That’s a loaded question and maybe one that changes over time. For now? It’s a personal blog/podcast website about all of the things I love: sports, entertainment, and of course beer, the beverage that makes all things entertaining even more enjoyable.
The origin of the The Brewball would technically start out around the year of 2011. I was in the final third of my college education when I was introduced to local sports radio. Well, introduced might not be the correct word. I had known that sports radio existed, but I just always pictured it as two guys who sounded like Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite reading through boxscores. When I finally experienced sports radio, it was a game changer. I was listening to people who talked about sports just like my friends and I did. The days of listening to the same thirteen songs on whatever FM station I had the dial turned to were gone. Any time I was in my car I was listening to discussions about the Twins, Timberwolves, Wild, or how the Vikings would rip the heart out of my chest like Kano in a Mortal Kombat video game.
Growing up, sports were always a huge part of my life. I was part of the 90s generation of kids who would watch the same SportsCenter episode hosted by Dan Patrick, Stuart Scott, Linda Cohn, or Rich Eisen three times in a row on a Saturday morning. Just like most kids, I had the dream of playing in the MLB or NBA and just like most kids…well I’m not writing on The Players’ Tribune right now.
By the time college started, having my name called by David Stern was not an option and although I loved sports, I didn’t see a future there. I pictured most sports related jobs as newspaper writers or the beat writers in locker rooms who get their ass chewed up and spit out by guys like Lou Piniella and Bobby Knight. I loved Pardon the Interruption, but that was one of the few opinion shows at that time that connected to me. First Take had started in 2007, but that form of clickbait and “let’s just give the most ridiculous opinions so people hate watch us” was not my cup of tea. Keep in mind that podcasts weren’t even a real thing yet. Joe Rogan was posting YouTube videos of him reacting to “2 Girls 1 Cup”. In 2007, Gordon Gekko wouldn’t have seen that stock rise to point The Joe Rogan Experience has reached now.
Local sports radio was my first big time introduction to sports media that I would’ve seriously considered as a career. The problem is that I had switched majors about three times and as I was nearing my graduation, I wasn’t about to be the University of Minnesota-Moorhead’s version of Van Wilder and switch again. I still watch sports religiously. I always just looked at sports radio as something I think I would’ve been good at, but like many things, it wasn’t meant to be.
The years after 2011 went by. I continued to listen to the local sports station daily, but then the development of podcasts started to take off. The biggest hole the local station left for me was that I’m not just a Vikings, Twins, and Wolves fan. I’m an NFL, MLB, and NBA fan (insert Rob Lowe NFL hat meme). I now had podcasts at my finger tips for not just sports, but all of my interests. I was listening to podcasts focused on general sports, specific sports, movies, TV, music, and even beer (I got way into the beer snobbery of craft beer once I was able to afford things beyond Keystone Light and Red Dog).
Around 2019, I started to get the itch to do a podcast. I wasn’t going to be ahead of any curve at this point. Everyone was doing podcasts and there’s a podcast for everything. Shit, I bet you can find a “Land Before Time Movie Binge” podcast hosted by two paleontologists (Side Note: I can’t listen to “Whispering Winds”, the theme from that movie, without crying to this day. I should’ve had therapy after seeing Littlefoot’s mom die as a kid). I was seeing former classmates doing podcasts. I viewed a podcast as an option to fulfill something that I learned about too late to attempt as a career.
I took two years to get to this point for a multitude of reasons. I didn’t want to just throw something together and call it a podcast. Even though this is a hobby for me, I wanted to make sure it sounded and looked professional not just for myself, but for anyone who wishes to listen. I slowly accumulated equipment for what I wanted to do. On top of all of this, there was also a pandemic that started shortly after I decided to do this and is still going on as I write this now. The “way of life” change didn’t necessarily make things go much more efficiently.
Finally, I had to come up with a name. The original podcast idea was going to be very much a “sports discussion over beers” theme. I wrote down about 30 different potential names including “The Swish”, “Riding The Pine”, and “Swiganomics” (woof). Eventually I decided I wanted to include pop culture topics into the podcast since I’ve always enjoyed talking about movies, TV, and music as well. On August 12th, 2020 I finally came up with the name The Brewballer which would eventually transform into The Brewball, a play on words of a type of baseball pitch (screwball) and using the verb brew to represent the mixture of topics I will discuss.
As I stated at the top, The Brewball Podcast and TheBrewball.com will be a personal podcast and blog for now. At this moment, I don’t know how often new episodes and posts will be published. Right now, I’m flying solo, but maybe eventually The Brewball will be place for others to share their thoughts about these same interests. Maybe this all just ends up being a scrapbook of my thoughts on my favorite things. I’m keeping an open mind with no expectations.
It has been 10 years since I first started listening to sports talk radio, 2 years since I decided I wanted to start doing a podcast, and a little over a year since I came up with a name for said podcast. I have finally reached the most exciting part of this journey, the beginning. Fire up the “Whispering Winds” music so I can shed a tear. It’s here.
Welcome to The Brewball. Cheers.