Hey everyone, before we begin we have an announcement.

Actually it's less an announcement than it is an appeal.

We put this off as long as possible, but to keep the show going in its current format,

we need some support from, as the NPR people say, listeners like you.

To that end, we've set up a show page on Patreon, which is a website where podcasts hosts and

other kinds of creators can solicit a small monthly stipend from people who enjoy what they do

and want them to keep doing it. We'll keep this less obtrusive than an NPR pledge drive,

but I want to take a minute to explain why we're asking for your help.

Sam and I have never been paid to do this podcast. When we started going on four years and

eight hundred fifty episodes ago, the show is just something we decided to do on top of our actual

jobs. And when I left baseball perspective, about three hundred fifty episodes ago, I decided to

keep doing it because I enjoy talking to Sam and directing with all of you, and because I didn't

want to be the bad guy who kills a podcast people like and also probably because I'm bad at business.

It takes a lot of hours to do a daily podcast. It's not just the talking, planning, and scheduling,

but also the editing, uploading, and posting. All the boring, but necessary behind the scene stuff

that happens between me calling Sam and you hearing our conversation is a one man effort,

and that man is me. Over the years, our episodes have gotten a lot longer, and our audience has

gotten a lot larger, which means that our hosting costs are higher and production takes more time.

Our play and deck sponsorship no longer comes close to covering those costs, and while the show

sounds much better than it did before, that quality has come at cost to my sanity and sleep schedule.

Our goal in asking you to support us on Patreon is to make it feasible for us to preserve the

podcast in its current form, to keep it free to download so that anyone can access it, and ideally,

...