Season 14 of The Moonlight Graham Show is here!
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This week we are sending out dreams of spring and early tee times on the weekend. Tim sits down with Nate McCoy to talk all things golf and life after you start carrying your own bag. The former Cyclone and pro golfer shares his perspective on the game, his career, and his decision to make a career in golf without the clubs in his hands.
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Every Iowa sports fan knows the reputation of Harlan Community High School. The Harlan Cyclones are known far and wide for their success in every sport. Coach Bladt and the football program built a foundation of success that the entire community rests on. There is a lot of pride in the school colors and full bleachers whenever they take the field or court. Mitch Osborn has helped to continue that success in his roles as AD and head basketball coach. This week we sit down with Coach Osborn to learn about his career and what makes Harlan so darn special.
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Much of the Moonlight Graham Show has been about telling the stories of former athletes. We have spent 274 episodes looking back on glory days and telling the stories that either made the highlights or shaped the person in the jersey. But this week, we look at a sport that is bringing athletes back to life while it grows on a national stage. Pickleball has been growing in popularity over the last decade. Today, names as big as Lebron James are involved as investors and sponsors. The game has gone from junior high PE classes and retirement communities to deserving real attention.
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Every listener to this podcast knows that a game of catch is rarely just a game of catch. Playing catch is an opportunity to connect with someone, whether you spend that time in conversation or just listening to the pop of the ball hitting the leather. Few understand this more than this week’s guest, Kevin Negaard. Negaard’s journey is nearing his goal of 365 consecutive days of catch. This endeavor has connected him with hundreds of partners, has spanned two continents, and led to two injections in his shoulder.
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This week’s Moonlighter is an underdog, but the hardwood he plays on is more likely to be found on a stage than on a basketball court. Like most of our guests, he is a former athlete, but unlike many of our guests, he walked away from the game instead of the other way around. Griffin House has spent the last 20+ years with a guitar in his hands, recording, touring, and turning out songs that thousands of us love to sing along with.
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The college basketball season is about to hit full swing. A lot of the attention in Iowa is on the Hawkeyes and the Cyclones and where they might fall in the top 25. But, lucky for us, we also have two top-tier Missouri Valley Conference teams in the state. Almost every February, there is talk about how many of our big 4 teams can get into the tourney and who can make a run. This week we welcome one of the best Drake Bulldogs to ever put on the uniform, Reed Timmer. Timmer’s career included many records, and he was part of the transition from a few rough years into the upshot that Drake has been on for the last several seasons.
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Role players come in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes, they have to change their shapes and sizes to fit their roles. So as you fill up on Christmas goodies and homecooked meals, just pretend you are getting yourself ready for a new challenge. Ryan Harklau went from being a 3 sport star at Humboldt High School to working through the dark days of the Dan McCarney era. Harklau has never stopped chasing down experiences in and around sports. Today he is still very involved with the Iowa State Cyclones and gets to stay about as close to the game as you can get.
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The underdog podcast needed to sit down with the underdog guy. Tyler O’Shea is a kindred spirit for the Moonlighters out there. O’Shea is researching, writing, and podcasting as he builds his own underdog story with Jokermag.com. Tyler O’Shea has built an incredible underdog storytelling machine. Now, he joins us at the Moonlight Show to break down his top 5 underdog stories from 2022. His list spans the USFL to the NFL and FedEx to the MLB. Tyler O’Shea and Joker Mag know their underdogs, and he came to share.
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In an age of sport specialization, the multi-sport athlete is more fascinating than ever. In this week's episode, Tim and Neil discuss the best dual-sport athletes of their lifetimes.
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Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, Moonlight Graham Show is getting in on the two-for-one deals. No, we aren’t talking about merch, although we have that too, we are talking about major league arm talent. Pat Venditte is the only true ambidextrous pitcher in MLB history.
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This week the Moonlight Graham Show takes a dip, and we aren’t talking about the Thanksgiving appetizers. What better time for our first episode about swimming than just as the first rounds of snow hit the ground? Tim sits down with Paul Jensen and Don Appleby of the 1985 Minnesota state swimming champions from Burnsville High School. This team was a true underdog story.
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Sports are about so much more than wins and losses. At the same time, though, sports aren’t nearly as fun if you don’t care about wins and losses. At the middle school and high school level, more than anything else, sports are about learning life lessons and building relationships. It takes a special kind of coach to be able to balance the drive to develop young people and develop competitors. Mike Szalat is one of those people. Over the last 20+ years, few people have put more hours into the students and athletes at St. Edmond in Fort Dodge.
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This week’s episode features an upcoming prospect. We don’t mean a guy projected to develop into something special; we mean a diamond in the rough uncut gem. John Klein has only been pitching for four seasons, yet he recently signed with the Minnesota Twins. It all began with a chance to move to the mound in high school, which set his baseball career on a new trajectory.
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There isn’t a more perfect way to kick off this season of the podcast than with a perfect game. Most of us probably think about the pitcher when we hear ‘perfect game,’ but on the Moonlight Graham Show, we are looking for someone behind the scenes. Two-time Moonlighter Pat Hoberg is working his first World Series, and we didn’t want to miss a pitch. And as it turns out, neither did he.
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Every once in a while, a Moonlighter just falls into your lap. Matt Buschmann connected to the podcast on Twitter, and, as it turns out, he was just the kind of story we are looking for. Matt Buschmann is a 10-year minor league baseball veteran who made three appearances in the Majors. When his playing days were done, he became the bullpen coach for the Toronto Blue Jays. Buschmann has the kind of story diehard baseball fan loves to hear, and he came to the right place to tell it.
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Neil and Tim discuss the CyHawk showdown this Saturday, Albert Pujols, Aaron Judge, and the new King of England.
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Jon Wisnieski’s name may be hard to spell, but it is even harder to forget for Des Moines metro Hawkeye fans. He was a star from Dowling Catholic High School and a highly touted recruit heading east to Iowa City. Jon played alongside some of the top names coming out of Tight End U during his five years in black and gold. Injuries sidetracked his college career but haven’t slowed him down since. Just in time for Cy-Hawk week, Jon Wiznieski gives the inside look at his time for both Dowling and the Hawkeyes and life beyond football.
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This week things get really nice on the podcast. That’s right, the Iowa Nice Guy, filmmaker, actor, and Moonlighter Scott Siepker returns to the pod to talk about his new feature-length documentary film, Kinnick. Scott and Tim take the pod outdoors for an early fall evening conversation about Nile Kinnick and the years-long journey that Siepker set out on to tell the famous Iowan’s story.
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Once again, Moonlight Tim returns to the course with Sam Meuret. This time they head west for the Mid-Amateur Qualifier. Like our previous episodes with Sam, this pod was recorded in two parts. Part one of the interview is Tim and Sam on the road to Shadow Ridge, and part two is the road home. The relationship between the caddie and the golfer is like the pitching coach and the ace or the quarterback and the offensive coordinator. Though Tim and Sam took a long break between podcasts and tournaments, they go together like a round of golf and an ice-cold 6-pack.
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