Next Wednesday evening, LA-based comedian Erin Foley will host a live broadcast of her sports podcast Sports Without Balls — a show and title Scene enthusiastically supports — at Hilarities on East Fourth Street.
Foley will perform standup Monday and Tuesday evening and will be joined by her comedian friend Fortune Feimster for the podcast. She'll also be joined by athletes participating in the Gay Games.
Foley told Scene that she's spent her whole life in love with sports, playing and watching them constantly. "I'll watch billiards," she says to indicate the breadth of her obsession; and to this day, she aspires to be an NFL wide receiver. But the galaxy of sports and sports radio (much like the smaller galaxy of standup comedy) has often felt like a dudes-only club.
"I listen to them, and I love them," she says of her favorite sportscasters, "but I thought it'd be really fun to talk to other women about sports. Besides, so many comics have podcasts where they talk to other comics about comedy, and that's not really my thing."
Sports without Balls covers anything and everything sports-related, and that's how Foley likes it. She says the Gay Games are perfect subject matter for the show, and Cleveland's the perfect place for them. Though Foley's a die-hard New York Giants fan, she says she's kept her eye on Cleveland's professional teams through the years.
"I watched Major League as a kid and fell in love with Cleveland baseball," she says. "You get attached to some cities randomly. I sort of have to hate the Eagles and Cowboys, but otherwise, I feel like you pick and choose."
Foley certainly keeps abreast of the topics animating local sports talk shows. Here's her take on the Wiggins/Love conundrum:
"I think Love to the Cavs would be amazing, and I just don't see LeBron being like, let's keep Wiggins and work on that development plan for seven to nine years. I think LeBron would shop his mom for Love. They'll get him for sure. Plus with Wiggins, I mean, growing up, we'd see these kids for four years [in college] and get a real sense of the impact they'd have on the court. Now we get one year? How do we know? I would pull the trigger on the trade."
(For the record, this correspondent has yet to be fully persuaded on the merits of a trade which many pundits seem to think is a foregone conclusion.)
For now, it's baseball season, and Foley says the first thing she did once her show was booked, before she even found out the location of the club, was try to get some Indians tickets. (After her podcast, she still might scurry over to Progressive to catch the Tribe take on the D-backs.)
But even if she misses the Tribe, she certainly plans to catch some of the Gay Games.
"I don't know which events yet, but I'm flying in Sunday night and am going to go to as many as I can on Monday and Tuesday during the day."
If she can't make up her mind, there's always billiards. (That event will be played both Monday and Tuesday at Dave & Buster's in Westlake, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.)
