Welcome To The Utopitorium

Kimberly: Hello listeners! You are listening to Take Me Out to the Blall Game, the world's most mid-Atlantic Blaseball podcast. I'm your host, Kimberly Dauber, and I use she/her pronouns. Today, we're going to get the scoop on what it takes to be a Blaseball journalist from a real live Blaseball reporter. But first, a word from our splonsors.

K: This episode of Take me Out to the Blall Game was sponsored by Blaseball News Network.

The SplortsCaster: Blaseball News Network. The place for the best Blaseball news, brought to you by the best Windows XP technologies, @blaseballnews on Twitter. In conjunction with our writing team, here of their own free will, on https://blaseballnewsnetwork.com/. The high-energy reporting tiefling, Forsythia Helltiger, our master of stlats, Firewall Andrews, sportcasting supreme and yours truly, The Sportscaster, and the intern chief himself, Benson Nutty Newton. That's https://blaseballnewsnetwork.com/, or @blaseballnews on Twitter. You cannot avoid it. You cannot resist. Blaseball News Network.

K: Hello listeners! We are back. So today, I was just thinking that it would be so great to get a real professional reporter in here on Take Me Out to the Blall Game to talk about Blaseball, cuz, you know, I'm just a person with a microphone in my bedroom. So a real reporter would be great. And lo and behold, just as I had that thought, who would have guessed, but I received a message in flag semaphore from a real professional reporter who wanted to talk to me on my Blaseball podcast. So without any further ado, I am honored to introduce our guest who...has just handed me a notecard, which I will read. *ahem* Straight out of the splortscaster stand and right into your hearts, it's Burt Bunt. Burt, it is great to have you on the show.

Burt: It's great to be here, Kimberly. Ahoy-hoy!

K: Ahoy-hoy to you as well. Burt, can you just confirm what should we call you, what are your pronouns, and as is traditional, is the Commissioner still doing a great job?

B: Absolutely! My name is Burt Bunt, I'm 31, he/him pronouns, coming to you on behalf of the New England Dandy, the best sports newspaper and other newspaper as well of New England, and the Commissioner is doing such a great job I believe Roosevelt intends to give him a commendation any day now.

K: That would not surprise me, given the nature of Blaseball. So, Burt, thank you for introducing yourself; you are here to talk about the ins and outs of reporting on blaseball. Can you tell us a little bit about your history with covering various sports and splorts and Blaseball in particular? What has that been like for you?

B: Well, I'll be honest with you, I was never too into sports, although I did play a mean game of jacks on the jacks team at the University of the Mid-Atlantic. Until a few months ago I was mostly focused on criticizing the latest picture shows for the paper, but then my editor found out I made a mean highball and decided that should put me right on the sports desk. Then he found out that my articles were just writing the highball recipe over and over again, so he sent me down to a Blaseball game and I fell in love right at the first swing of the blat.

K: Wait wait wait, so back up just a second: you said your editor made you a sports and splorts reporter because you make a fantastic highball? Is that right?

B: You figured out my secret to being the office jock, have you?

K: Oh my gosh, well can you tell us a little more about it?

B: Normally it would take you years of practice to learn this highball recipe, but with me here it'll be as easy as fishing the bugs out of your chowder. So, what you wanna do is start with your sarsaparilla of choice: light, heavy, cursed, eldritch, elven, Canadian, whichever is fine. And add two parts of that to your tallest drinking receptacle. It should be tall enough that when your wife Petunia walks into the room, she says "land's sakes, Burt, put a straw in the ocean why don't you!" Ho ho! After that, you wanna add four parts ginger ale. If you only have jaunty ale, just pour it in very slowly and carefully and that should do the trick. Add some crushed ice and some moxie, and voil-- oh, pardon my French, Kim, I forgot that this was a family show.

K: Don't worry, I'm sure that the expiration date on any of your profanity has long since passed. Well, that sounds like a really great recipe, I should have been writing that down. Luckily I've recorded it, and everyone will be able to listen to it and try out Burt Bunt's fantastic highball recipe at home. Right before we cut to the break, Burt, I just have one more question for you, since you've been covering Blaseball since its inception. Tell us, what's the absolute wildest moment that you have covered in Blaseball thus far?

B: Why Kim, that's like asking me to choose what the prettiest star in the sky is.

K: Aww, please choose what the prettiest star in the sky is.

B: Well, since you insist: Deneb. But as for your prior question: in between the blaserunning, the hits, the strikes, the deaths, the screams, the random encasement of players in peanut shells, it's tough to choose. But I have to say, it truly was watching Nagomi get encased in a peanut shell right in the Utopatorium skybox.

K: Ugh, that was brutal.

B: It really knocked my socks off.

K: That was absolutely brutal.

B: The first time I saw somebody run a blase, that was when I fell in love with the game. That was the moment that broke my heart.

K: Well, that's absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing, Burt. Alright, listeners, we're gonna cut to a break, but don't go away; when we come back, we're gonna learn more about how you and I can become fantastic Blaseball reporters, straight from Burt Bunt.

B: Ho-ho!

K: Stay tuned.

K: Today for our break, we have an update on everyone's favorite Blaseball commissioner. Burt, since you're a professional reporter, can you tell us how the Commissioner's doing?

B: He's doing a heck of a job, and this update was brought to you by the delicious flavor of Charleston Chew. The more you chew, the better it tastes: for you!

K: Thanks Burt, now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

K: And we are back! Hello, you are listening to Take Me Out to the Blall Game, I'm your host Kimberly Dauber, and we are here with Burt Bunt, Blaseball reporter extraordinaire, thanks again for coming. I have one question for you, as an aspiring Blaseball journalist myself: what is the key, in your opinion, to being a good, or even a great, Blaseball reporter?

B: Well that's your first mistake right there, Kim, because there's not one key, there's three keys.

K: Oh!

B: The three H's of Blaseball. The first H stands for highball, because apparently that's the key to splorts journalism, because that's what got me this job in the first place. The second key is heiress, because the only reason I'm able to travel the country the way I am is because I married a buggy whip heiress. Petunia, I love you very much, and I miss your delicious bean canwiches every single day. But thanks to your fortune of over two dozen dollars, I'm able to galavant around the country in style on the finest rail cars and backs of turnip trucks.

K: That sounds luxurious.

B: Oh, it is. Especially when the turnips aren't rotten! That's a free lunch! The last H, and the most important H, is human. Because you have to remember that Blaseball players are human too. Except for the ones that aren't, but in this reporter's mind, that's just fine and dandy.

K: Three H's, three H's, alright. Highball, Heiress, and Human. Got it. We are almost out of time, so I'm gonna go right ahead and ask you my last question. Burt, as you know, we here are all love Blaseball, but could you tell me: what are you love about Blaseball in particular yourself?

B: I love Blaseball because it's the great equalizer. In a world where everything is topsy-turvy and upside down, where honest bums go without pies every single day, and Herbert Hoover has all the cherry pies that he wants, Blaseball is a constant, because NOBODY knows what's going on no matter what's happening.

K: That sounds remarkably familiar to my life, in spite of the fact that it seems to have come out of a completely different era of history.

K: Well, that's all the time that we have for today. Burt, can you tell our listeners where they can find you on social media?

B: I don't know what that is, but here's what I will tell you: if you want to follow my correspondence, you're going to want to go to the biggest house in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The BIGGEST one. BIGGEST one in town. And when you go there, you're going to want to knock on the front door, and ask the mistress of the house if she'll show you the postcards I've been mailing there. And if you're very nice and have a shiny nickel in your pocket, she'll let you in and show you my various postcards. You can catch up to what I was doing exactly three and a half weeks ago!

K: Alright, well I will have to take a trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Listeners, if you wanna get in touch with us here at Take Me Out to the Blall Game, you do not have to send us a postcard, but you can send us your Blaseball questions, opinions, and soulscreams at blaseballpodcast at gmail dot com. It is a real email address and I do check it, so please email us your soulscreams. I would love to hear your Blaseball reactions and opinions, especially recordings of your voices, because this is a podcast. Remember to follow us on twitter @blaseball_pod, and as always, thank you for participating in the cultural event of Blaseball.

B: Aw nuts! Aw beans! Aw shoot, you whippersnappers! You, you little rapscallions! Mmm!