The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Dan Gets COMBATIVE With Mike Schur And Joe Posnanski | Hour 2
08 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What insights do Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski share about their book?
This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stukas Podcast.
I just saw all over the televisions they were talking about the idea of Jalen Brown and Milwaukee, Jalen Brown and the Celtics trading for Giannis, but Windhorse has said on GetUp, quote, the team to watch here is Miami. Miami would say we got Tyler Hero, who's a young player and been an all-star.
We got draft picks, including the 13th pick in this draft, and Giannis, I think, wants to be in Miami. There's more check marks on Miami. I'm not sure Boston... is ready to trade Jalen Brown. And he also says of the Celtics this weekend, I have not heard that Boston is on Giannis' list. I have not heard that Giannis is prepared to sign the extension with Boston.
Just because I haven't heard it doesn't mean it's not true. But until those two things are true, I don't think it's really something that's in the world of reality. We will get back to that in a second. But Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski have written a great book, and they're going to be joining us here momentarily.
Joe Posnanski, one of the world's best sports writers, a New York Times bestselling author of nine books, co-host of the podcast, and also Mike Schur is here with him.
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Chapter 2: How did Mike Schur's experience at the World Darts Championship inspire their book?
So, Posnanski, thank you for joining us. I appreciate the time. I appreciate that you continue to carry around Mike Schur and lift him to levels that he couldn't get to by himself. Why did you guys decide to write this book? It's called Big Fan, Two Friends, 82,490 Miles and the Wild Wonderful Sports We Love. I feel like Mike Schur doesn't have time to be doing this nonsense. So what happened?
How did this come together, Joe? What was the idea for it, and how did it happen?
Well, honestly, it is completely Mike's idea, which is weird because he doesn't have time to do this, and it's a complete waste of his time. But he's better telling how it happened, but he got a video from a friend of his from the World Darts Championship that he found himself entirely just blown away by this ridiculous, wonderful event that they've got in London.
And he found himself watching the fans. And these fans are dressed up like minions and bananas and Harry Potter characters.
Chapter 3: What unusual fandom experiences did they encounter during their travels?
And and they're they're pouring beer on each other just every time somebody makes another throw and it was just such a weird thing and yet mike's sort of like takeaway from it was i think these people are just like us i think we're we're exactly like that when we watch uh our games we we're the same people and uh and he said we should travel around the world and go to events and
and write about the fans, write about what it means to be a fan. And it was, I was like, yeah, that's a great idea. And we did it. And we traveled whatever, 82,490 miles chasing fandom.
Metal Ark Media did a three-part documentary for the BBC on darts because that whole scene is just sheer lunacy. Sure. How many places did you end up where you thought that you found things even more colorful or stranger than what it is you were experiencing around darts?
Well, first of all, hi, Dan. How are you?
I'm mad at you. Like, you know what's happened here. You've gone from being on our show to going on Pablo Torre's show because it's a trendier show.
It's run by the same people.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of their trip to Fairbanks, Alaska?
It's all them in the Meadowlark family. Why are you complaining about this?
You have stopped coming on our show to go on that show. Which part of that are you not understanding?
You're right. You know what? Fair. I'm very sorry. I will come on your show anytime you want me to come on your show. But can we just lower the hostility a little bit? I feel like I woke up early, as I always do, to come on your show and see my old friend Dan. And what do I get? I get like, I'm being grilled. It's like you're grilling me. This isn't a friendly interview so far.
Chapter 5: How did the Buffalo Wild Wings experience shape their narrative?
You're being very hostile. He's also been on the pitch clock multiple times, Dan.
That's the segregated part of the show. That is not a part of the show. That's a part of the show that's adjacent to the show that's sort of part of the show that I've not been on. You've never been on the pitch clock? Never. Never invited either.
Well, that is just a blatant lie.
What's this guy doing?
Nick's fan over here. Ridiculous. I have never been invited to be on Pitch Clock.
We blocked his number.
I would turn down all of the invitations, but I've never been invited.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did the authors face while exploring different sports cultures?
There you go.
Open invite for this week, Dan. You want to join? What other strange things did you find? Sure. What other unusual places did you find that are stranger than the darts community?
Stranger than the darts community, I don't know. That was pretty strange in a wonderful way. We went to Joe went to the indigenous stickball championships in Mississippi, which is how native tribes have solved disputes for an extremely long time. It's sort of like a proto lacrosse slash field hockey slash just people beating each other up kind of a competition.
We went to Fairbanks, Alaska, because there is a every year on the summer solstice, the sun never fully goes down and they play a baseball, a semi-pro baseball game there at midnight with no lights. And we were like, let's see what that's about. That was the mission of the book. It was, the events were weird, some of them and odd, but the point was,
Chapter 7: How do Mike and Joe define the essence of being a sports fan?
more about the fans we wanted to go to places where that drew like rabid intense fans and to write about and experience what it was like to be them at those events so we you know it wasn't like uh we didn't make our choices based on what's the farthest place we can travel or what's the weirdest thing we've heard of because we got a lot of suggestions from people you know go to the wife carrying championships in Kazakhstan or whatever
But we decided that we were going to choose the events based on the fervor of the fans. And that was a good call because everywhere we went, we found the same kind of intensity.
But, Joe, there's some bullshit in here. I mean, eight hours in a Buffalo Wild Wings watching football, that shouldn't be a chapter in the book. That's you guys just wanting to expense wings, right?
What's the hostilities back now?
That was a question for Joe. That was a hostile question. But it was a question for Joe. It was a hostile question for Joe, not for you.
Yeah, it was more specifically hostile to me. Yeah, listen, Mike's a vegetarian, so we didn't even eat any wings while we were there. That was one of the... Well, I mean, that really is what this book was.
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Chapter 8: What reflections do they have on the impact of their journey on their views of sports?
I mean, because like our initial idea was we had all of these different weird places to go and we were going to travel all around the world. We were going to go to New Zealand for rugby. We were going to go to Japan for sumo. We were going to India for cricket. We were going to do all these sorts of things. And then it sort of started to morph into this idea what it really is about fandom.
It really is about what it means to be a fan and We were like, well, we've got to do something on the NFL.
and we had this idea that we were going to go to a bar and then we had this other idea and then on the way to the bar we kind of decided like you know where do people watch football they go to the buffalo wild wings so we went to the buffalo wild wings that was closest to us which was mike what would you say like 0.8 miles closer than another buffalo wild wings yeah we put buffalo wild wings into the gps and like seven we were in dallas and like seven of them came up and it was like well there's one
uh one mile away and one 1.3 miles away so we'll go to the one that's one mile away at the risk of making this yet more hostile you say it's a book for the fans and yet you're sitting here writing about the hollywood star of fame unveiling for mike shore like what is that
Yeah, Mike really, really, really, really didn't want that. That was that was that was entirely me insisting that that I go and and do that. Mike was I cannot I cannot begin to describe how hostile he was when when I said that I was going to come and write about my friend getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
But I kind of thought it was important because I don't think that we can ignore that that
television has fans too and and and you know a lot of those people really love mike and and we wanted to write about what what the other side of this thing is you know from fandom and and this was mike in the middle of what i think is the most embarrassing day of his entire life where he just had a whole bunch of people praising him and talking about how great he is and of course i had to be there for that because that was just
He was utterly humiliated as, you know, all of these incredible people talked about how great he is.
Mike, was there a place along the journey where you were like, what the hell are we doing here more than all the others? What are we doing?
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