Volume 3, Issue 43: Kingpin

"Statue of Liberty play: It only works once, don't throw it away."

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This is the last newsletter of 2020. We actually made it. This year has taken a lot out of all of us—it’s sure taken a lot out of me. I just feel heavier at the end of this year. I don’t think I’ve gained any appreciable weight during the pandemic, but the cumulative effect of this year has made me feel as if gravity has become unnaturally powerful, as if every part of my body has weights on it, pulling me down to earth. I’m graying faster, I’m moving slower … I just feel lumbering. It’s difficult to be light of spirit. It has been that sort of year.

I have written before about the illusion of New Years, how the idea that the next year will be better with this one is not rooted with any singular year being particularly difficult and more in the fact that every year that just ended always feels a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying. From my big piece on that:

The end of every year allows us the persistent illusion that things are terrible now but both: a) were better in the past and b) are bound to improve. This year was bad — unusually bad — but next year, next year we’re going to get it right.

I still believe this theory of mine, but must nevertheless grant that 2020 was a special circumstance. I feel comfortable saying that 2020 was the worst year I’ve personally experienced … and I say that knowing full well that it could have been worse, that I haven’t lost anyone close to me, that I’ve been able to stay employed, that Donald Trump still lost, that we still got him out of there. 2020 has brought out the worst in people, and it has done damage to all of us that it’ll take decades to unwrap. (The Pandemic Generation is not one I’m all that excited that my boys will be joining.) I do not know what 2021 will bring. But I believe that it will have to bring some hope. I feel as it if already has.

Ordinarily the final newsletter of the year is a bit of a breather for me: I just reveal my top 10 movies of the year (as discussed on the Grierson & Leitch podcast) and wish everybody happy holidays. But this year was so overwhelming, and seemingly infinite, that I thought I might use this, the last newsletter of 2020, as a look back at 2020 through the eyes of this newsletter. Which is a long-winded way of saying this week’s newsletter is going to be a glorified Clip Show. If you only started subscribing to this newsletter in the last year—and there are thousands of you that have—you might have missed some of the best stuff we made around these parts in 2020. So here’s a month-by-month look back at the highlights and lowlights. And a dream that 2021 will be better. Or at least not this.

This newsletter is going to be very long, by the way, perhaps so long that it’s cut off in your email. (That’s what Substack appears to be warning me about, anyway.) So, as always, you can find this and all of these newsletters right here.

JANUARY

Newsletters:

• Fighting the losing fight against competitiveness in youth basketball.

• On the closing of the old packaging plant I used to work for back in Illinois.

• The five times I was in the same room with Donald Trump.

Publications:

• On Trump’s obsession with college football and needing a stadium full of people who love him, from NBC News.

• My first ever piece for The Washington Post, about the Astros scandal.

• I discovered that Kobe Bryant had died while on an airplane coming back from Mexico City. This is the piece I wrote on the plane, from New York.

• This piece, also about Kobe, got me yelled at more on social media than any other I wrote this year, but I stand behind it, for NBC News.

• There was a documentary about the 1980s Cardinals that wasn’t that great but was nevertheless glorious, for MLB.com.

• That Aaron Hernandez documentary on Netflix was terrible, for Vulture.

FEBRUARY

Newsletters:

• On burning trash.

• Ten albums of Mattoon High School.

• Creepshow, and nightmares.

Publications:

• On the Super Bowl where everything went right, for New York.

• Pete Rose still sucks, for New York.

• Best Picture winners, ranked, for Vulture.

• More on the Astros cheating scandal, which sure seems like a lot less big of a deal now, doesn’t it? For New York.

• Jim Carrey movies, ranked, for Vulture.

• Mike Petriello and I drafted potential World Series winners, for MLB.com, back when we thought the season was going to start on time.

• Speaking of things we thought were going to happen, here’s a piece about Bernie Sanders and his history with minor league baseball, back when we thought he was going to be the nominee, for New York.

MARCH

Newsletters:

• Right after March 11—the unofficial beginning of the pandemic in the United States—I wrote about each generation’s places and moments in history.

• We began running daily, then weekly, stories from you how you were handling the first days of the pandemic.

• On wondering when someone close to me would test positive. (It would not end up taking long.)

• How the pandemic already felt like Groundhog Day, in late March.

Publications:

• On March 9, I wrote about how sports seemed to be pretending the coronavirus wasn’t happening, which would be true for about 50 hours, for New York.

• How sports won’t be an escape, not this time, for New York.

• Having The New York Times ask me to just write about whatever I was thinking right now, days after the pandemic, remains a career highlight.

• My later contract with Medium was initially sparked by how huge this piece about Generation X hit.

• I started a Better Know a Ballplayer series for MLB.com. The first one was Darrell Porter.

APRIL

Newsletters:

• On taking mental health breaks from the news.

• On trying to find a narrative in the middle of madness.

Publications:

• How to fix Joe Biden’s bad podcast, for New York. (He ended up just not making them anymore.)

• Christian Bale movies, ranked, for Vulture.

• This story about Vern Rapp, Pete Rose and a radio prank that changed baseball history, for MLB.com. This was one of the more purely fun pieces I wrote all year.

• The problem with The Last Dance, for The Washington Post.

MAY

Newsletters:

• The first signs that some people were starting not to take this pandemic seriously.

• On slowly peeking your head out to the outside world.

• On good trouble, and cleaning up the mess.

Publications:

• In praise of the post office, for NBC News.

• The key person in getting sports to start to come back might have been … Brian Kemp? For New York.

• This very long interview I gave to a right-wing publication called The First still holds up, I’d argue!

Also, I finally sold that darned novel in May.

JUNE

Newsletters:

• What do you when you realize you’re raising children in 1968?

• On the little people in this house discovering they are best friends.

• Micromorts!

Publications:

• How the NFL stopped fearing Donald Trump, for New York.

• One of the most emotional things I’ve ever written about baseball, for New York.

• The death of the Segway, for The New York Times.

• The only thing that can stop sports is the death of a player, for New York.

JULY

Newsletters:

• Patriotism on this particular July 4.

• Sometimes you just need to jump in a damn lake.

• Cincinnati, in the midst of a pandemic.

Publications:

• Bubba Wallace, on top of all of this, for New York.

• Gary Gaetti, Lake Land College legend, for MLB.com.

• Baseball coming back is good, for MLB.com.

• Especially when it’s on the radio, for MLB.com.

AUGUST

Newsletters:

• The college kids are coming, and they’re bringing hell with them.

• Let’s try to all give each other a break.

• The children’s best friends are now their stuffed animals.

Publications:

• This was probably the best sports piece I wrote this year, for New York.

• Why the NBA bubble worked, and what the United States could learn from it, for New York.

• Russell Crowe movies, ranked, Vulture.

SEPTEMBER

Newsletters:

• Stop looking at the traffic numbers, people.

• Missing banality.

• The choice of empathy.

Publications:

• The only way for players to evoke change may be not to play, for New York.

• My first, and still somehow most popular, column for Medium.

• The limits of Obama nostalgia, for Medium.

OCTOBER

Newsletters:

• I made the case for voting for Joe Biden. (It was not a hard case.)

Publications:

• My Bob Gibson obit for MLB.com.

• Why pandemic sports ratings are so low, for New York.

• The story of Albert Pujols in 10 at-bats for MLB.com.

• My interview with Armando Ianucci for GQ.

• But it was even cooler when I got to talk to Jeff Tweedy, also for GQ.

• Election Night is not supposed to be funny, for Medium.

• You can make an argument that no one handled the pandemic better than MLB. I tried to make it for New York.

• I was all over GQ in October, here writing a feature about Don Hertzfeldt.

NOVEMBER

Newsletters:

• A long story about Drew Barrymore with a good punchline.

Publications:

• Social media was the worst way to experience the election, for Medium.

• My favorite rankings of the year were these Kevin Costner rankings for Vulture.

• Trying to figure out if sports were making the pandemic worse, for New York.

DECEMBER

Newsletters:

• There should be no difference between zero readers and a billion.

• How do you talk to people who don’t care about truth?

• She’ll come back as fire, and burn all the liars, leave a blanket of ash on the ground.

Publications:

• Confessions of a Pandemic Risk-Taker, for Medium.

• I was in New York’s “Reasons to Love NYC” issue.

• The courtroom feeds are going viral, for Medium.

• What if the Cubs don’t win the World Series, for MLB.com.

All right, so maybe we hold the top 10 movies for next week.

Honestly: This newsletter is my favorite thing I get to do, and I have you to thank for it. So thank you. You got me through this year. I will repay you by spending most of 2021 desperately trying to get you to buy my book.

But yeah: 2020 is almost over. We made it. Barely.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Ten Ways 2020 Changed Sports Forever, New York. This piece is probably the one piece this week that I’ve been thinking about all year. (No offense to George Clooney.)

2. George Clooney Movies, Ranked, Vulture. One final big Grierson & Leitch joint to finish out the year.

3. Ten Things That Happened in January and February This Year That You’ve Already Forgotten About, Medium. I’m a terrible citizen, but I had completely lost the thread on the whole Iranian Guard thing.

4. Year in Review: Five Players Who Rebounded in 2020, MLB.com. I actually love writing end of year content. I think years should end all the time! (Especially this one.)

5. Pixar Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. With Soul.

6. The Final Five People Who Made 2020 Tolerable, Medium. The last one of these. Rubrics!

7. The Thirty: One Holiday Wish For All 30 Teams, MLB.com. An obvious end-of-year bit here.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, a big podcast week, the biggest really. Three shows. The first, we discuss (deep breath) Wonder Woman 1984, Soul, The Father, News of the World, Promising Young Woman, One Night in Miami, Small Axe: Education and The Midnight Sky. Then I had my big yearly conversation with Tommy Craggs. But the big one was Dorkfest 2020, our now nearly 30-year tradition of going through our Top Ten Movies of the Year. That show is good for the soul.

People Still Read Books, no new show this week, but you should still listen to David Wallace-Wells about his groundbreaking book The Uninhabitable Earth.

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, no show this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Who Did J.K. Rowling Become?” Molly Fischer, New York. I have been waiting for a deep dive about what exactly happened to J.K. Rowling. This is the story I was waiting for.

ARBITRARY THINGS RANKED, WITHOUT COMMENT, FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON

Beginning of Decade Years of My Life, Ranked

1. 2010

2. 1980

3. 2000

4. 1990

5. 2020

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

The upcoming week is probably the slowest of my entire year, so the time to get a rapid response is right now. Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Shameika,” Fiona Apple. Craig Jenkins, along with Steven Hyden my favorite music critic, wrote that “Fetch the Bolt Cutters supposes life is the summation of the sweets and the bitters and scatters both into the same dish.” That is exactly right. Also, I love the story behind this song, and the story that resulted from it.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

This is one of the last photos I took before the pandemic hit.

We will be there again. Be safe, everyone. I’ll see you in 2021.

Best,
Will