Brian Baumgartner on the legendary Tahoe flip cup game and how the golf episode of 'The Office' came to be
Julio Aguilar
For golf fans who also loved "The Office," the best worlds-colliding moment came in episode 17 of Season 4 titled "Job Fair." In it, Brian Baumgartner's character Kevin plays golf with Jim (John Krasinski), Andy (Ed Helms) and a prospective client who asks the group if they should make the match a little more interesting.
"Ten bucks a hole?" asks the client. Kevin's response to that question has become a clip that will live on the golf corner of social media forever.
"What are we talkin'? Skins? Acey-deucey? Bingo Bango Bongo? Sandies? Barkies? Arnies? Wolf? What?!"
The hilarious line made it clear that whoever came up with it had some serious knowledge of golf gambling games. They were speaking from experience. Baumgartner, an avid golfer who plays to a single-digit handicap, joined us on this week's episode of The Loop podcast, and I had to ask him if it was he who came up with the brilliant moment or someone else behind-the-camera.
"You know, it's been some time," Baumgartner said (the episode aired in May 2008). "It's hard to know. I certainly don't want to undermine someone else's great ideas. But it was really important to the writers that they bring in—as different as Kevin was from me—to bring in ourselves. Like the fact that I had a World Series of Poker bracelet, for example, I'm sure was influenced by that. The basketball episode wasn't written at all. That was just me and John Krasinski being young and shooting hoops every time they called cut for a week and they were finally like, well, this actually, he might be able to make some of these [shots].
"I assume that the golf episode was sort of built around the fact that I played. I mean, I'm the only one from the cast that played golf."
Baumgartner has now parlayed his golf hobby into many an appearance at the American Century Championship, where he is not a part of TJ Oshie's legendary flip cup game but has certainly kept a watchful eye on it. And he's also parlayed it into a golf-meets-comedy podcast that's launching next Monday, Sept. 15, on SiriusXM. The show is called "We Need A Fourth," and it will be co-hosted by Baumgartner, legendary broadcaster Kenny Mayne and Cooper Manning, the older brother of Peyton and Eli and the father of Texas quarterback Arch. They'll chat with some of their favorite golf-playing comedians as well as athletes and other celebs about the sport they all love. Show No. 1 will feature Cooper's brother Eli and actor Jason Bateman.
To hear more about the show, more about the literal scorching-hot flip cup game in Tahoe and more tales from Baumgartner's "The Office" days, please have a listen to our chat below, and like and subscribe to The Loop wherever you get your podcasts.