Casual Diehard

Ana, Janice, and Jesse share their reactions to the WNBA draft, from Caitlin Clark officially becoming the face of the Indiana Fever to the Las Vegas Aces putting together a sparkling draft class without a first-round pick. Did the Liberty outsmart everyone, including their own fans? What are reasonable expectations for Clark, not just adapting to the WNBA level, but playing the most basketball of...

The "win or bin" concept is not our own, but Addy, Jesse, and Katie do find some similarity between their faves here, whether it's at Ferrari, in NASCAR, or on the baseball diamond. On a between-races episode in the F1 season, there's plenty of room to speculate about silly season ahead, and lots of fun scenarios to imagine as we get ready for the first Chinese Grand Prix since 2019 -- a rare race...

Jesse and Youppi go for a walk in Prospect Park with Jennie Egerdie, the author of Frog And Toad Are Doing Their Best and the upcoming Oh, Bother: Winnie the Pooh is Befuddled, Too , to enjoy a beautiful spring day and talk about the Sesame Street atmosphere of Park Slope, trees growing in Brooklyn, monster trucks, and, of course, the biology of Mr. and Mrs. Met as relates to their old SportsCente...

Ace, James, and Jesse are back together to transition from the NBA regular season to the playoffs, tackling all the big questions. Could the bracket have worked out any better in the East for the Celtics? Is Dame Time already up in Milwaukee? Can the Knicks really make a run without Julius Randle? Is Oklahoma City for real as a top seed? Is Denver inevitable as a repeat winner of the West, if not...

Ace, Jesse, and debuting guest Martin Rickman ready for the playoffs by examining potential intriguing matchups and what might come to pass as the regular season winds down toward its conclusion. We now know all 20 teams that will be involved in the play-in and playoffs, but not their seeding order. Is it as simple as being a two-month march to an inevitable Denver-Boston collision in the Finals?...

After a snooze of a racing weekend between F1 at Suzuka and NASCAR at Martinsville, Addy, Britt, and Jesse are tackling big questions, like whether Max Verstappen or Mike Trout is a more interesting person, what's going on with Lance Stroll's hair, and whether Charles Leclerc would get designer glasses made for viewing a solar eclipse. Oh, and does Williams have enough cars to actually make it thr...

It’s never a good thing when Pete Rose is back in the news, and he has been lately because of the alleged theft of $4.5 million from Shohei Ohtani to cover gambling debts. That story has yet to fully unfold. Rose’s has, to the point where the Washington Post ran not one , but two big stories looking back at it… 10 years ago. This year is the 35th anniversary of the death of then-commissioner Bart...

Walking in Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with Sophie Vershbow and her dog, Simon. It's a great park for dogs, a great place for walking, and little did we know, a great place to look across the river to New Jersey right before an earthquake, which struck less than an hour after we finished recording. That would have been some kind of conversation topic. As it is, a great time...

Ana and Jesse are joined by one of women's basketball's best writers, Jackie Powell, to celebrate a momentous NCAA Tournament won by South Carolina, and to look ahead to the 2024 WNBA draft, which of course will be headlined by Caitlin Clark after she led Iowa to the national title game against the Gamecocks. If "reality is coming," as Diana Taurasi said, what does that mean? The challenges that W...

Addy, Britt, and Jesse spent the week between F1 races diving into the start of baseball season, which has gone for the Mets about the way we usually expect things to go for Ferrari. But remember how the last F1 race was won by... Ferrari? Wild. Ferrari won the last F1 race. That is a thing that happened. This is a mixed racing/baseball episode, as we've got NASCAR highlights from Richmond to disc...

In episode 2 of Dugout of History, Chrystal and Colleen dig into the Pittsburgh drug trials , the scandal that many people know because the Pirate Parrot mascot was implicated as a coke dealer, but that had far-reaching impacts across major league baseball, including shaping the sport’s drug policy into the Steroid Era. For me (producer Jesse, writing the show notes), it’s a very interesting episo...

Ana, Janice, and Jesse assemble after the opening weekend of the NCAA women's tournament and continue waiting for what must be the biggest Washington Post story since Watergate for all the hype it's gotten from its subject. The basketball has been excellent, and the regionals bring potential matchups of Kim Mulkey's LSU against Caitlin Clark and Iowa, the rejuvenated Paige Bueckers and UConn again...

Addy, Britt, Jesse, and Katie are over the moon after the Australian Grand Prix and the rare occasion of not only a race not dominated by Max Verstappen, but won by Carlos Sainz in his Ferrari, two weeks after his appendectomy and a few months before he cedes the Scuderia seat to Lewis Hamilton… who was one spot ahead of Verstappen in the running order as Mercedes’ disaster start to the season rea...

Addy, Britt, Chrystal, and Jesse are caught up in the Shohei of it all, and the scandal-embroiled superstar isn't a clubhouse cancer, but a clubhouse Cancer. That's his zodiac sign. And we are talking astrology in a big way, too, because Jesse made a full fantasy baseball league on ESPN ( it's publicly viewable ) where the teams are divided by the stars. Who's got the best roster? Hosted on Acast....

On the premiere of Dugout of History, Colleen and Chrystal go deep into history for the story of Merkle's Boner, a dramatic turn of events in 1908 that to most folks now is just a funny name for an incident more than a century ago. There's so much more to it than just the boner. From Wikipedia: Merkle's Boner  refers to the notorious  base-running  mistake committed by rookie  Fred Merkle  of the ...

Jared and Riann from Dunks and Donuts join Ace, James, and Jesse for a Celtics-themed episode that is specifically about love for Derrick White, and nostalgia for Marcus Smart, because the regular season might still have about 10% of the way to go, but business is settled, and business for Boston has been great -- they've already got that "x" next to their name in the standings. So, when it does g...

The field of 68 is set and it looks like a lot of chalk at first glance. Certainly, Barack Obama felt that way with only five lower-seeded teams winning in his women's bracket for the entire tournament. Ana, Janice, Jesse, and Lyndsey scan the regionals and see where upsets might be waiting to happen, because you know they will -- that's tournament basketball. After our last women's college episod...

NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Ryan Ellis joins Addy, Britt, and Jesse to talk about driving the No. 43 Chevrolet, Washington Capitals fandom, and texts from grandma to turn on the Cup series. Also, since this is regularly an F1-themed hour… what would it really be like if Max Verstappen came over to drive in the truck series? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a pu...

Shaun joins Ace and Jesse to talk Knicks basketball. It’s great. We are loving the Knicks. Jalen Brunson is a superhero. Isaiah Hartenstein put up a historic night in Sacramento. OG Anunoby is back and transformative. In a fandom defined by failure, how do we stay positive? And who are we most negative about, because Knicks fans are, after all, world class haters? Is it the Hawks, the Heat, or eve...

This is the first episode of The Youppi Show (it'll have its own feed by the time the next episode drops -- now that spring is springing, we can schedule more walks for Youppi and for other New Yorkers and their dogs to enjoy) with Jesse Spector (Youppi's person) and Laura Albanese (our fabulous guest). Laura is a lifelong New Yorker, and like Jesse a Brooklyn kid who moved to Astoria. This episod...

Ace and James join Jesse for the worst game of the year -- meaning both Knicks-Sixers from Sunday night and a virtually impossible trivia game based on boxscore connections through the years. The point is that Josh Hart is doing some extremely cool and entertaining stuff out there for New York, and you can only worry about the results of the games so much at this time of year. Even the Celtics dro...

If you're the kind of person who would like to ponder a world where Logan Sargeant never drove a racecar, and instead was in spring training with the defending American League East champions, you're not alone. That's not a thing that specifically happens on this episode with Addy, Britt, Jesse, and Lily, but it's kind of the vibe. It's a baseball episode. It's a racing episode. It's an astrology e...

Ace, Ana, Janice, and Jesse welcome Lyndsey on board for women's basketball talk, as it's time to get ready for the NCAA Tournament. Turns out, there's more to the sport than one player, and Iowa isn't among the top four teams in what some outlets might have you believe is the Caitlin Clark Invitational (defending champion: LSU). How many of our top 16 teams will make it to the second weekend of M...

Addy, Britt, Jesse, and Katie pick their F1 drivers for a season-long game, and there's a lot to talk about on the grid, mostly away from the track as things are blowing up in the Red Bull front office. Could Max Verstappen really leave? Do we dare to dream of Adrian Newey designing red racecars? In NASCAR, Rajah Caruth gets a historic truck win, Kyle Larson does his best Max Verstappen, and Ross...

Ace, James, and Jesse convene in the immediate aftermath of Jalen Brunson’s injury and a Knicks win in Cleveland, and the slightly less immediate aftermath of the Celtics obliterating Golden State. So, what are we looking forward to between now and the playoffs? It’s time to get a little existential about the NBA, at least for those of us not bleeding green. Could the Lakers improve this summer by...