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We promise this is not a morning cop-out. We thought of all the things we could write, and we still decided the best thing to do on a day like this is fire up a rerun. You see, we did a Q&A -- with the help of some dear readers -- back in the middle of 2008 with Michael Schur. If you are not familiar with his work, he is one of the creative geniuses behind The Office, and now Parks & Rec (season premiere tomorrow night for both! Woo!). He also was one of the authors of one of the most vicious, clever and hilarious sports blogs around: the now-defunct Fire Joe Morgan. Schur (aka Ken Tremendous) and his old FJM pals are guest-editing Deadspin today. We give you permission to sneak over there every now and then to take a look at what they've cooked up. But first: please do give a read to the Q&A we did with Schur. It's a win.
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Michael Schur writes for "The Office" and has also appeared on episodes of the program as Dwight Schrute's cousin, Mose. He also writes for a (primarily) baseball blog called Fire Joe Morgan. The Office. Baseball. Yeah, it sounded like he would be right up the alley for a RandBall Q&A. We promised to keep the questions plenty bizarre and mostly about baseball. But we couldn't help but slip in a few references to his television program. He was kind enough to answer our questions; four of the questions were at least partially written by either Stu or Fasolamatt (hence the "RB" is really a collective in this case), which is the second part of the fun here. If you can guess all four, you win a special prize. The main part of the fun, though, is that Schur is hilarious. We hope you enjoy:
RandBall: You're stranded on a desert island and only have room for VORP or OPS+. Which do you keep?
Michael Schur: VORP is a better stat. But I might take OPS+ so I can easily compare Juan Pierre's 2003 with Tim Raines's 1985 and have a nice laugh.
RB: A ghost runner of Michael Schur is on first base when a young Joe Morgan hits a double into the gap that rolls to the wall. Two outs, crack of the bat, you're off. Do you follow the rules of ghost runners and stop at third when the entire free world knows you could have scored? Is your answer somehow influenced by the batter?
MS: Well, I haven't really seen enough Ghost Baseball to know one way or the other. The thing about Ghost Mike Schur is he needs to be consistent with his baserunning. There really aren't very many great Ghost Teams anymore. To be a great Ghost Team you have to be Ghost Consistent. The 1975 Ghost Reds were a great Ghost Team because they could do it all -- run, hit, ghost hit, hit for power, field, ghost field, ghost pitch, scare people, haunt houses, stack chairs on top of tables when people's backs were turned, make scary noises, slime people, and sneak into ladies' locker rooms. So I would say that Ghost Mike Schur would try to score, because you have to be aggressive.
RB: Two outs, bottom of the ninth, the Yankees are down by a run. Derek Jeter draws a walk, followed by an Alex Rodriguez home run. Which one is more "clutch?"
MS: Are you kidding? Jeter. Because what you didn't see is that Jeter pumped his fist after turning a routine DP in the 4th inning, which inspired ARod to hit the home run. Jeter's walk is a direct result of his leadership and calm eyes. ARod is lucky that he gets to play with Jeter every day.
RB: Your father-in-law appeared in "The Bad News Bears Go to Japan." Why?
MS: If you're telling me that anyone would turn down the chance to be in a "Bad News Bears movie you're nuts." I would trade most of my career to have played the guy who loses to Kelly Leak in air hockey before Tatum O'Neal walks into the arcade.
RB: Rainn Wilson graduated from New Trier (Ill.) High School, as did Liz Phair, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Castino, the 1979 AL Rookie of the Year with the Minnesota Twins. What do you imagine would be a good icebreaker at an all-class reunion attended by each of those four? And would you personally show up to point out that Castino was only a co-winner with Alfredo Griffin?
MS: It would probably go something like this:
RB: More gratifying: The Office's critical and commercial success or the fact that Joe Morgan thinks Billy Beane wrote Moneyball?
MS: The Office's success is more gratifying. The fact that Mr. Morgan thinks Mr. Beane wrote "Moneyball" is funnier than anything I could ever write.
RB: Which current Major League manager fills out a lineup card in a manner that most closely resembles the way Michael Scott would do it? Defend your answer.
MS: Maybe Dusty Baker. He hits Corey Patterson leadoff when Ryan Freel doesn't play, seemingly just because Freel usually hits leadoff. CF = leadoff hitter. That's a very Michael Scott philosophy. Plus, he delivers roughly as many malapropisms as Michael does, like when he was trying to talk about how much Edwin Encarnacion cares about winning and he said "the guy bleeds internally."
RB: You get to pick the TV play-by-play and color guy for each of the four divisional playoff series. Who do you want, and why?
MS: I'll take Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy out of pure homerism. I love Gary Thorne, so let's pair him with Rick Sutcliffe, since you never know what's coming out of that guy's mouth, and it might be entertaining. Mike Tirico is very good, so I'll match him with Al Leiter, who I think does a great job when he's in the booth. And then let's have one series called by Hawk Harrelson, Ed Farmer, John Kruk, Steve Phillips, Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver. It's getting harder and harder to find material for our blog, and that should keep us posting for years.
RB: Your words are heard by countless people when you write for TV. Why start a sports blog? And why ditch the cloak of anonymity?
MS: Because I love baseball, and I'm a comedy writer, and baseball reporting provides ample opportunities for comedy writing. The anonymity provided a way to keep our professional worlds from being conflated with our silly sports metacritical world, but when push came to shove, we felt like we should stand behind what we write. The accused have a right to face their accusers.
RB: Wade Boggs reportedly ate chicken before every game -- a ludicrous idiosyncrasy that nonetheless paved the way for 3,000 hits and a Hall of Fame career because he thought it helped him. Can you envision the creation of a statistical tool that would measure such factors for various players, and if so what would you call it?
MS: I would call it the "Jeter." It would measure the importance of personality traits and behaviors that have nothing at all to do with baseball, and their impact on baseball. Every player would get a perfect score of 0.00.
