Bob Ryan's Boston Podcast

Bob Ryan's Boston Podcast has a clear shape: Bob Ryan, one guest, and no hurry. Its subject is Boston sports and the city around them, told through people who played for the teams, ran them or called their games. Red Sox history runs all the way through it, but the show doesn't stay in one ballpark. Jim Lonborg comes on to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 American League champion Red Sox, a team Ryan says changed baseball in Boston forever, and he insists that isn't hyperbole. That conversation shows how Ryan interviews. He offers a single name, tells Lonborg the floor is his, and lets him go. The answer starts with the night before, and Ryan points out that there is always a backstory. Hubie Brown, a coach who calls NBA games for ESPN, covers the basketball side: the hometown Celtics, the 2017 playoffs and the game in general. Asked about working with John Y. Brown and Ted Turner during his coaching career, he says it was 'an event every day.' Ryan sends him off calling him an irreplaceable treasure for the sport. Larry Lucchino, a Red Sox executive with three World Series rings and chairman of the Jimmy Fund, argues that Boston is the top of the mountain for baseball fans. He ties that to Fenway Park, then works outward to the city's other fan bases. He also describes a picture at Fenway of four championship trophies set side by side. Kevin Cullen is the guest for the season-two premiere. The show travels, too, recording on location at Stars on Hingham Harbor, South Shore Plaza in Braintree and the WGBH multimedia studio inside the Boston Public Library in the Back Bay. The openings have a dry streak: one welcome extends to native Bostonians around the country and to anyone who dislikes the city because it wins so often, followed by a flat 'too bad.' Ryan reads the ads for Boston-based sponsors himself, and they are part of the texture. One entry drops the usual format entirely. RYAN75: A 75th Birthday Tribute Podcast to Bob Ryan is a keepsake assembled by friends and family, introduced and closed by Jackie McMullen, and it benefits the Scituate Animal Shelter. Sean McDonough's contribution is a single deadpan line about Ryan's age. What a listener gets throughout is Boston sports history told firsthand, at a measured pace, by an interviewer who knows when to stop talking.