During the coronavirus shutdown, each day we will bring you a recommendation from The Post’s Peter Botte for a sports movie, TV show or book that perhaps was before your time or somehow slipped between the cracks of your viewing/reading history. Here is one that you can catch up on while it still is on the air.
Brockmire (IFC, 2017-present)
Streaming: Hulu, Amazon Prime
Hank Azaria grew up in Queens enamored of baseball — particularly fascinated by the Mets’ original broadcasting trio of Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner and the storytelling charm of Yankees counterpart Phil Rizzuto.
The 55-year-old actor — and longtime voice of various characters on “The Simpsons” — channeled the best pieces gleaned from those yarn-spinning legends and flipped them upside down to create the outrageously crass and outlandishly attired title character of his ongoing comedy series, “Brockmire.” (Currently in its fourth and final season).
Jim Brockmire was the beloved, old-school, play-by-play announcer for the Royals until a drunken and scatological on-air rant about his wife’s infidelity cost him his job, turned him into a series of viral internet memes and sent him into a deep, personal spiral of debauchery. He eventually resurfaces a decade later calling games over the PA system for the low-level Morristown Frackers in a dead-end, minor league town in Pennsylvania in a ticket-selling scheme by team owner Jules James (Amanda Peet).
Azaria told The Post in 2017 that his character’s trademark garish plaid sports jacket was “a “direct homage” to Nelson, and that he patterned and exaggerated Brockmire’s drinking on and off the air after various others.
To that end, this isn’t exactly a fun-for-the-whole-family recommendation — as Brockmire’s prurience, drinking and substance abuse are a central theme for much of the series.
Azaria also has called the show “a sybaritic love letter” to baseball and broadcasting, even if his character often tests the credo that you can talk about anything on the air as long as you occasionally give the count and the score.
Quote of Note: “Let’s not make baseball out to be any more important than it really is. It’s just a diversion that keeps us from pondering our own personal hells. So what do you say, folks, how about we kill another three hours on our slow and painful march to the grave? All right, top of the first. Should have a good one here this afternoon.” Jim Brockmire
Botte Blows: 4.4 of 5