Volume 1, Issue 58: Drain You
I have been on a family vacation in Folly Beach, South Carolina all week, awash in those fleeting moments where my children still enjoy our company and still need things from us and still are present before they grow up and run away and construct their lives in quiet opposition to our own and only call us when we can't figure out how to use a certain piece of new technology so they can feel so much smarter than their dumb old moron parents. I have also been watching the news, in which every day brings another reminder that we have elected a con man -- a lousy con man at that -- to be the public representative and leader of a country that I still do love very much in spite of the current insanity. I have also tried to take some time away from the daily toil, to both improve and expand my work, to figure out what the next big project is going to be. This has been a week built to have some quiet reflection, to genuflect on this grand world and my own place in it.
Yet through all this, all I can think about is how the St. Louis Cardinals lost seven in a row.
I've written about fandom my entire career -- I've always argued that fandom is, essentially, my beat -- but it never fails to surprise me on the regular nonetheless. When you follow a sports team, you are essentially giving yourself, and your well being, and your general worldview, over to a bunch of strangers who do not know you and do not care about you. When the Cardinals (or the Illini, or the Knicks) win, I am happy, and when they lose, I am sad. I have written that line many times in my writing career, but it never stops being true. On my wedding day seven years ago, as I stood up waiting for my wife to come down the aisle, I made eye contact with my father in the front row. He made the motion of a player getting a base hit, and mouthed "Rasmus." Colby Rasmus had just hit a walkoff single to beat the Brewers in a game I'd been tracking on my phone all day; I'd only put it away because the ceremony was about to start. I smiled. The Cardinals had won. Now I could get married in peace.
When your team is winning, the universe seems calm, normal, just, and when it loses, the entire planet is askew and angry and wrong. I can have everything in my life in its proper, pleasant place, but if the Cardinals (or the Illini) lose, it can ruin the whole thing. This has been a lovely week of a family vacation, but that the Cardinals have lost seven in a row makes my mood edgy, nervy and fraught. This is not sane and this is not healthy but I know no other way. It's always going to be like this.
The worst part is that I'm now taking other people down with me. My son William has woken up every morning this week asking me if the Cardinals won after he went to bed; every time I've said they haven't, and every time he's frowned and cried, "Why?" (I've tried to explain to him "it's Mike Matheny," but I don't think he gets managerial dysfunction yet.) It's always personal. My parents went to the game against Philadelphia last night, and even though I'd told myself, "I'm not keeping an eye on the game tonight, I'm not letting them ruin another evening of vacation," knowing that my parents were there raised the stakes: I didn't want them to be unhappy because of the Cardinals like I was. That the Cardinals finally won felt like my parents being spared the gallows.
(There's hope for my younger son Wynn. William wanted to watch the Cardinals highlights this morning after their win, and I asked Wynn if he wanted to join us. He turned and matter-of-factly said, "No. I like my cartoons more." Smart kid.)
I know you probably hate the Cardinals, and I'm not even necessarily sure I blame you for that, but just replace them with your team. Sports give us something external to have disproportionate control over our lives, our moods, our well-being, our connection with others. It's no wonder sports are often referred to as a religion.
And the worst part is that it's not just the Cardinals. The Cardinals were my gateway drug to other sports, but that drug was also a virus and now I'm infected everywhere. Here is a ranking of my sports teams, in order of how much they destroy my otherwise positive countenance when they are losing. I have spent far too much mental space determining these rankings:
St. Louis Cardinals
Illinois men's basketball
Arizona Cardinals
New York Knicks
Georgia football
USMNT
Illinois football
Georgia men's basketball
Atlanta United
Arsenal
USWNT
St. Louis Blues
Illinois women's basketball
Illinois volleyball
Georgia women's basketball
Eastern Illinois men's basketball
That's a lot of sports teams to ruin one's mood! And yet every single time every single one of these teams do anything, positive or negative, an alert pops up on my phone, and my view on the world is changed. I care too much about this stuff. But I'll never stop. It's beautiful outside. My family is warm and happy and near. The fate of our country is at stake this very second. And all I can think about is, "Carlos Martinez needs to shut down the Phillies today." It's a curse. Save yourselves.
Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality. (This is an attempt to have an objective look at the value of my work in a way that I suspect will be difficult to sustain.)
1. You Don't Know Tiger Woods, The New York Times. Here is the aforementioned Times op-ed piece, which turned out really well, I thought. I have had dozens of bylines in the Times but it will never, ever stop making me pinch myself: I have a piece in The New York Times!
2. Your USMNT World Cup Qualifying FAQ, Sports On Earth. Thinking of painting my face for Sunday night's game. I don't know if that's more embarrassing than wearing a jersey of an 18-year-old, but I'll be doing that too.
3. Cardinals Still Looking for Answers, Sports On Earth. I promised my editor I wouldn't write about the Cardinals again until they got good, or until 2018. I think you can probably guess when I think I'll be writing about them next.
4. Mike Schmidt Took Heat for His "Leadership" Comments, Sports On Earth. We lost some of the nuance from the first version of this piece, but hey, it happens.
5. The 10 Most Shocking Things in MLB So Far, Sports On Earth. "That I am still watching" should be high up this list.
6. The NBA Finals Are Looking Kind of Familiar, Sports On Earth. I just want the series to get back to Cleveland, because man, that would be some kind of scene.
7. Dive Dive Dive Dive, Sports On Earth. Dive Dive Dive.
As I say every week: If you are the sort to subscribe to a weekly newsletter, I would have to think it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to subscribe to one of the three podcasts I do. You don't even have to listen to them! Just download them. Here they are:
Grierson & Leitch, we loved Wonder Woman, and The English Patient and In Bruges are pretty good too.
The Will Leitch Experience, I try and fail to talk Alyson Footer off the PED Crazy Ledge for the 50th time.
Waitin' Since Last Saturday, no show this week.
Back to the water. Go Birds!
Have a good weekend, everyone.
Best,
Will