The Other 51

You know those banal-sounding cliches you hear baseball players say in interviews with reporters every day? Stacey May Fowles finds a lot of truth in them. She’s built a newsletter and written a book about the life lessons she’s learned as a baseball fan.

After breaking down exactly what’s up with the Toronto Blue Jays, Stacey May talks about her career writing about baseball from a fan’s perspective. She and Brian talk about how the Blue Jays’ recent run of success has changed the fan culture in Toronto, the value of writing on a closed platform like a newsletter, how Jose Bautista would be an awesome life coach, and how being an outsider can help you find your voice as a writer (especially in a closed world like sports).

Brian and Stacey May also share their favorite memories of Exhibition Stadium, the best worst stadium in Major League history.

ESPN The Magazine investigative journalist Seth Wickersham joins Brian this week. The two bond over Jason Isbell and talk about the idea for a SiriusXM channel called “Byline” that would feature Isbell, Bruce Springsteen and other singers journalists tend to love.

Seth calls himself “an accidental byproduct of people landing on ESPN.com” but he’s one of the best reporters in sports journalism today. He talks about his work with Don Van Natta Jr and the lessons he’s learned from working with him on several ESPN stories and their upcoming book about the NFL. Seth also talks about why compassion is such an important skill for journalists, how he organizes his stories, why the worst thing you can feel as a writer is that you’ve plateaued, and why he has faith that the writing process will always work itself out.

Seth also tells the story of what happened when he asked Ben Bradlee a question at a Washington Post internship lunch. You can imagine how this one goes.

She’s a comic book writer and artist. She’s written My Little Pony comics, worked on books for Marvel, D.C. and IDW. She’s written her own comics, including the adorably awesome Gronk. She drew pictures of the cast of Hamilton for Broadway Cares and has been on stage at the Richard Rogers Theater twice. She’s basically living every nerd’s dream life.

She and Brian talk about the comic book writing process. Katie talks about why it can be easier to write for an already defined, established character as compared to one you create yourself, why she always thinks of herself as an artist first, the importance of having a sounding board as a writer, the delights of hearing your 6-year-old singe age-inappropriate Broadway songs, and how Hamilton inspires us all to create something unique that lasts.

Kate was also kind enough to answer a question from Brian’s daughter about My Little Pony.

Patrick Hruby is probably best known as the sports journalist who writes about all the unpopular issues in sports. Whether it’s concussions in football, amateurism in the NCAA, or cities subsidizing sports stadiums, Hruby writes about the intersection of politics and sports for Vice (among other places).

Patrick joins Brian to talk about how sports can serve as a gateway drug to talk about bigger issues in society, and why “stick to sports” is such a false position. They also talk about the generational use of social media, why curiosity is such an important trait for journalists and why he sometimes feels like Darth Vader at the end of Rogue One.

It’s a WSBU/88.3 The Buzz reunion, and Brian catches up with fellow St. Bonaventure alum and author Michael Farrell. The two talk about the importance that Dr. Rick Simpson played in both of their writing lives, with Michael telling the story about how Doc Simpson line-edited the 600-page first draft of his first novel.

Farrell talks about the writing process of his two novels, Running with Buffalo and When the Lights Went Out. He discusses the lessons he learned in several grad-school meetings with Dennis Lehane, why it’s important to keep a story moving forward, what it’s like to see Buffalo’s resurgence and how he’s happy his children won’t have to grow up through his stories.

But most importantly, Michael helps Brian figure out how to start listening to Wilco.

Mike Vaccaro and Brian both attended St. Bonaventure University as journalism/mass communication majors. Their first jobs out of college were at The Times Herald in Olean, N.Y., working for the legendary sports editor Chuck Pollock.

The professional similarities pretty much end there.

Mike, a senior sports columnist at the New York Post, joins the podcast this week to talk about the art of writing a sports column. Mike talks about why the lede of his column can be so important, what makes a good New York City story, the value of a great editor and the challenge of writing something that stays with the reader. They also talk a lot about St. Bonaventure and A LOT about the Beatles and Mike’s ranking of all 189 Beatles songs.

There have been days in the past month where Keith Law has done more than 20 interviews in one day.

So what’s one more?

Law, the ESPN columnist and author of the outstanding new book “Smart Baseball,” joins Brian to talk about writing and analytics in sports. Keith talks about how he learned to slow down his writing, how writing about analytics doesn’t mean you don’t have passion for your subject material, and how being open-minded can help you ask better quesetions and write better stories. He also describes how numbers can never drive a story, and he reveals what question interviewers ask him that is a giveaway that they haven’t read his book.

Brian also gets his first-ever board game recommendation.

[Smart Baseball](http://amzn.to/2q5Ufpm)

[Keith Law](https://twitter.com/keithlaw)

[Keith at ESPN](http://www.espn.com/blog/keith-law)

[The Dish](http://meadowparty.com/blog/)

[Keith Law writer](https://www.facebook.com/KeithLawWriter/)

[Like a Detuned Radio](http://tinyletter.com/keithlaw)

[Blackout by Connie Willis](http://amzn.to/2r46fVh)

[Commonweath: A Novel by Ann Patchett](http://amzn.to/2r42O0S)

[Reconstruction by Eric Foner](http://amzn.to/2qvNZYI)

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Don Van Natta Jr.’s favorite song in Hamilton is “The Room Where It Happens.” Partially because, in his own words, as an investigative journalist, he is always trying to find out what really happens in the rooms where things happen. Seriously. It’s pretty perfect. Van Natta Jr., a senior writer at ESPN, joins Brian this week and talks about how covering the White House, Pentagon and CIA prepared him to write about the NFL, how he keeps organized when interviewing 100 people for a story and how he builds the architecture of his stories. He also shares tips on how to become a better rewriter, and he and Brian figure out why writers drink so much.

Professor, essayist and novelist Alysa Auriemma joins Brian this week. In between nerding out over both Hamilton and comic books, they really do talk a bit about writing. Alysa, who teaches at the University of Connecticut, talks about why she always writes her fiction longhand, how she uses her phone to help her write and what student writers can do to improve their writing by 10 percent today. She also discusses how Twitter has helped make her a more nuanced writer. I know, right?

Author, writer and award-winning columnist Sean Kirst has lived in and written about upstate New York his entire life. He joins Brian this week, and they talk about why writers work best at extreme times of day (late night for Brian, early morning for Sean), the discipline that comes from writing on deadline, how column writing is like both archery and pitching, and why communion is the essence of writing. They also break down the subtle differences between Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse and what makes a good Central New York Story.