Now hear this: baseball on podcasts

And I’m not talking about the hundreds of podcasts actually devoted to the national pastime, but a couple not normally associated with the game.

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the NPR (aka National Pastime Radio) news quiz show, featured San Francisco Giants announced Jon Miller in its “Not My Job” segment on the March 2 program. Miller is in the announcers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame for his many years of wonderful work. He is also the author of Confessions of a Baseball Purist: What’s Right–and Wrong–with Baseball, as Seen from the Best Seat in the House.

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I “discovered” Greg Proops via a segment on the Comedy Mixtape podcast and enjoyed it so much (you can hear it here) I subsequently found his own website/podcast. You may also remember him from the hit TV show Whose Line is It Anyway?

Proops, it seems, is a solid baseball fan; Giants, in particular, I believe, although I haven’t heard a whole lot of his stuff. Suffice it to say, he knows what he’s talking about, as opposed to those celebrities the networks love to profile during the World Series to promote shows who profess to be diehards but who don’t know a designated hitter from a designated driver.

In 1993, Proops released The History of Baseball (History of Sports) as an audiobook. You can listen to a clip on the book’s Amazon page.

On this podcast, titled “Walkers,” Proops regales his live audience with the recitation of an “official” letter (still can’t figure out if it’s authentic or made-up) written in the 19th-century about the use of cursing by ballplayers. WARNING! WARNING WARNING! It is FOUL. Not only is it NSFW (“not suitable for work” for those over 35), I don’t know if it’s suitable unless you’re by yourself wearing headphones in a sound-proof room. But it is hilarious. Having said that, you can access it here.