Royal Rooters’s Podcast

Royal Rooters’s Podcast is a one-host sports rundown built around Boston teams, and it makes no effort to hide how loose it is. Tom O'Shea runs it. He introduces himself as the Junkyard Dog and T.O. Swiggins, and adds for good measure that you can't change that. The roll call usually comes first. Each team is announced with its trophy count: the nine-time World Series champion Red Sox, the six-time Super Bowl champion Patriots, the 17-time NBA champion Celtics, the six-time Stanley Cup champion Bruins and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. In some episodes the list keeps going, to Celtic, Chelsea, Gonzaga men's basketball, Wright State baseball and Boston College hockey, whose five national titles come with a promise to explain why they're still five. Then the news. Items are read off one at a time, each followed by a quick reaction and usually an aside before the next. Spring training wins over the Twins and the Rays, Marcus Smart cleared after COVID-19 and donating plasma, the Bruins getting a bye as hockey sets up a 24-team playoff format: all of it passes at the same unhurried pace. The college results draw more feeling. Gonzaga holding off Oklahoma to set up a meeting with Creighton gets a cheer, while Boston College hockey's season-ending loss to St. Cloud State is called, plainly, really sad. Several episodes were made while the coronavirus had shut sports down, and the host says so, calling one stretch a dead week. One of those episodes is titled 'Pour Me a Corona Light NOT VIRUS'. With the schedule empty, the show fills the gap its own way. The host reads passages from articles aloud, stopping to comment, and corrects himself mid-thought when a word or name comes out wrong. There are book reviews, covering Notre Dame football history against the backdrop of the 1918 flu pandemic and the homegrown core behind the 2018 Red Sox. There is a simulated Red Sox and Orioles game on MLB the Show 20, called pitch by pitch, with Jackie Bradley Jr. at the plate and open bafflement at an Orioles lineup he barely knows. Pop culture wanders in too, most memorably Tiger King, which he admits he has already finished. He sometimes talks back to himself, cutting off his own spoiler with a quick 'Don't give too much away.' Songs close out several episodes, followed by the send-off: you're still here, it's over, go home. What a listener gets is less analysis than company, in the form of an unpolished fan working through his teams and whatever else is on his mind.