sounds good, goes with the whole Willets “P” deal we’ve got going here.

If you remember the Tampa Bay Lightning Power Play Radio hit of the late 2010s, “Jesse Spector Is…” (it goes without saying that of course you do, duh) then the format should be pretty familiar — it’s Jesse and a guest, ostensibly talking about a sport, and then spending half an hour hanging out and chatting.

The idea here is a little different, and not just because we’re centering baseball rather than hockey. It’s because there’s no “ostensibly talking about a sport.” We’re going to be at baseball games to do these episodes, and it’ll just be whatever we’re talking about in the middle innings. Basically, we’re inviting you to come hang out with us for a while at the ballpark, just, y’know, in podcast form.

For the first episode, Jesse and Thornton McEnery take in a bit of Mets 10, Nationals 0 (check out Roger Cormier’s game thread from Twitter, ICYMI) and chat about Steve Cohen’s purchase of the Mets, hearing yourself discussed by Mike Francesa, the Mets’ penchant for beating shifts, and much more from the stands.

Regular Willets Pod episodes will return next week, and Willets Park, or PATP, or whatever, will be the bonus episodes that are for paid subscribers only. The paywall goes up next Thursday, and to celebrate our 6/9 “grand opening,” we’re offering a 69% discount on your first year for anyone who gets on board in the next week. Nice!

In the meantime, come on over to our Discord server, where we have daily Mets game chats and talk about anything we feel like (mostly the Mets, some hockey, also the White Sox and Rockies and whatever else you want).

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com

The Mets are having what can only be described as a bonkers trip to San Francisco, which you can catch up on with Roger Cormier’s tweet threads from Monday night’s rout and Tuesday night’s ridiculous 13-12 affair.

Our latest podcast episode recorded just as the series opener was about to begin out West, and it begins with Jesse hitting record to start the show, then somehow not thinking the show has started. Allison (who has a new installment from Lake Nipples out!) drops some knowledge about Victorian era beachgoing, while Addy debunks a common fallacy about Jacques Lacan’s notion of the gaze and its subsequent application in Laura Mulvey’s cinematic philosophy.

We were going to add Lenny Dykstra’s 1986 NLCS walk-off here as a treat, but searching for it brought up Lenny Dykstra’s 1986 MTV appearance with Roger McDowell, so in the name of Juan Samuel, here’s that, including Dykstra being creepy with Martha Quinn and saying, “I’m a good cheater. … They’ll never know.”

Well…

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We’re still working on getting Willets Pod onto all the podcast apps. By the time you read this, we might have made it, but probably not until Episode 5… and that’s all Wright with us (haha -JS). To subscribe, you can use this RSS feed, or, you know, just listen right here, since all you have to do now is click that “play” button up above this paragraph.

How do you write up a podcast episode? Sure, you were there and you participated in it, but you’re sure as heck not going to listen back to it and hear the sound of your own voice. So what do you do? You remember some moments from the episode, put them up top so everyone knows what’s gonna happen, and give the title the best name you can. Nobody really cares anyway, they just want to listen to the podcast — they’re in this for their ears, not their eyes. So you can probably stop now.

Get well soon, Max Scherzer. Perhaps this picture of Colleen’s new dog, Buehrle, will help!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com