Brilliant Reader Challenges: Dogs, Journeymen, Dumb Lyrics and More

OK, time for some Brilliant Reader Challenges! And remember, if you want a guaranteed spot in the Brilliant Reader Challenge lineup — and I do get swamped with hundreds of challenges a week — you can get that by being part of our refer-a-friend program — sort a frequent flier program for JoeBlogs.

Here’s the leaderboard, with Brilliant Readers Justin and Jamison taking the early lead in referrals!

Five referrals gets you a Brilliant Reader Challenge! And I’m adding a little something to this contest! As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, anyone want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. No, wait, that’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

No, we’re going to pick a final date — Right now I’m leaning toward July 31 as the deadline for our first Refer a Friend contest — and first place on the leaderboard will get you a showcase showdown prize of your choosing.

What are the choices? Well, there will be a bunch. Some of you have asked to play tennis with me. That will be one of the choices. Some of you have asked for me to write a full-length story on your high school team or your college team or your Little League team or your child’s team. That’s on the table, too. Someone asked if they could be a part of a PosCast draft. Sure, we’ll put that out there, too. I’ve also been cleaning out my closet at home and I’ve come across a bunch of goodies — would you want a Chicago Cubs PosCast uniform signed by Mike Schur and Nick Offerman? That will be one of the choices.

We’ll have a lot of fun with this, I promise. Remember, you can refer a friend at this link. Also, Brilliant Reader Ari asked if gift donations count as referrals. Well, I asked the good people at Substack and, because of us, they will indeed count! I’m not sure if the Substack tech team has made that update yet, but they will, and they will be added retroactively. Fun!

OK, enough of that, let’s get to the challenges!

This is not EXACTLY a challenge, but Brilliant Reader Paul reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write something. Paul is writing a book — I’ll let him fill you in on the details if he would like — and he asked about the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award. So let me say something about the Ford Frick Award.

The Ford Frick Award is given annually to a broadcaster for “major contributions to baseball.” I call on the Hall of Fame to change the name of it to the Vin Scully Award, like, TOMORROW. Or, if they can get a meeting going, for them to do it today. Let’s go. What’s the holdup? This should have happened on Aug. 3, 2022, the day after Vin passed away.

You might know that some names of awards have changed in the last little bit.