Batting Stance Guy
Growing up on a sandlot field is all about dreaming about bigger things. Picturing the crowd going wild as you hear your name announced. Pretending your t-shirt is the jersey of your favorite team and your sneakers are metal cleats making that distinctive sound as you walk up to the plate. Your best friend is actually the star closer brought in to win the World Series. And as you step into the box, you become your favorite player and do your best to mimic their stance. Every kid does it. You want to be what you see on tv. When we were kids it was copying Gary Sheffield’s or Jeff Bagwell’s unique stance or trying out the extreme bat angles of Craig Counsel and Rod Carew. We did anything to be a little bit more like a real pro. This week’s Moonlighter takes looking like a pro to a whole new level.
If you google Gar Ryness, the internet refers to him as “an American sports entertainer”. And while you may not know that name, or what an American sports entertainer is, you have probably seen an online video of Ryness doing his impressions of batting stances and what can only be described as baseball comedy sketches. His talent for impersonating ball players started as a kid pretending to be the players on his ball cards as he carried out an entire game of wiffle ball by himself. He started doing impressions at the requests of his friends but really honed his craft by figuring out what made different people laugh. It wasn’t just the stance or swing, but the facial expressions, mannerisms, or the run of individual players that garnered the biggest response.
What started out as fun with friends started to really blow up around 2008. Over the course of the next year, Gar Ryness was either mentioned by name or was featured on shows including Dan Patrick, Bill Simmons, and E60. One of his biggest highlights was making an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman and getting on a roll with Letterman calling out players to impersonate. For more than a decade now, Ryness has been the Batting Stance Guy. Gar Ryness has some incredible stories in and around the world of baseball. Its clear from the conversation with Tim that Ryness still loves it as much now as ever.
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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.