The first time Ryan Dempster made a stand-up at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, an 18th-century market that was the site of Samuel Adams’ speeches to former President Barack Obama.
The next night, Dempster, the beginner pitcher who opposed the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the oldest primary league baseball stadium still in use and the position where Babe Ruth began his career and where Carlton Fisk connected his remarkable home run in the 1975 World Series.
Two historical ones put the nerves of any artist, and Dempster made them on consecutive nights.
“I was much more nervous during this stand-up than I was at the beginning,” recalls Dempster. “I’m not forgetting to be so nervous about this stand-up. I couldn’t be doing this, compared to him at Fenway Park, I was thinking, ‘Oh yeah, it’s going to be difficult, but I can do it.’
This is the essence of Dempster’s dual career; While completing a 16-year term as a primary league pitcher, Dempster was already in the next phase of his professional life.
“It was all I was interested in when I played,” Dempster said of his career at the comedy and communication exhibition.”I was going to do live improvisation exhibitions in Second City, comedy displays or stand-ups, and then when I was done betting and started going down that path, I think the most productive way for me to do it was to go and win so much.I signed up for a course at the Improvisation Olympics.”
In the years after his retirement from baseball in 2013, Dempster moved from the mound to the stage, running on television as an analyst on MLB Network and in stand-up comedy and improvisation.As the best baseball players, he grew up loving the game and faithful his life to gamble, however, Dempster also grew up with a love of comedy.He jokes that his years of training as a nanny were surprised to see him as a baseball player rather than a comedian.
Dempster attributes his sense of humor to his family, and his love of standing comedy and night comes from the fact that he stayed awake as a child watching Johnny Carson with his father.
“I grew up in a circle of relatives, a prolonged circle of relatives too, who believed in the price of laughter and humor,” Dempster said.
Between his father, his mother and his two younger brothers, dinners in the house were full of jokes and identity theft.Dempster took his sense of humor to the clubhouse after the Rangers pulled him out of high school in 1995 and while he crossed the miners and stormed the major leagues.It’s not unusual for you to take the team bus mic and play a fake tour consultant or make a joke to lighten your spirits when a teammate is struggling.
Once in Houston, while running for the Cubs, Dempster helped his then-teammate Jacque Jones out of an altercation with a rebellious fanatic.Jones was suffering on the plate at the time, and even though he was betting on a In Smart Defense, the fan attacked Jones for a bad throw at the plate.Dempster first tried unsuccessfully to intervene, then finally turned to humor.
“Jacque, did you see your pitch? It sucks,” Dempster told his teammate.”He disarmed it with the fanatic, and he took it inside, and it was a moment when I can accept it as true with my teammate.him well enough and he can accept it as true to me, yet he needed humor to spread a moment between a fan and a player about throwing a baseball.
Like his baseball career, Dempster has taken his comedy seriously, it’s more than just looking to be funny or not forgetting the moments that made him laugh when he took the stage.Dempster began taking improv categories towards the end of his baseball career and began practicing stand-up at about the same time.He carries a pocket notebook with him most of the time, so that when he comes up with a joke or something he thinks he can use on stage, he can write it down.Dempster said, it’s a major detail in the progression of a successful stand-up routine.
“They’re a lot of paintings,” Dempster said, “Those other people who do stand-up comedy that still do great things, those are hours and hours, days and days traveling the country and looking for other concerts in other clubs, there are many paintings to get to where they are..»
These days, Dempster has his own screen and podcast on the Cubs’ television network, Marquee Sports, which emerged from a concert he had at the Cubs fan conference that took place every January.night-time-tasting demonstrations that he grew up seeing. Every night, visitors can diversify from baseball stars like Mike Trout to rock stars like Eddie Vedder.
The concept of Off the Mound came a few years ago as a way to unite enthusiasts with players at the Cubs’ annual winter convention.In addition to being a street for its humor and preference for having a late-night show, Dempster saw Off The Mound as an opportunity to further humanize players and make enthusiasts less susceptible to booing them when they fight.
“It’s the only task where it’s quite valid for other people to boo us,” Dempster said.”Can you believe if I walked into an emergency room and someone is operating and booed the doctor because I didn’t like your incision?I think I deserved to have been horizontal rather than vertical?I’m moving on to court and starting to boo the lawyer, they’re passing by to kick me out.In sport, it’s like, yes, no problem.”
Dempster hopes that by bringing players he can show them their sense of humor and some of the things that make them normal people.Like the new dad Mike Trout turning a diaper.
“You can highlight the ultimate person, and that’s the guest,” Demspter said.”The wonderful paintings they do in their charities, the kind of people they are, the funny guys that other people don’t even realize how funny they are.Are.
“Sport is very motivated by the effects and we get lost in it.They’re still human there. They have feelings and give everything they have, and they strive to succeed.I still sense this, and I haven’t lost sight of it, so if I can get other people to see them as the humans they are.As much as we appreciate what they’ve done and appreciate it, there’s still a human being in the other aspect of that, and maybe we can be a little more compassionate when they don’t.it’s not your job or when things aren’t going so well.
Dempster expects Off the Mound to have a live audience in a theater.He went to Letterman and Colbert’s in person, and that’s the kind of atmosphere he needs for his show.
For now, those dreams are on hold due to the coronavirus, but Dempster has made the most of its remote transmission.Since his time in Marquee, Dempster has directed seventeen episodes with an audio edition of each in podcast format.
“I’ve enjoyed the audience of the live studio, its authenticity, of having other people there,” Dempster said.”To be there, you smile all the time, you laugh and leave with a little joy.
I have baseball for several years in positions such as Sporting News, Chicago Magazine and NBC Chicago, with Forbes.BBWAA member for the first year in 2019.
I have baseball for several years in positions such as Sporting News, Chicago Magazine and NBC Chicago, with Forbes.Member of BBWAA for THE FIRST year in 2019.Follow me on Twitter: @jwyllys.