Ben Schwartz is known for his comedy and acting, but there's more than just laughs behind the "Parks and Recreation" star.
Schwartz is a big sports fan and grew up watching Kenny Mayne and the rest of the "SportsCenter" anchors every morning. It helped shape his comedy and he caught up with Mayne on Audacy's Hey Mayne podcast.
Sports cause a wide variety of emotions for fans. Mayne and Schwartz are no different.
“I cried at the Ice Bowl,” said Mayne (22:54 in player above). “Bart Starr sneaking it over to beat the Cowboys in Green Bay. Look it up. Google the Ice Bowl.”
“I cried tears of joy. My beloved Packers. I was seven. I had no football team in Seattle. I had to go to somebody and the Packers were pretty good, so the Packers were my team.”
While Mayne’s first sports memory brought tears of joy, he has others that weren’t quite as sweet.
“I cried when I got cut from baseball. Kind of held the tears in, but I wasn’t that good at baseball,” Mayne said. “Football I was pretty good, I could throw. Played in college, I wasn’t great. I was good enough. Baseball, I couldn’t hit the damn ball. Every year I’d get cut in March and they’d move me down.”
“I played basketball in high school,” Schwartz chimed in. “I got better at basketball in college because there weren’t coaches putting so much pressure on me and making me feel like I wasn’t very good. When I was in college I got to be better,” he said.
Schwartz also shared shedding tears over his favorite team, but these were tears that are all too familiar for Knicks fans.
“I have such a clear memory of when the Knicks lost – I’m a Knicks fan – when the Knicks lost to the Rockets when Hakeem was on there.”
Schwartz was 14 during that loss and had just recently moved from the Bronx to West Chester, he explained.
“I remember going to my dad, it was late, I go ‘Dad, I gotta shoot around. Can I shoot around?’ He’s like, ‘You can go shoot around, Ben.’ And I’m outside with like a tiny little light on me crying and shooting baskets, being like ‘How did we lose!’ I was so invested in the Knicks.
"We would get so close and then we could just never pull it off. I remember that being a huge moment. There’s a lot of Knicks moments where I got so upset.”
“You needed to let that out and this was the time to do it,” Mayne replied.