A couple of months ago - after baseball season ended, I think - I put out a call on social media for podcast suggestions.

90% of my podcast listening is baseball-related, and in-season there are too many episodes for me to listen to anything else.

When baseball season ends, the podcasts pull back a bit - usually one or two a week - and I have more time to listen to other things.

So I asked if anyone had any suggestions, and an Instagram friend suggested ‘American Scandal.’

Naturally, as you can see from the picture above, the season I chose had to do with baseball.

That wasn’t my intent. It’s a little overwhelming - there are almost 60 ‘seasons’ - which are basically topics. Each topic has about 5 or 6 episodes that tell the story.

I didn’t want to spend forever going through all of the seasons, so I picked the first one that appealed to me.

(Also, a lot of the other ones were less ‘scandal’ and more ‘tragedy’, and I didn’t want to listen to anything too heavy. I mean, maybe there’s some kind of scandal involved, but some of the ones I saw were much more tragic than scandalous. When I said that to the guy who suggested the podcast he said they usually go beyond the tragedy in their storytelling. Regardless, the Houston Astros certainly fit in the scandal category and seemed like a safe choice to get a feel for the podcast.)

Obviously the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal (see? fits the topic perfectly) is something I knew a lot about already. But I guess it’s a credit to this podcast that it kept me listening even though I mostly knew what was coming.

I could see it being very informative for someone who had no idea about it, which I’m sure I would be if I listened to another topic - not impossible, if I find the right one.

The bottom line - this podcast features some really good storytelling. The episodes are not very long, and you can really fly through a season. It did not take me long to get through the 5 Astros episodes.

I’m going to keep it in mind when the time comes for some audio distraction on my long runs this summer. Although, by then I’ll have plenty of baseball podcasts to listen to.