PHOENIX -- It sounds like the setup to a joke: A World Series MVP, a Minor League lifer, a college coach and a strength guy walk into a podcast studio ...
What you get is "Show and Go," the brainchild of the Cubs' Benjamin Zobrist and pitcher, filmmaker and funnyman Tim Dillard, who is entering his 16th season in professional baseball with the Brewers. With Trevecca Nazarene University head baseball coach Ryan Schmalz and Zobrist's personal trainer, Josh Costello, they have been producing podcasts aimed at young ballplayers interested in learning about "the game behind the game."
"It's not professional in any sense of the imagination," said Zobrist, "but it's conversation."
That's the point.
"It's what I do in the bullpen, anyway," Dillard said. "Something happens and I'm like, 'Hey, that reminds me of this one time …'"
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Dillard, who does all of the editing himself, has posted three podcasts so far on the group's website, theshowandgo.com. They cover how to be a good teammate, preparation and player-coach communication.
Another episode on mental skills is in the works, and more topics await courtesy of Schmalz, whom Dillard says brainstormed 100 or more topics in 30 minutes.
"It's endless," Dillard said. "That's what we love about baseball."
"The goal is we're not trying to make it rote or something too thought out," Zobrist said. "That's why it's called 'The Show and Go' -- we're just showing up and talking about it. We know what the topic is going in, but we don't know what each other is going to say or what we're trying to lead into. It's a fun way to facilitate the discussion."
Dillard and Zobrist met by coincidence in 2007 during Dillard's first season playing Triple-A ball in Nashville, Tenn., Zobrist's hometown. Tim and Erin Dillard loved the city so much they made it their offseason home, and while they did not know a soul in town, they found a church they liked. When Erin Dillard mentioned to the first parishioner she met that her husband played professional baseball, she was introduced to Julianna Zobrist.
A friendship flourished.
"Ever since then, we started doing life together," Dillard said. "We had our first kids, like, one day apart. We had our second kids a few months apart. We live seven minutes from each other. I don't know, I'm waiting for him to build a big house so we can all live together."
Ben Zobrist might enjoy that. He's a big fan of and sometimes co-stars in Dillard's comedic short films, which he produces with limited equipment and extremely cooperative teammates.
If you stumble across one of those videos on Dillard's Twitter feed -- he's @DimTillard -- you're likely to be there a while.
"I'm trying to get him an entertainment agent," Zobrist said. "He needs a baseball agent and an entertainment agent -- he's that talented."
Zobrist is pretty good on the podcasts, too.
"I think his microphone is deeper, because he's got that real -- he's just well-spoken," Dillard said. "Me, I have way too much coffee before going into it, so I come across as a nervous squirrel."
The quartet is figuring out future plans as they go along.
"We love talking about it," said Zobrist. "If there's a way we can communicate via podcast and get some of the information out ahead of time, hopefully we can do that while we're still playing and doing other things."
Said Dillard: "We think we're doing it as good as anybody else is doing it right now. I see us living in the same area for the foreseeable future, and it doesn't take but a couple hours. It's what we do anyway -- we talk baseball. Now we just happen to record it."