Volume 3, Issue 8: Sky Blue Sky

"The old buildings downtown empty so long ago, windows broken and dreaming. So happy to leave what was a home."

We’re running your Quarantine World stories every Wednesday. Here are two particularly good ones, about an impromptu quarantine wedding and the perils of running a small business right now, if you need points of reference. Send them to me at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.

This was the week when plans started officially getting canceled. One of the more disorienting aspects of this whole experience is that while are we constantly having to readjust every little detail of our daily lives on the fly, we are at the same time also recalibrating just how long we’ll have to continue to keep doing so. Even the good things we do, like flattening the curve, seem to extend the timeline even longer. Two months ago, the idea of all of America staying inside for, say, one 24-hour period would have been inconceivable. It has now been six weeks, and, among sane people at least, it still feels like we are only getting started. It is difficult to be optimistic about anything returning to normal, whatever normal is at this point, at any point before July 4, and very likely deep into the fall, perhaps into 2021 or, according to some particularly harrowing projections, even into 2022. If this lasts into 2022, this current situation will have gone on for more than a third of my youngest son’s life. By 2022, I’d worry how much of the Before time he’d even remember.

But we don’t have to go down that rabbit hole just yet. Right now, we can only worry about the summer. And this was the week that summer trips officially started falling away. I’d already dropped a New York trip in April — I was going to spend all day on television talking about baseball before seeing “Girl From the North Country” that night, and that was going to be a good day — and my parents and I had already cancelled our London trip for the Cardinals-Cubs series in June. A month out from Memorial Day brings out the tough cuts though. The whiskey tasting in Atlanta we won at a charity auction in February? Nixed. The annual trip to visit friends in Charleston, South Carolina? Gone. The trip to the All-Star Game in Los Angeles, as well as a chance to see close friends I haven’t seen in literally half a decade now? Nope. The yearly visit to Busch Stadium with my oldest son William, the trip where he gets to eat terrible food and high-five Fredbird and stay up late with Daddy in an AirBNB in a room with his own television? Not this year. We’re still holding out hope for all the summer camps they signed up for, including the first overnight camp for both of them, but it sure feels wishful to think those will happen at this point. Even if they aren’t shut down, will you be feeling comfortable sending your children away with a whole bunch of strangers coming in from all across the country in a confined area for a week by June?

And that’s all just assuming that the best case scenario subsists, that my loved ones and I remain healthy and well through all this. That is a scenario I am constantly reminding myself not to take for granted.

All’s I’m saying: It feels like we’re gonna be in here a while. This summer may end up looking a lot like this spring.

This can lead to despair, but I’m not going to let it. I’m lucky to have this nice people in this house, and to have family close, and to see the quiet little happy things unexpectedly blossoming. (The two boys have become best friends through this, and are now basically inseparable.) I’m fortunate to be able to work out of my home, to continue to have an income, to be in as stable a position as anyone can be through this. Someday these children are going to be grown and living thousands of miles away and they’re going to be too busy living their lives to call home and I’m going to miss them like a phantom limb. It is not perverse, I don’t think, to appreciate these extra moments when they are close, when they are here, and as safe as they can be. I am trying to savor every minute of this I can. As absurd as it sounds, there will be a time when I look back and sort of miss it.

But I still look for what’s next. Like a lot of people, I’ve made a list of things I’m going to do as soon as this is all over, and we can go out again, all those expeditions we all planned on doing but just never got around to. Eventually we will be let off our leash. And I can say this: I won’t want to look at the Internet for a month.

What will we do? What will you do? There are the obvious things. I will go to every sporting event I have the opportunity to attend. I will go see a movie, any movie, the worst movie, in a theater. I will visit every old friend I’ve been reminded of just how much I miss during this time. I will never cancel dinner plans. I will walk to the neighborhood pub for a nightcap on cool spring nights. I will personally thank every teacher at my children’s school. I will finally go see that band.

But are there larger changes? I’ve been working out of home for 15 years now, and I’ve become largely autonomous professionally. I have editors I set up my schedules with, but I don’t really have co-workers, at least not on a daily basis; I’m not on Slack, I don’t do conference calls, I have no real “team” of colleagues. Running Deadspin by myself all those years ago, exactly the way I wanted to run it, set up an ethos moving forward: I’m going to do things precisely how I want to do them, by myself, because I’d just proven that could work. But I’d never realized how isolated that made me until everyone was isolated. It’s nice to be a part of something. It’s OK not to do things just on my own. I’m going to be better about that.

It has long been a personal embarrassment how few countries I’ve visited. France, Russia (for work), Argentina, Belize, Canada. That’s it. I’m 44 years old and still a Central Illinois kid who has never been anywhere. I don’t want to be an ugly American. I want to see what haven’t seen, to plunge myself into a world I don’t understand and see what I can learn about myself from it. I want to go to Japan, where I know nothing about the culture or the language, and be forced to look within myself to figure it out. (I also want to eat all the sushi.) Or Australia. Or Africa. Or anywhere. I’d always planned on traveling more, but told myself I had plenty of time. But now that time has frozen on us all, it’s clear that I don’t have nearly as much time as I thought I did. None of us do.

I want to see the Grand Canyon. I want to be drunk in a Irish pub. I want to have a huge, indulgent three-hour meal surrounded by my closest friends. I want to drive across the country with the windows down. I want to water ski. I want to go to a soccer game in London with my kids. I want to see an elephant. I want all the things that I could have had before, but didn’t, because I thought it would always be there, because I thought I had all the time in the world.

There has been something cruel about this week, about the realization that the few plans in the outside world I had made have to be cancelled at the exact moment I desire and need them most. No Cardinals-Yankees series with William. No Six Flags trip with Wynn. No London baseball trip, three Leitch yokels from Mattoon finally going overseas. No catchup with Los Angeles and New York friends. No anniversary dinner out. No coaching Little League. No family visit to Buffalo. All those future memories, all those stories to someday be told, extinguished. The outside world has rarely seemed farther away.

But that will make sure I come that much closer to it, that I fully embrace it, when I can. When we get through this, the dim, even dull haze of everyday life can’t help but feeling brighter and more vivid after this. I’m making my list. And I’m gonna try to cross every goddamned thing off it. I know am probably not going to actually do all these things. But this is the time to gear myself up to try.

Someday we’ll be released, and the world will be ours to grab again. It may not be just around the corner. It may not be as soon as we want it to be. But it’s coming. We just gonna hang in. We just gotta hold on.

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

1. The NFL’s Magical Thinking on the Coronavirus, New York. Not that I haven’t sort of loved living in the NFL’s imaginary parallel universe for the last month or so.

2. Better Know a Player: J.D. Drew, MLB.com. I know nobody liked J.D. Drew, and I understand why nobody liked J.D. Drew, but know that I liked J.D. Drew

3. This Week in Genre History: Mystery Science Theater 3000, SYFY Wire. I saw this movie in the theater, at the old Co-Ed in Champaign. I am one of roughly 24 people who can say this.

4. Christian Bale Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Never a bad excuse to watch American Psycho again. 20 years!

5. Mike Petriello and I Drafted Every MVP Since 2000, MLB.com. Petriello is one of those people you stand next to an automatically seem smarter.

6. We Also Drafted Every Rookie of the Year Since 2000, MLB.com. These were done about three weeks apart, in case we sound different.

7. This Year in Baseball History: 2010, MLB.com. I cannot believe this was 10 years ago.

8. Better Know a Player: Moises Alou, MLB.com. Remember that he used to urinate on his hands to make them tougher.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we looked back at the movie year of 2001, and also “The Mend” and “Over the Edge.”

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we checked in during what was supposed to be G-Day Week.

Seeing Red, no show this week.

LAUGH THAT I NEEDED THIS WEEK

This John Mulaney bit about colleges asking for money after you’ve already paid them tuition seems particularly relevant right now.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“The Coronavirus in America,” Donald McNeil, The New York Times.

McNeil has covered infectious diseases for the Times for several decades, basically preparing for this moment. He has become just about the only person I trust, on this, or on about anything right now. This piece should be ready by every human on the planet.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

Support the post office! The post office is good! So send 'em:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“I Contain Multitudes,” Bob Dylan. Of the two new Dylan songs released during the pandemic, this is my favorite one.

Be safe out there, everyone. Don’t drink bleach.

Best,
Will