Joey Mellows - The Baseball Brit
It all started with a broken heart
This week’s Moonlighter has squeezed a lifetime of fandom into the last few years. Baseball was not part of the story growing up in the UK, but Joey Mellows has made up for the lost time and earned his title “the Baseball Brit”. While he won’t call himself an expert of the game of baseball, he is an expert in fandom and the intricacies of great ballparks.
Joey Mellow’s first fell in love with the experience of the baseball game Japan in 2015. He then developed his love for the game with another Brit Moonlighter Andy Brown. Mellows had to watch English broadcasts of MLB games early in the morning to learn the rules of his new pastime. The noise, customs, and environment of the Japanese and Korean baseball leagues were what drew Mellos in. While living in South Korea, the two became passionate KBO fans, going to games, collecting cards, and Brown painting the ballparks.
The go-to meal was a hot dog, peanuts, and a Miller Lite.
That love for baseball remained when life took him back to the UK. When love threw him a curveball, Mellows took the money he had been saving for a wedding and home and spent it on the most epic baseball road trip you can imagine. Mellows crisscrossed the US on a trip that included 150 baseball games over 8 months. The Baseball Brit built up a following on social media as he toured the country and tried to experience the game, stadiums, and cities of American baseball.
There was a lot of luck involved
Those connections turned into World Series tickets from the wife of the Houston Astros GM, a free flight from an airline pilot who loves LSU, and a die-hard passion for Tulane University. Mellows is currently working on a book about his baseball adventure and hopes to finish it and release it soon.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Baseball Hall of Fame looks to celebrate the greatest from across all generations. Standards like 3,000 hits or 300 wins are looked at as certain marks of excellence that lock in a player’s place in Cooperstown. While we don’t know where Fernando Tatis Jr.’s career is heading or what Aaron Judge’s next few years will be like, our resident baseball experts Tim and Neil sit down to prognosticate the Hall of Fame classes of years to come.
This week’s Moonlighter goes way back with Moonlight Tim. Eric Stein was a sophomore leader for the Iowa Central Tritons when Tim joined the team as a freshman. Even as a 19-year-old, Eric Stein’s baseball IQ made it clear that his future was in coaching if he wanted it. Roughly 18 years after that first meeting, Tim sits down with Eric to talk about Stein’s progression from player to head coach for those same Tritons.
There are few roles more important than that of coach. Part mentor, part cheerleader, part teacher part disciplinarian, and sometimes even part father or mother figure. This week’s Moonlighter fits those descriptors to a T. Marty Sutherland has spent most of his life in sports and played a prominent role in the lives of countless young men.
This week Neil and Tim discuss the current state of attendance in the MLB and the astounding fact that over 600,000 fans attend baseball games each day.
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.