Big Fan: A Guest Post by Joe Posnanski

There is nothing quite as powerful as cheering on your favorite team in the presence of 65,000 other diehard fans, right? Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski take readers on a journey to celebrate sports, fans and the games that bring them all together in Big Fan. Read on for an exclusive essay from Joe Posnanski on writing Big Fan.

New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars, and more.

 

When Mike and I became friends all those years ago, we made a sort of unspoken pact. We were still kids then. I was writing a newspaper column for the Kansas City Star — yes, this in the days when newspapers were delivered to front doors. Mike had just left his writing job for The Office and was imagining a new television show that would become Parks and Recreation. We had no idea about the lives ahead.

But we just sort of decided that when we got together, we would have fun. That would be the whole point of our friendship.

The very first thing we did together was go watch spring training baseball in Florida. Fun. That was our mission. We started doing a podcast together, not for money — lord knows we’ve spent much more money on it than we’ve made — but for fun. We went to Wrigley Field together. We went to the Baseball Hall of Fame together. 

So when Mike called me with the idea of traveling around the country and world together to get at the heart of what it means to be a fan, yeah, that felt about right.

BIG FAN was pure joy. We sat with people dressed as minions and bananas at the World Darts Championship. We sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with the Kopites at a Liverpool match. We celebrated and suffered with football fans at the most American place in the world, the Buffalo Wild Wings in Dallas. Mike sent me to a pickleball tournament because he knows how I feel about pickleball. I sent Mike to Wrestlemania in Las Vegas because I know how he feels about wrestling.

We watched a baseball game together on top of the world.

We even got our daughters to write about how much they love Taylor Swift.

We learned some things. We unlearned some things. We came to understand fandom — including our own fandom — in all sorts of unexpected ways. We found connection at time a time when everyone keeps telling us how divided we are.

But more than anything: We had fun. The best feeling as a an author is to be in love with your book, and we’re in love with BIG FAN because we honestly believe it will make you happy. 

*Note from Mike: Unless you’re a Cleveland Browns fan, like Joe. In which case, sorry, you may never be happy.