Michael Schur is most well known as the creator of shows such as "Parks and Recreation," "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and "The Good Place," and as a writer for shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "The Office." Joe Posnanski, formerly of The Kansas City Star, has won National Sportswriter of the Year on several occasions, and has written myriad books on some of the most fascinating eras of sports history.
Together, the duo for years has hosted a podcast called "The PosCast," where they talk about "sports and nonsense." Now, they've joined forces to write a book called "Big Fan," which chronicles their travels to sporting events around the world to observe fans and understand what has drawn them into their passion.
Schur said he came up with the idea to write this book after a friend sent him a video of the World Darts Championship in England, which featured thousands of fans "absolutely losing their minds" at two guys playing darts.
"And I had this very sort of immediate thought, which was, 'I don't understand why they love that thing, but that reminds me of the way that I love the things I love.' And I had this idea to travel around the world, go to different events, and write about fandom and why it possesses us the way it does," Schur said.
While writing "Big Fan," Posnanski and Schur at one point sent each other to events centered around their least favorite sports: pickleball and WWE wrestling, respectively. Through it all, they traveled over 81,000 combined miles to attend sporting events for the book.
"I've been a sportswriter for 30-plus years, most of those in Kansas City, and I felt like I had seen sports from a fan perspective throughout that entire time. But this was different, because we really went to so many different events that we never would have gone to otherwise," Posnanski said. "And what we saw is we recognized everybody there. They were watching the weirdest things, but it was like, 'These people are us. We're them.' Yes, they're rooting for the darts, or, yes, they're rooting for Indigenous stickball or pickleball or wrestling. But we're all the same. We all care about these things in the same way."
- Michael Schur, television writer and director
- Joe Posnanski, sportswriter
Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski, "Big Fan" with Rainy Day Books, 7 p.m. Thursday, May 21, at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th St., Kansas City, MO 64112. Tickets are available online.
